Amiga A600 Vampire II Hardware Accelerator - Tested and Reviewed !

[@50ShadesOfBeige]

Great review. We recently mentioned the Vampire2 on the Retro Computing Roundtable Podcast, and yes, if you have a 600 get one, if you don't have a 600, get both.

[@danwood_uk]

Great video. This looks incredible, hope mine will arrive soon. Can't wait to play with it!

[@ModernVintageGamer]

+Dan Wood - kookytech.net thanks Dan. always been a huge fan of your videos. cheers!

[@ronaldmadican2393]

+Modern Vintage Gamer I gave up on a Vampire board after 3 months of nothing. It wasn't just the wait that put me off, it was not replying to emails that put the fear in me. That and the fact that payment as a "gift" is required. I cancelled my order because I have lost faith in Brian. If this board is that good then Vesalia or Amigakit would sell it. Problem is that Brian won't deal with shops. I wonder why that is?

[@ModernVintageGamer]

+Ronald Madican i will tell you that Brian/Kipper is 10000% honest and i would not be concerned about being scammed out of money. The problem is he builds 10 or so boards a week and with the demand its taking months and months for them to be shipped out. And over time , people tend to lose interest and move on to other things. To be honest - I'm not sure why they dont send these to china or somewhere to be mass produced but im not involved in that decision making process. It's a shame that more people dont have their boards yet - i guess i was fortunate to have preordered really early (i believe in november 2015). I hope they have a better system going forward.

[@ronaldmadican2393]

+Modern Vintage Gamer Just to be clear. I have in no way said that anything is dishonest. Although the way Brian is, he might as well be. I know that this is his hobby and he's a one man band. But I work hard for my money and I don't like being handed the shitty end of the stick. The order I placed way in early January and on the website there are updates like: if you have been missed email me. And in my case that email was ignored. And the one after that as well. So it's not the homemade boards or honesty that's the problem. It's the lack of respect for customers and having to pay as a gift that worried me. BTW I do like your videos.)

[@obsoletegeek]

Dude, this is awesome! Well done! Your best video yet

[@ModernVintageGamer]

+The Obsolete Geek thanks Rob! means a ton coming from you

[@tarstarkusz]

You mentioned this was $160, but it's now listed at 260 euros. Do you know what the price in Dollars in America is? Is that extra money a vat tax Europeans have to pay?

[@imajstorovic]

Hi, I must say that this video is done really professional. Let me just say that you have some unique skills to do things like this. You are very talented so I m happy that someone like you did this review. Regarding some mentioned problems. You have silver version of the core, and like you know there will be more upgrades where you will be able to see real performance of the card. Once you see how HDMI works on higher resolutions and once you go online surfing with A600 using Vampire you won't believe what is happening :) Thank you again for such nice video and your support.

[@ModernVintageGamer]

+Imajstorovic thank you very much for such a great piece of hardware :) I cant wait to see the updates. when will they be available?

[@x2net]

I say your "company" is full of scammers and idiots. Unable to fulfill orders, unable to make enough boards, keep announcing whatever shitty emulation hardware. I'm pretty shure that "vampire" "v2" is not a real product, they just sent out a few beta boards for youtubers for review just to gain popularity for their shitty emulation hardware. Now they cancelled v2 for shitty emulation boxes. Well done. Apollo accelerators will be the next "next thing company".

[@LuManUK]

Great review. Well put together and good comparisons.... I think I'm going to have to buy one now!

[@kipper2k]

nice Video, For clarification the core is rewriteable and upgradeable,. An FPU is on the list as a future addon along with SAGA and a few more little tweaks. There is room to squeeze out about 20% more power yet. Compatibility is very high and we are working to make it 100%. Shapeshifter is puzzling as to why it doesn't start but the Fusion Mac emulator works like a charm, especially when you set up a Mac partition on your HDD. So much to try, so little time :)

[@ModernVintageGamer]

+Brian R awesome. cant wait for that update Kipper. thank you very much for this hardware. its fantastic!

[@crpgdev]

Looks like a great all in one board. Look forward to seeing more.

[@RasVoja]

Thanks for quick V600 review, nice!

[@Runar_W]

Vampire II for ALL AMIGA VERSIONS! I would so love to have one in my A4000...

[@trydowave]

Cant wait for mine to turn up

[@thedevilbunny]

Great Demo! Thanks a bunch for getting that up in a hurry!

[@EXITMUSIC2011]

I hope they make one for Amiga 1200, would be amazing ;)

[@JimmiG84]

Agreed. There are a lot of AGA games that would really benefit from a fast CPU. I would love an excuse to fire up my old A1200 again :)

[@RasVoja]

Majsta did it! With shining Vampire and faster core!

[@morphshag]

I would LOVE to get my hands on a card like that. put some life in to my stock Amiga. I want to use it so bad but the stock 1mb RAM is really holding it back. great video.

[@RasVoja]

I am now building sys with A600 and V600

[@ToddsNerdCave]

Wooooo! That thing is a screamer. I have the original Vampire board in my A600 but this one looks to crush it. Great video!

[@ModernVintageGamer]

+Todd Gill yeah i never really had an interest in the original. i couldnt really pass on this one based on the specs.

[@channex8179]

This is an awesome bit of kit!! Love the Amiga back in the late 80s early 90s i was the quintessential Amiga Kid who my mates came to when their Amiga's fucked up I had boxes full of spare processors' Ribbon cables and Floppy drives. Heady days man!

[@RetroDemoScene]

That's quite the board, cant wait to see what they do with the A1200 version (sales will go threw the roof) i wouldn't say no to the A500 version either though :) Great vid, cheers.

[@ModernVintageGamer]

+RetroDemoScene im looking forward to an A500 version more than an A1200 personally but both will be awesome to see

[@Djformula]

Fantastic video, really well presented and a good review. Subbed!

[@ModernVintageGamer]

+Ravi Abbott thank you! i am a fan of the podcast you and Dan do weekly. i appreciate the feedback!

[@Djformula]

+Modern Vintage Gamer Yeh we will give your video a shout on next weeks ep. Its a great overview.

[@VectrexRoli]

Thanks for your excellent review. One quick question: The problem with the Indivision flicker fixer you did mention, was that a compatibilty issue, or more a "lack of space" issue in your A600?

[@RainerK.]

Mine is probably months away, he hasn't even gotten to my e-mail so far. Looks great!

[@Zizzily]

I wish I could find a nice Amiga A600 or A1200 at a yard sale or something. I only rarely see them on Craigslist or eBay, and they're always a fortune. I miss a lot of the old school games and such. Thanks for the great videos. Cheers!

[@ultrapetey]

CloanTo sell Amiga Forever which gives you really good emulation on a PC

[@KarpowSCX]

Awesome board and very nice video too! Test more CPU hungry games please. Red Baron would be nice. Does Quake run on ECS chipset? Sim City 2000 and Alien Breed 3D II were AGA only I guess.

[@ModernVintageGamer]

+KarpowSCX theres a few other things i can try. Some of the management style games like Syndicate, Theme Park etc run faster too, i may do a follow up vid with some more games tested.

[@GadgetUK164]

Brilliant! Subbed!

[@ModernVintageGamer]

+GadgetUK164 hey man, huge fan of your tech channel. thank you very much!

[@ralfkaiberg2860]

i still love my Amiga

[@ModernVintageGamer]

+Ralf Kaiberg as do I brotha :)

[@CipherDiaz]

How to get Quake on the amiga: 1. Download freepascal 3.x (not public build) for 68k 2. Download pascal (delphi) port of Quake 3. Rip out the DirectX stuff, replace with Amiga stuff 4. Compile -- enjoy

[@104d_3rr0r_vince]

Great review!!! Most of us waiting a 1200 version. Well I don't. The only thing that stops me is the fpu.

[@mantrahus]

+Vincent GR FPU will come in future release of the Core. Maybe when A500/2000 version is ready. The Apollo Team is hoping that will be in 3 months... Latest (hopefully) Summer 2016. It seems that FPU will be ready before the A1200-Vampire

[@104d_3rr0r_vince]

Johannes Schaefer That would be awesome! I use FPU progs a lot. Also games like quake need it. I play quake quite well on a classic 1200 with ppc but wouldn't be awesome to run it on an A600? ;-)

[@ModernVintageGamer]

+Vincent GR yeah the FPU is a problem for some. I would like to run quake also - but im sure FPU will come soon. And i agree with you. i dont think i will use one an A1200 - my 060 board is perfect there. I would prefer a Vampire A500 :) i dont like all the hardware hanging off the side of my A500 ;)

[@104d_3rr0r_vince]

***** I know what you mean. I have an ACA500 and I installed my Bliz030. After that I didn't even bother to test the ppc.

[@IntrinsicPalomides]

+Vincent GR Yeah a1200 version would be so nice, maybe replace my Blizzard after all these years.

[@uberdude2555]

A great review, but one thing you failed to mention is that the HDMI out will only support workbench screens, so you will still need to switch to conventional video output when playing games.

[@ModernVintageGamer]

+uberdude25 good info , i wasnt aware of that. thanks for the heads up

[@spawnterror]

Only thing that is stopping me from getting the card as I play games mostly. I'm going with the Furia and RGB to HDMI RPi solution.

[@KONEY.INDUSTRIAL]

can't wait to get my unit!!

[@vertigoz]

The thing you're experiencing is Amiga OS. When I had my amiga you could throw everything at it and the system would still run smooth, even with 99% full CPU as I was rendering in Imagine 3D*. When you open multiple ppaints, once they open they don't consume much more cpu. *I had to set the cpu priority of imagine 3D task though

[@ReneWOlsen]

thanks for a great review

[@feriszabi6921]

Oh, the good old days! Amiga will never die, but won't be resurrected for sure. Lightwave with 16 MB was superb! Nowadays 32 GB is still not enough, WTF are we doing wrong?

[@caffeinated-pixels]

Would love to see this for the A1200.

[@rossdag4232]

NICE VIDEO , AND HAPPY NEW YEAR ... WHO SELLS THESE NEW CARD? THANKS

[@TYNEPUNK]

Awesome! Thanks.

Un video muy profesional!

[@jaylordalien]

thanks, awesome video

[@pferreira1983]

It's amazing what they've done. I hope the 500 machines got one in the end as well.

[@ilmostro749]

Have they done a 1200 version yet? My 1200 is in the loft, and I'd love to get it up and running, and see what Frontier looks like on it.

[@MrLandster]

is workbench the same between the 600 and 1200 if you have an accelerator? i have been thinking of picking up either a c64 or amiga to learn basic, the amiga seems a lot more versatile if more expensive

[@TheLemminkainen]

Great review dude ? you speak so fluent english with strange dialect :) are you from Canada?

[@ModernVintageGamer]

+TheLemminkainen thank you ! i am australian :)

[@TheLemminkainen]

u r welcome m8 :) I found aussies and folk from NZ to speak best english of all.

[@MarkTheMorose]

You mention Frontier running in NTSC on the A600; was it running an NTSC version of the game?

[@perperikis5501]

V2 is great indeed for A500/600. However, there are some things you can't do, that a Blizzard 060 on A1200 can, like running the amazing 060 demos that require AGA chipset.

[@fightclubhubbs]

Is there a snowballs chance in hell that a graphics accelerator might work on the amiga cd32 with the SX32 addon?

[@ProteusMega]

Good Review :)

[@methanoid]

I would have liked to hear more about how the hardware works. (1) HDMI port -is the Amiga output via this or is it only for future SAGA/P96 graphics? If Amiga ECS then does it scan double etc and is it fully compliant 50/60Hz. Would have been nice to know (2) SDcard - what for? Is it seen by Amiga as IDE storage? Or what? Does that replace the need for an IDE-CF adapter? (3) Does this have KIckstart remapping to Ram?

[@ModernVintageGamer]

+Meth Methanoid as far as i know both the SDCard and the HDMI out wont work with the 'silver core'. im waiting for the updated 'gold core' to be released with P96 which will support both

[@ianp8462]

+Modern Vintage Gamer the silver core includes a 640x480 HDMI mode with 256, high colour and true colour settings. There's a public beta P96 driver for this mode on the Apollo forum. No word yet on SD card AFAIK.

[@rhodesy761uk]

wonder what a 64 bit amiga released to today's specs would be like you think it would be a PC killer

[@JimmiG84]

The AmigaOne X1000 and X5000 are not technically Amigas but they run a direct descendant of AmigaOS 3.x and are pretty up to date hardware-wise. Very pricey, though.

[@steve24822]

Nothing would be a PC killer because pcs are open platform.

[@peterluxus7382]

thats the problem

[@19whity81]

Where do you buy this for that price?

[@alextee2684]

great vide makes the 600 64 bit

[@ultrapetey]

Should have been called the 664 then eh? :D

[@KrunchyTheClown78]

Was the addon card made recently? I doubt Doom could run a on stock original Amiga 600. now the A4000 is a different story.

[@krashd]

+Joey Jo Jo Jr Shabadoo It was.

[@achaney]

WOW!!!!

[@BlueAcid9]

+Modern Vintage Gamer What if you put both the Motorola 68060 and Vampire II into the same Amiga?

[@TheGuruMeditation]

Great video! That board is awesome. Who ever imagined an A600 with that much power! Just subscribed to your channel - it is great. Check ours out too. We have a lot more videos coming soon. Thanks for the video

[@ModernVintageGamer]

+The Guru Meditation hey guys, thanks for the shoutout. i subbed to you as well. cheers!

[@zaitarh]

Can the vampire accelerator be disabled, so that you use the normal 68000 CPU, without having to remove the vampire card from the motherboard?

[@HPPalmtopTube]

euuhhmmm, when he said doom was not possible on the amiga, he meant on an original 68000 machine, not a fancy 68020 or higher!

[@danielson9579]

I got that doom speed with ease on my 240mhz ppc card 🙂

[@a4000t]

for mac you can use fusion3.2 :)

[@MrBaconinabun]

nice :)

[@johnraymondt.domingo4105]

Is a1200 the fastest version of amiga. Please help because i want to start a amiga setup.

[@RenaudSchweingruber]

Mac émulation on Vampire works with Fusion.

[@ModernVintageGamer]

+Renaud Schweingruber thanks for the advice! i will check it out

[@jeffkarrow6924]

My Vampire Black only shows the logo using the DVI output. It outputs to the RGB and Composite ports. I have no screenmode drivers for a Vampire DVI. What's wrong?

[@Ecidemon]

a bit late maybe but you need to install Picasso96 and the SAGA vampire drivers

[@LuisMercadoorg]

Love the music! Where can I get it?

[@ModernVintageGamer]

hi Luis, check out my soundcloud in the description - the track is called 'White Mirrors' . Enjoy :)

[@MichaelOglesby]

I have a question: Does having this accelerator game make the games *too fast* to play, and if so, how do you slow them down?

[@storerestore]

+Michael Oglesby Most games use the screen refresh rate as a timing reference; game logic and the screen is updated at the same rate that the TV is. A few games do rely on CPU speed for timing, but sometimes, if there is a WHDLoad patch for the game, it will fix it.

[@ModernVintageGamer]

+storerestore well said. great explanation!

[@merlin-ulg]

Sorry, i dont understood, where i can buy it? From where you've get information about this card? Give a link to official site please.

[@ModernVintageGamer]

+merlinulg kipper2k.com/accel600.html

[@merlin-ulg]

***** Thanks! Although price of this thing is big :(

[@madcommodore]

I think all native onboard built-in classic Amiga chipset bandwidths are what are holding back the framerate of any FPS and not code specialization or CPU speed anyway. Also is it possible to play back MP3s in the timing critical 14bit Paula mode in stereo?

[@danielson9579]

How was ur chip ram usage

[@RETRONuts]

Why is it so expensive,its as big a RPi2..every thing for the Amiga is so expensive,Will not be getting until it goes down in price.

[@simonj48]

The reason why this is and continues to be so expensive is because of the FPGA chip it uses. Unlike most chips, and certainly like the one on the Raspberry Pi devices at the moment, they're going to be the same chip for ever more, you can run software on them, and interact with the chip but that's it. If you want it to do something else, you have to buy a new board. With the FPGA, you can change the chip's actual hardware inside it so it's something different. The 'cores' you download for the vampire board are actually changing the hardware design of the FPGA chip, something you'd traditionally do by buying and installing new hardware. Another way to think of FPGA vs traditional chips is like a 4 way traffic light system. That's the traditional chip, and you can program the software to change the lights in lots of different ways, you can even program it to make the lights flash in time with music. Now, with a FPGA 4 way traffic light system, you can re-arrange the actual traffic lights, add a new road, decide you don't want to even be a traffic light system anymore and suddenly it's a 7/11 serving week-old hotdogs.

[@focotaku]

Does it need the latest kickstart roms (3.1)?

[@mantrahus]

+cotaku Kickstart 3.1 is in the flash. You dont have to upgrade the onboard kickstart roms. more at the website of kipper2k dot com.

[@ModernVintageGamer]

+cotaku yes it does. in fact when you purchase a Vampire II, you will be asked to send your legal copy of KS 3.1 to them. its flashed into the hardware.

[@someone-id8yd]

@3:23 doom wasnt possible on amiga, as, would you write it for 3 ppl that could run it properly... as spend your time and assets for such a marginal market

[@bb8luc434]

DSP HARD-640 spintes, resolution 1X1 à 512X512 + 32 Scrollings+ son 32 Voix stereo +3 DsP falcon, +1giga DDr4 + SSD 128 giga Super AGA 320X200-320X-256-640X480 à 120hz ;-) Merci VAMPIRE 3 ultra GOl 2

[@aalakhras9229]

im looking for vampire 2 for A600 for 150 euro can you get me one please? thanks

[@vertigoz]

160? :O

[@jeffkarrow6924]

My Vampire II is installed, but refuses to recognize the CF drive I was previously booting from.

[@nexusvi4373]

Powinniście kupić... Za ile? Tysiąc złotych, dwa? Rozumiałbym podjarkę, gdyby kosztował stówkę. To hobby dla bogaczy, a nawet wtedy szkoda by mi było forsy. Lepiej dopalić peceta, a Amigę zostawić z 030-tką.

[@ussarius]

I want A500/CDTV/2000 version.

[@Zeonoid]

smallest amiga gets fastest from all amigas 30 years after it was considered pointless

[@Naa-ee7nq]

they sell for 300 euro now :( doubled the price in 3 years rather than lowering it.

[@adz929]

Great review :-) I've sent Brian an email, still waiting for a response...

[@metalglasses07]

Noob question, will it work on a amiga 3000?

[@ultrapetey]

Nope

[@snappermancation]

I've been playing with magic64. Ghouls n ghosts with the exact issue you have with it freezing on the title on my 1200 the issue is its looking for pal emulation not ntsc a lot of d64 images are like this flick it to pal under video and it should go

[@PrzeszczepiX]

ehhh, it's just an emulator. Amiga emulator in original hardware :( sad it isn't the real accelerator. it has even no 68030,40 or 60 cpu on it, it is being emulated by another FPGA SoC. :(

[@miikasuominen3845]

So, it was something like 140€ and now they are asking 300€ for it.... No, just no frikkin' way xD Technology is fantastic behind this, but I just cannot lower myself to be a blatant cash cow for about everyone in the "Retro Business". That's horrible...

[@dragonbleu1205]

Only Amiga make it possible... Miam.

[@LOveERDos]

Is like to put a Ferrari engine in a Fiat 500 that is not anymore an original car

[@rickxxx3909]

Ok, and now we need a professional Software Company that code New Software for this Card....oh wait, fuck, we never become new Software because the Software Houses give a shit about the Amiga and the tiny Amiga Community.For what we need the Vampire? To play all day old Dos games and surf in the Internet with too old AmigaOs and too old Browser? The Time for the Amiga is over.....all the things came too late. But when you have too much money and too much time, the Vampire is the best choice for you. Have fun.

[@amimenamimen8599]

this not accelerator this is EMULATOR , and amiga is power suply for this EMULATOR !!

[@nukester.]

it sort of emulates CPU only and it does that on hardware level, it does not replace all custom chips in amiga and so

[@roygillotti4615]

It's not an emulator, With FPGAs you are essentially programming it at a gate level to be a 68060 processor. It's essentially the real deal with the benefit that it can be upgradeable as it's programable logic. Like in this video it says there isn't an FPU on it. there was a recent firmware update recently that added that feature.

[@roygillotti4615]

Actually making a standalone board is one of their long term goals

[@matthiaso57]

look up what an FPGA is. it is an accelerator that uses an open source cpu that is created in an FPGA

[@caffeinated-pixels]

Would love to see this for the A1200.

[@ModernVintageGamer]

+the cake is a lie: a nostalgic gaming blog im sure It will be announced soon . love your avatar btw..Chaos Engine rocks!

[@caffeinated-pixels]

+Modern Vintage Gamer Thanks! One of my all-time favourite games, obviously!