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

Another success story: New cases for Amiga 500!

Philippe Lang and A1200NET, who already created new Amiga 1200 cases and keycaps are going to create professional molds for new compatible Amiga 500 cases.

It's another amazing success story from the self organizing, crowd-funding Amiga-scene: According to the Indiegogo project page, as of today $186,734 USD have been raised, and the project was 112% funded on May 31, 2018!

 

These new cases feature a number of improvements over the original ones, apart from being brand-new:

- screwholes with metal threads
- immune to UV-light
- prepared to house a Vampire 500 V2 or Raspberry Pi 3 mainboard
- or of course an original Amiga 500 mainboard
- Vampire ports extender, allows routing of internal LAN / USB / HDMI / SDcard connections to proper outlets (e.g. disk drive opening)
- different colors available: white, black, light blue, orange, and more
- signatures by Amiga celebrities like Dave Haynie and David Pleasance, among others
- metal case badge, floppy buttons, rubber feet, and trapdoor covers included

The whole thing seems to be well on it's way, and mass production of cases is planned towards the end of 2018, to be shipped in April 2019.

Of course if you want to support the project you still can, there are numerous packages available for you to claim - from "Unique Solo" - one case - to "Quad damage" - four cases - or silver and gold metal coated editions, or a beautiful "Scourge Of The Underkind" collector's edition.

Oh, and there's even more: if the project reaches it's "stretch goal" of $189,000USD, project backers will receive new Amiga "tank"-mouse cases, too!

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/new-compatible-case-for-amiga-500-plus#/

https://c1.iggcdn.com/indiegogo-media-prod-cld/image/upload/c_limit,w_695/v1520575661/cy6t8kk6e2hqsxx1vx2c.png

Source:
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/new-compatible-case-for-amiga-500-plus-computers#/

Apollo Team Activity Report: GOLD 2.7 core, GOLD 3 core, Vampire V4

Apollo team has released an activity report on their forum website, addressing some current issues, like the halted Vampire V2 600 production, as well as ongoing new developments.

Some highlights from their report:

- GOLD 2.7 includes faster IDE, hardware sprites, optimized rewrite of RTG graphics driver, MapROM functionality, hybrid software/hardware FPU, HyperThreading, and more

- GOLD 2.7 core will be available for Vampire V2 500, V2 600, and V4

- GOLD 3 will bring AGA support to OCS/ECS Amigas, and seems to be routing Paula-audio to the HDMI output

- a list of non-Amiga website reports about the Vampire V4, which boldly shows that the outside world does take notice

Judging from the list of new features of the GOLD 2.7 core users can expect a major overall increase in performance.


Especially the Apollo core's current lack of an FPU is a crucial difference to "real" M68k based accelerators (with an FPU), but it looks as these days will soon be gone. It'll be interesting how the other manufacturers of accelerator boards will react to this - namely: phase 5 - as they now have some serious competition when it comes to floating-point number crunching.

Again, Apollo team has given us some spectacular report on their progress. Together with the latest phase 5 announcements this makes 2017 probably the most exciting Amiga year since the turn of the millenium!

Sources:
forum.apollo-accelerators.com/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=1822

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

"Mini Metal Slug" for AmigaOS3 by Arti - and many other games by HunoPPC

Arti has ported "Mini Metal Slug", a "Metal Slug" remake, to AmigaOS3. It's a one-man-army comic-style shoot'em up game, and it demands some serious processing power: 68040 CPU, fast emulator, or Vampire accelerator is required.

You can find it on AmiNet:
http://aminet.net/search?query=minislug

Arti's homepage is:
https://artishq.wordpress.com

The AmigaOS3 version is based on HunoPPC's AmigaOS4 port of the game. HunoPPC has done a lot of other ports, mostly for AmigaOS4, and some for AROS, MorphOS, Linux, MacOS, Windows.

Titles include "World of padman", "Return to Castle Wolfenstein", "OpenBor"
"Xgalaga", "Aliens versus Predator 2000", "Enemy Territory: Legacy", among others.


You can find a list of his projects on his homepage:
http://hunoppc.amiga-projects.net/

Here's a video of "Mini Metal Slug" running on a Vampire accelerated Amiga:

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

Sources:
http://www.apollo-core.com/knowledge.php?b=3&note=6140
http://aminet.net/package/game/actio/MiniSlug
https://artishq.wordpress.com/

Amiga Kit (GB) and Relec (CH) to retail Apollo / Vampire accelerators

The next step in Apollo / Vampire accelerators development: After the boards have been put into mass production, they're now available from Amiga retailers AmigaKit in Great Britian and Relec in Switzerland!


http://www.amigakit.com

http://www.relec.ch

http://apollo-accelerators.com/images/v500v2.gif

AmigaKit reports that the first batch of Vampire 500 V2's has sold out in just hours - be quick to place your order!

http://apollo-accelerators.com/images/V2-128.png

You can read AmigaKit's news release here:
http://www.amigakit.com/news/News_Release_Apollo_Accelerators.pdf

Your can read Relec's news release here:
http://relec.ch/frch/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=141:vampire-qon-the-roadq&catid=1:relec&Itemid=8&lang=en


Home of the Apollo accelerator boards:
http://apollo-accelerators.com

Sources:
http://relec.ch/frch/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=141:vampire-qon-the-roadq&catid=1:relec&Itemid=8&lang=en
http://www.amigakit.com/news/News_Release_Apollo_Accelerators.pdf

A new Amiga...?!

With the Vampire accelerator boards out and in mass production, and AROS gaining momentum on m68k, it has been announced that the Apollo/Vampire team will open-source their S-AGA enhanced Amiga-compatible chipset!

This means that other companies can reuse and build upon this new, compatible Amiga chipset implementation without worrying about license fees, copyright holders, or future safety.

AROS is already open-source, and AROS amiga-m68k is running on the Vampire boards, providing a free operating system. (It still needs optimization for the S-AGA chipset, though.)

Yes, it looks like it's finally happening: a new, open-source 68k-Amiga.

AROS-m68k running on Amiga Vampire 500

Sources:
http://www.apollo-core.com/knowledge.php?b=1&note=5768
http://www.apollo-core.com/knowledge.php?b=1&note=5580

Accelerators galore

In recent times, a lot of new hardware developments for retro computers are popping up. Among these are a remarkable number of different accelerators for the Amiga 500, 600, and 1200 - here's an overview of what's currently available and/or in development.

Please note that information provided here may not be 100% complete. Read about the boards' details on the websites provided, or get in contact with the developers, if in doubt.

Have fun choosing your next-gen Amiga accelerator!

ACA500plus

Individual Computers brings us this accelerator board for the Amiga 500, with some interesting features - like e.g. built in Kickstart ROMs, AmigaOS 3.1 installer software, and a connector for A1200 accelerators.

CPU: MC68EC000 at 14 to 42MHz
8MByte RAM
8MByte FlashROM
two CF-card slots
Action Replay-compatible freezer
7-segment display "DisMo"
Kickstart V1.2, V1.3 and V3.1, and AmigaOS 3.1 installer in FlashROM
Extension connectors: A1200-compatible Clockport, local 16-Bit extension port, connector for A1200 accelerators

Website(s):
https://icomp.de/shop-icomp/de/shop/product/ACA500plus.html

ACA1221ec

Individual Computers' low-budget accelerator for the Amiga 1200, sells for only about 120 Euros.

CPU: 68EC020
17 to 42 MHz
16MB RAM, 9MB of which are usable FastRAM
1MB-MapROM option
2 clockports, one of which is hi-speed (for RapidRoad USB host controller use)

Website(s):
https://icomp.de/shop-icomp/de/shop/product/aca1221ec.html

ACA1233n-40 and ACA1233-55

Individual Computers' 68030 accelerators are still available.

CPU: 68030 at 40 or 55 MHz
128MB RAM
MapROM option
Clock port

Website(s):
https://icomp.de/shop-icomp/en/produkt-details/product/ACA12xx.html

Furia EC020 for Amiga 600

On sale for quite some time now are the Furia accelerators for the Amiga 600, available via online stores (e.g. http://vesalia.de or http://lotharek.pl )

CPU: 68EC020 at 33MHz
FPU: 68882 (if present) 
9.5MB FastRAM 
Maprom function

Website(s):
http://www.kuchinka.cz/furia/

TerribleFire TF520, TF530, and TF540

Stephen Leary's open-source DIY accelerators for the Amiga 500. Documentation on how to build the 68020 and 68030 CPU versions (TF520, TF530) are already available via GitHub and YouTube (see links below), and just recently Stephen has begun developing the 68040 version (TF540).

CPU: 68020, 68030, or 68040
FPU: 68881
IDE controller

Here's a demo of the TF530 in action, comparing a stock A500's performance to that of a TF530-equipped one, using "Frontier - Elite II":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRO9j2G9owc

Website(s):
https://www.youtube.com/c/TerribleFire
https://twitter.com/terriblefire

https://github.com/terriblefire/tf520
https://github.com/terriblefire/tf530

Wicher 500i

Accelerator board for the Amiga 500, from Poland.

CPU: MC68000/68010
Max. clock: 50MHz
RAM: 1-8 MB SIMM 72 (FPM,EDO)
IDE Controller
SPI Controller

Here you can see it in action:
https://youtu.be/WWG1BVmYEXU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6-r4OQP9Sc

There's also a Wicher 2000 accelerator board for the Amiga 2000 planned.

Website(s):
http://retro.7-bit.pl

HC508

Homebrew accelerator for the Amiga 500 by blogspot/YouTube user "m68k". Not much is known about this one, especially if it'll be sold to the public or made open-source one day.

68HC000 CPU at 50 MHz, 100% MC68000 compatible
IDE-controller (40-pin) for HD and CD-ROM
integrated CF-Card slot
8 MB FastRAM (1 wait state)
512k FlashROM for Kickstart (1 wait state)
Utility to individually (de)activate any module (CPU, RAM, ROM, IDE)

Here you can see it in action:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VK1h65u8UIU

Website(s):
http://amigaprj.blogspot.de

Vampire 500 V2 and Vampire 600 V2

FPGA-based accelerators - and much more - for the Amiga 500 and 600. Amiga 1200 version is in development. CPU performance far beyond that of a 68060, SAGA graphics with Full-HD resolution, HDMI output, 128MB RAM, MicroSD card slot, IDE controller (Vampire 500 only). The ultimate boost in performance!

Website(s):
http://apollo-accelerators.com