@Beans

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Right...and continue to wait while Gunnar and company dicks around with unnecessary features while not finishing the fpu and the guy building them insists on assembling each one by hand.

do you really think you have any influence on this? especially formulating your doubt in such a way? fortunatelly there are other 68k softcores without the features you demand to be removed (and some further may be underway). use them instead. since you are so gifted it wont be a problem for you to design a hardware for them, or simply use an existing development board.

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Since your primary Amiga endeavor involves a perpetually unfinished product,

if you mean aros, then this should rather be worded more like "actively developed product. you know, because by this logic you can declare every linux distribution "unfinished", as long as it gets upgraded.

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maybe they could benefit from some advice from those that have actually produced something.

you mean yourself? still have never seen anything you had produced. but i saw vampire in action on my own desk, i am sitting at.

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I'd like to actually be able to buy one before I die of old age.

im almost certain, if you had proposed them some worthy contribution, instead going off on forums, about how dumb they are, you might already have one. and it would be much more fun.

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let's by all means get back to the thread topic.

i agree..

Last edited by wawa on 29-Nov-2016 at 07:36 PM.

Ive been using a Vampire 600 for half a year, so unless your doctor have given you a terminal illness forcast by the end of this year, you should be able to get one whenever you actually order one+a decent wait thereafter. Thats why most people ordered it as soon as they heard of it.

Similarily V500 is already running, as I linked to you on last page;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZzbOPe0csxg

And they aiming for V1200 first quarter next year, but its still in the "when its ready" category.

More info regarding production pace;

http://forum.apollo-accelerators.com/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=18&p=63#p63

Last edited by Overflow on 29-Nov-2016 at 08:27 PM.
Last edited by Overflow on 29-Nov-2016 at 08:25 PM.

@wawa

Well...at least we agree on ONE thing.

And what gave you the idea I wanted Gunnar's other features removed?
I'd just like him to FOCUS, get the basic stuff complete, THEN he can play around.

And I'm not surprised you haven't heard of anything I've done, most of the customers I dealt with were in process control, point of sales, engineering and other industrial uses.
Limited cross over with Amiga hobbyists there, BUT having customers with well defined needs that are willing to actually pay for your efforts...priceless.
Not that the Amiga couldn't be used in those applications (and was), but often it was overkill when a basic 68K SBC could be used.

Made a great development platform for most of our work though (except for apps that required RTOS functionality). And demoing stuff always looks better with a little flash.

As to who could advise Gunnar and the rest of the team?
Doesn't even have to be an Amigan.
Anyone familiar with bringing a successful product to market (from design, to construction, through distribution), basic business stuff.
The kind of things the Wozniaks of the world don't get.

Don't get me wrong, I love well engineered equipment, but engineers/developers are not faces you want in the public presenting a product.

And my advice? Just get it freakin' done, don't act like its a privilege to be able to buy it, and worry about what enhancements can be made later.
Is that unreasonable?
I'm not being a dick about this, its just basic business.

Last edited by Beans on 29-Nov-2016 at 08:33 PM.

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Amiga! "Our appeal has become more selective"

@Beans

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I'd just like him to FOCUS, get the basic stuff complete, THEN he can play around.

again, he has been told that thousand times. he doesnt want to play his game as you want it. get accustomed to that, its his game, when you start yours, you will be making up the rules.

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And I'm not surprised you haven't heard of anything I've done,

sorry, but in my book that doesnt account for anything. almost everybody here claims to be an expert in one or other way. it isnt neccessarily relevant. majsta is a complete self tought newcomer, who accomplished more that you all together, while constantly being called onbeing a noob. on the other hand gunnar is probably more of an expert than anybody else. the results count. thats all.

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And my advice? Just get it freakin' done, don't act like its a privilege to be able to buy it, and worry about what enhancements can be made later. Is that unreasonable? I'm not being a dick about this, its just basic business

okay. taken into account. now what?

@wawa

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okay. taken into account. now what?

Now we watch and wait, and hope that yet another eccentric approach to business doesn't hinder the endeavor.

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almost everybody here claims to be an expert in one or other way

Ain't that the truth.
One of my favor instructors, the late Dr. Bernie Petrofsky once said "Three correct guesses in a row qualifies you as an expert". Obviously he wasn't real impressed with "expert" opinions either.

But I can document that I was the retail manager for Delmar Company (developers of PT68K4 and K5 based computers) in the '80s and '90s, the general manager of its successor, that I have over two hundred college credits that span from our local community college to the University of Delaware (and that of two of my references from there, one is now the Delaware Secretary of Agriculture, and another, Dr. Nancy Target, was, until recently the acting President of the school)..
That I have two associate degrees, one bachelors degree (with a second temporarily halted), and that I am working on my masters degree.

As to even wanting to compare myself to the average Amigan, I try not to.
I'm not even that familiar with the majority of Amiga applications, since most seem to be games.

I focused on business applications for 68K based systems.

Oh, and if you have ever heard of Gespac, a company with a background in 68K embedded applications, our company, Delmar Company ported a GUI used by them that was created by a fellow named Steve Adams called G-Windows (it was an X-Windows based GUI for the Microware OS-9 for the 68K OS).

Oh, and I had a hand in creating the Tseng Labs ET-4000 video drivers that operated under that OS driving that GUI on the systems I previously mentioned.

Again, not primarily an Amiga user, a 68k developer.

Last edited by Beans on 30-Nov-2016 at 07:46 PM.

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Amiga! "Our appeal has become more selective"

@Beans

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Oh, and I had a hand in creating the Tseng Labs ET-4000 video drivers

That's a chip I haven't heard of for a while! I was working for a company in the early 90s where one of our customers wanted to get XFree86 running on Linux with a Diamond Speedstar graphics board, and we had to figure out the timing parameters. We did, eventually.

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"Unix is supposed to fix that." -- Jay Miner

@bison

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I was working for a company in the early 90s where one of our customers wanted to get XFree86 running on Linux with a Diamond Speedstar graphics board

Yep, I remember that one. Early graphic accelerator. The ET-4000 had no 2D or 3D functions, but it did have the most bandwidth to vram, so it had its advantages.
And we were using it on an ISA bus tied to either a 68000 or a 68020, so we had to write drivers that didn't rely on the onboard bios.
That experience made me push for the support of X86 card under MorphOS because I knew that the bios interface could be bypassed.
Of course Mark "bigfoot" Olsen did one better and later MorphOS drivers rely on the AtomBIOS function built into most Radeon cards.
So we now all drivers from the R500 series up work on Macs or other PPCs while utilizing standard PC roms without requiring X86 emulation in rom.
Cool stuff..

At our core, I believe we have retained more of the hacker spirit than the PC community has.

Last edited by Beans on 30-Nov-2016 at 07:44 PM.

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Amiga! "Our appeal has become more selective"

@Overflow

The 1200 does look like a nice option.
I've alway preferend the more expandable desktop cases, but a compct AGA machine could prove useful.

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Amiga! "Our appeal has become more selective"

@wawa

I think what beans tries to say is that Amiga has a history. He just tries to use concepts from both a computing and cultural worlds, while the history plays a more significant role here: ours is one full of dissapointments and broken hearts. Groups waiting in anticipation since forever in computer and tehcnology terms. Someone behind this project or any other Amiga-related project be it old school Amiga, AmigaOne or whatever, has a responsibility and a burdain to bear (more than on other projects or based on customer-maker/seller relationships). He can't be one of those guys.

@Beans

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Don't get me wrong, I love well engineered equipment, but engineers/developers are not faces you want in the public presenting a product.

I think you have some misconceptions about what people can relate to and maybe on the way kinsa sell yourself short in how you presented here technical info that I could understand, and even relate to. Then you put engineering on a padestel.

People of all walks of life can relate to an engineer who done some "heavy lifting" in his field. If I would choose someone to explain a product I would choose you over me. I bet you know pretty well that in your field a lot of times it's like trying to bend iron just like in heavy industries while the glamorous side is left to movies about Steve Jobs. Regarding the logic of engineering - you would be surprised about some users ability to comprehand the logic behind. Didn't say I am one of them

On that note, people can relate to a special hand-made product that treats them not just like some customers that get something and maybe some help afterwards and that's that. The entire niche market of Amiga nowadays is at the same time - small and unique and the challange is to expand one without losing the other

Now, regarding games - should I again quote that RJ Mical saying about the world wide web?

@Srtest

You folks have served to give me an even more jaundiced view than I had after the beat down by Wintel.
After all, you had it all, and then repeatedly faced disappointments.
So you have an even composition of the really resilient and the obviously insane (and I'm only being slightly hard on you there).
But I do admire you guys for recognizing your place in history, when most people only remember Apple and the PC.
Because Amiga WAS the first multimedia PC.
Color, stereo sounds, graphics co-processors...

Everything that is now taken for granted, and had to be ADDED to the competition's systems.

If ever there was a embodiment of the idea that life's not fair in the form of a technology, this is it.

And still you guys soldier on (see line three ).

Last edited by Beans on 01-Dec-2016 at 03:05 AM.

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Amiga! "Our appeal has become more selective"

@Beans

Hey Beans - I've been watching you on this thread duking it out with others here and everyone has a point of view for sure.

I deal with Windows PCs and other stuff all day. Complicated, bloated, incompatibility, updates breaking things, Microsoft changing the rules on things, registry cleaners, broken uninstallers, driver corruption/incompatibility, BIOS issues, viruses, ransomware, wacky 32/64 bit complication, missing VC++ 2005/2008/2012/2015 runtimes, .Net runtimes, etc. etc. etc.... lots of fun.

Then you have the Amiga. Simple boot-up process. Easy to see what is going on. Small OS installation. VOLUMES. OH MAN I WOULD KILL FOR LOGICAL VOLUMES ON WINDOWS. A simple shared library configuration setup. Sure sometimes it is a bit weird, and memory protection would definitely help, but even with those foibles it's still "fun" to work with. Definitely nostalgia factors into it.

At least OS3/OS4 are reasonably "logical". Windows? Bzzzt.

Have a great day. :)

Seems like such a marvel in engineering and an ideal product I want to buy. But I get the feeling I may never own one if they are going to trickle into being one at a time forever (or for however long interest in making them lasts), with such high demand (relative as compared to other Amiga products in this time). Oh well. If these things ever turn up some place where I can "add to cart" I'm in. Totally. And for multiple units, if I can be so greedy.

The Mist is easy to get, and I have bought two. The FPGA Arcade is comparatively much harder to get, and I haven't been able to obtain one. I'm hoping somehow the Vampire project will become modeled on the distribution model of the former, not the latter.

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@mbrantley

The Vampire 600 is being ramped up right now. It is being built in batches of 100. First batch shipping is imminent, second batch is in progress.

More info here: http://forum.apollo-accelerators.com/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=18

V500 V2+ I'm not so sure on. It is being ramped up as well by Majsta. Haven't had much news recently but I'm sure they will be working on a large batch model since the demand for this one will be insane. For example, I have zero candidate machines for V600, and 5 for V500.

Cheers!

@gregthecanuck

That is GREAT news.
I assumed this would be the next stage, but everyone around here gets so defensive about their favorite projects...

Its hard to believe that I had justify a push for production.

Way to go all. Congratulations are in order for Gunnar, the rest of the Apollo team, and especially for Majesta.

Now about getting a V500 modified to run in an old PT68K4....
After the one I'd like for my A2000 of course.

Seriously, this will promote a rebirth of many 68K applications.

Last edited by Beans on 01-Dec-2016 at 12:32 PM.

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Amiga! "Our appeal has become more selective"

@gregthecanuck

The registry...oh, the horror....the horror...

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Amiga! "Our appeal has become more selective"

@Beans

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Way to go all. Congratulations are in order for Gunnar, the rest of the Apollo team, and especially for Majesta.

i think in this particular case its kipper who is responsible.

@wawa

Well, credit where credit is due then, a big thank you to kipper for making this a reality for this rest of us.

AND still a nod to the development team for pushing to realize this.

Now about that floating point unit...

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Amiga! "Our appeal has become more selective"

Guys, my apologies for sounding so negative in my post above. It's just from an eagerness to know I will be able to obtain a V500 sometime in 2017 and a fear that there is no guarantee on that being so easy. It was reading this blog entry -- http://www.majsta.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=129 -- that made me think, "uh oh, might not be so easy with the expected demand."

My expectation is the model that will fit the A500, A100 and A2000 will be a real hot item, as compared to the V600, which blew away expectations.

Anyway, am powerless to do anything but wait and see what turns up.

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@Beans

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Now about that floating point unit...

there will always be something in the cue that has not been released yet. after fpu people will return to complaining about mmu. good thing is that there actually is progress and its steasy and being communicated.

@mbrantley

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Anyway, am powerless to do anything but wait and see what turns up.

the situation may appear not that different as with os4 hardware, still you are being clearly and honestly told, how it is being handled. i do like that approach, but i dont feel so much urge to posess that item as soon as possible myself. thats probably why i see it a bit more relaxed.

Last edited by wawa on 01-Dec-2016 at 09:03 PM.