The Amiga line fascinates me. Not only the platform itself but the loyal fanbase that continues to make new hardware and software for it. I don't think I've ever seen such a dedicated community for any other piece of hardware.
@@mikebrant4615 The problem with those A1 systems is the same one that blights Amiga OS4, they chose to use the PowerPC architecture. Outside of a few niche areas, nowadays nobody uses or develops desktop PPC hardware, and what little exists, is both incredibly expensive and relatively low powered. ARM has neither of these problems, whilst RiscIV is still an emerging, but promising architecture.
I can tell you how to easily "fix" the video glitches that you see in your video. Actually there is a config option for this. If you set JUMPER "J1" this should fix your glitches. I can explain you the technical reason behind this: The combination of Icedrake and Amiga 1200 - has 2 video out signals. And both video outs can slightly drift. If they drift then the Computer can always only in Sync to one of them and the other will have to "look" wrong. A very good example as you showed is Frontier. The CPU will reset colors on the screen depending on the screen position of the MonitorBeam. If both Monitors are not 100% in sync - then one display by design will have false colors. You can fix this in two ways: a) Use only 1 video out and tell the card to sync on the video out you want b) enable auto syncing of both video outs.
An excellent product! Which one will offer RGB to HDMI passthrough for native Amiga screenmodes first? Will it be the Vampire/Apollo V4 boards or the PiStorm32? I guess that will decide the true victor in the market IMHO! However, the PiStorm32 can't be beaten on price and the V4's SAGA modes plus AMMX extra instructions are unique to that product family and allow unique Vampire specific software and games! The choice is ours! A great time to be an Amiga fan!
Agreed, lots of fantastic stuff coming out! Am excited to try out the pistorm32 too sometime soon. The IceDrake has HDMI output of native screen modes already, that’s one of the improvements over the older Vampire V2.
We need more modern software developed for the new standard that Vampire/Icedrake sets. I would be quite happy to go out and buy an Amiga 1200 and an Icedrake .. having said that I'll see what new games are already out we might as well face it the Amiga is BACK and the AGA chipset is actually gonna get warmed up for a change it was never fully kind of put through it's paces. Super stardust and the rendered scenes in Microcosm might have been somewhere close to showing what the Amiga is capable of ..MORE of that please
There is no practical use for a fast Amiga in today’s world, anything that requires high processing speed such as video editing or 3D modelling work is better tackled on a modern computer nowadays, and the vast majority of classic Amiga games don’t benefit from acceleration (with the notable exception of 3D titles and a handful of games & demos which were developed with accelerated Amigas in mind). These modern accelerators for vintage computers are labours of love for a vintage computing platform many people are fond of, they are for the fun of pushing old hardware to beyond its limits.
That's an issue you can have with real Amiga hardware. OCS, ECS, AGA are broadly backward compatible, but not the other way. The same with 68000, '020, '030, '040 and '060 CPUs, as they don't provide close to 100% compatibility. No Amiga can run every piece of software.
@@another3997 In general you are right, in truth 080 and V4 SAGA are WAAAY less compatibile since they are reverse engeenering experiment compared to real chipsets and CPUs made to be compatibiliy
@@RasVoja Very fast 68K CPU and Chip RAM/Custom Chip timing interaction is a problem. PIStorm-Emu68 encountered a similar problem. This is due to missing resource tracking features like in PC's Direct3D API. PC's Direct3D API is designed to scale with different CPU/GPU combinations in laptops and desktop PCs. PC's DirectX12 still has resource tracking. PS5 has timing-accurate PS4 backward compatibility mode.
Good review. Thanks for comparing HDMI and RGB output with games and tell us about glitches. But there is more to consider when you buy an IceDrake and own an Amiga 1200 in a tower case plus accelerator board like Blizzard 1230 IV with SCSI Kit. If you replace it by an IceDrake you will lose your SCSI controller, so that your SCSI-CD-Rom drive, your entire collection of Amiga sofware CDs, CD32 game discs, CD writer for backups, external scanner will become useless, - unless you consider to buy an extra SCSI controller on top, e.g. a Squirrel for PCMCIA port or when you have a tower with Zorro 2 expansion board as I do, you will have to add one of those rare A2000 SCSI-controllers - not all of them support autoboot, run in PIO mode only, lack of fast DMA access or have glitches with accelerator boards. So, if I decide to buy an IceDrake for an extra boost to my A1200, finding a proper SCSI substitute controller might become tricky. I cannot help but to think that all Amiga users who enjoy a Vampire or Icedrake whithout similar complaints had never had or wanted Amiga software on CD, threw away or sold their enitre media collection in the meantime if they did have it, never listened to AudioCDs on their Amiga and thus feel no need to use these things at all or not anymore. By the way, do you know about similar glitches in games with a Vampire card? Do you know if the IceDrake IDE controller at least supports a dated IDE CD-ROM drive? How did you install more than one OS on a CF card? Is at least one OS (e.g. Apollo OS or WB 3.1) pre-installed on the CF card that came with the IceDrake?
Yeah, you definitely loose some stuff too, like CD drives. According to Apollo the IceDrake should be able to handle IDE CDROM drives, but I couldn’t get it to work on my card. In fact, I couldn’t get anything to work with the large IDE connector. It appears to be completely dead on my card. As for multiple OSes, the have a utility called ApolloBOOT that sets that up for you. Check the website for more info. I haven’t used any of the older Vampire cards, so I don’t know how they compare in terms of compatibility. But for sure, if you want the genuine retro experience, go with genuine retro hardware, but if you want to explore something new and different, the IceDrake is plenty of fun to play around with.
@@OddObsolete Thanks for your reply. Good to know, the IceDrake not only deactivates A1200's internal IDE port, but its own IDE is pretty useless right from the start. But unlike the Vampire it not only adds better graphics modes and HDMI port but also upgrades Paula chip's 8-bit sound to 16-bit sound. The main difference between Vampire and IceDrake. And Amiga soundcards for 16-bit sound are most hard to find of all classic hardware. Even one of recent years' Prisma Megamix by A-EON which allows to decode MP3 audio in 16-bit quality was only made in small quantities and is not available anymore. Since the Vampire 1200 preserves the internal IDE port while the card's speed is like IceDrake, I think I will buy a Vampire 1200 V4 soon. I have become a bit jealous at hte speed those cards can achieve in 3D rendering and Amiga Doom clones (AlienBreed 3D 2, Adoom, Shadow of 3rd moon and Quake) My Blizzard 1230 IV is a bit too slow for these games. Fortunatley, I already found an AdSCSI 2000 Zorro controller for my Zorro 2 expansion board as a new old stock item and thus can keep using my SCSI devices and install a harddisk. Better a slower SCSI port than none at all. BTW, where did you install your WHDload games? The IceDrake's IDE port does not work and A1200's internal IDE for harddisk or CF card was deactivated by IceDrake.
Nah, just Mister attached to the Amiga for some reason. I am sticking to PiStorm for 500 and will do for PiStorm 32 lite as well for A1200. Faster, sleeker, open source, improving like every day with new builds for Caffeine OS, way to go! also no 4k resolution, or even at least 1080 :(
No offence to the Mister project, but currently Mister simply can't do what the Vampire boards can. But it was never designed to be a 'Super Amiga'. Whether you like the Vampire boards or not, they are far more complex and much more capable than a Mister. PiStorm is a fantastic alternative, but it certainly isn't perfect. All three projects will improve over time.
In our emotions. 020 was too slow, only chip RAM, no CD ROM, no 3D expandability. A3000 AGA was supposed to be out much earlier. While its great jump frpm A500 and A600 its not a really competitive to Falcon, 386DX SVGA SB and other machines of time. Even HDD was not standard.
@@RasVoja When running Doom, A1200 with 50 Mhz 68030 / AGA is like AMD 386DX-40 with ET4000AX. Falcon has 16 bit 16 Mhz bus while A3000/A3000+ AGA has a 32-bit 25 Mhz Fast RAM bus.
In my opinion most of the incompatibilities are question of the correct WHDLoad configuration (sometimes older versions are better), not Icedrake itself. Also correct OS/ROM/Libs are crucial for many Amiga games anyway. Any other remaining incompatibilities are mostly typos in the FPGA code - that is easy to fix. For example recent Blitter typo fix enabled many games and demos to run accurately. Apollo is even fixing bugs in Amiga games, to make it run correctly, like with the Alien Breed recently. Apollo-Core is an ongoing development,. so what was not working a week ago, is working today. Another advantage of FPGA is ability to add features, for example that onboard IDE port might eventually work.
nah the problem is with the custom chip emulation, as it is only some sort of reverse engineering, those chips are still copyright protected and none allowed them for legal duplication (i.e. no documentation). So you are relying only on some Xray pics for creating schematics
@@Kppot the MISTer project has a much more compatible Amiga core and it runs on the exact same FPGA. It's true that it's a reverse engineering exercise but they're also not the first to do it, and there are open source cores which are an order of magnitude better. For me it's an indication of priorities. The core author, Gunnar, wanted to have fancy '080' instructions and to be the saviour of future Amiga with the new custom chips before getting a baseline level. And that would be cool if it was a community sourced project, but it's not. It's sold as a complete, closed and commercial product.
I disagree here. Well maybe you're right and it's easy to fix, but it hasn't happened after a number of years and several revisions of the boards. I would happily fund the project, in fact I planned to buy either the standalone or the new A600 V4, but was not impressed by their prepacked demos. I'm not going to shell out €500-600 to figure out which point release of a whdload package I can't find is the least glitchy. Because the development is closed and the community is a locked out, I have to treat them as the huge commercial operation they're pretending to be and my money will be theirs when they've fixed those typos. It would be a different story if the community was allowed to fix the typos, too. I think it's great that it's providing value to people already, and if it fits your use-case then awesome. Just not for me, yet.
I'm assuming it's using the fpga custom chips on HDMI but the original custom chips on the RGB output? So the glitches on the HDMI are going to usually come from the incomplete aga emulation. When it's broken on both, especially in demos, that's going to be down to the CPU either not playing well with the demo, or again an imperfect 68k implementation. What I don't get is why it would be good on the HDMI and not the RGB, unless it's that the CPU is somehow too fast, or the real custom chips have contention for the memory with either the simulated chips or CPU? It's super interesting in any case
Yeah, that makes sense. Probably a combination of that and various timing issues with the fast CPU. And I guess certain timings will differ between the FPGA implementation and real chips, leading to some things occasionally being less glitchy on the FPGA version.
In all V4 series video and audio out are unfied via HDMI. No real onboard chi[s ,.no RGB Out. However, what you say is true for V2 models that are put into Classics and use onboard chipset and ports for OCS ECS AGA out
@@RasVoja then I'm a bit confused how we end up with simultaneous RGB and HDMI output in this review? And why they're curiously different - sometimes one is glitching and sometimes it's the other and sometimes both are fine or not
@@RasVoja Clearly there is RGB out. Did you watch the video? :) The OG chips still do their thing and all the ports on the back also work. It's only when you're in a RTG screen mode that the onboard video is disabled. Same with audio, onboard audio is still used unless you're playing 16-bit sound through the new ARNE chip.
@@OddObsolete the functioning of the Ice Drake is the following: there are in fact two chipsets that work simultaneously in the machine, the original one of the 1200 and the one replicated in the Ice Drake. The code is executed on both chipsets. That's why we can have the two video outputs working with the software that displays on the chipset.
Pretty sure most productivity software runs fine on the Vampire. There will always be exceptions, just as different Amigas had compatibility issues back in the day.
Haha yes, I noticed that too while editing the video! It’s not actually bent, it’s just longer than the other pins for some reason. And it looks like it still soldered correctly, so it should still make contact. But definitely worth a closer examination!
For me it worked after following the PDF guide they have on their website. I did it in UAE on Mac, but it should work the same in WinUAE. I suggest you ask for help in the Apollo discord.
All of the Amiga is active (except IDE controller and 68EC20 cpu). The Icedrake mirrors the state of the original chips, so to speak, to produce an alternate output over HDMI. Kind of similar to how you get sound over HDMI with the Indivision AGA mkIII. It mirrors the Paula chip in FPGA to produce the sound.
When I see these though I always think it's time to create an entire system that doesn't rely on the old hardware and maybe steps up the game for those that want to move the Amiga onto new territory.
The major problem has always that nobody can agree which direction 'Amiga' should go. It always ends in arguments and multiple projects, most of which never succeed. The Vampire/Apollo team have stuck to their guns and finally made a success of their project, but there are a lot of VERY VOCAL detractors out there. Most of whom actually have nothing to offer as an alternative, other than negative comments.
8:28 Oh Thank the HW-Gods 😀 ^Sry' i'm just not a fan of A 1200 in a tower*... It has to be in my good ol' May 1993 now pretty yellow org. one... *got to many of 'em already...
Not the fastest by far. PiStorm can deliver about 5 times the performance. But of course it comes with it's own compatibility related issues, just like the Apollo or an original 68030+
True, but many people seem to think software the CPU emulation is inferior to, or less desirable than either an ASIC or FPGA 68K. Fortunately we have plenty of choices. If you want the ultimate 68K CPU performance, UAE running on X86/64 will beat the pants off them all. 😉
@@another3997 Yes, I think so too, when it comes to full system emulation. The complexity of emulating a whole system is high enough for raising a lot of potential issies, with communictaion and timing between components. But I think it's a very different thing when you have distinctly emulated components which still are combined by the native layout. It still feels 'real' to me, especially when it's about the CPU :) Of course either usig a realtime OS, or bare metal coding is needed, which mostly compensates the usual disadvantages of software compared to an FPGA implantation. It's a bit different when it comes to emulating the C64's SID for example, which of course has it's own very specific and individual characteristics, making an emulation less suited.
The Amiga, I wanted to add, is a good example of what I mean: The componentns by themselves can be emulated utterly precise and thorough. But gluing all components together logic is where ther issues start. IMHO the Amiga still is the hardest to emulate system to this day and I haven't had any system, no matter how performant, which could provide a decent Amiga emulation. It all comes down to little precision deficiencies in timing, whidch then wull result in either stuttering or delayed sounds, or mouse lag and such. And these timing issues exist in between the components, not inside the components themselves,.
@@another3997 Ryzen 7 4750U's 15 watts is still too high for A500 accelerator processor. Raspberry Pi 3 B+'s four CPU core full load has about 5.1 watts.
You haven't heard of pistorm, have you? What you are showing is by far not the fastest accelerator ever made. The A1200 specific pistorm32 already gets over 2000 MIPS in sysinfo 4.4 ....
The pistorm is not a real accelerator card. As it emulates the processor, it is more like an inbuilt 68k emulator. The Vampire/Icedrake/Manticore are FPGA based cards which make it hardware implemented CPU and custom chips.
@@TheThore that is bull. It is as much an accelerator than any fpga implementation. Both have to implement code to simulate mc68k instructions in its own native machine code. No difference.
Io lho avuta per qualche mese. Non mi è piaciuta. Prendere troppo il controllo su Amiga poi la seconda ide non funziona. Sulla prima ide devi per forza usare una CF altri adattori non funzionano. Poi non va oltre i 2mb di chip ram metre annunciava fino a 12mb. Sembra quasi di avere una scheda versione beta. Rivenduta in attesa della pistorm32. Sul 500 la pistrom con emu68k va una meraviglia.
Haha, had not even considered that my preconception of “German candy” might be wrong. But Wikipedia to the rescue! Turns out I had the right idea after all :) Gummibärchen! en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haribo
Technically incorrect. It CAN replace many of the chips on an Amiga, but it doesn't have to. You aren't forced to use all (or any) of the features. But how is it any different to loading up a big box Amiga with an '040 accelerator with fast RAM, a graphics card, a Toccata sound card, a fast disk interface etc? That's what people did back when Amiga was in production, and it was still an Amiga.
I challenge you to run Amiga software on that board WITHOUT plugging it in to a real Amiga. Most of the Amiga is still used. It really is no different to when people would add an accelerator, RAM, 24 bit graphics card, Toccata sound card, a faster disk interface, network card and any number of other upgrades to their Amigas back in the day. They were still Amigas.
@@another3997 you are wrong, there must be clear motivation about any action, otherwise it's just sign of serious mental disease. Using hardware that 10000% more powerful and calling this Amiga (pretending this is something that related to original Amiga) is insane.
@@another3997 there is no rational point to use 100 times more capable hardware together with retro computer, this is insane and signal of serious mental disease.
@@РоманАндреенко-ч2л Stop being stupid. This Ice Drake just enhances the Amiga experience and no doubt if Commodore stayed in business this is how the Amiga would have progressed. I have two Vampires and they are the best upgrades I bought.
You don’t understand Pistorm is emulation you can use Pi Amiga emulation without Amiga would be the same… the icedrake do not emulate it reconstruct a 68080 processor ( that never came 68060 was the last) since production of a 68080 for only some freaks would make a processor 10.000$ since only limited seller. The fpaga chip can not emulate but simulate another chip, so they construct a 68080 on a cheaper way as pressing new Prozessors.
The PiStorm will have none of the new hardware, not to mention the 68080 cpu, enhanced sound and graphics chips implemented in FPGA hardware. FPGA is not emulation.
The Amiga line fascinates me. Not only the platform itself but the loyal fanbase that continues to make new hardware and software for it. I don't think I've ever seen such a dedicated community for any other piece of hardware.
You should see the 8 Bit Guy community. They made a whole new computer based off the Commodore 64 line, and will be selling it
@@danielktdoran they have tried that with the amigaone systems
We love our Amigas for sure!
@@mikebrant4615 The problem with those A1 systems is the same one that blights Amiga OS4, they chose to use the PowerPC architecture. Outside of a few niche areas, nowadays nobody uses or develops desktop PPC hardware, and what little exists, is both incredibly expensive and relatively low powered. ARM has neither of these problems, whilst RiscIV is still an emerging, but promising architecture.
It was a spirit during CBM existance, all essential SW and HW upgrades were 3rd party
I can tell you how to easily "fix" the video glitches that you see in your video.
Actually there is a config option for this.
If you set JUMPER "J1" this should fix your glitches.
I can explain you the technical reason behind this:
The combination of Icedrake and Amiga 1200 - has 2 video out signals.
And both video outs can slightly drift.
If they drift then the Computer can always only in Sync to one of them and the other will have to "look" wrong. A very good example as you showed is Frontier.
The CPU will reset colors on the screen depending on the screen position of the MonitorBeam.
If both Monitors are not 100% in sync - then one display by design will have false colors.
You can fix this in two ways:
a) Use only 1 video out and tell the card to sync on the video out you want
b) enable auto syncing of both video outs.
Well now. I'm not too interested in Vampires, but SuperAGA does bring a smile to my face.
Great video. Good to see you're back at it so soon after the channel update.
Monster is back for Amiga IceDrake Baby! I LOVE IT!!! ❤❤
Excellent video ! I've been interested in adding a vampire to my a1200 for a while now.. but it might be better for me to get a standalone.
An excellent product! Which one will offer RGB to HDMI passthrough for native Amiga screenmodes first? Will it be the Vampire/Apollo V4 boards or the PiStorm32? I guess that will decide the true victor in the market IMHO! However, the PiStorm32 can't be beaten on price and the V4's SAGA modes plus AMMX extra instructions are unique to that product family and allow unique Vampire specific software and games! The choice is ours! A great time to be an Amiga fan!
Agreed, lots of fantastic stuff coming out!
Am excited to try out the pistorm32 too sometime soon.
The IceDrake has HDMI output of native screen modes already, that’s one of the improvements over the older Vampire V2.
We need more modern software developed for the new standard that Vampire/Icedrake sets. I would be quite happy to go out and buy an Amiga 1200 and an Icedrake .. having said that I'll see what new games are already out we might as well face it the Amiga is BACK and the AGA chipset is actually gonna get warmed up for a change it was never fully kind of put through it's paces. Super stardust and the rendered scenes in Microcosm might have been somewhere close to showing what the Amiga is capable of ..MORE of that please
Wow, very nice, not seen this before. You're certainly paying for that performance, but if you've got a use for all that power, well worth it.
There is no practical use for a fast Amiga in today’s world, anything that requires high processing speed such as video editing or 3D modelling work is better tackled on a modern computer nowadays, and the vast majority of classic Amiga games don’t benefit from acceleration (with the notable exception of 3D titles and a handful of games & demos which were developed with accelerated Amigas in mind).
These modern accelerators for vintage computers are labours of love for a vintage computing platform many people are fond of, they are for the fun of pushing old hardware to beyond its limits.
Speed is fine, issue with V4 is compatibility since chipset is reverse engeenered. Improves with cores/
That's an issue you can have with real Amiga hardware. OCS, ECS, AGA are broadly backward compatible, but not the other way. The same with 68000, '020, '030, '040 and '060 CPUs, as they don't provide close to 100% compatibility. No Amiga can run every piece of software.
@@another3997 In general you are right, in truth 080 and V4 SAGA are WAAAY less compatibile since they are reverse engeenering experiment compared to real chipsets and CPUs made to be compatibiliy
@@RasVoja Very fast 68K CPU and Chip RAM/Custom Chip timing interaction is a problem. PIStorm-Emu68 encountered a similar problem.
This is due to missing resource tracking features like in PC's Direct3D API. PC's Direct3D API is designed to scale with different CPU/GPU combinations in laptops and desktop PCs. PC's DirectX12 still has resource tracking.
PS5 has timing-accurate PS4 backward compatibility mode.
Good review. Thanks for comparing HDMI and RGB output with games and tell us about glitches. But there is more to consider when you buy an IceDrake and own an Amiga 1200 in a tower case plus accelerator board like Blizzard 1230 IV with SCSI Kit. If you replace it by an IceDrake you will lose your SCSI controller, so that your SCSI-CD-Rom drive, your entire collection of Amiga sofware CDs, CD32 game discs, CD writer for backups, external scanner will become useless, - unless you consider to buy an extra SCSI controller on top, e.g. a Squirrel for PCMCIA port or when you have a tower with Zorro 2 expansion board as I do, you will have to add one of those rare A2000 SCSI-controllers - not all of them support autoboot, run in PIO mode only, lack of fast DMA access or have glitches with accelerator boards. So, if I decide to buy an IceDrake for an extra boost to my A1200, finding a proper SCSI substitute controller might become tricky.
I cannot help but to think that all Amiga users who enjoy a Vampire or Icedrake whithout similar complaints had never had or wanted Amiga software on CD, threw away or sold their enitre media collection in the meantime if they did have it, never listened to AudioCDs on their Amiga and thus feel no need to use these things at all or not anymore.
By the way, do you know about similar glitches in games with a Vampire card?
Do you know if the IceDrake IDE controller at least supports a dated IDE CD-ROM drive?
How did you install more than one OS on a CF card? Is at least one OS (e.g. Apollo OS or WB 3.1) pre-installed on the CF card that came with the IceDrake?
Yeah, you definitely loose some stuff too, like CD drives. According to Apollo the IceDrake should be able to handle IDE CDROM drives, but I couldn’t get it to work on my card. In fact, I couldn’t get anything to work with the large IDE connector. It appears to be completely dead on my card.
As for multiple OSes, the have a utility called ApolloBOOT that sets that up for you. Check the website for more info.
I haven’t used any of the older Vampire cards, so I don’t know how they compare in terms of compatibility.
But for sure, if you want the genuine retro experience, go with genuine retro hardware, but if you want to explore something new and different, the IceDrake is plenty of fun to play around with.
@@OddObsolete Thanks for your reply. Good to know, the IceDrake not only deactivates A1200's internal IDE port, but its own IDE is pretty useless right from the start. But unlike the Vampire it not only adds better graphics modes and HDMI port but also upgrades Paula chip's 8-bit sound to 16-bit sound. The main difference between Vampire and IceDrake. And Amiga soundcards for 16-bit sound are most hard to find of all classic hardware. Even one of recent years' Prisma Megamix by A-EON which allows to decode MP3 audio in 16-bit quality was only made in small quantities and is not available anymore.
Since the Vampire 1200 preserves the internal IDE port while the card's speed is like IceDrake, I think I will buy a Vampire 1200 V4 soon. I have become a bit jealous at hte speed those cards can achieve in 3D rendering and Amiga Doom clones (AlienBreed 3D 2, Adoom, Shadow of 3rd moon and Quake) My Blizzard 1230 IV is a bit too slow for these games.
Fortunatley, I already found an AdSCSI 2000 Zorro controller for my Zorro 2 expansion board as a new old stock item and thus can keep using my SCSI devices and install a harddisk. Better a slower SCSI port than none at all.
BTW, where did you install your WHDload games? The IceDrake's IDE port does not work and A1200's internal IDE for harddisk or CF card was deactivated by IceDrake.
Nah, just Mister attached to the Amiga for some reason.
I am sticking to PiStorm for 500 and will do for PiStorm 32 lite as well for A1200.
Faster, sleeker, open source, improving like every day with new builds for Caffeine OS, way to go!
also no 4k resolution, or even at least 1080 :(
No offence to the Mister project, but currently Mister simply can't do what the Vampire boards can. But it was never designed to be a 'Super Amiga'. Whether you like the Vampire boards or not, they are far more complex and much more capable than a Mister. PiStorm is a fantastic alternative, but it certainly isn't perfect. All three projects will improve over time.
Minimig v1.81 has support for A500 CPU accelerator cards such as TF536, PiStorm, and Vampires.
@@another3997 Vampire V4SA doesn't support 3rd party A500 CPU accelerator cards and it's less flexible than the actual A500.
A1200 might be one of the best home computers ever made
Agreed!
The vampire cards for A1000, A2000 and A500 also bring AGA to them
In our emotions. 020 was too slow, only chip RAM, no CD ROM, no 3D expandability. A3000 AGA was supposed to be out much earlier. While its great jump frpm A500 and A600 its not a really competitive to Falcon, 386DX SVGA SB and other machines of time. Even HDD was not standard.
@@RasVoja When running Doom, A1200 with 50 Mhz 68030 / AGA is like AMD 386DX-40 with ET4000AX.
Falcon has 16 bit 16 Mhz bus while A3000/A3000+ AGA has a 32-bit 25 Mhz Fast RAM bus.
@@RasVoja
A3000+ AGA's AT&T DSP 3210 (24-bit integer and 32-bit FP support) will crush Falcon's Motorola's 56000 DSP (24-bit integer support).
AT&T DSP 3210 has modern-day 3DNow/SSE/GpGPU-like 32-bit FP data format support.
AT&T DSP 3210 @ 33 Mhz has 33 MFLOPS.
Both AT&T DSP 3210 @ 33 Mhz and Motorola's 56000 DSP @ 33 Mhz will do about 16 MIPS.
In my opinion most of the incompatibilities are question of the correct WHDLoad configuration (sometimes older versions are better), not Icedrake itself. Also correct OS/ROM/Libs are crucial for many Amiga games anyway. Any other remaining incompatibilities are mostly typos in the FPGA code - that is easy to fix. For example recent Blitter typo fix enabled many games and demos to run accurately.
Apollo is even fixing bugs in Amiga games, to make it run correctly, like with the Alien Breed recently.
Apollo-Core is an ongoing development,. so what was not working a week ago, is working today. Another advantage of FPGA is ability to add features, for example that onboard IDE port might eventually work.
nah the problem is with the custom chip emulation, as it is only some sort of reverse engineering, those chips are still copyright protected and none allowed them for legal duplication (i.e. no documentation). So you are relying only on some Xray pics for creating schematics
@@Kppot the MISTer project has a much more compatible Amiga core and it runs on the exact same FPGA. It's true that it's a reverse engineering exercise but they're also not the first to do it, and there are open source cores which are an order of magnitude better. For me it's an indication of priorities. The core author, Gunnar, wanted to have fancy '080' instructions and to be the saviour of future Amiga with the new custom chips before getting a baseline level. And that would be cool if it was a community sourced project, but it's not. It's sold as a complete, closed and commercial product.
I disagree here. Well maybe you're right and it's easy to fix, but it hasn't happened after a number of years and several revisions of the boards. I would happily fund the project, in fact I planned to buy either the standalone or the new A600 V4, but was not impressed by their prepacked demos. I'm not going to shell out €500-600 to figure out which point release of a whdload package I can't find is the least glitchy. Because the development is closed and the community is a locked out, I have to treat them as the huge commercial operation they're pretending to be and my money will be theirs when they've fixed those typos. It would be a different story if the community was allowed to fix the typos, too.
I think it's great that it's providing value to people already, and if it fits your use-case then awesome. Just not for me, yet.
Kul o se hur produktionsvärdet ökar med varje avsnitt. Behövs mer svenska retroentusiaster på RUclips. :)
I'm assuming it's using the fpga custom chips on HDMI but the original custom chips on the RGB output? So the glitches on the HDMI are going to usually come from the incomplete aga emulation. When it's broken on both, especially in demos, that's going to be down to the CPU either not playing well with the demo, or again an imperfect 68k implementation. What I don't get is why it would be good on the HDMI and not the RGB, unless it's that the CPU is somehow too fast, or the real custom chips have contention for the memory with either the simulated chips or CPU? It's super interesting in any case
Yeah, that makes sense. Probably a combination of that and various timing issues with the fast CPU. And I guess certain timings will differ between the FPGA implementation and real chips, leading to some things occasionally being less glitchy on the FPGA version.
In all V4 series video and audio out are unfied via HDMI. No real onboard chi[s ,.no RGB Out. However, what you say is true for V2 models that are put into Classics and use onboard chipset and ports for OCS ECS AGA out
@@RasVoja then I'm a bit confused how we end up with simultaneous RGB and HDMI output in this review? And why they're curiously different - sometimes one is glitching and sometimes it's the other and sometimes both are fine or not
@@RasVoja Clearly there is RGB out. Did you watch the video? :)
The OG chips still do their thing and all the ports on the back also work. It's only when you're in a RTG screen mode that the onboard video is disabled. Same with audio, onboard audio is still used unless you're playing 16-bit sound through the new ARNE chip.
@@OddObsolete the functioning of the Ice Drake is the following: there are in fact two chipsets that work simultaneously in the machine, the original one of the 1200 and the one replicated in the Ice Drake. The code is executed on both chipsets. That's why we can have the two video outputs working with the software that displays on the chipset.
Love the channel brotha !
You should try a PiStorm with Pi4 and Emu68 in your nice A1200 Tower, that will accelerate it like you never seen before.
I didn't know running Amiga 1200 in a tower was a thing. I like it. Would you rather be back it not the all in one case?
Kul! Ser fram emot mer Amiga videos! ;)
Really thinking about getting an A3000 version and revive the old beast
What about Productivity software? Even a stock Amiga will play games decently. Adpro, Photogenics, etc?
Pretty sure most productivity software runs fine on the Vampire. There will always be exceptions, just as different Amigas had compatibility issues back in the day.
@@another3997 Thanks, I ask because most productivity software does not run fine on my Raspberry Pi Amibian system.
Hadn't the A1200 Amijoe G3 by metabox been the fastest A1200 accelerator so far??
I see no ram slots on it. What use is the fastest accelerator if you're stuck with the stock memory?
It comes with really fast onboard DDR RAM (512MB)
why dont we just port chrome for vampire?
Is that the OmniPort for Vampire V2? I assume it is fully compatible with the IceDrake then?
They sell this one specifically for the Icedrake, but it just forwards the hdmi, network and USB ports, so I can’t imagine there’s much difference.
Ahh...found it on the apollo shop. I was originally looking at Alinea shop.
8:14 one of the pins on the IDE connector is bent. Could that be why it doesn't work?
Haha yes, I noticed that too while editing the video! It’s not actually bent, it’s just longer than the other pins for some reason. And it looks like it still soldered correctly, so it should still make contact. But definitely worth a closer examination!
Hi
How do you can prepare Apollo boot for Icedrake? I can not did it in winuae in pc and after start I have a Env error
For me it worked after following the PDF guide they have on their website. I did it in UAE on Mac, but it should work the same in WinUAE.
I suggest you ask for help in the Apollo discord.
i want to know more about vampirestand alone 4
So how much of the amiga is still active? Is this just a compleet amiga on a fpga with some acces to the ports?
All of the Amiga is active (except IDE controller and 68EC20 cpu). The Icedrake mirrors the state of the original chips, so to speak, to produce an alternate output over HDMI.
Kind of similar to how you get sound over HDMI with the Indivision AGA mkIII. It mirrors the Paula chip in FPGA to produce the sound.
@@OddObsolete I see, thank you!
why is it called an Iced Rake?
When I see these though I always think it's time to create an entire system that doesn't rely on the old hardware and maybe steps up the game for those that want to move the Amiga onto new territory.
The major problem has always that nobody can agree which direction 'Amiga' should go. It always ends in arguments and multiple projects, most of which never succeed. The Vampire/Apollo team have stuck to their guns and finally made a success of their project, but there are a lot of VERY VOCAL detractors out there. Most of whom actually have nothing to offer as an alternative, other than negative comments.
The V4 is the way to go if you want only new hardware, or to build an A1200 reAmiga and use the IceDrake.
thx great video
Cool!
No bad, Specs are more respectable than other boards over the last few years. If only we could get a 2.5Ghz CPU and full hot plugable USB2.0 support.
Dying for some benchmarks lol
8:28 Oh Thank the HW-Gods 😀
^Sry' i'm just not a fan of A 1200 in a tower*... It has to be in my good ol' May 1993 now pretty yellow org. one...
*got to many of 'em already...
Not the fastest by far. PiStorm can deliver about 5 times the performance. But of course it comes with it's own compatibility related issues, just like the Apollo or an original 68030+
True, but many people seem to think software the CPU emulation is inferior to, or less desirable than either an ASIC or FPGA 68K. Fortunately we have plenty of choices. If you want the ultimate 68K CPU performance, UAE running on X86/64 will beat the pants off them all. 😉
@@another3997 Yes, I think so too, when it comes to full system emulation. The complexity of emulating a whole system is high enough for raising a lot of potential issies, with communictaion and timing between components. But I think it's a very different thing when you have distinctly emulated components which still are combined by the native layout. It still feels 'real' to me, especially when it's about the CPU :) Of course either usig a realtime OS, or bare metal coding is needed, which mostly compensates the usual disadvantages of software compared to an FPGA implantation.
It's a bit different when it comes to emulating the C64's SID for example, which of course has it's own very specific and individual characteristics, making an emulation less suited.
The Amiga, I wanted to add, is a good example of what I mean: The componentns by themselves can be emulated utterly precise and thorough. But gluing all components together logic is where ther issues start. IMHO the Amiga still is the hardest to emulate system to this day and I haven't had any system, no matter how performant, which could provide a decent Amiga emulation. It all comes down to little precision deficiencies in timing, whidch then wull result in either stuttering or delayed sounds, or mouse lag and such. And these timing issues exist in between the components, not inside the components themselves,.
@@another3997 Ryzen 7 4750U's 15 watts is still too high for A500 accelerator processor.
Raspberry Pi 3 B+'s four CPU core full load has about 5.1 watts.
@@valenrn8657I wonder how a 5w intel cerelon n5100 would do in comparison to the pi 4.
You haven't heard of pistorm, have you? What you are showing is by far not the fastest accelerator ever made. The A1200 specific pistorm32 already gets over 2000 MIPS in sysinfo 4.4 ....
^ this ^
there's a pistorm for the 1200 now??????????????????
@@chrisearl2217 yes. Not public yet though.
The pistorm is not a real accelerator card. As it emulates the processor, it is more like an inbuilt 68k emulator. The Vampire/Icedrake/Manticore are FPGA based cards which make it hardware implemented CPU and custom chips.
@@TheThore that is bull. It is as much an accelerator than any fpga implementation. Both have to implement code to simulate mc68k instructions in its own native machine code. No difference.
Io lho avuta per qualche mese. Non mi è piaciuta. Prendere troppo il controllo su Amiga poi la seconda ide non funziona. Sulla prima ide devi per forza usare una CF altri adattori non funzionano. Poi non va oltre i 2mb di chip ram metre annunciava fino a 12mb. Sembra quasi di avere una scheda versione beta. Rivenduta in attesa della pistorm32. Sul 500 la pistrom con emu68k va una meraviglia.
Haribo candy is Danish 👌🏻
Haha, had not even considered that my preconception of “German candy” might be wrong. But Wikipedia to the rescue! Turns out I had the right idea after all :) Gummibärchen! en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haribo
This is the worst USB gamepad I used. Drifting left stick out of the box. Nothing helps to eliminate it.
it's not an accelerator - it replaces damn near every single chip. It's just an FPGA Amiga implementation.
Technically incorrect. It CAN replace many of the chips on an Amiga, but it doesn't have to. You aren't forced to use all (or any) of the features. But how is it any different to loading up a big box Amiga with an '040 accelerator with fast RAM, a graphics card, a Toccata sound card, a fast disk interface etc? That's what people did back when Amiga was in production, and it was still an Amiga.
reviewing amiga??? ha ha ha where did you saw amiga there? fpga so powerful that can replace whole amiga? that rediculous
I challenge you to run Amiga software on that board WITHOUT plugging it in to a real Amiga. Most of the Amiga is still used. It really is no different to when people would add an accelerator, RAM, 24 bit graphics card, Toccata sound card, a faster disk interface, network card and any number of other upgrades to their Amigas back in the day. They were still Amigas.
@@another3997 you are wrong, there must be clear motivation about any action, otherwise it's just sign of serious mental disease. Using hardware that 10000% more powerful and calling this Amiga (pretending this is something that related to original Amiga) is insane.
@@another3997 there is no rational point to use 100 times more capable hardware together with retro computer, this is insane and signal of serious mental disease.
@@РоманАндреенко-ч2л Stop being stupid. This Ice Drake just enhances the Amiga experience and no doubt if Commodore stayed in business this is how the Amiga would have progressed. I have two Vampires and they are the best upgrades I bought.
Wow, you convinced me with that really factual and rational argument! @@РоманАндреенко-ч2л
Coffin is a terrible name for an OS, couldn't be any more morbid and depressing.
Vampire.....Coffin.....get it? :D
@@jkdsteve I'm a bit slow sometimes, we all have our blonde days 🤣
LMAO 599EURO... would rather have a PiStormlite.
You don’t understand Pistorm is emulation you can use Pi Amiga emulation without Amiga would be the same… the icedrake do not emulate it reconstruct a 68080 processor ( that never came 68060 was the last) since production of a 68080 for only some freaks would make a processor 10.000$ since only limited seller. The fpaga chip can not emulate but simulate another chip, so they construct a 68080 on a cheaper way as pressing new Prozessors.
The PiStorm will have none of the new hardware, not to mention the 68080 cpu, enhanced sound and graphics chips implemented in FPGA hardware. FPGA is not emulation.
Jan Beta has a passionate of kontifying the Amiga systems