The process that followed was quite straight-forward and well explained in the subsequent emails. I put my name down on the waiting list around December last year and had honestly forgotten about it until I recieved this exciting and unexpected email towards the end of June this year: The ordering process was pretty straightforward even if it did involve a long wait - which, frankly, is nothing new in the Amiga scene ) I also want to just add that this is by no means a complaint, it’s simply the reality of a small but dedicated team working as best they can in these strange times of shipping delays and supply chain issues. Quite an impressive technical achievement! Ordering The FPGA solution has also enabled the team to add extra capabilities beyond that of purely providing a faster CPU: The Vampire range of boards includes features such as a “SAGA” graphics chipset with Hi-Res HDMI output, Faster IDE port, SD Card slot, Ethernet expansion and much more besides. This reports itself as a “68080” processor and being a FPGA-based solution, it can also be updated on a regular basis with downloads from the Apollo site. The Vampire boards from Apollo take a different approach: Rather than sourcing original Motorola processors (or requiring the end-user to find and separately purchase a processor, as in the case of the Warp series of cards), they designed a new 68000-compatible core and implemented it in FPGA form. Notable examples include the open-source TerribleFire range, and the new Warp 1260 which utilises a Motorola 68060, the fastest of the 68000 series of processors produced by Motorola and used in the original Amigas. New products are being designed and released even today, with the accelerator scene - providing faster processors and often other additions - seeing a resurgence of late. Faster processors, more memory, PCI expansion boards, graphic cards, network adapters… There really is seemingly no limit to the ingenuity of the scene, even going so far as to re-purpose the A1200 clockport into providing USB connectivity! I would imagine that most in the Amiga scene are familiar with the Vampire range of accelerators, but here’s a brief recap: The Amiga was always a very expandable and flexible system - over the years, a wide variety of add-on cards were produced that pushed the machine beyond its original design limitations and opened up a whole world of expansion possibilities. This has ended up as one of my longer blog posts, with lots of screenshots and photos, but if there’s anything in particular I have missed that you would like to know about please feel free to leave a comment or get in touch with me. What follows is a review/retrospective on my first month or so of usage of this card - I’ll cover the ordering experience, hardware, installation, updates and software and wrap up with my thoughts and reflections on the project. After months of being on the waiting list, I recently recieved my Apollo Vampire V1200V2 accelerator! Since then, my Amiga has had a new lease of life so I thought I’d write an update covering all the stuff I would have wanted to know while I was waiting for the package to arrive.
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