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Review: Amiga Vampire 4 Stand Alone
slaapliedje Nov 10, 2020
Well I said I'd try to write up some form of review for this, so here goes.

I've had this for a while now and got in on a test for something called V4BL, which is a fantastic setup that multi-boots a bunch of different configurations;

Let's first talk about hardware.
It's an FPGA based system with the Apollo 68080 Core, outside of missing a fully functional MMU, it has everything expected of a 68k family processor. The Amiga doesn't have memory management in hardware, which really has been one of it's Achilles Heels since the beginning.
The external ports on it are USB for keyboard, Ethernet, HDMI, MicroSD, and Mini USB for power. On the other side you have USB port, and two DE-9 connectors.

Of note, these are not generic USB ports, and the side with the DE-9 connections is actually for the Mouse and the one on the side with power is for the keyboard. There is no power switch.

Internally you have three sets of 8 pin headers that are similar to the GPIO headers on a raspberry pi, and you have the JTAG programmer interface for flashing the FPGA. Another 5 pin header that I am not sure what it is for is there as well. There is also a 44pin IDE connector that comes with a compact flash adapter. Overall it's a tiny device, not much bigger than a RPi 4.

Software; it comes with a fully open source stack with Aros for the Vampire that they have branded as ApolloOS so that you can be up and running without any of the baggage of the AmigaOS IP being tossed around like a rag doll. Also as if yesterday there is a new release of the firmware that includes EmuTOS (That's right you can run Atari ST GEM based software on this thing!) I haven't tried Release 4 of the firmware yet, hopefully it also fixes the lack of a working keyboard in EmuTOS.

V4BL; currently you need to send an email or join the discord to request access to it;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYsVKHel1uM
But quick notes (as of release 3 firmware) EmuTOS doesn't have a working keyboard, and needs to launch off the SD Card. But supports running ApolloOS (AROS), CoffinOS (a prebuilt OS3.9 setup), AmiKit, AOS 1.3 (old!), AOS 3.1, AOS 3.9, AOS 3.2 (AKA 3.1.4), AROS, and EmuTOS. All of these require official ROMs except for Aros/ApolloOS and EmuTOS, as they are open source.

A weird thing I noticed, if you connect the V4SA up to a PoE switch, the metal case acts as a reset switch... This seems bad, and needs some more investigation.

An additional issue I've seen, is that the OCS/ECS, AGA and SAGA screen modes use some non-standard frequencies and not all monitors work well with them. For example, my Samsung TV won't boot at 960x540, which it should as that's just half 1920x1080. The new firmware boasts 1280x720 as that should hopefully work on that screen.

Between ApolloOS and updates of the Firmware, it's becoming a nice little open source set up (granted the firmware / 68080 is not open source).

On the closed source front, I have a weird issue with Roadshow (the tcp/ip stack used everywhere in amiga land at this point) doesn't seem to like my DHCP server, I don't even see it attempting to get an IP, so I have had to set it up manually to use a static IP/Gateway/DNS.

Will add more notes as I run into things.
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