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Documentation about the Vampire hardware

My First Impressions of V4+

Mikael Grahn

Posts 14
10 Mar 2021 21:53


I finally got my Vampire. Gave up waiting for a V1200 and ordered the v4 (That waiting list must be great selling point for the v4).

As probably many have done, I've been reading quite alot of posts here on the forum. So I had prepared myself with V4BL. Just to be on the safe side, and I love choices :)

But first I booted ApolloOS that came inside the Vampire when it was delivered. It seemed nice enough and seemed to work, but then crash. It really seems to crash for almost no reason very often. Functionality can stop working for some reason. Like suddenly I was unable to double click (how odd is that?). I had to do so many reboots that I got tired and put in the V4BL prepared CF card.

Going into Coffin or AmiKit really was much better for now. It's so much more stable and usable for now. ApolloOS is not really ready for primetime just yet in my opinion. It will eventually get there, but there is still some way to go.

So what's the first thing to do with my shiny new Amiga? I'm a music man so I really wanted to re-listen all of my old tunes. Have a nice sorted collection of mod-filen and all strange formats you can think of. Kicked up HippoPlayer which is my old favorite (even have my own key from back in the day). Damn it sounded awful. Crackles and pops at the end of almost every sample. This was not how I imagined it would be. I noticed it was AHI enabled per default, but that should not be a problem. Worked fine on my old Amiga. Anyhow I decided to turn off AHI playback and go for direct Paula (Arne) playback. It was still horrible and if anything it was even worse. I played around with the settings and after setting the PT replayer to normal it worked like I wanted. There is still the occasional little crackle, but it's hardly noticeable. The fastram player is just so horrible, and is just unusable.

Trying Delitracker II I seemed to come to the same conclusion. When using any noteplayer but the Paula-Noteplayer the result was all but good. Can it be that the other noteplayers work with fastmem? Seems far fetched that the Vampire would have problem with using fastmem coupled to playing sounds? That is the feeling from my not so deep tests. But then ain't chip and fast the same on the V4?

After this I turned to demos. As an old scener this is my thing. Started up Desert Dream by Kefrens, which happens to be my all time favorite. It seemed to work fine but then... the "jelly" Desert Dream sign looks all wrong. Then when it starts rotating it's totally wrong. The zoom scroller is glitching and then the end of part one also glitches bad. This demo has undergone some heavy fixing with whdload, so was really expecting it to work well.

Many demos seems to work perfectly well, but some not so well at all. It's a bit hit and miss at the moment, so still seems to need some work to be fully compatible. An extra funny thing is that there are few whdload demos that came with ApolloOS. One thought that those would be examples of those who works extra well. Sorry to say that it was not so.

I even upgraded with 5B hoping for something, but I guess that was for fixing something else :)

So in the end my first impressions are mixed. It's fast and have the RTG which I always missed on the Amiga. The quick and colorful workbench really is something to behold. The sound output seems to be nice when it works but anything but direct paula playback (and then seems to prefeer chip mem). The (S)AGA output seems to work fine for system things, but still has kinks when banging on the hardware it seems.

Oh well, it's still under development so it will become better with time. For now though the development seems to focus on things getting quicker and not more compatible. Only time will tell if the V4 will ever replace my A1200. We'll see how far things have come when I finally get my V1200.




Gunnar von Boehn
(Apollo Team Member)
Posts 6207
11 Mar 2021 06:32


Hi Mikael,
 
You seem to have quite some problems.
As you know we have 24/7 support channel on discord for which  you got an invitation.
 
Did you talk to anyone of the team for assistance?
I don't recall that you asked me - I think a lot could have been solved if you had asked.

ApolloOS is at the beginning.
This was IMHO always clearly communicated.
I personally think that ApolloOS runs surprising good already but there are a number of items that need improvement.

Aros has open bugs in a few areas, like e.g. AHI Sound, like e.g. timers, like IDE/ATA. I think we clearly communicated that these areas need improvements and that we work on these areas with high focus.

The changes in Release5B, are purely software fixes to the OS.
- bug in LoadView, (fixing some old games/demos)
- bug in DMA handling of AROS, (fixing some old games/demos)
- fixing serious issues in Aros/IDE code. (highly increasing stability and as side effect improving speed by over 50%)

While ApolloOS offers some things which AmigaOS not had, or surpasses AmigaOS in some areas - its clearly not 100% compatible done yet. But our goal is to fix all these areas in the coming year.
 


Mikael Grahn

Posts 14
11 Mar 2021 06:57


I'm on discord but I've not been on there since I got the V4. I've just played around with it some so far. I was thinking that especially the sound problems was odd that no one hade mentioned it. I'll try my luck on the discord then :)


Manos Sg

Posts 96
11 Mar 2021 12:07


Hello, Mikael,

as a new V4+ owner, I shared most of your concerns on my first impression with the Vampire. ApollOS isn't quite there yet, although philosophically it is definitely in the right direction. Overall stability and compatibility are indeed quite suspect.

OTOH, the team is working non-stop and already in the short time I have been a V4 owner I have seen noticeable improvement in the compatibility section (with core updates-and the next update is right around the corner). There is also quite a decent amount of stuff that works perfectly worth of years of Amiga fun, while the team steadily and diligently fixes the stuff that doesn't work.

At the moment, I have to admit that I am using my V4 more than my lovely, accelerated A500. :D


DiscreetFX Studios

Posts 140
11 Mar 2021 14:17


Is the Arne audio chip short for Arnold Schwarzenegger?


Vojin Vidanovic
(Needs Verification)
Posts 1916/ 1
11 Mar 2021 16:45


DiscreetFX Studios wrote:

Is the Arne audio chip short for Arnold Schwarzenegger?

as far as I know, its Pamela, so we might wonder is it Anderson?

On sidenote, its nice Kevin got his V4sa
EXTERNAL LINK 
Hope Sketchblock, and some more software, will go OS 3.x-ApolloOS

posts 6