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| Author | Do we have any Vampire V4 Standalone users here? (Read 99487 times) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Bolkonskij
Administrator 1024 MB  Posts: 2023 
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on: June 29, 2025, 18:02
I'm seriously impressed with the new hardware featuring a 68080 (albeit only implemented as a FPGA, if I got that right). Still, this is impressive *new* 68k hardware, kind of the next step in 68k development. This should make @68040 excited :-) Anyway, the thing appears pretty amazing. It does run Amiga stuff with a high compatibility, it can be an Atari ST if you want OR ... run a 68k Macintosh on top of the Amiga OS. https://www.apollo-computer.com/mac.php Quote However, the Apollo 68080 not only fully supports all 68040 integer and FPU calculations but also outperforms early PowerPC RISC CPUs when running 68K software. Do any of you have the thing and can tell us anything about how well it does the Mac part? Do we have effectively new modern hardware for 68k Macintosh use? |
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Last Edit: June 29, 2025, 18:05 by Bolkonskij
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lauland
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512 MB  Posts: 674 Symtes 7 Mewconer!
Reply #1 on: June 29, 2025, 18:34
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I've been very tempted to get one, being a die hard m68k fan, it is exciting to see what could have been, if the architecture had kept evolving. This is likely what it would have looked like. More registers, 64 bit extension, and vector units, etc. The thought of real NEW hardware, that can run the AmigaOS "natively" out of the box is enticing, and the fact that it can stumble along Atari STish, at least a little is a super bonus, as I'd love to get into the Atari m68k world, if I ever had time. The Mac "compatibility" I'm a little suspicious of. From what I can tell, they are just running ShapeShifter, which is a Mac emulator for the Amiga, so it is NOT natively booting, and you'd need to deal with the amiga side of things, as far as disks and other hardware goes. Don't get me wrong, ShapeShifter is an excellent emulator, compatibility is great, but...emulation is always a pain, and never ever perfect and very picky. As far as I can tell, that is what running MacOS on the vampire is. ---- The stand alone is basically the same board that is used as an accelerator, PiStorm-wise, in amigas, in that it typically replaces your 68000 chip, and in many models, sits in its socket. Like the PiStorm, it provides Amiga drivers for a lot of modern onboard hardware. The PiStorm is an entire ARM based computer, and runs an m68k emulator in software, with drivers for some of the pi's hardware. The Vampire is FPGA, so a "hardware" implementation of an m68k compatible core, and the board itself has other hardware for which there are drivers. ---- I believe Knezzen has a vampire accelerator in one of his amigas, so he could tell you more, and I think there may be another person here that has one also. They both will tell you the people behind the vampire aren't great, but I won't repeat any hearsay, and have no experience with them myself, so they'll have to tell the tales, if they wish. ---- I will note there are things about the 68080 that make it less wonderful than you might think. As far as I can tell there are NO compilers that support any of the new instructions, so if they are ever used, its only in hand written assembly, and thus pretty rare, and of questionable quality. It looks amazing on paper, but I think when the wheel hits the road, a lot of the features may have been added because they could, or thought they'd be cool. How useful are vector operations, if its just part of a limited FPGA? And I seriously doubt the FPGA is natively 64 bit, so the those operations won't necessarily be much faster. Etc etc. There are a lot of computer science reasons I'm skeptical. With that being said, any implementation of an m68k cpu on a modern FPGA will be loads faster, just because the hardware is modern. And so running MacOS 8 inside ShapeShifter on it WILL be faster than the fastest quadra...but you'd be using a HIGHLY mutant thing, far from a real mac. ---- One thing I really need to do is try ShapeShifter on my PiStorm equipped amiga. In theory it'd be faster than a quadra, and quite nice. But I have enough real macs to keep me VERY busy, and emulation via Basilisk and QEMU are great on much much less persnickity machines than ancient amigas... I just haven't wanted to have to deal with all the bizarre weirdness. This has kept me from buying a vampire too, as that is what it REALLY is, an amiga first. ---- Finally, one interesting idea that COULD happen in the future, is to use a vampire accelerator in an m68k mac. Electrically it'd work, if not physically fit, on an 68000 based machine like a plus or se. It would need a lot of software that nobody has written to work, but it would possibly work. Getting it in a newer mac would require an adapter like a PDS or nubus card...again...possible, and might happen one day far in the future...
Last Edit: June 29, 2025, 18:40 by lauland
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Johnny7
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64 MB Posts: 78 System 7 Newcomer!
Reply #2 on: June 29, 2025, 19:05
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@Bolkonskij Everything that lauland stated is true. I've been reading everything "VAMP" since it came about. However I would add that the "questionable folks" behind the VAMP are real picky about what software you can even run on it sometimes. They also "borrow" rewritten (legal?) drivers heavily from the folks behind AROS. And then there's VAMP-OS. The VAMP stand alone is also NOT CHEAP. However, I would never dissuade any educated buyer from a purchase. Also, I'll parrot what I say about Amiga "acceleration"... you're still only going to be using the same software that's been around forever - unless you need heavy compilation speed and/or rendering. Anyhoo, HAPPY SUNDAY ALL! 😊
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Bolkonskij
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Administrator 1024 MB Posts: 2023
Reply #3 on: June 30, 2025, 08:14
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Thanks guys for the info, that really helps with the Vampire. I've heard great things about ShapeShifter (the Mac OS emulator for the Amiga) in the past and I think @knezzen has used it before. Does anybody know how "complete" the support with ShapeShifter is? Is it just for games or could I also go online with it?
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lauland
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512 MB Posts: 674 Symtes 7 Mewconer!
Reply #4 on: June 30, 2025, 16:21
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https://shapeshifter.cebix.net/ (modern link) It was written by the same person that did SheepShaver (whose name itself is a play on ShapeShifter) and Basilisk. So, although it is MUCH older than them and no longer supported or updated in any way, you'd probably have a similar experience with it. That is, mostly quite good, but crashing for no reason that you can find sometimes, and similar compatibility issues. Again, note, it is very old, even for Amiga software! I'm unsure how good its network support is, but, very important to note, it would be using the host Amiga's network connection, and probably even its network stack, so you'd have to deal with Amiga stuff, and, if you think networking on classic Macs can be a pain, just TRY it using an Amiga! Meaning, it will be very weird, hinky, and have almost zero support. (Although it is possible the Vampire creators do some). Note that the original Amiga OS came with NO networking support, at all, so any networking isn't standardized well, and there are multiple sometimes incompatible stacks. ---- I do need to give ShapeShifter a try, as I have a PiStorm accelerated Amiga, which should thus act as a quite nice, very fast, m68k mac. I haven't done so because just getting software onto the Amiga is such a pain, and I have enough stuff to play with, Basilisk on modern machines suits me fine. It probably wouldn't be earth shatteringly faster or worth the trouble it'd take to set it up (nor would it on a vampire). I'm a big Amiga fan, and the fact that I haven't wanted to deal with it maybe says something about what a Vampire/ShapeShifter experience might be like. It is far from a real Macintosh, instead an emulator on an obscure ancient crazy platform. I love it, but there are better uses of my time. ---- One more further note on "68080" support. Because ANY software that uses it is hand coded assembly...and since it is as obscure an architecture as they come, of dubious and very mixed quality...I believe it will be mostly limited to drivers, where it WILL make a big difference, and probably video encoding/decoding, but that's just about all there is, and possibly ever will be, until there are compilers for it. The fact that nobody but the vampire people have embraced it, I think is very telling. If it REALLY was a good idea, you'd think the entire m68k world (as small as it is) would have gotten on board, and we'd see emulators adding 68080 instructions. We haven't, and I take that as a clear sign that it is very interesting, but not as exciting as it might seem, on paper. I love the m68k architecture with a passion, and the fact that nobody has done a gcc port for the 68080 may be partially down to lack of interest and knowledge, but seems to me also that it just wouldn't be worth the trouble or get you much. ---- Basically, if anyone should be going nuts about the vampire, I think I'd be one of them, and an ideal customer. I haven't bought one, and probably won't, so that says something. Not entirely sure what, but I think it means, unless you really want to learn how to deal with Amiga stuff, you probably should stay well clear of it. (Even I don't want to!)
Last Edit: June 30, 2025, 16:35 by lauland
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wove
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1024 MB Posts: 1363
Reply #5 on: June 30, 2025, 23:01
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I never had an Amiga so never have used ShapeShifter. I did use its cousin(?) SheepShaver on BeOS. I went to ShapeShifter's home page. At the bottom of the page I came across this "MacOS pre-emptively multitasks...on my Amiga! The ShapeShifter makes it possible." I do not understand how this is possible. How would an emulator turn cooperative multi-tasking into preemptive multitasking.
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lauland
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512 MB Posts: 674 Symtes 7 Mewconer!
Reply #6 on: July 01, 2025, 20:14
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Is isn't possible. It's just a bit of hyperbole I think. The classic MacOS Toolbox is not "re-entrant safe". This means two (or more) different tasks can not be safely executing different parts of it, so this precludes full pre-emeptive multitasking. You CAN do multiple pre-emptive tasks on 8.5+, within your app, but only one of them may call the toolbox. In theory you could do some fancy locking around it, but you'd have to do it by hand, and still, all tasks would have to wait until whichever one was using it was done with the API call. What the ShapeShifter author probably means, is that the Amiga OS runs MacOS as a single Amiga task, so MacOS itself is running alongside all other Amiga tasks, which ARE pre-emptive. ShapeShifter was one of the first MacOS emulators, so, at the time, this was quite impressive. These days, that is exactly what happens when you run Basilisk or SheepShaver on a modern OS such as Linux, Windows, or MacOS X.
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ShinobiKenobi
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256 MB Posts: 362 System 7 fan
Reply #7 on: July 02, 2025, 21:31
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That's pretty cool. I've wanted an Amiga for a couple of years now, but don't have the space for another computer, since I need to share monitors between my 7200 and LC III. I also am fascinated by the what-ifs of m68k hardware and possibilities, but from what I remember reading years ago, Motorola was putting less priority on the m68k, so there never really was going to be further development on it.
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lauland
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512 MB Posts: 674 Symtes 7 Mewconer!
Reply #8 on: July 03, 2025, 07:06
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There are actually some decent working '060 based accelerators for Amigas. The last m68k cpu, that Apple never used. But even they are finicky, expensive, and still not earth shatteringly fast. Like any sort of cpu accelerator, such as a pistorm for '030/'040 macs, it would be technically possible to create an '060 board for macs...but require tons of knowledge and resources. Its hard enough to even FIND working '060 chips, not a ton were made, so we're not likely to ever see such a thing. We're more likely to one day see something like a pds or nubus pistorm, still would need a lot of esoteric wizardry, but much more realistic and more bang for the buck. Now THAT would be interesting. I've got one in my amiga 500, and it is quite speedy (replacing the stock 8mhz 68000 with something like a 100+ mhz '040). I do need to give ShapeShifter a try on it...like the vampire, it'd make a very very weird Mac, but might be worth the trouble. The thing to remember is that even a low end g3 or g4 will run m68k mac apps very quickly, with little fuss at all. You wouldn't need to learn a new, and very alien, operating system, deal with bizarre disk formats, etc etc etc. Unless you really want "the hardware experience", there are much better cheaper easier less painful solutions. ---- Ok, I need to get off my high horse. I don't REALLY want to discourage anyone who is truly interested in purchasing a Vampire. I just wanted to make sure that people knew what they were dealing with. The vendor's site is a bit hype heavy. It is not really a trivial out-of-the-box "super fast m68k mac", although it may look like one.
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Cashed
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128 MB Posts: 192 System 7 Newcomer!
Reply #9 on: July 03, 2025, 15:40
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Thanks for posting this Bolkonskij. First glance at their site was catchy -confess I got tempted. I did some research and found more sources -none very pleasant. Hacker News: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28369165 Former Apollo Team member speaks up: https://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=102586 Alternatives: MIST 1.5 MIDI FPGA computer https://amigastore.eu/en/358-mist-midi-fpga-computer-with-midi-add-on.html Macintosh Plus for the MiSTer Board https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/MacPlus_MiSTer MiSTer FPGA Hardware (DIY) https://www.retrorgb.com/mister.html The Buffee Project https://www.buffee.ca/about/ My apologies -no intentions of shattering anyone's purchase or dreams. ____________________________________________ Long-Lost Attic Treasures -grab a copy Today!
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cballero
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1024 MB Posts: 1179 System 7, today and forever
Reply #10 on: July 04, 2025, 18:00
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Hey Cached, the more new retro projects, the better, right? 
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lauland
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512 MB Posts: 674 Symtes 7 Mewconer!
Reply #11 on: July 05, 2025, 03:47
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What I wish existed was an fpga (like the non-standalone vampire) or pistorm like accelerator for m68k macs. The ones (that originated in amigaland) that fit in the 68000 socket like the pistorm actually DO work on extremely old macs like plus's and se's, although the software and drivers for them is in its infancy. Macs also use some of the 68000 pins differently from amigas it seems, so timing and possibly interrupts and things aren't QUITE right. It would be SO lovely to have a pistorm (or vampire) PDS card! But I think you'd actually need several, since PDS slots are very different on different Macs. Doing nubus would also be technically possible, although who has the knowledge (and interest) to make nubus cards in 2025?!?
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