Best Amiga Software

[Su Strawderman]

Butthe Vampire is not the only FPGA that has been adapted for retro computing, far from it. On the more affordable end of the spectrum you have the UnAmiga FPGA, which is a straight-forward, easy to use Amiga system. There is also the much more powerful MiSTer FPGA, which has tremendous potential.

So the issue is not really skill and time, because a Patreon project would no doubt help fund a better core. The issue is how these people view the Amiga, which is clearly cemented in the past as a dead legacy system.

Picture above: This comment is why i contacted the MiSTer group directly on sunday to ask what the status was. My experience of the community up until that point was largely positive. I figured that instead of listening to rumors that it would be best to ask directly. Sadly the members there was more interested in telling me what an idiot i was for wanting RTG and more speed, twisting my motivation for needing said features, just to troll the question to pieces -and eventually resorting to name-calling. At which point i left the group for good.

Out of these three FPGA solutions, the Vampire from Apollo is the only one where the developers seem to have a clear-cut agenda and vision, namely to build the best damn Amiga they can; one that remains true to the 68k legacy, compatible with existing Amiga software, yet updated to modern performance and features.

Apollo is likewise the only company (again, from my subjective viewpoint) that have a realistic, long term financial goal. They are offering the Vampire line of accelerators and the stand-alone as a means to fund their journey to that goal. So enthusiasts get awesome new tech to play with, Apollo get to refine and perfect the technology, and everyone is happy. Focus so far has been on getting the FPGA out there, and then funneling sales back into the project for the next step.

The model I have came with a standard VGA out (I am unaware of a HDMI version?). It also has a mini-jack audio out (which the Vampire lacks). And two traditional Amiga joystick ports. Convenient and to the point.

The only thing that was a bit surprising was the PS2 sockets for keyboard and mouse. So i had to buy a PS2 adapter kit and keyboard/mouse that would work with the adapters. But you can pick that up for $20, so not exactly a huge thing. The device boots from a normal SD Card, and you can download a premade disk image.

Beyond this there is not much to say. Ordinary rules apply, like making sure you are using a kickstart compatible with the software you want to run. Trying to run AGA software on an OCS setup will have the exact same result as on a classical machine.

Again you have standard joystick ports, as well as proper USB support (a huge plus!). The MiSTer is actually an add-on board that you attach to the Intel DE-10 Nano (bought separately), which contains a full ARM SoC for development (!). This means that the ARM side of things takes care of stuff like USB device drivers, SD card drivers etc. So you can pretty much plug in any keyboard and mouse you like -and the Linux driver database will deal with the rest. Needless to say, this is an excellent solution, one missing from both the Vampire and the UnAmiga.

Another cool thing is that both the DE-10 Nano board and the Mister daughter-board have SD card slots. So you boot from one and use the other as an Amiga storage unit. I found this to be very practical indeed.

For me, yes. And for anyone who always wanted a power Amiga with all the trimmings. I could never afford an A3000 or A4000 back in the day, especially not with RTG graphics, sound cards and all the fancy stuff such a dream machine was capable of.

I've never had an Amiga before that. As there are RELATIVELY few "AGA" games, that's not really what I'm after. A WHDload system with "degrader" and all that crap - playing classic games - is what I was really after. Well, that's a handful - A1200, all the stuff to make that happen.

I've decided a simpler approach is - A500, and the HXC Floppy Emulator is a nice option, since I have it already, and the later versions offer Amiga write support. The Amiga 500 is the model I should have gone with in the first place, and I think it has a better reputation for reliability, as there aren't sites dedicated to the bad capacitor issues of the A1200/A4000 - which there are. I know adding a hard drive to an Amiga 500 is a major bitch (no internal IDE cable like the A1200), but I just want to game from floppy images. I don't care about all that stuff, unless I have to.

The trouble with the A500 is there are SO MANY REVISIONS - each called simply "A500" and each much less distinct than the Atari 1040ST - that it leads one to believe that necessity was the mother of the invention of so many revisions, and by virtue of so many revisions, the earlier versions must be inherently flawed, or there wouldn't be so many revisions. Also - how to tell - by Ebay listing - what revision you're buying? So confusing, I'm almost inclined to give up before I gamble again, but I'd really like to have an Amiga in my collection. I wonder if A1000 wouldn't get the job done, but it was less-popular, and I have a feeling the A500 is what I'm after.

.....which cues me in, towards a few things to look for. It's difficult, when you've never followed Amiga before. I'm inclined to want to buy from him - he's reputable, knowledgeable, and pretty much great guy - but there's a bit more there than I need. However, in attempt of learning something from his ad:

(1) Rock Lobster motherboard. This is the earliest, from what I can Google. Caveats? There are so DAMN MANY revisions (6? 8?) that I figure there must be something to it. I'm assuming the later the motherboard, the better, but is this correct? One likely is NOT going to know which motherboard revision they're getting, from Ebay, unless they state, as our pal does. Is this really an important consideration?

(3) Kickstart 1.3 - As I think I understand it, 1.2 was the standard for older A500 (but newer revisions have it) and 1.3 is an upgrade. Caveats? What's wrong with 1.2, specifically, if you end up with it?

(5) 1MB RAM - 512k chip ram and 512k Fast RAM (but can be changed to 1MB chip ram upon request). Well, I don't really know what this means. What's the "standard" 1MB Amiga 500 setup? I think I understand that lots of people had a "standard" 1MB upgrade, and in the end a number of games required it. Was this "chip RAM" or "fast RAM" or what? The only accord I can try to draw is on the Atari TT and Atari Falcon, they had "ST RAM" and "TT RAM" (or whatever - I never owned those machines) but I think the "ST RAM" was more like "chip RAM" and the "TT RAM" was more like "Fast RAM" but, this is just an attempt to understand what the hell they're talking about. I only had Atari ST, and there was just one kind of RAM, which is why I'm not so sure what's up with this. What is the standard 1MB setup, for maximum game compatibility?

(6) Any other general reliability issues? Why are the power supplies so maligned? Are there any clock batteries that leak electrolyte onto motherboard traces, ruining them? Why is it that I even suspect this? I think I'm getting my Amiga revisions a little confused, but there was one model of Amiga with this battery problem, eh?

Thanks for any info. I feel a slight void in my retro-collection without an Amiga of some type, and the A500 still catches my eye, yet I find I know so little about them, that even the lingo is somewhat greek to me.

I wouldn't worry too much about one motherboard revision or the other with the 500. For me, a good machine would be one that hasn't been messed about with by the hamfisted, although that said, some of the common mods are dead simple and could be done by almost anyone.

Kickstart 1.3 was much more prevelant, and more reliable/desirable to have than earlier 1.x versions. A popular mod is a dual OS board that has 1.3 and 2.1 (from memory about the highest OS revision the 500 could run).

Most 500s have 512K built in and another 512K on the trapdoor RAM expansion, IIRC it was the much later ones that have 1 Meg on the motherboard. A Fat Agnus is required to run 1 Meg on the motherboard.

As for that, yes, some 512k RAM expansions can have leaky batteries. Luckily, on the A500, it's not on the motherboard, just the memory expander.. So, when you get one, take out the memory card and check it!! It'll run fine without a battery...

I wouldn't be too concerned about the specific revision of the motherboard but more on the other stuff you list below. I don't remember there being revs of the A500 that were tremendously better or worse than the others.

The "Fatter" Agnus gave you two things: the ability to have more chip memory, and the ability to change the video mode (between NTSC, PAL, VGA, etc). The original "Fat" Agnus only supported 512 KB of chip memory and was fixed to either NTSC or PAL only.

KS1.3 added: Support for the Fatter Agnus/ECS Denise so that you could change the video mode; KS 1.2 was hardcoded for either NTSC or PAL only. Support for AUTOCONFIG - this allowed you to boot harddrives connected to the side expansion port; KS1.2 required you to boot a floppy that in turn boots the harddrive.

The Enhanced Chip Set made some minor changes to the Amiga hardware. You could change the video modes on the fly, do larger blits, and use more chip memory. The two chips affected were Agnus (Fat -> Fatter -> Obese) and Denise (OCS Denise -> ECS Denise). Paula was not changed in the update from OCS to ECS.

The 1MB setup on an A500 is either 1MB chip memory with the Fatter Agnus, or 512KB chip memory + 512KB bogo memory. Bogo memory is also called slow memory. This 512KB of memory is accessed through Agnus, but cannot be used for video or sound data. Since it is accessed through Agnus, it has the same DMA slow-downs as chip memory, hence the reason people called it Slow memory instead of Fast memory.

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