
Apollo Team Announces the (Amiga) Vampire V4 - erickhill
http://forum.apollo-accelerators.com/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=1804
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ZenoArrow
To anyone unfamiliar with previous releases of the Vampire, they're the
fastest Motorola 68K compatible accelerators for the classic Amiga (there were
some PowerPC-based accelerators for the classic Amiga, not sure how they stack
up against the Vampire in terms of performance).

The main news here is the standalone Vampire board (previous versions of the
Vampire would need a classic Amiga to plug into, the older versions sat on top
of the existing CPU, intercepting the power and data intended for the existing
CPU, the name 'Vampire' is a play on this parasitic approach).

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LordKano
I have wanted to get and setup an Amiga to play some old games again on real
hardware but I can't bring myself to pay that much money.

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erickhill
For the highest compatibility and lowest $, a 500 running 1.3 is really the
best bet. If you really get into it, there are harddrive options (including
somewhat modern ones) that make life a lot easier. But it doesn't _have_ to be
expensive.

~~~
LordKano
I was introduced to the Amiga 2000 back in high school. That's where I have
always started my search but the 500 might not be a bad re-introduction.

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amiga-workbench
Always nice to see new hardware development for the Amiga, but I really do
wonder what everybody is running on hardware that powerful.

Personally I don't have any interest in the newer OS's and software and I have
my A1200 running 3.1 with a Blizzard 1230 IV accelerator, it handles the
classics flawlessly and I've got enough RAM for WHDload now.

~~~
ZenoArrow
There are quite a few videos on YouTube showing people doing different things
with Vampire accelerators, just search for "Vampire Amiga". So far the most
technically impressive is probably the video player (technically impressive
considering the hardware it's running on). Also, whilst the A1200 had a decent
range of accelerators released for it, it wasn't the same for the A500 and
A600.

My personal favourite demo is this Cannnonball video. Cannonball is basically
an open-source engine for Outrun. Aside from needing to create an Amiga
version of the soundtrack, the game runs fairly smoothly without
modifications:

[http://youtu.be/NWLztVtxJuU](http://youtu.be/NWLztVtxJuU)

For comparison, this is the original Amiga port:

[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=eOGxxYm4z5I](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=eOGxxYm4z5I)

The best Outrun-style games for the Amiga before now was probably the Lotus
series:

[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=SUoVoCc04GA](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=SUoVoCc04GA)

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protomyth
68080? had to look that up: [http://www.apollo-core.com/](http://www.apollo-
core.com/)

~~~
ZenoArrow
Yeah, they've got their own 68k-compatible CPU design.

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wmf
GraphQL adoption has been really held back by the lack of Amiga support, so
this is the final... wait.

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kingmanaz
Find it amazing that my thirty-year old A2000 is still being developed for,
both software and hardware. Here's hoping AmigaOS 3.1 developers somehow get
Firefox (or another HTML5 browser) ported once these FPGA accelerators become
more common. Would love to watch Netflix with my son from my childhood Amiga.

~~~
erickhill
> Here's hoping AmigaOS 3.1 developers somehow get Firefox (or another HTML5
> browser) ported once these FPGA accelerators become more common.

I think the honest problem is 3.1 is locked down, really. It's not ever been
open sourced, just reverse engineered (see AROS, MorphOS, AmigaOS 4.1). I've
not heard of a single instance where the 3.9 or 4.1 users feel they have a
viable, modern system they can realistically use. 4.1 works on PPC hardware
for goodness sake. How old is that? Just being real. Much of this has to do
with software support (lack thereof) as well as driver support.

Hang on to that 2000. And enjoy it. But I wouldn't try and push it into
"modern" daily driver use.

Ideally I think the OS(es) in dev today would all work together with the
hardware teams and go the route Linux took. Let Hyperion et al continue to
package up software and sell it commercially (like RedHat). But open source
the Amiga OS and let the community run with it. Make it a "real" and a viable
alternative.

It's just a complete and utter mess in the meantime. And getting all of the
current parties to talk and work with each other...

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rvense
3.9 and 4.1 are actually based on the real Amiga sources AFAIK.

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cable2600
I heard there was some lawsuit between companies over AmigaOS. The AROS is
based on AmigaOS 3.1 API calls and some version of AmigaOS 3.x or 4.x used
source code from AROS etc. I am not 100% certain of that, the websites that
reported it are down.

The guy who wrote the AmigaOS 3.x API calls got upset that someone scanned his
book into a PDF file and pirated it. So he didn't make an AmigaOS 4.x API
calls and without knowing them it is hard to make Amiga 4.x apps.

AROS made their own Kickstart ROM for Classic Amigas to run AROS on Classic
Amigas. Since AROS supports networking it is possible to rig up some sort of
Internet connection and port a web browser to it.

Amiga Forever is worth it for the ROM images and Kickstart disks to run
Workbench and other things.

~~~
kingmanaz
In regards to the author who was upset his book was scanned; I believe you're
referring to Babel and his "The Amiga Guru Book".

Currently on my bookshelf.

