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Documentation about the Vampire hardware

Vampire In A2000 Connection Options

Retrobrain Johnny

Posts 12
21 Jan 2017 22:39

I have seen that there is 2 ways to connect the Vampire board in a A2000 machine, the normal way on the cpu slot, same as on A500, but also with an adaptor in the CPU expansion slot ( EXTERNAL LINK )

It would seem to me that putting it with adapter in CPU expansion slot would make it alot easier to get to, change SD cards and so on as the "normal way" means its completely hidden under floppy/cd drives.

But will it have any effect on speed or will it be, as i would guess, exact same speed? Any other differences between the two connection options? pros and cons?

Will we be offered to buy the adapter with the card? (im on the waiting list from verry beginning).


Gunnar von Boehn
(Apollo Team Member)
Posts 6216
22 Jan 2017 07:39

I use the V500 just as it in the 68k-CPU socket of the A2000.
This works fine for me.
 
For the SDCard I have bought a SDCard extender Cable from Ebay few $.
I have now a full size SDCard Slot in the front of the A2000 next to the Floppy. Makes swapping data with Camera etc very easy.
 


Retrobrain Johnny

Posts 12
22 Jan 2017 20:35

SDcard extender.. never even tought of that.. mainly because ive never heard of them, but that actually seems like a verry good solution im gonna order one of those.

But just to clarify, there is no difference really between using cpu slot or cpu expansion slot then?


Ian Parsons

Posts 230
22 Jan 2017 20:57

Accelerators at the time the A2000 was being designed tended to need a lot of space for all the glue logic and memory ICs plus the A2000 was an expensive machine so it made sense to provide a CPU slot to allow easy installation of big expensive accelerator cards. You can also plug accelerators onto the edge connector on the A1000 and A500 but it's an ugly solution chewing up desk space and prone to getting knocked about. So as technology improved with surface mount, denser memory ICs and programmable logic the boards became smaller, lighter and cheaper so a "hacky" solution of plugging the accelerator into the motherboard CPU socket became popular for the A1000 and especially the A500 which lead to the same being done on the A2000.

posts 4