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Documentation about the Vampire hardware

Vampire 500 V2+ Black Screen On Boot

Carlo Pascoli

Posts 5
06 Nov 2018 23:38


Hi guys, Today I installed my Vampire 500 V2+ into my Amiga 500 but unfortunately all I got is a black screen via the rgb out to my 1084 monitor rather than the Vampire logo. I also tried the hdmi and lcd screen  with same result.
The 2 leds on the card lit up but that’s about it.
I swapped back the Vampire for the 68000 and my Amiga was working fine.
I put the Vampire back in and got the same problem.
I did not connect a CF card into the ide port, I just wanted to make sure the Vampire logo shows up.
Can you please advise me what to do?
Thanks


John William

Posts 563
07 Nov 2018 00:26


Carlo Pascoli wrote:

Hi guys, Today I installed my Vampire 500 V2+ into my Amiga 500 but unfortunately all I got is a black screen via the rgb out to my 1084 monitor rather than the Vampire logo. I also tried the hdmi and lcd screen  with same result.
  The 2 leds on the card lit up but that’s about it.
  I swapped back the Vampire for the 68000 and my Amiga was working fine.
  I put the Vampire back in and got the same problem.
  I did not connect a CF card into the ide port, I just wanted to make sure the Vampire logo shows up.
  Can you please advise me what to do?
  Thanks

Did you swapped back that Vampire for the 68000 and saw what happen?



Anton Gale

Posts 19
07 Nov 2018 00:27


The vampire Logo only shows on the DIGITAL-VIDEO port.  Without a CF you should get the insert disk prompt like you normally would.


Daniel Sevo

Posts 299
07 Nov 2018 01:36


Do you own a USB Blaster so you can update the core?
Might be worth trying to roll back to a "less demanding" version.

I had a black screen problem on my V600 a while ago.. worked fine on old cores then went black on newer ones, this was in the days when it wasnt yet known some cards will require a capacitor mod (adding two caps).



Simo Koivukoski
(Apollo Team Member)
Posts 601
07 Nov 2018 04:39


Did the Kick 3.1 have a 35 sec delay before the kickscreen, when booting without IDE device? And even longer, if the floppy drive is not connected.

Kickscreen comes from RGB only. DIGITAL-VIDEO works better with the TVs than dvi-d monitors. You should see a Vampire logo immediately after the power is turned on.


Carlo Pascoli

Posts 5
07 Nov 2018 16:27


No I don't own a USB Blaster but I realised the Vampire eventually booted after several minutes.


Carlo Pascoli

Posts 5
07 Nov 2018 16:47


I had waited several seconds but that wasn't long enough.
Today I left the Amiga+Vampire switched on and after several minutes it came to life!
I repeated the test several times and it's taking between 4 and 7 minutes to get the Vampire logo on DIGITAL-VIDEO and Amiga logo on RGB.
The Vampire has an old GOLD 2 core and Kickstarter 3.10 rev 44.72

Interestingly, if I soft reset via CTRL-Amiga-Amiga combo the Vampire boots immediately.
Now the main problem is that I cannot boot the OS from CF card.

I am able to boot WB 3.1 from DF0 (via Gotek drive) but my Workbench 3.1 installation on CF card doesn't boot. 
How can I troubleshoot boot issues of the IDE drive?

I would like to upgrade the Vampire firmware to the latest GOLD 2.11 but I think I need to boot WB from an IDE drive first.
I'm new to the Amiga and any help would be greatly appreciated.
thanks!



Carlo Pascoli

Posts 5
07 Nov 2018 16:50


I tried to boot from IDE drive with a CF card containing WB 3.1 from Amiga Forever and another one containing Coffin r0.53 . none of them was able to boot.


Simo Koivukoski
(Apollo Team Member)
Posts 601
07 Nov 2018 17:38


Carlo Pascoli wrote:
Interestingly, if I soft reset via CTRL-Amiga-Amiga combo the Vampire boots immediately.

Do you have a recapped PSU and motherboard? have you tested with the another brand IDE-CF adapter?



Carlo Pascoli

Posts 5
08 Nov 2018 16:29


I might have solved the problem. It took many attempts but today I was able to boot Classic Workbench 3.1 from CF card, (it took more than 20 minutes since switching on the Amiga!) I flashed the latest 2.11 core and then i was able to boot the Coffin r53  from my other CF card.
Now the Vampire seem to consistently boot as soon as powered on.
My motherboard hasn't been recapped so that might be a factor, but I didn't experience big problems before installing the Vampire.
Anyway it took a bit of patience but now I'm happy :)
thanks for your help

posts 10