Vamprire 4 Stand Alone
(my first week with an Amiga-ish Computer)
Carsten Strotmann
Created: 2020-12-18 Fri 12:57
the Vampire 4 Stand Alone
What is the Vampire 4 SA?
- a new Amiga-ish Computer from Apollo Accellerators
- custom 68080 CPU in FPGA (Altera Cyclone V, Equivalent to 1000MHz 68030 / 500MHz 68040 / 250MHz 68060)
- 512 MB DDR3 RAM
- SAGA Graphics (Modes up to 1280×720@60Hz, 1920×1080@24Hz, Color depths of 8, 15/16, 24, 32 bits per pixel)
Vampire 4 SA
Vampire 4 SA
What is the Vampire 4 SA?
- IDE/CF Card
- SD-Card Slot
- HDMI
- Ethernet (100Mbit)
- USB (Keyboard/Mouse/Joystick/Joypad)
- Amiga Joystick Ports (DB9 style)
- Power via Mini-B USB
Main Operating System
- comes with ApolloOS (customized AROS - AROS research operating system http://www.aros.org/)
- Open Source: AROS Public License, based on MPL https://aros.sourceforge.net/license.html
- API and ABI compatible with classic m68k AmigaOS
Alternative operating systems
- Modern AmigaOS
- EmuTOS (Atari ST)
- MiNT (Atari ST)
V4SA can be picky
- power supply - use the one that comes with the machine
- keyboard - I use a Vortex TAB75 https://candykeys.com/product/vortex-tab75
- mouse - I had luck with a Lenovo USB mouse
- USB ports: keyboard must be in the rear USB port, mouse must be in lower front USB port
- HDMI: works fine even with my wide screen LG monitor in 1280×720@60Hz with 24bit color
First impression
Desktop looks great
- nice prepackaged and preconfigured system
- Network (TCP/IP) was disabled, but enabling on startup was a breeze
- a lot of "Batteries" included
- Tools and applications (AWeb and IBrowse)
- Games
- Demos
Browsers
Developer Tools - gcc
- ADE - Amiga Development Environment (GeekGadgets)
- Unix-Environment for AmigaOS (https://github.com/bebbo/ixemul)
- translates Syscalls, a BSD kernel running inside AmigaOS/AROS/ApolloOS
- comes with gcc 2.95.3
- m68k binutils
- common Posix tools (ksh, awk, perl, sed …)
Developer Tools - vbcc
- Nice C-Compiler http://sun.hasenbraten.de/vbcc/
- ISO C according to ISO/IEC 9899:1989 and a subset of the new standard ISO/IEC 9899:1999 (C99).
- supports Amiga (AmigaOS, MorphOS) and Atari (TOS, MiNT, Jaguar).
- comes with vlink http://sun.hasenbraten.de/vlink/
- comes with vasm http://sun.hasenbraten.de/vasm/
Developer Tools - Assembler
- ASMone Assembler (m68k, PPC)
- DevPac Assembler
- vasm
Developer Tools - Basic
- AMOSPro
- AmigaBlitz https://www.amiblitz.de/
- PureBasic https://www.purebasic.com/
AMOSPro Basic
Development Tools - Editors
- VIM (MUI) - AmigaOS/AROS/ApolloOS is VIM land
- Annotate https://www.onyxsoft.se/annotate.html
- REdit
- ED (AmigaOS default editor)
VIM
Development Tools - Others
- FreePascal https://freepascal.org
- Lua (AmiLua)
- MUIBuilder (MUI Interface builder)
- (Regina) REXX (of course)
FreePascal
MUIBuilder
Lua
Emulators
- PCTask4 (PC Emulator)
- AMIMSX (MSX)
- Stella (Atari 2600)
- MAME
- GNGeo (NeoGeo)
- ScummVM
PCTask
PCTask
Issues in the first week
the "make" shutdown
- ADE GNU make - shuts down machine (WTF??)
- very annoying
- downloaded a different "make" port from AmiNet - works
GCC instabilities
- after compiling 2-3 source files, gcc "crashes" in VFORK() with an illegal stack frame
- either a AROS, IXEMUL or gcc issue
- current workaround: "suspend" crashed task, restart "make" in another shell process
Free-Pascal date issue
- compiling even simple programms ("Hello World") stopps with "Error:
1980-0-0 is not a valid date specification"
- possibly an issue between ApolloOS and FPC
Whats missing
- IPv6 Networking
- Real Time Clock - available as an I2C add-on for ~ 3 Euro
- stable GCC environment
- Emacs (some wort of)
- Modula2/Oberon
- Forth
Vampire 4 SA final thought after one week
- great system
- lots of fun
- fast enough for most tasks
- small teething issues - but team and community are responsive
Questions? Discussion!
@cstrotm@mastodon.social
Vamprire 4 Stand Alone (my first week with an Amiga-ish Computer) Carsten Strotmann Created: 2020-12-18 Fri 12:57