Next-generation 3D rendering performance with "Maggie"

Apollo Team, creators of the Vampire line of FPGA-based Amiga accelerators and compatibles, just published an impressive 3D graphics demo.

"Maggie" is a 3D unit and truecolor hardware texturing engine with zbuffer and shading, that is implemented in the CYCLONE 5 FPGA based models of the Vampire family. After presenting a couple of nice 2D demos of scaling and blending, Apollo Team has now uploaded a 3D demo showing Maggie's 3D features in action, running smoothly in what appears to be a 1280x720px screenmode created by Vampire's SuperAGA video system.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rxggxxPzYg
Apollo-Team YouTube channel  

Find out more about Vampire and Maggie on Apollo's website:
http://apollo-core.com

APECAT making progress

You might have seen our little article, asking for support for APECAT, the "Amiga Processor Expansion Card for Application Transfer" - we have good news!

In case you haven't heard about APECAT before: Stian Søreng is developing a homegrown expansion device for the Amiga 500 (MC68000 CPU slot - probably Amiga 2000, too) that is designed to be able to directly upload code to the Amiga's memory, and execute it on boot.

Pretty cool, isn't it?

Stian has just reported via facebook that he's making progress, his prior problems seem to have been solved. 

In a new article on his website (see link below) published on Aug. 31st, he describes he had to fix timing issues both in hard- and software, and has started working on revision 2 of the APECAT. 

He also created a short video showing his strikingly simple and simply amazing invention doing a little work! Here it is:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJHgCr-Vl1Q

Yeah, it IS pretty cool.

In fact it's awesome.

:-D

Visit Stian's website for more information:
http://jmp.no/blog/apecat-writing-to-ram-running-code


Sources:
https://www.facebook.com/amigaalive/posts/781513535557774?comment_id=890311298011330
http://jmp.no/blog/apecat-writing-to-ram-running-code

BANG! There it is: Vampire V4 standalone & Vampire V4 Amiga 1200

And this is how things happen. You have an Apollo team, and a Vampire team, and Kipper2k and Majsta and all the others, and they just go the way, all the way.

Today has been announced Vampire V4, and what a beast it is: it comes in different flavours, including an Amiga 1200 version, and a standalone version.

Among it's features are the Altera Cyclone V A5 FPGA, 512MB DDR3 RAM, FastIDE with two connectors (40 and 44-pin), HDMI* video out, dual Kickstart-flashrom, USB, ethernet, and MicroSD storage. Additionally, the standalone version will feature two DB9 mouse/joystick ports.

From the official announcement: "The Vampire V4 standalone system will be a complete new Amiga system powered by the 68080 CPU core and the complete SAGA chipset (AGA compatible)."

Probably most interesting are three I/O ports on the new Vampire V4. Currently we have no information about these, but could this be the basis for a new standard of Amiga expansion devices? Will this be what people build upon, and make the Vampire V4 the new Amiga?

It has to be said, though, that there's some sort of question mark regarding the Amiga 600 version of the Vampire boards. The announcement of the V4 says "Amiga 600 with kippa’s adapter (if produced)", and assuming that "kippa" is "kipper2k", things don't look too well: recently, kipper2k left a note on his website (see sources, below) that he doesn't intend to continue making the Vampire 600 boards. Let's just hope this doesn't affect the overall roadmap of the Vampire boards, and that someone will build the adapter for the V4 600.

Anyway, exciting times we live in!

Congratulations!

  

http://www.apollo-accelerators.com/images/v4.jpg

*) probably, see sources below

Sources: 
http://amiga-news.de/de/news/AN-2017-08-00003-DE.html
http://www.apollo-accelerators.com/files/V4_announcement_v1_5.pdf
http://forum.apollo-accelerators.com/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=1804
http://kipper2k.com

Vampire V2 / Apollo-Core GOLD3 boldy goes AGA chipset emulation!

Here's the next step in Vampire/Apollo-core development, and what an important step it is: Amiga-chipset emulation, namely AGA, is making good progress - now Vampire boards can do AGA graphics and audio via HDMI!

Once again, and finally, it looks like it's really happening: the looooong overdue update of the Amiga's screenmodes and connection capabilities in regard to modern displays.

Additionally, some programs - probably mostly games - will benefit from this new stage of Apollo-core in a specific way: due to not only the super-fast CPU-emulation but also the new AGA-emulation both residing on the Vampire now, there's no need for "turtle mode" anymore - in other words: the CPU doesn't have to wait for the slow Amiga-mainboard chipset blitter anymore, giving huge performance boosts to blitter-heavy applications.

AGA chipset emulation is still work in progress (e.g. currently PAL only), and hasn't been released to the public yet, but you can already watch some impressive demo videos:

Vampire 600 V2 / GOLD3 "No more turtle mode", parts 1 and 2

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYxEFUgWe1o

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Q_rfkqPymg

Source:
http://apollo-core.com/knowledge.php?b=1&note=6563