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Documentation about the Vampire hardware

Vampire V1200 and Micronik Zorro 2 Slot

Puig Thierry

Posts 6
31 May 2021 15:21


Hello, I received my vampire v1200 v2 this morning and I am very happy. But I have a problem because I have an A1200 with Micronik 6860 Rev 4.15 Slots Zorro 2. The vampire is not recognized with slots but works very well without the slots. There is a solution ?
other than withdrawing my Micronik card.


Juan Jose

Posts 23
31 May 2021 23:12


The same applies to the Mediator.
They said they would fix it in a future core.
But there are no new cores for our Vampires 1200.


Gunnar von Boehn
(Apollo Team Member)
Posts 6207
01 Jun 2021 09:46


Sorry there is currently no support for this.
As we also have not such card for testing,
I not know when this will be supported.


Son Goku

Posts 39
01 Jun 2021 19:50


It's not the Board itself, it's the Adapter that prevents the Vampire to be recognized...

@Gunnar
When I got my Vampire 6 month ago, i offered you to send someone from the Team my adapter for testing.


Puig Thierry

Posts 6
01 Jun 2021 21:44


good evening, yes exact it is the adapter that is involved, I did the test nothing by connecting the adapter between the 1200 and the vampire and the vampire is no longer recognized, the problem does not exist Not with my card 68030/50.

Thierry


Jd 64

Posts 41
02 Jun 2021 17:03


Terriblefire got his TF1260 working with the Mediator PCI 1200 TX so it should be possible to get the V1200 working with it too.



Chastanier Cclecle

Posts 19
02 Jun 2021 19:06


As far as I recall, the issue with vampire is also the lack of MMU / FullMMU. TF1260 work with mediator thanks to full 060.
But maybe im wrong ?


James Husted
(Needs Verification)
Posts 81/ 3
02 Jun 2021 19:17


no that has nothing to do with it - i think igor said before it was a simple fix



Gunnar von Boehn
(Apollo Team Member)
Posts 6207
02 Jun 2021 19:29


Chastanier Cclecle wrote:

  As far as I recall, the issue with vampire is also the lack of MMU / FullMMU.
 

 
You got this wrong. An MMU is not useful for this.
 
     
Please mind that AMIGA OS will never make use of an MMU.
 

There are some 3rd party solution which work around bugs in some CPU cards by using some "MMU hacks". You have to understand that this is by design an ugly patch for a problem and not a desirable solution.
  The Apollo 68080 CPU does not have these flaws, therefore any "dirty" workarounds like this are not needed. It goes without saying that dirty hacks to work around bugs are not something you want to do or want to have.


Carles Bernat Martorell

Posts 21
02 Jun 2021 20:13


I guess Mediator and Zorro 2 busboards are not the same scenario becasue A1200 already has zorro 2 logic. On the other hand V500 works very well with Zorro cards on my A2000. I also happen to have a micronik zorro busboard and I was thinking it could made a great Raptor setup for the future :)




Son Goku

Posts 39
03 Jun 2021 19:31


Could be a timing problem, Igor said to me. Which is probably easy to solve.

I'm hoping, there will be a solution. I don't have any Zorro Cards, but I use this board in my  Micronik tower for powering the system.


Juan Jose

Posts 23
03 Jun 2021 23:16


James Husted wrote:

no that has nothing to do with it - i think igor said before it was a simple fix
 

Yes, that's right, that's what Majsta said for a future core.


Chastanier Cclecle

Posts 19
07 Jun 2021 20:32


Got it, but I did not invented it:
  CLICK HERE 
  + MMU make sense because 32bit PCI @ space is to be accessed through a 4/8MB window.
 


Gunnar von Boehn
(Apollo Team Member)
Posts 6207
08 Jun 2021 06:36


Chastanier Cclecle wrote:

  + MMU make sense because 32bit PCI @ space is to be accessed through a 4/8MB window.
 

I can not see why MMU will make any sense here.
Maybe you can explain me the implementation details?


Chastanier Cclecle

Posts 19
10 Jun 2021 17:37


I did not say its mandatory, just that it make sense because otherwise you have to access, lets say GPU memory, through a 4 or 8 MB window.

Of course you can manually (programmaticaly) change the window offset, but how a program not aware of that can do that ?

But maybe openPCI / Warp3D have required abstraction level to prevent the necessity of this fully virtualized adress space...
How could Radeon memory be used as "slow" RAM otherwise ?


Gunnar von Boehn
(Apollo Team Member)
Posts 6207
10 Jun 2021 19:27


Chastanier Cclecle wrote:

I did not say its mandatory, just that it make sense because otherwise you have to access, lets say GPU memory, through a 4 or 8 MB window.
 
  Of course you can manually (programmaticaly) change the window offset, but how a program not aware of that can do that ?
 
  But maybe openPCI / Warp3D have required abstraction level to prevent the necessity of this fully virtualized adress space...
  How could Radeon memory be used as "slow" RAM otherwise ?

Seriously I not think MMU does any help here at all.
I think you just think about this right now, right?
Without knowing how it works?


Chastanier Cclecle

Posts 19
04 Jul 2021 11:43


How could I know in detail how it work ?
I'm not part of apollo team
I'm not part of mediator team

But Anyway, I know that mediator 1200 have 4/8MB access window so one can not access GPU memory without mediator chips cooperation.

So I did some more research.. And it apears that:
- MMU seems to be needed only for some drivers and special functions like RadeonMemOs/VoodooMemOS
- PCI api have memcpy-like functions for developers, it allow to access pci memory space ( pci_inb/w/l()/pci_outb/w/l() in openPCI,  they even say NOT TO USE direct memory access but rather use those functions in the SDK datasheet).

So Ok you are right when you said MMU is not mandatory, but I disagree when you way it has nothing to do with it.

Note: The driver even have an option to disable it (MMU=no), if someone have V2 1200+ Mediator I think its worth the try...


Gunnar von Boehn
(Apollo Team Member)
Posts 6207
04 Jul 2021 12:14


Chastanier Cclecle wrote:

How could I know in detail how it work ?

Of course you don't know this. And this is OK.

So lets try to clarify this.
As you correctly said:  the combination of Vampire V1200 and Micronik Zorro 2 Slot is not working.
I would assume this wont change.

 

posts 18