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Documentation about the Vampire hardware

Vamp V2 600 / SPI ETH / SD CARD

Chastanier Cclecle

Posts 19
30 Sep 2020 10:14


I all,

I am a happy howner of a A600 with Vamp V2 600 who want to get the more out of this little monster :).

At the moment I am using a PCMCIA card to get connected to the internet and it work very reliably !
I got 400kB/s-ish wich is allready great and allow me to access my 10TB NAS with smbfs ( very convenient !).
For storage i have an CF card with CF/IDE adaptor, directly connected du IDE port.

I found this storage solution a bit slow...

So, what I plan to do is:
- adding a buffered 4xEIDE to get some more mbps on vanilla IDE and in a (close) future being able to add a slimline CDROM (on master 2).
- using an SDCARD on the vamp to put the OS inside: I read that it is supposed to be way faster than IDE.
- add ETH/SPI module to improve netwok rate

Then, questions are:
- how fast is SD-Card slot ? I can not find numbers. Is there some benchmark / advices to choose the right SDCARD and maximize perfs ?
- same question for ETH/SPI module, is it really going to be faster than a PCMCIA wifi card ? I know I will have to switch to roadshow to achieve better bps... (using AmiTCP ATM).
- Can SDCARD and ETH/SPI share the SPI bus ? Or have-I to choose wich one I whant to use each time ?

Thxx


Gunnar von Boehn
(Apollo Team Member)
Posts 6207
30 Sep 2020 10:34


Chastanier Cclecle wrote:

  - adding a buffered 4xEIDE to get some more mbps on vanilla IDE

This will not increase speed.

Chastanier Cclecle wrote:

  - how fast is SD-Card slot ?

SDcard about 2 MB/sec

Chastanier Cclecle wrote:

  - same question for ETH/SPI module, is it really going to be faster than a PCMCIA wifi card

The SPI Vamp solution will be a lot faster than serial/parallel ethernet but same or slower to most PCMCIA cards.


Ozzy Boshi

Posts 31
30 Sep 2020 11:01


I have 2 amigas, 2 vampires, the first one is a v600 + coffin + pcmcia linksys ethernet, the second one is a v1200 + amigaos 3.1.4 + arduino ethernet module from china.

Both amigas are connected to the same switch, same vlan, same gateway, same cat5e cables and both roadshow.

Result for the pcmcia
EXTERNAL LINK 
result for the arduino
EXTERNAL LINK 
for testing i used this tool
EXTERNAL LINK 
Conclusion, for me this speed is more than enough, i can download anything amiga related from my samba share or ftp server in a reasonable time. If i were you i wont bother which is best, both works good.



Chastanier Cclecle

Posts 19
30 Sep 2020 13:12


Gunnar von Boehn wrote:

  This will not increase speed.

 
  As an electronician I also was thinking that at the begining, givig the fact "buffered" is just a signal amplifier...
  But, I saw this: EXTERNAL LINK  There is a speed noticiable difference between stock and buffered interface so I was wondering the IDE speed could go faster with a buffer interface...
  But apparently it was a wrong asumption ?
 
Gunnar von Boehn wrote:

SDcard about 2 MB/sec

 
  so its slower than stock (not accelerated) internal IDE ?
  Even with VCONTROL tuning ?
  I assume its PIO mode (non DMA) ?
  So on A600 the only way improving the speed is:
  - revert to older firmware when FAST IDE was enabled (but not a idea solution I thing ..)
  - getting all the best HW and SW for my current config (better CF-CAR, best FS/rom patch etc..)
 
Ozzy boshi wrote:
 
  Conclusion, for me this speed is more than enough, i can download anything amiga related from my samba share or ftp server in a reasonable time. If i were you i wont bother which is best, both works good.

 
  Thank you very much for the "numbers", it is exactly what I was looking for ;) !
  As I can see, it is not worth it (at leat for me) to go to SDNET route.
  Except if there is other advantages than speed, maybe CPU overhead ?
  I think its not DMA at the moment ?
  I will consider switching to RoadShow soon...
 


Gunnar von Boehn
(Apollo Team Member)
Posts 6207
30 Sep 2020 13:27


Chastanier Cclecle wrote:

  There is a speed noticiable difference between stock and buffered interface so I was wondering the IDE speed could go faster with a buffer interface...
  But apparently it was a wrong asumption ?
 

When you carefully read the "test" then you will notice that also different software version of IDE drivers were used when comparing IDE and buffered IDE.
You can either win a test by you being faster, or by making the other slower. E.g. by using a known slow driver version ...
 
 
  Your A600 IDE interface is as fast as it is.
  You will not get it faster with this product.
   
 
 
Chastanier Cclecle wrote:

 
Gunnar von Boehn wrote:

  SDcard about 2 MB/sec
 

   
  so its slower than stock (not accelerated) internal IDE ?
 

  Yes its a little slower.
  But its still great for swapping data around.
 
 
 


James Husted
(Needs Verification)
Posts 81/ 3
30 Sep 2020 13:55


I can concur that buffered interfaces dont improve speeds - i tried and it and noticed no difference.

posts 6