In a recent post about the Apollo V4 Standalone FPGA Amiga clone I made the claim that the V4 may be the best new classic Mac you can buy. Obviously I worded that claim carefully. Good luck buying a new Macintosh that runs Classic OS anywhere. 

I have a love hate relationship with Apple and Mac. Through the years, first in PC sales and then as an IT professional, being familiar with the Apple line of OS Classic and OS X systems has been a necessity. Mostly I end up supporting family members, friends and neighbors, but occasionally I run into these systems professionally too. 

I've had many Macs, all the way from the original 128k to a core i7 Macbook Pro in my life. The majority of them have left to the refuse heap after dying prematurely. I don't do anything in particular demanding to Macs. In my subjective opinion, they just have higher failure rates than any other brand. Mac loyalists will gnash their teeth and call me a Windoze Fanboy here. The truth is from the earliest Macs - issues like "cracked cold solder joints" have been an issue for Macs. That issue was caused by cycles of heating and cooling, and a design where the logic board was at a 90 degree angle to the power board and enclosed next to an open CRT tube, air cooled with no fans. Apple has been emphasizing design over functional engineering since the beginning - and Mac durability suffers for that - but there is no denying it looks dead-sexy doing it. My current Macbook Pro is a 2012 i7 notorious for a Radeon GPU that cooks itself if you use the machine to do things that require a 3D GPU. It is pretty safe as long as you use it only for tasks that require the Intel HD graphics. Later MBP models resolved this by using Nvidia GPUs - only, the Nvidia GPUs also cook themselves. It is worth noting that these mobile GPUs were used in similar "cheap commodity windows PCs," at the time, and didn't cook themselves in those machines nearly as predictably as in Apple laptops. Only the Macs seem to really suffer from this issue on these GPUs. I'm not saying it is Apple's fault - but it is Apple's fault.  

Despite this, I've developed an affinity for the Mac OS and several apps that are exclusive to this quirky personal computer lead by the Cult-of-Personality surrounding Steve Jobs. The problem is that despite having more Mac 68k and PPC classic machines at one point than any other retro-platform, almost all of them are dead. Leaky batteries and capacitors and cases that have become so brittle with age that they crack and break like porcelain are the most common issues. I have one PowerPC 8500 that seems fine electronically, but the case is slowly reverting to earth, and a Classic that only boots one time out of 10. My Quicksilver G4 seems to be a very solid machine, though. Macs in more traditional PC tower formats and iMacs seem to be sturdier stuff than their ultra-compact designs. 

Knowing the writing is on the wall, and not actually interested in trying to keep additional ancient Macs alive - I started looking into emulation after I discovered Basilisk II on the PC. It is a nice program, but it is no longer developed. I run it on my i7, on my Note 10+ and on Pi and MiSTer. 

It has some issues though. In particular, it chokes on the Liarware version of Ultima III - hanging, crashing the system, and in some cases, corrupting the hard drive image I use for the Mac emulator. It is a hassle to set up and configure. There is a GUI front end for most platforms that helps. Still, I'm not using Mac OS 8 or earlier as a daily driver. Sometimes I'll go months without visiting the Mac classic OS - and when I come back, having to re-learn how to launch the emulator as well as refreshing myself on how the OS itself works - well - this is one of the reasons I think FPGA is superior to emulation. It is generally one less abstraction layer between yourself and the classic platform you're trying to re-experience. FPGA simplifies configuring classic machines. 

So I was excited when I saw that the Apollo V4 was being billed as a very competent Mac Classic OS emulator - and that the Coffin OS image had this built-in. 

Instead of Basilisk II, Coffin and the V4 run an earlier predecessor of Basilisk II called "Shapeshifter". 

While MiSTer will run the Coffin OS and there is an image for MiSTer floating around - sadly the Minimig 68ec020 core doesn't have enough horsepower to run it at a decent speed or color depth. You can get it to launch - but if you've got a PC or modern Mac, you're better off running Basilisk II. In fact, there is an image of Basilisk II for the ARM processor on the DE10 Nano that is the core of MiSTer - and this runs better than running Shapeshifter on Coffin on MiSTer/Minimig. It is inconvenient to install, configure and launch though - loading through the scripts menus instead of the core menus. MiSTer does have a perfectly good Mac Plus emulator that runs very old B&W Macs running system 6, but an FPGA Mac II core has never been released for any FPGA platform. 

Mac Plus core on MiSTer FPGA

Shapeshifter however, is a different animal on the V4. Everything is set up with Coffin. There is a launcher in the menu bar that brings up a selection for OS 7.5 or 8.1. Click the button, and it will take you into the GUI. There you can tweak graphics, hard drives, SCSI, memory, serial, network and miscellaneous settings. You may want to. There is already a hard drive image installed and configured - so once you've got things where you want, click Start - and it will launch the emulator. However the drive images are a system drive of 300mb with 176mb available, and a Programs drive of 800mb with 154mb available - so there isn't a ton of extra room to load up your own programs or images. You can always create bigger volumes or remove installed apps that you don't need. 

Coffin R58 with Shapeshifter GUI on V4 Click to view full size

Click on Image to View Full size

After setting up the network in the Chooser and Control panels, the virtual Mac was able to see my G4 Quicksilver Powermac. This is an interesting observation about Macs. I have the MBP i7 running OS X, the PPC 8500 running OS 8.5, and the G4 running OS X PPC, and the V4 running 8.1 on Shapeshifter, as well as a NAS that is configured with Bonjour and Apple networking shares. The one consistent device that all the other devices can see is the G4 Quicksilver. I'm not sure if this is something I could tweak in the settings on the various machines to enable them to better talk to one another - but it works out in that I can use the G4 to get any Mac file from any of my Macs to any other - using the G4 as a bridge. The network uses the V4 device driver - but it appears to be a direct connection. I didn't need to have the Amiga TCP/IP stack up and running for Shapeshifter to establish a network connection. I'm not sure how that works, but I'm not questioning it. In fact, the TCP/IP stack in Shapeshifter seemed more reliable than the TCP/IP stack that V4 uses. I've had trouble with transferring large files via FTP and SAMBA from devices to my V4 - but large files transferred painlessly and without error from network devices to the Shapeshifter Mac. 

Note here - I tried to enable Appletalk networking and file sharing on Shapeshifter, and it locked the emulator while booting into OS 8, hanging on an extension. I was unable to load with extensions disabled. Fortunately I had made a copy of the Shapeshifter folder - so simply copying the hard drive image back over the one I had FUBARed fixed the problem. I recommend you make backup copies of your hard drive image in case you experience a similar issue. 

In any case, the networking is simple to set up and overall works well.

The official Shapeshifter page states,  

"ShapeShifter is now obsoleted by Basilisk II which also runs on AmigaOS. This page is only kept for completeness."

Intrigued by the performance of Shapeshifter on the V4, I wondered why it was bundled with Coffin instead of Basilisk II. Unfortunately, I was unable to get Basilisk II running on the V4. I can get as far as having it launch the emulator window - but I never get as far as seeing a happy Mac icon. It tends to lock up the V4, requiring a Ctrl-Ctrl-Amiga to reboot the system. I suspect it has something to do with the unique video modes of the V4 - and maybe in the future we'll see it running on the V4. For now, Shapeshifter is the best game in town. The biggest limitation I can see is that Basilisk II will mount a local, native host drive system as a Mac drive, allowing you to easily copy files to your host, in this case, the V4, and then move them into your virtual Macintosh. That is a very nice feature to have, but with robust networking, is something that is fairly trivial to overcome in its absence. 

Likewise, physical hardware like serial and floppies that do not exist on the V4 can't really be enabled or configured on Shapeshifter. Running Shapeshifter on a genuine Amiga, you can mount and read Mac floppies. Printing is also something I haven't figured out on the V4, and which may not be possible. Of course, you can always print to a PDF or other document, then copy it to a modern machine and print there. Color depth is set in the configuration menu as well, and seems to be dependent on the host OS system. On the V4, I've been successful using a color depth of 15 bit (32768 colors) and a Screen Type of CyberGfx/P96 at a resolution of 1024x768 in full screen. Running "windowed" will run the emulator with access to the Amiga desktop, but limits you to black and white in Mac OS. Running full screen, you cannot switch back and forth between the Amiga desktop and the Mac desktop without shutting down Shapeshifter as far as I can tell. You'll be limited to running Shapeshifter in a window, in black and white, if you want to use an Amiga screen grab utility to capture Shapeshifter, or you'll need to use the native MacOS screen grab (still the same key combos in OS X today). 

This introduces some special challenges. The native screen capture on OS 8.1 saves in a long depreciated "PICT" graphics format. I couldn't find anything, including Corel Paint Shop Pro 4 - that could read this format. The G4 Quicksilver once again became the intermediary. I had to copy screen shots from Shapeshifter back to the G4, then open them there. This would launch Preview - possibly in OS 9 "Mac Classic" mode, and then I could save the image from PICT to a modern format like JPG or PNG. Figuring this out took me a couple hours.  

Using OS X PPC on a G4 to bridge the gap click image to enlarge

Click for full size image

Because the FPGA core on the V4 is in effect the fastest 68xxx compatible hardware clone in the world - it makes the V4 the best choice for emulating classic 68k Macintosh systems. Basilisk II feels slow and laggy on my core i7 with 16GB of RAM and a fast SSD drive. It feels as responsive and generally as stable as a real Mac on the V4. 

There are some limitations. The memory assigned to the Mac in Shapeshifter is limited to the size of the largest contiguous block of Amiga memory. With about 500mb total on the V4, I found that this was limited to around 64MB of memory. Shapeshifter and Basilisk II are limited to OS 8.1, so Classilla, the Macintosh Classic Web Browser for OS 8.6 and 9 - wouldn't run. I get "Out of Memory" errors. I was hoping that Classilla on Mac would be better than aWeb or the outrageously priced IBrowse Amiga browsers. But let's be honest, even browsing modern websites on ancient platforms and browsers is an exercise in frustration and futility at best, even on "classic" machines far more powerful than these. 

The Coffin Shapeshifter images come pre-loaded with a great selection of the titles that most people are going to want to use OS 8 for anyhow. Carmen Sandiego, Doom II, Heroes of M&M II, Kings Quest, Links Pro, Warcraft, Leisure Suit Larry and other familiar titles are already here - saving you the trouble of moving CD sized image files around and figuring out how to get them transferred to the Mac image. I was able to copy all of my essential utilities like Aladdin Expander 5.5, SitExpand, and StuffitLite as well as image viewers and other utilities. All of these installed and ran fine. 

I haven't copied over any productivity applications like PhotoShop, Illustrator, or word processing. Really those things are novelties on machines this old - a neat way to see how far these kind of applications have come in 20+ years. They might run, and a well-matched version would probably run well. But you're not going to run old Mac 68k versions of Photoshop and Illustrator to avoid the Creative Cloud subscription model.

The website Macintosh Garden is one of several sites that is a Classic Mac version of Aminet. Unfortunately it isn't designed like aminet to support old systems with outdated browsers - so you'll need to connect via a more modern machine and then figure out how to get files from that machine to  Shapeshifter. Fortunately, they have several 68k FTP clients. I was able to download "Fetch 2.1.2" and get it installed on Shapeshifter, giving me access to my NAS and the folders there. 

Click for full sized image

The ability to faithfully emulate a reasonably accurate Classic OS 7/8 68k Mac that runs at blazing speeds (relative to Classic II/68k benchmarks) is a big bonus feature of the V4 FPGA. Emulation itself is not perfect, and Mac Classics are a fairly neglected platform in Retrogaming/Retrocomputing circles (but then again, they were fairly neglected in gaming when they were still being sold new.) I've tried various solutions to continue to have Mac II experiences without relying on maintaining old, very unreliable 68k Mac platforms, and they've all felt like imitations. Shapeshifter on the V4 has been the most convincing "Non-genuine hardware" Classic Mac OS experience I've experienced, short of running OS 9 mode on my G4. The V4 has a price tag that is a bit steep if you are only buying it for the ability to emulate classic Macs - especially considering that relative to other platforms, genuine Mac hardware can be had cheap, if you can find it. But if you're interested in Amiga emulation and you want the best Macintosh emulation possible - if there is a better choice than the Vampire V4, I haven't found it yet.  

 After a little more than a week with the Apollo Vampire V4 Amiga FPGA standalone computer, I'm finally starting to feel a little comfortable with the platform. If you thought the first impressions were long-winded, I've got even more to say this time. Were my initial impressions of the V4 accurate, were my criticisms fair? 

Sort of. 

Let me start of by saying this. The V4 is currently a better FPGA  Amiga than the MiSTer. It is probably the best Amiga you can buy right now, at any price. 

But it is also more complicated, difficult to configure and operate, and frustrating to get set up and operating correctly. It is also less stable. 

About the geographic/national culture barriers with Apollo/Vampire: 

A big part of the problem is culture. This applies to both the culture of the community, and the geographic/national cultures involved in these communities. 

Despite being a commercial, branded, "retail-boxed" product - the V4 is just as dependent on community support for the platform as the MiSTer. Unfortunately, the V4 community isn't as unified and cohesive as the MiSTer community. This may simply have to do with the "maturity" of the communities. The MiSTer community has a broader user-base because of its multi-core/multi-platform approach - and has been dealing with the logistic challenges of supporting the MiSTer framework for longer. There are a network of distributors, document writers, core developers, all well known to one another. It is largely an organic, non-coordinated effort - but the sites are established, well known, easy to find and generally information about "the right way to do a thing" is communicated quickly and widely through various channels. Significant changes that modify the previously conventional way things were done are rare - and usually an army of MiSTer fans are ready to adapt, modify, document and communicate anything that breaks. We saw this recently when the "Retrodriven" MAME scripts were discontinued by their developer, only to be quickly replaced and implemented by an alternative.

Apollo and the V4 is at a bit of a disadvantage here. They really have two lines of products at this point, their classic Vampire accelerators that act as upgrades sitting on top of an actual Amiga, and the V4, which is the same basic technology but operating as a stand-alone with no genuine Amiga required. Additionally, there have been multiple versions/iterations of their accelerator line. There is a lot of overlap - but there are differences too, between these devices. 

This causes complications for Apollo. Their websites and other support groups have grown organically providing support for their accelerator communities as their business has expanded and grown - and the V4 doesn't always perfectly fit the model of their previous accelerators. Advice on the website that matches their family of accelerators may not be applicable to the V4. Some advice that works for their accelerators could even brick or damage the V4. If you've been part of the Vampire community for a while - this may all seem obvious to you. But if you've jumped into the Apollo line of products with the V4 and no previous experience - it can be very intimidating and confusing. 

In addition, there are a number of loosely affiliated but "non-official" projects that are outside of Apollo but these projects are essential in my opinion to utilizing and enjoying the V4 to its full potential. Those projects are the V4 Boot Loader (V4BL) and Coffin OS. 

"She was hard to look away from, Ja?"

This has been a relatively constant theme in my quest to get my head wrapped around the V4, so I think it is worth mentioning. If you're not a native German speaker - constantly checking your own perceptions can only help you. 

Finally, a less apparent regional difference in experience exists between many US and European Amiga users.  As American users switched to VGA 386s, 486s and Pentiums, and 68020, 30 and 40 Macs in the 90s, the later Amiga systems with 68030 and 68040s and AGA graphics became almost as mythical as unicorns. On the other hand, the Amiga in Europe became a kind of starter/value computer, a successor to the C64 that could offer powerful modern gaming bundles at a significant savings over a gaming Intel PC. So, while many US citizens may have never operated an AGA Amiga running anything newer than KS/WB 2.0, most Europeans naturally progressed from earlier OCS/ECS Amigas up through AGA and RTG systems.  

Methods:

My methodology for evaluating the V4 consisted of comparing the accuracy and performance of the V4 to both a MiSTer and a genuine A500 accelerated with a Classic 520 68ec020. 

So first, you'll hear this a lot - but it is because it is true. The V4 is early in its development cycle, and does not aim to be simply a recreation of any of the original Amiga systems. It is supposed to be an evolution from classic 68k Amiga line. This isn't just recreating a 68040 Amiga 4000. It is the next logical model of Amiga that an A4000 user would have upgraded to if the line had not disappeared. 

To be honest, even with this caveat, I haven't really encountered any show-stopping incompatibilities. Almost every issue I've encountered just requires really diving into the issue, figuring out what is going wrong, and sometimes putting some significant effort into resolving it. 

This stands in stark contrast to a MiSTer where if it works on a similar real Amiga, it almost inevitably works the same way on Minimig on MiSTer. One could argue Minimig on MiSTer is more authentic to a genuine Amiga. This shouldn't be surprising, as Minimig/MiSTer aren't really trying to push the envelope - they're trying to authentically recreate machines from 25-35 years ago. 

OS:
I really want to buy-in and support the goal and concept of ApollOS, and I don't think that is out of the question. ApollOS is a great concept, and very well executed. It is designed to really optimize the forward looking vision of the V4, and despite being early in its development cycle - it is very polished. 

Let me take a quick aside here: Apollo support and sales will really encourage you to join the Discord channel. 

Listen to them. 

It is probably the best source of information on the V4 available today. Documentation and webpages may be out of date, new developments happen quickly. Run things by the Discord group before you attempt them. It'll save you headache and heartache. If you're considering buying, lurking there for a few days can't hurt. 

As I struggled with ApollOS, members of the Discord constantly recommended that I give Coffin a shot. I resisted this, because I want to support ApollOS and see it grow audience and continue to develop. In my decades in IT, I've seen many inferior OS platforms and other technologies become dominant simply because the better one wasn't adopted. Gaining a critical mass of installed users is more important in many cases that being technically superior. 

I had come across a pre-rolled version of Coffin R58 customized for MiSTer designed to take advantage of the new AGA/RTG modes the Minimig core on that FPGA device recently released. My interest in the V4 had finally encouraged me to buy a bigger SD for my MiSTer and upgrade to that newer core and set up Coffin there. This was partly so that I would have a good baseline of compatibility and performance to compare the V4 with something. All my genuine Amiga systems are OCS or ECS. I don't have a genuine AGA/RTG system. 

That is a story for another blog - but I had difficulty getting the Coffin image running on MiSTer - and ended up employing WinUAE and copying things around manually to finally get the Coffin .hdf working right on Minimig. 

ApollOS looks and operates like a clone of AOS 3.9 on an AGA Amiga. The Apollo team has made customizations and changes that are not well documented that make ApollOS a familiar but alien landscape where things aren't always where you would expect them to be. If you were a European that grew up learning the evolution of the Amiga OS gradually it might seem perfectly intuitive and obvious to you what is going on with ApollOS - but as an American who left the Amiga in 1993 and has recent experience that ends at ECS 68ec020 systems running 3.1.4 on CF, the leap is huge. ApollOS is the way forward for Amiga users - but the philosophy seems to assume that you've already experienced an A3000, A1200, or A4000, AGA/RTG graphics, and AOS 3.9. 

If you stopped using Debian Linux around Sarge or Potato and came back around Buster - a LOT of your cheese has been moved. Someone who stayed with Debian the entire time might claim, "hardly anything has changed, it still works like Debian!" Especially from their perspective and experience, they would be right. But from your experience - many important things wouldn't work like you remembered or expected. 

The jump to ApollOS was like this for me. Control panels weren't there, I didn't know how to customize settings, applications weren't installing or launching right. Combined with the AROS bios and very different physical hardware - I was overwhelmed with ApollOS. 

Once I had Coffin running on the MiSTer, not yet stable or complete - I immediately felt more comfortable - things were in the places I expected them, I'm familiar with the MiSTer hardware platform, I understand loading the cores, where the ROMs are, setting up the configuration of the MiSTer core menu. It made me realize that Coffin on the V4 would be one less thing that I was confused about, one less thing that I was unsure if it was related to the issues or not. These things were confusing to me, and the documentation was sparse, not organized in a way I could get my head around, and sometimes out of date. I'd get different instructions on the Discord channel than I had read on the website. 

As soon as I decided to install Coffin, I asked the Discord for advice - and most of the responses recommended installing something Called V4 Boot Loader, or "V4BL." This plan was quickly getting more complicated. I had decided just to build a CF card as a native V4 hard drive and swap out the ApollOS card inside it. Pretty straight forward. 

Another problem I should mention here - Coffin hasn't, until recently, had a big web presence or official website. Even today, you can't download the Coffin distro from the website. It directs you to a torrent. Coffin lives in the same sort of "graymarket" world as MAME Rom Sets. The top hit on a search for Coffin is generally sites in Europe selling CF cards preflashed with Coffin as a "service". Hits beneath this site contain the Readme file for the Coffin distro, and that starts off with, "Coffin is free, if you paid for it, ask for a refund now." But actually finding the file without having someone tell you, "you grab it from a torrent," is easier said than done. 

Vampire 4 Boot Loader:
V4BL is similar. There isn't an official V4BL website, full of docs and instructions. I won't say that these apps exist in the "Dark Web," - but they're certainly in a dim Web - they tend to be outside the reach of Google's webcrawlers. I'd provide links - but I think at this point, the people involved in these projects prefer it this way. 

Right as I had made up my mind I just wanted to install Coffin alone - I had already bought a 64GB CF just for this purpose, I was convinced to just go with V4BL. That was a new adventure in German documentation I also found confusing and disorganized. The V4BL documentation comes as 54 Power Point style "slides" in PDF format and starts off talking about an install method that requires 4 SD cards, a CF drive, and WinUAE - but then seems to indicate the way it should be installed is a method called the Turbo Preload that operates entirely from a hard drive and WinUAE. After reading the documentation several times over a 2 day period and asking questions on the Discord, I started to conceptualize what the documentation described and thought I had enough of a handle on the Turbo Preload method to give it a shot. 

I installed onto the 64GB CF I had bought. There were a few things in the documentation I wasn't clear at, but a couple tries later I had a CF ready for the V4 with both ApollOS and Coffin R58 installed on it. 

Coffin on the V4 instantly made me feel more grounded, in control, and able to navigate the OS as expected. It didn't solve all my problems, but installs that were failing on ApollOS, like DCTelnet - were successful on Coffin. Compatibility seemed higher - and the overall operation was far more familiar. 

But in subsequent testing, I found that a favorite tank game called "Firepower" wasn't operating right on the V4, in Coffin or ApollOS. More frustrating, - the same title worked fine on Coffin on the MiSTer and my genuine Amigas. 

I spent 3 or 4 days chasing this issue. Sometimes it would run as good as on the MiSTer. Other times it would run better than on any Amiga I ever played the game on. Most times, it ran worse than on a poorly configured emulator. 

Describing the issue on the Discord - it was attributed to PAL/NTSC and accidently switching modes using the hot-keys. There are hardware hotkeys that aren't described on the website or the included printed document - I think they're detailed in the tips.txt document on the ApollOS desktop. They're discussed a LOT in the Discord channel. The most important ones are the 3 keys usually to the right of the F-keys, often labeled Print Screen, Scroll Lock and Pause Break. In that order they switch to PAL, activate a "zoom" mode that I think "unscrunches" PAL, and NTSC. Below those Page Up and Page Down both are mapped to exit WHDLoad games, and F11 toggles simulated scanlines and F12 toggles Turtle mode, which is basically like a PC turbo mode button that will run the 68080 FPGA at a speed closer to an A1220 for games that run too fast, or throw the entire processor at games that can benefit from the 68080. In most cases, these should be left alone. WHDload should prep the V4 optimally for most games, shutting down the network and putting the machine in turtle mode so the game runs at a playable speed. Note that with Turtle mode activated, the Power LED dims. If you're unsure, hit F12 and note if the light gets brighter or dimmer. 

So, I think I've had the V4 for 2 weeks, next Thursday will be 3 weeks. I've spent most of that time configuring and troubleshooting things that weren't working as expected, and learning about the device. I haven't actually "played" with it very much - I haven't done a lot of using it as an Amiga. A few sessions of games, a couple of downloads from Aminet, and a few Telnet sessions to my BBS at telnet.wallofhate.com - but mostly I've been reading documents, chatting on Discord and installing apps and operating systems. Compared to getting started with a MiSTer, I'd say the V4 has a much steeper learning curve, and more frustration, even for someone relatively well seasoned with FPGA and the Amiga platform. 

Concerns:
There are some other things about the V4 that cause some concern. The process for flashing/updating the core, the kickstart and the SAGA video drivers is poorly documented, and making a mistake, using the wrong version, installing something you shouldn't can trash your OS, or even brick your V4. Again, consulting with the V4 discord before doing anything like this is a good idea. They also recommend having a "USB-Blaster" FPGA programmer - which can evidently unbrick a V4 after a bad flash. I bought a cheap one from Amazon - but haven't tested it yet. Veteran Vampire users almost universally say they do all their flashes using the USB Blaster. This requires opening your case, and connecting the USB blaster to a header. If you do it wrong, it can fry your V4, and that isn't covered under warranty. The software for the cheap USB-Blasters has to be downloaded from Intel, and it sounds like this isn't a very clear process, either. It is also worth noting that I saw at least one user brick his V4 by using the flash menu in the utility. I flashed mine from a command line utility, and had no problem. The guy who bricked his unit was pretty nonchalant about it for having turned a $600 device into a paper-weight - but he was confident that a USB Blaster would fix his issues. I'd be far less confident if I had been in his shoes. Along with a rapid and aggressive development cycle - this feels less than ideal compared to the process of loading cores on a MiSTer.

Apollo seems to assume their user-base is a very technically competent and experienced audience. I believe the MiSTer and buzz in the Amiga community means that they're going to see a less experienced customer-base with the V4 than with past FPGA accelerators they have produced. 

Despite all of this, the Apollo team actually sells ApollOS and the V4 short. Many times I heard team members say, "remember, this is rapidly developing, and things aren't mature or stable yet," when apps didn't run as expected or the system was misbehaving. One thing I'm seeing a lot of people complain about, and I was experiencing for a while, was the system locking up intermittently or locking immediately after booting. It does sometimes freeze, or guru, just sitting there doing nothing. Sometimes it locks while loading a program, or exiting one. This is something I rarely encounter on my genuine Amiga or MiSTer, and I think the experimental, developing nature of the V4 absolutely contributes here. In most cases it is a minor inconvenience at worst - and let's be honest - if we grew up when Amigas were running our local cable TV provider, we all saw our TV with the menu guide crashed  to Workbench or in the middle of a GURU meditation. 

We know you did the A/B switch hack on the adult channels.

Expecting better stability from an FPGA clone than the original actual hardware was capable of is a bit of wishful thinking. The Amiga OS does not protect memory address space, and that is as true today as it was in 1987. Despite these concerns, I've been able to resolve every issue I've experienced so far. I'm not seeing the random freezing/locking since replacing my first 64GB build of V4BL with a 128GB V4BL build. I've added Amiga OS 1.3, 3.1, 3.14 and 3.19 and the appropriate Kickstarts in addition to ApollOS and Coffin R58 as selectable boot OSes. The apps I've had trouble installing, I've been able to find solutions. 

But that really is part of the fun, right? Getting something new and learning how to make it do the things you want it to do. 

The Apollo team knows they've got challenges with documentation. They're working franticly to improve that.  

I think it is remarkably well developed for how long it has been available, and the amount of work that has already been put into it is an incredible achievement. ApollOS has a few rough edges - but it is actually a very nice AOS alternative and I prefer it in some ways to Coffin. Coffin is a garishly *pretty* OS. I think it is more pleasing to the eye than even OS X. Literally. But, it looks like a comic book OS. It is vibrant with well rendered icons with eye-popping colors and the color scheme of it all must have been done by someone with a graphics design background. The same is true of drawers and application icons. It isn't just the prettiest OS for Amiga - it may be the prettiest OS ever. 

But it might be a bit too noisy and loud and flashy for some people - and it looks... fun. Some people want their OS to be all business, some want a more business-casual attire. Coffin isn't sorry for Party Rocking. It looks like a Honda painted color-shifting purple with neon accents under the ridiculous ground effects. I love it, but tastes are subjective. 

ApollOS is a little more reserved. Still a pretty, well designed OS - but a little more buttoned down and respectable. 

There are other minor differences. Coffin is more like a mainstream, unmodified AmigaOS in most ways that it operates - and seems to enjoy slightly superior compatibility and stability at present. It is probably necessary at this point in order to get the full potential out of your V4. 

ApollOS is more forward looking, and probably has greater potential to become the future of Amiga OS. 

The Future:

Gaming:
What is the future of Amiga OS? Well - Right now the future of Amiga OS looks a lot like an Intel PC in 2003. The games that justify the V4 all have familiar titles. Gloom3, AmiQuake2, AmiDuke, Heretic, Hexen2 Quake, Diablo68k. These are titles that have been around, that show off the Vampire accelerators - and they run even better on the V4 than on previous generations of Apollo FPGA devices.  

Hopefully porting classic PC titles to Amiga to show it could have been done isn't the only gaming progress we see on the V4. I'd love to see a port of the Liarware Mac version of Ultima III to native 68080 V4 code - maybe as a game engine with new adventure modules that could plug into it. No gathering reagents and visiting shrines to learn to become a paladin. Just open-world classic tile and turn based CFRP gaming. I miss that. Let the story happen mostly in my imagination. 

Be he implying what I savvy?

I'm sure I'll be hearing from your legal team, anyhow, though, Mr. Rose.

Media:
The V4 is capable of playing fairly low quality MP3 rips and playing back videos - though your phone probably does better at either. When compared to the era of PC when a 68080 would have logically existed - it is arguable that the V4 does better at these tasks. Unfortunately, we live in a day when a Pi 400 can perform these tasks without breaking a sweat for $100. Still - it is pretty cool to open the audio player, load up a playlist, and let your *Amiga* handle the soundtrack in your study or office. I kinda like the low-fi quality of the audio playback. 

Don't get me wrong, it isn't terrible. It is pretty good - but if you're holding modern audio and video PC playback as the benchmark you expect, you may be disappointed. 

Internet:

The V4 comes out of the box with Ethernet and an easy to set up TCP/IP stack. Still, as impressive as the V4 68080 is - I'm not sure it could handle the demands of modern, multi-tab web-browsing of sites using TLS encryption and javascript. But that is really a rhetorical question, because there has never really been a modern 680x0 Amiga where this has even been an option. Because of this, no one has ever written TLS support or a modern web-browser for the Amiga. The closest you can get are AWeb and IBrowse. But even here - accessing http://aminet.net has never been more pleasant. Pages load and render quickly - even compared to the 100Mhz 68ec020 speeds (faster than an A3000,) of a MiSTer. File transfers are quick and snappy too. ApollOS and Coffin both contain a suite of Internet applications, including a Twitter Client, RDP client and VNC client. I haven't tried these yet - having recently sworn off mainstream social media sites and not having any real call for RDP or VNC. But they're there. This is another case where we don't know how far the V4's 68080 can be pushed - because the limitation is currently the Amiga 68k software that is available.  

Productivity: 
2D digital painting, 3D rendering, Spreadsheets, Word Processing - they're all loaded up here. I probably should have written this on the V4. Maybe my next blog, I'll set the PC up playing music, and write the article over there. I haven't really given this a spin. I haven't set up a printer. I'm not even sure if that is possible. 

Programming:
 I hear the V4 is really awesome if you write code. Until they get Access and VBA running on it, I can't really say - as that is about the extent of my programming ability. If this changes, I'll be sure to report back. 

It looks like you're trying to relive the late 80s? Would you like me to tune Pandora to Fresh Prince Radio?

My initial impressions of the V4 were pretty accurate - but I understand them better now. The V4 is the best value in a stand-alone Amiga, FPGA or otherwise, that money can currently buy. I consider it more of a "real" Amiga, and Amiga successor, than the Amiga-One X1000 and X5000. To me not only are they priced out of the market to be practical - potentially costing more than a powerful, fully rigged Intel or AMD gaming rig with nice GPUs - but they're not genuine 68xxx processors at their core. You might as well be running WinUAE on that expensive gaming rig, or one of the *nix distros that simulates a native mode desktop Amiga experience by installing and launching into an emulator from a native install. That isn't what happens with the V4. You're running your 68xxx instruction code right on the FPGA - and that FPGA could theoretically be made into an actual chip, and it would run no different. The V4 is a native mode 68k core machine. Even regardless of this, the price difference, compared to what the V4 - makes an Amiga-One a real hard sell. It is like buying the Ferrari after you've seen a Supra for less than half the price eat it alive on the track. 

The MiSTer has a very respectable, powerful Minimig core that is very stable, authentic, and compatible for less than the V4 - and that makes it a viable competitor. I can't ignore that. In addition, the MiSTer offers so many other cores that are also as mature and stable and authentic - and it is easy to set up, upgrade, maintain, and use. From the initial setup of your SD card, to the layout of the file architecture, to documentation, the network of the community, the wealth of information available on the web - the MiSTer is a very mature platform that has few barriers to entry for even the FPGA novice. The biggest problems with MiSTer are generally with the complexity of the core itself. They've made it easy to set up the ao486 core. You just run a script. Setting up Windows 98se on it though - is the challenge - especially if you're not familiar with older Win 32 platforms. The same applies to Amiga OS on the MiSTer. The MiSTer is no different than the V4 in that regard. But the MiSTer is easier to set up to the point where you can be sitting confused in the OS not knowing what to do next - and arguably safer too. It is difficult to accidentally brick a MiSTer. It seems as if you can follow the instructions perfectly, and still end up bricking your V4. If you have your MiSTer in a case, you'll probably never have any occasion to open it again, unless you're replacing or upgrading something. The V4 may require looking under the hood more frequently. For general, casual users the MiSTer is an incredible value. If you want a multiplatform system - the MiSTer is arguably a better value than the V4. The V4 does have a host of emulators - but it is no match for the breadth of platforms MiSTer supports - and it is still emulation on the V4, while it is FPGA on MiSTer. The odd exception here is Classic Mac. Classic OS on MiSTer is achieved by running Basilisk II on Linux on the ARM processor. The V4 emulates Classic Mac too - but on a genuine 68k CPU instruction set - taking one abstraction/translation layer out of the equation - and it shows. The V4 may be the best option available, period - for those who are interested in classic Mac OS. I can imagine buying a V4 simply for its Mac II capabilities. 

The V4? It is a very specialized, dedicated vehicle among FPGA devices. It is a hot rod. It is designed for actual enthusiasts. Like some of the motorsport edition cars out there - the designers and engineers have tried to make it a practical daily driver - but at its heart, it is a track vehicle. 

The people who I know who own these vehicles and never have a complaint are the ones who knew what they were getting into and bought that model anyhow. They understood that it wasn't going to be as simple as hopping into a Maxima or Camry every morning and making the drive into the office. That they had bought a car, that even in "comfort mode," would still put them into the center divide if they weren't paying attention and forgot how much power they were sitting on on a slick day. Those guys love their motosport division editions. 

I think there is more than a bit of this spirit in the V4. You'll need to arrive already an experienced driver in the twisties, or willingly to learn quickly how to toe-and-heel or how to induce oversteer in a corner and control a drift with throttle, brake and clutch. 

This is a performance Amiga. It may occasionally have a rough ride, concerning rattles and some unpolished edges. If you understand going in what it is, when you've got it flat out on a straight, and it still has more to give and you're pushed back in your seat trying to catch your breath - you'll probably have a stupid grin on your face while having too much fun to even notice. If you just plan on driving it around town to do errands - you may have bought the wrong ride. 

It is really a lot of fun. 

 If you've come here from a link looking for my review of the Vampire V4 FPGA Amiga Computer, the link you followed points to my most recent blog. The blog you are looking for is HERE, instead... 

Now for something different than usual - I'm not a rock journalist or critic - but I do have some opinions on Metallica's evolution and career - I wrote these casually on my BBS, but at some point, it turned into more of a blog article, so I thought I'd share them here to reach a wider audience - mostly in the hope that maybe this link will reach Lars Ulrich at some point.  

So, Death Magnetic is Metallica's best album since Ride the Lightning. I know people think that Master of Puppets was their best album - but they're wrong. Ride the Lightning was the peak of Metallica's talent - and I believe it was absolutely *entirely* the influence of Cliff Burton. 

Master of Puppets Target Demographic

Bass mix[edit]

At the instruction of Hetfield and Ulrich, Newsted's bass guitar was made almost inaudible.^[11][14] According to Rasmussen: "After Lars and James heard their initial mixes the first thing they said was, 'Take the bass down so you can just hear it, and then once you've done that take it down a further three dBs.' I have no idea why they wanted that, but it was totally out of my hands."^[11] In 2009, Hetfield said that the bass was obscured as the basslines often doubled his rhythm guitar, making the instruments indiscernible, and because the low frequencies were competing in the mix with his "scooped", bassy guitar sound.^[15]

Newsted was not satisfied with the final mix: "The Justice album wasn't something that really felt good for me, because you really can't hear the bass."^[11] Steve Thompson, who mixed the album, was also unhappy, and blamed Ulrich for the decision; he tried to quit the project, but was blocked by management.^[14] Rasmussen said in 2018: "I’m probably one of the only people in the world, including Jason and Toby Wright, the assistant engineer, who heard the bass tracks on And Justice for All, and they are fucking brilliant."^[16]

In 2019, Hetfield and Ulrich said they had mixed the bass low not to belittle Newsted, but because their hearing was "shot" following heavy touring and they "basically kept turning everything else up until the bass disappeared".^[17] They decided not to adjust the mix for the remastered 2019 reissue, saying: "These records are a product of a certain time in life; they’re snapshots of history and they’re part of our story … And Justice for All could use a little more low end and St. Anger could use a little less tin snare drum, but those things are what make those records part of our history."<sup>[18]"


-------------------------------------------

And later:

...And Justice for All is a musically progressive album featuring long and complex songs,[21] fast tempos and few verse-chorus structures.[22] Metallica decided to broaden its sonic range, writing songs with multiple sections, heavy guitar arpeggios and unusual time signatures.[23] Hetfield explained: "Songwriting-wise, [the album] was just us really showing off and trying to show what we could do. 'We've jammed six riffs into one song? Let's make it eight. Let's go crazy with it.'"[19]</sup>

-------------------------------------

This was Metallica headed into their "Napster is Theft" stage as Lars became the dominant public face of Metallica - and they were headed to peak popularity with audiences far outside of the metal crowd - crossing over into some strange land of Heavy Metal Arena-Filling Jock Rock doing Monster Rock Shows with Van Hagar. 

[35]:

There is nothing to make me believe Jason Newsted is what took Metallica off-track, and everything to make me think that Cliff's death and Lars becoming more or less the public face and manager of Metallica is what increasingly steered their ship onto the rocks. Screw you Lars. You were the problem. 

There were little side projects during this time - Metallica was starting to become one of those mega-bands entertaining ridiculous hubris-filled ego projects - like their album with the San Francisco Symphony orchestra, which was basically the orchestra playing backup and being drowned out by James on guitar and Lars on drum. Instead of letting the orchestra bring the songs to a new level, it was like they were there just to add a background track to a remastered version of classic Metallica songs that had been reworked to make Lars and James the center of the attention. At this point, Metallica having a bassist or not didn't matter, and it was even easy to forget that Kirk Hammet was still a member of the band. Metallica was basically a two man band, James for his voice, his guitar playing rhythm, and Lars on Lead Drums. 

Load was the first album to receive any significant critical reception. 

Even here, there are tracks I liked. I did not buy this album. It wasn't WORTH buying. Until it Sleeps, King Nothing, Hero for the Day, Wasting my Hate were the most memorable tracks from this album. Metallica is now down to 4 tracks on a 14 track album that were memorable when at the beginning, every song on every album was worth the listen. Even the initial non-favorites grew on you with repeated listening from Kill 'em All and Ride The Lightning. There is maybe one song On Master of Puppets I skip.  

Reloaded arrived with more negative criticism. I'm not going into detail - but it isn't worth the bandwidth to download it from Napster, despite it going triple platinum on release. More rockstar-excess hubris including having the indigenous Nose Harp players of Where-The-Fuck-Ever doing bizarre nose-harp solos arrives on this album (I'm looking at you, Lars - the idea to include nose-harp players has your diminutive signature written all over it. James didn't discover Nose-Harp players and go, "we've got to include these guys on our next album!" You did.) Or throat singing, or whatever it is. 

(Interestingly - they've changed history on this. I saw an MTV interview once that covered the "da-da-da" lyrics - and it was an old man, Mongolian or Himalayan - that they showed singing like this. That was the influence for the weird old lady making "da-da-da-da-da" noises.  if anyone can find a link to this interview - please contact me so I can add it to this article.)

"Fuel," "Unforgiven II" and "The Memory Remains," (despite the nose harps) are the only titles on this 13 track album that made any impact. I literally saw a video of Lars trying to sell an MTV VJ on the concept, and he was an unironic precursor of Aldous Snow from Get Him to the Greek discussing how it wasn't for HIM to call himself a White African Space Jesus, that was up to Metallica's FANS to decide as he marveled about how incredible the nasal throat singing of these old people who lived in the mountain ranges of Naples or wherever were the PERFECT addition to Metallica's forward moving metal. 

Metallica knew it too. Lars was being mocked constantly for his position on Napster when it was BECAUSE of bootlegs they had become the metal behemoth they were - despite receiving no early airplay and small indy label releases. 

On learning that the album was released early in France and subsequently leaked onto Peer to Peer networks, Lars responded, with uncharacteristic humility:  

"We're ten days from release. I mean, from here, we're golden. If this thing leaks all over the world today or tomorrow, happy days. Happy days. Trust me. Ten days out and it hasn't fallen off the truck yet? Everybody's happy. It's 2008 and it's part of how it is these days, so it's fine. We're happy."

Later telling USA Today, 

"By 2008 standards, that's a victory. If you'd told me six months ago that our record wouldn't leak until 10 days out, I would have signed up for that. We made a great record, and people seem to be getting off on it way more than anyone expected."

This was followed up by the announcement on the Metallica website that the song, "My Apocalypse" was in need of a "mood setting" introduction when played live. This intro was made available as a free download so that fans could, "learn it to prepare to sing it at future live shows." 

Finally, a 90 minute broadcast between Metallica and Dave Grohl ended up going on for two hours. 

Death Magnetic got a lot of comparison to Kill 'em All. I get where that comes from - but there will never be another Kill 'em All from Metallica, just like there will never be another Too Fast for Love from Motley Crue. Both albums are raw, underproduced, freshman efforts by young artists who haven't had a lot of commercial expectations placed on them yet, and who are still figuring out their art and full of ideas. 

Many will scoff at comparing Kill 'em All to Too Fast for Love - but they're both early looks at bands that would define and dominate their genres in metal, with similar energy, intensity and raw energy. Motley Crue are the biggest posers in Hair/Glam/Rock Metal. Whatever flavor is currently the favorite in this demographic, Motley Crue are trying to redefine themselves as the pre-eminent band representing this subculture of rock. Likewise Metallica are the biggest posers of Speed/Thrash/Hardcore metal and its derivatives. Both bands will adopt whatever conventions are necessary to stay relevant with changing tastes among their audience. This is actually less problematic for Crue - who never promised not to be trendy. It wears worse on Metallica, though Metallica has been more subtle in their changes over the years. 

All of this sounds less like organic revival of a flagging band and more like a carefully orchestrated marketing campaign - scripted exhibition posing as actual competitive pro-Sports. LeBron returning to Cleveland and winning a ring for the Cavs. 

Its fake. Metallica is a Corporate franchise. They're Metallica, Inc., now - and like any corporation, they'll do whatever they can to stay dominant and competitive in their market, including faking returning to the roots of who they were when they were genuine musicians. A team of marketing experts studied Metallica's history, noted the same things I've described here, and the board of their label got together with Metallica and told them that this is what they were going to do - and they had no choice. 

Oh, also, Lars, we feel it would be good for your image if you appeared in Get Him To The Greek as a washed out rock-star living a life of excess, sleeping with the super-model ex-wives of other rock stars. It will be gentle, but we're going to mock your life of indulgence and excess. Research shows being self-deprecating on SNL skits really helped Justin Timberlake turn his image around - and yours needs a serious makeover with the fans. You're disliked. That Napster thing was a terrible mistake. 

So, then, Russel Brand calls you a "little Danish twat"!

 I've been interested in the Apollo Vampire accelerators since 2018, when I first was introduced to FPGA at a Commodore convention in Las Vegas. That particular trip to Vegas was a complete disaster, taking a sudden turn into drunken rants, first fights at 2 in the morning on Freemont Street, and irreparably damaged long term relationships. 

Come to Vegas, it'll be fun. We'll have a good time...

So when Vampire accelerators started to become available for the Amiga again, I wasn't as enthusiastic in my desire for one. 

But over the last several years, there has been a lot of buzz in Amiga circles about a FPGA device called the Vampire V4 standalone. This is a dedicated FPGA device that claims to not be emulation or simulation - but the roadmap to a genuine hardware evolution of the Amiga line of computers. A prototype in FPGA designed to eventually be a genuine modern hardware Amiga. Knowing what FPGA is capable of, I was very excited. First the development prototype was demoed at Commodore conventions in Europe. Then some early retail versions were sold at conventions in Europe. They were out there. I joined the wait list, and waited, and waited - and never heard back - though increasingly, people in the Amiga community were being contacted and receiving theirs. 

About a week ago, someone in a thread mentioned they had put themselves on the wait-list, and two weeks later, had gotten theirs. This is important to note - as it actually should have been a warning flag. I went back to the Apollo site, put myself back on the wait-list, and the next day, I was contacted and told I was eligible to order. Excited, I ordered, made payment, and settled in from what I expected would be the long delay in delivery from Germany. I ship back and forth with a friend in Germany on a regular basis - and shipments sometimes take 4 weeks or more to arrive. I was shocked when it was exactly a week later that the Vampire arrived. 

Bonus Swag - stickers and authentic German Gummibaren

I bought the device figuring that I'd work out any details when it arrived. I spoke with someone about the advertised packages and prices - and was told there were new packages. They were actually more affordable, but included a smaller 32GB CF instead of the larger one advertised. Having set up Amiga CF hard drives with the ACA500 and the Classic 520, as well as .HDF images on UAE and MiSTer and MiST - I wasn't too concerned about this, and I figured I'd probably be flashing my own kickstart and installing my own AmigaOS anyhow - and it would probably be cheaper to buy the least system offered and buy my own CF and make my own custom OS image, anyhow. Besides, the lower price took some of the sting out of the terrible USD/EU conversion of about .77% on the day I bought. 

HELLO Nurse!

This is one of the big misunderstandings between the MiSTer community and the V4. Alexy Melnikov (Sorgelig) has stated several times that the MiSTer is about preserving and recreating classic machines, as they existed. He had been resistant with the Amiga to add "modern" features like ATA and RTG which he thinks have little practical purpose in retro-platforming on the Amiga. His priority has been in faithfully recreating the widest variety of classic retro platforms for the MiSTer. I think he has achieved that goal admirably. 

The design motivations and goals between MiSTer and the V4 are radically different, and depending on your desires, either one may please or disappoint you. 

I am a casual user interested in re-experiencing the Amiga platform as I knew it between 87 and 93, when I owned an original Amiga. In my short experience with the V4 - MiSTer has a huge lead in this regard. You shouldn't just stop reading here - because there are important qualifiers to come. 

The V4 ships exclusively with AROS, a genuine KS Rom clone. Many will be familiar with AROS as the default ROM on UAE - you see two cat-like eyes instead of a regular Kickstart, and then your Amiga image fails to boot. You replace the AROS rom with a real Kickstart, and things suddenly work right. I'm not faulting the AROS rom here. This is just the breadth of a lot of people's introduction and experience with AROS as a KS replacement. 

The V4 also comes with ApollOS - or maybe it is ApolloOS - it is referred to as both in different places on the Apollo/Vampire websites. In any case, ApolloOS is itself a modified version of the Aros OS - which is a somewhat confusing project itself. Aros is a project to create a multi-hardware platform AmigaOS compatible OS. Apollo has gone in and stripped out all of the code designed to make Aros multi-platform compatible, optimizing the OS for 68k processors, specifically their 68080 as implemented in FPGA on the Vampire 4. 

There are many layers of abstraction and complication here. In a nutshell, as you receive the V4 in the box, it isn't running a genuine Amiga kickstart, and it isn't running a genuine Amiga OS, and it isn't running a genuine Motorola 68k silicon CPU - it is running a Apollo 68080 prototype running on FPGA. 

And it looks gorgeous and runs fast. It is initially overwhelming if you're not familiar with AROS. It is a big leap forward for someone used to non 68030/40/60 Amigas. It feels like an Amiga - but things aren't necessarily where you expect them to be. Part of this is that Apollo has done some customization to AROS themselves. They've implemented Directory Opus 4.0 as a Workbench replacement and made other customizations to optimize ApolloOS for the V4. Those of us who have had no previous experience with AGA/RTG and 68040 processors or above may feel a little lost initially. 

But in that sense it feels like the future of the Amiga line. People didn't know what to make of Windows 95 at first - because it had changed the paradigm of Windows 3.11 so much. Any OS has experienced this kind of evolutionary change where people were initially resistant to the changes because it moved their cheese. If you're coming from Workbench/AmigaOS 1.2, 2.0 and 3.1.x - you're probably going to feel lost at first. I sure did. 

The V4 is still relatively young in its development cycle, and has already made huge strides forward from its initial release. Things like the Ethernet Port and SD card were there, but not active yet, on the first V4s received by the public. Those work now, more or less. But development is rapid. When I first got my V4, the SD was active, but only as a large file-transfer device. It couldn't be made a bootable hard drive. Since then, a developer on the Discord channel has worked out booting from the SD and is currently improving this feature's stability. Shortly it should be rolling out as an official consumer release. 

Currently the V4 has USB ports, but they do not support a full USB stack - so they only work with specific devices. I knew this buying the V4, and opted not to buy a keyboard and mouse from Apollo. I figured among the piles of hardware I own, something would work - and I was right. I have a Razr Chroma gaming keyboard and a Logitech mouse that worked, although several other devices failed. Unfortunately, I didn't want to use my $125 gaming keyboard on my Amiga - but a quick search of the Apollo Site for recommended peripherals found an inexpensive keyboard available on Amazon. I thought the Speedlink Lamia really fit the V4 aesthetic best, and as a bonus, it was only $24. 

My next obstacle was that the V4 only has audio-out over HDMI. Most of my displays are monitors, and have neither built in speakers or HDMI-audio passthru. Somewhat ridiculously - the only display I have that supports HDMI-audio-passthru is a Samsung CHG90 - a 49" curved very high-end gaming LCD hooked up to my i7 gaming tower. Because I am using displaylink to connect the tower to the monitor, I had extra HDMI ports open on this display - so it became the illogically logical place for my V4 to live. Evidently there may be future plans to output audio from the V4 through other methods - but for now, the V4 relies on output of audio over HDMI - something you should be aware of before purchase. 

While I was getting all of this sorted out, I only did some cursory things on the V4. Changed my desktop theme, perused the selection of pre-installed software, and tried to familiarize myself with the new OS and its differences.

Great Giana Sisters is kind of my benchmark for Amiga systems. How well it runs, how authentic it sounds, how genuine the response is to my muscle memory - is how I subjectively tell what feels like a real Amiga compared to what feels like emulation or recreation. 

Once I got the V4 hooked up to the CHG90 and speakers hooked up to that, I fired up GGS - and found that the experience was very authentic to playing on a stock Amiga 2000. So, on a MiSTer configured with a 68ec020 and running KS 3.14, and on a genuine Amiga 500 also with 68ec020 and KS 3.14 - Giana Sisters runs fast. The rainbow scroll at the start is fast, the music is fast, and the gameplay is fast. I enjoy this speed boost - it makes the game a little more exciting. But I know that the KS 3.14 rom and 68ec020 introduces some weird sound glitches in the soundtrack on both a MiSTer and a genuine Amiga. This is solved on either by dropping to KS 2.0 or earlier and a 68000 processor. 

On the V4, it runs as if it were on a native pre-KS 3.1, straight 68000 Amiga. This isn't necessarily a bad thing. It feels absolutely authentic to the actual game on platforms it was intended to run on. When I mentioned this speed on the Discord, someone suggested I might have Turtle mode on. There is a Function key switch to slow down the FPGA for certain games that run way too fast in the native 68080 speed of the V4. I did not have that switch enabled - but maybe the WHDLoad config of the preloaded game accounts for the processor speed somehow. I haven't had a chance to investigate further. 


Anyhow, as an initial test, I felt that this boded well for the compatibility and authenticity of the V4. 

I then attempted to install DCTelnet to try connecting to my Retro Citadel BBS, The Sanitarium, via Telnet. I was able to connect to my network via ethernet, bring the network up, open aWeb, connect to aminet.net, and download the dctelnet.lha, unarchive it, and install it. On trying to execute the program, I encountered difficulty with the presentation of the drawer. Instead of opening to a view of the installed icons, it presented a text list - much like a modern Windows Explorer can be configured. Unfortunately, it wasn't readily apparent on how to change this to an icon based view - and this was not something I had encountered on an Amiga before. Clicking on the executable in the text view asked for arguments, click on the .info file for the executable brought up the .info properties. I attacked the issue another way, changing to the installed directory via CLI and launching the executable there. I was greeted with a "First Run" dialog about the default display size, told that I could change this in the preferences, and then... 

Nothing. 

At this point, I really needed the drawer to be in the default icon view to be comfortable trying to troubleshoot what was happening. 

And that was a problem. While the V4 comes with a document on the desktop with some tips, and there is a help file in one of the drawers, there isn't any real documentation that explains how AROS works or how ApolloOS customizations affect operations in the OS. So, I went online to RTFM. The problem is, I really didn't know the question to ask. I wandered around the Apollo websites. When I talked on the Discord channel about the problem and said things were different than AmigaOS and I was overwhelmed and didn't know how to manage my way around the ApolloOS, one of the Apollo team members, who I won't name, instead of answering my question, demanded,

"How is it different? It is just the same. What kind of Amiga systems have you used?" 

Later, someone else on the Discord chat managed to explain that Directory Opus was being used as a Workbench Replacement with ApolloOS, and pointed me to Dopus documentation, which helped me get a handle on making the changes I needed to make the desktop appear more familiar to me. 

Their website is confusing. Apollo has several Domain Names that are loosely connected and linked to one another, but not a cohesive site. 

https://apollo-accelerators.com/

https://wiki.apollo-accelerators.com/doku.php

http://apollo-core.com/index.htm

Additionally, these sites have contradictory information compared to one another, and to the manual included with the V4, and the "Tips.txt" file included on the ApolloOS V4 desktop. 

I decided to try and flash my core. The Download page describes the latest stable core Gold2.12 (release data 13.03.2020). 

This page: 

Describes a Vampire 4 Standalone Release Core: 

Release5_7905.jic released 2021/01/12



And the Wiki describes using a USB-Blaster as the preferred method to install .jic binaries - while the included manual available at: 

http://apollo-core.com/downloads/VampireV4manualEN.pdf

says that the recommended method is to use flashrom.exe to flash the .jic. 

But even that is wrong. I checked with the Discord channel first, and they advised me that "VampireFlash" is the correct utility to use to flash the .jic file. 

An additional problem was that the documentation on how to verify your core wasn't consistent with what I was seeing - but what I was seeing wasn't consistent with being on the previous core either. The Discord channel also helped me work through the steps on this until they were fairly certain I was on the older core. 

On the issue with the desktop appearance, as I was discussing with other members of the group, one person said, "you don't get an OS manual with a PC." 

To which I responded, "yes, but I can go down to Barnes and Noble and buy 'Windows for Dummies', or take a Windows course at my community college." 

Someone else suggested that the V4 group are engineers and coders, and that this is a group that hates documenting. I don't think this is unfair. Having worked in IT with engineers, developers and coders for 25 years, I know that getting these folks to document their work is like herding cats. I think this is a big part of the issue. But you can't tell your users to RTFM when the manual is spread over 4 or 5 locations and some of those documents contradict one another or have outdated information. Apollo needs a team coordinating and consolidating their sites and making sure that there is a single repository for information and that this information is kept up to date. This is just a truth of their business model and as they grow, this issue is only going to get worse if they don't address it soon. It could become a major problem. Unlike MiSTer - which is a volunteer community with no single "company" really owning the product or the profits - Apollo and the V4 are an actual company, selling an actual product - and their website and documentation needs to be at a higher level than the MiSTer GitHub and a string of YouTube videos made by community members. Although - even that would be a good start. For right now, my advice is before you do anything, run it by the discord channel. 

Some additional confusion existed in that although the web advertises with 128gb CF cards, the package I was told was available only included a 32GB card - but on arrival, I could only find 16GB accounted for. Talking to Sales via e-mail they advised that only 16GB is partitioned and formatted, and they provided a link to a YouTube video explaining how to partition and partition the remaining 16GB. 

Finally - and this is more amusing than anything else - the order page advertises that the V4 comes with "Powersupply (EU/World)." But when I opened the package, I found a USB PSU with EU style prongs, and the box was completely in German. I don't know any German, but looking at the PSU it looked like maybe you could flip the prongs. Reading the box, I saw

"Mit Aufsteck-Adapter zum Betrieb an Euro- und USA- Steckdosen".  

And wondered to myself... "what is a Euro und USA steckdosen?" 

Sure sounds like "Stick those in," especially if you say it in a bad German accent. 

Could it possibly have both Euro and USA style stick-those-ins? 

So... I did the reasonable thing and took photos of the box, and sent them to a girl I know in Germany - who confirmed that it did say something about being Euro and US compatible, and that you slid off the Euro plug and there were US prongs underneath. After a few minutes of playing with it, I got the Euro adapter to slide off, revealing the US prongs, and only then I noticed a little imprinted "push" with arrows on the Euro adapter part. On the Discord, several other people who had just replaced their USB PSUs were shocked to hear that the included PSU was convertible - so I'm not the only one who was confused by this. 

There are a lot of little details that aren't documented. There seems to be a lot of confusion and lack of communication with the Apollo team. They're developing rapidly at this point, moving quickly, and things are changing fast. I'm not angry or upset. But the criticism is fair. They've got a vision, they've been good at communicating their vision, they've developed and delivered the product of their vision - but they're far behind on organizing and documenting it. To be fair - we are still in an "early adopter" stage of the V4 release and it is a grass-roots retro-platform (if one with grand ambitions) - so we can assume that for now the people buying and using these will mostly be fairly technical people with expertise working with poorly documented information technology. I think that as the MiSTer has gone more mainstream and the barriers to entry with that device have become less challenging, we've seen less technical users arriving more frequently - and I think the buzz about the V4 will draw some pretty inexperienced newer Amiga users to Apollo's product. It would be good for Apollo to get as far out in front of that as possible, either in making sure that buyers know that previous strong Amiga experience is a prerequisite, or in having the processes in place to really do some hand-holding with users that aren't experts in the Amiga. 

So, for me, most of these are just minor quibbles with the first major "consumer release" of a new, somewhat experimental product sold mostly to people who open up and break electronics as a hobby and then RTFM to figure out how to fix what they've broke. 

What about the device itself?

The device is professionally built, professionally packaged, and comes ready to plug in and go. The quality of the build is very good. The AGA/SAGA/RTG display is incredible, and ApolloOS is a beautiful AmigaOS alternative that really leverages the incredible resolution and color capabilities of the machine. The bundled software is carefully curated to highlight the next-generation potential of the V4 - and it does. Full videos, MP3s, fantastic demos, and a great selection of games, utilities, and other software really highlight what the V4 can be. The internet suite is a decent selection to get you started doing most of the things on the 'net you would want to do, and if you've struggled with aWeb on a traditional Amiga, or even on MiSTer - you'll appreciate that although it isn't a modern browser, it seems very fast rendering pages that will display on an Amiga with aWeb. Those first few hours with the bundled applications I was very impressed. 

The compatibility unfortunately is not fantastic. I don't know if this is the AROS Kickstart, ApolloOS, or the core itself, or maybe a combination of all 3. Once I got my mind wrapped around everything and felt more comfortable with the system - I started downloading files from Aminet.net and had trouble with installs either failing or working but the application failing to load. This may be partially or completely Operator Error - and I will continue to troubleshoot those issues. I think part of the issue is that ApolloOS uses ZUNE (an Aros MUI replacement) instead of MUI. They do offer a StartMUI script which unloads Zune and starts MUI. At any rate, this is part of the complexity of what Apollo is attempting here. MUI is a somewhat complicated step over a stock Workbench experience on an actual AmigaOS installation. Now we're dealing with ZUNE and MUI on Aros. Add dependencies like ClassAct into the mix - and you've got a lot things to keep track of and an increasing likelihood of incompatibilities. I'm hesitant to jump into adding things until I understand how they'll interact with ApolloOS and the AROS Kickstart. In either case - there may be some extra bookwork required to try and get certain packages installed and running, if possible at all. 

In most cases, I did find alternatives to my standard favorites that installed and ran OK under ApolloOS. FTP clients, Telnet/SSH clients, and related programs. 

What about games? 

Let me be blunt - if you're a casual Amiga user only interested in playing old games - a MiSTer is a probably a much better choice. 

First, my methodology. I've had an .hdf image of Amiga games for a while. I copy that .hdf from system to system. I use it on WinUAE, I use it on MiSTer - I've even extracted the folder and copied it on the physical CF drive in my A500 systems. If I pick a random game and run it - it generally works. 

Yesterday I copied those files onto an SD (more about this in a minute) and then onto the V4. To be fair, many of them worked without a hitch. Ultima 3 worked fine. Additionally - some AGA titles that have until recently been out of reach on my actual ECS Amigas or the MiSTer also loaded and ran fine. But many others did not. Bards Tale 1, Archon, Phantasie, DeluxeGalagaAGA and others failed to launch, launched and then crashed, or even locked up the machine completely, requiring a soft reset. But titles that I know work on MiSTer and my physical Amiga, like Archon - failed to load on the V4. Interestingly, Archon was one of the earliest Amiga titles, developed for a 1.2 KS Floppy Amiga 1000 - and it did not work on the A2000 or A500 "back in the day". I've always figured that the version available today has been patched at some point. It is one of the titles that hard locks the V4, requiring a soft reset. 

The SD slot is very small, and difficult to get to between the power connector and the HDMI connector. I actually managed to stick the MicroSD in the small gap *between* the slot and the case. It is also worth noting, it is the kind of slot that you push to eject. I strongly recommend V4 owners invest in one of these: 

MicroSD to SD Card Extension from Amazon

(Addendum. The placement of the power and the HDMI prevents using an extension cable like this with the V4, as the tapering design of the SD extension cable is too wide at its maximum extent to fit between those cables. If someone comes up with a better solution, let me know.) 

The stability of the Minimig core on MiSTer seems much more solid and mature than the V4. Sometimes I get hangs at power-on requiring a soft-reset. I've very rarely had to do a soft reset on MiSTer in the couple of years I've been using it as an Amiga. I've even experienced hangs requiring a soft rest while it was sitting there dormant. That is a bit of a concern to me. 

But Minimig on MiSTer has been "in the wild," generating bug reports and improving incredibly from where it was just 2 years ago - with an aggressive upgrade cycle. Given a couple years of aggressive development by Apollo, how stable might the V4 core be? 

So, is it a choice between MiSTer and V4? Going back to my original claim - V4 is more about moving forward with an evolution of the Amiga into what it should have become - and likely at this point there would be a lot of legacy titles that were no longer directly compatible if the Amiga and 68k CPU had survived and evolved into a 64 bit world. Lots of DOS and Windows titles no longer work on a modern Windows 10 system, requiring emulation and DOSBox and other fixes to run. It is plausible that a 68080 optimized version of UAE ported to Amiga might be the ultimate way to get complete backwards compatibility on a V4. 68040 and higher Amigas have compatibility issues with very old titles as well - so we can't expect absolute and complete compatibility from the V4. Finally, the development team is making progress every day on new core improvements, on improvements to the ApolloOS, and I assume to the AROS KS replacement. The V4 has a lot of potential to morph into a fantastic, stable and highly compatible modern hardware Amiga - and it is quite possible that new titles intended solely for the V4 will blow us away and be virtually exclusive to this platform and the 68080 CPU. You can already do things like Diablo on the V4 that you can't really achieve without the acceleration and the specialized features that the V4 has. There are things you can't do with regular acceleration that you can do with the Vampire accelerators for the actual Amiga. The Apollo accelerators and the V4 are more about looking ahead - and some things looking back may need to be let go of to get there. 

On the other hand, there are exciting rumors about potential developments for the MiSTer that may make the processing capabilities of MiSTer on that device far more competitive with the V4. I'm not going to go into details on that, yet - but if the rumors come true, it will be as much of a game changer as AGA and RTG coming to Minimig on MiSTer was. 


Conclusion:

I don't intend to be hyper-critical of the V4. But I want to give my honest impressions of the device. It isn't fully mature, it has some issues, but I think it is a bargain for a machine that blows the doors off the big-box Amigas. Rather than buy an A1200, 3000 or 4000 to add to my hardware collection - I think the V4 is a great way to scratch the itch for a very fast, very powerful, hardware Amiga with ATA and RTG capabilities and not just that, but enhancements. I think the people that claim the V4 is too expensive don't really understand the concept. The V4 does not currently really compete in the same space as the MiSTer, or RetroPi. It isn't so much if one is better than the other - it is about you personally knowing what you want and setting your expectations accordingly depending on which one you purchase. I think there is room in the Amiga community for both of these devices, and the more people that buy both the better it will be for the entire Amiga community. I want Apollo to be successful with the V4, and to continue to develop this alternate branch of the Amiga family as a powerful and compelling alternative to the other branches, including AmigaOS 4.0 on PPC and MorphOS and other evolutionary attempts at keeping the Amiga concept relevant. 

From what I've seen of the V4 so far, I believe Apollo has the most possibility of achieving success in that goal. I mean, the V4 really seems to compete more with things like the AmigaOne X1000 and X5000 than with RetroGaming platforms. Around $700 for an FPGA 68080 vs. a couple grand for a PPC Amiga One? The V4 has the potential to sell enough units to make it a viable product line. The AmigaOne is always going to be a kind of luxury machine for Amiga loyalists with large bank accounts. But our belief in that vision as purchasers is the only way we'll achieve that goal. 

Another important distinction is that the MiSTer rides on top of the DE10 Nano, which is only affordable because Intel subsidizes the price as an educational board for FPGA learning. That could end at any time, or Intel could decide to capitalize on it and figure out a way to profit directly from MiSTer. In any case - Apollo owns, designs, and manufactures the V4. They have much more control over the manufacturing and design process of the core of the V4. MiSTer is a ride that will end one day, we just don't know when - and we'll have to find something to replace the DE10. Apollo can keep producing more V4s as long as there is a demand and it is profitable - and can design future improvements to this design as well. It is one of the reasons the V4 costs more than a MiSTer. If someone were building MiSTer's from the board up using a custom engineered FPGA - it would probably cost similar to what the V4 costs. 

Finally, the MiSTer is very easy to configure for different configurations, including different Kickstart Images, CPU and other hardware configuration, and disk images. The V4 is not as easy to set up to be multiple *different* Amiga systems. It is designed to be one consistent hardware Amiga. You won't switch between 68000, 68020, 68080 on the V4. You won't switch between reboots between KS 1.2, KS 2.0, Aros KS. They have a utility called VampireMap that evidently allows you to select a particular KS image - but I haven't looked into that much, yet. 

In many ways, the V4 is more like the Collectorvision Phoenix - an FPGA Colecovision clone designed to be a replacement for a true Coleco, down to compatibility with original hardware and cartridges. The Collectorvision can technically run other FPGA cores - and does currently support the Atari 2600 core - but primarily, it exists to be one thing, a Colecovision.  

At $200 - many people called this too expensive, too.

My ultimate goal would be to see less conflict and competition among the Amiga community and more collaboration, assistance and sharing. I think the MiSTer team and the Apollo team helping one another would be great for both platforms, and excellent for the end-users. There has been too much division and conflict in the Amiga world for too long, and it has held the platform back and stunted it. Too many talented people who refuse to work with other talented people - to many rivalries instead of partnerships. Too much litigation. It is unlikely anybody is going to get Zuckenberg or Gates rich off of the Amiga - so instead of fighting one another and causing rifts in the community - it would be great if we saw more unity in it. Ultimately I want this for a selfish reason. I think it will benefit me - in better Amiga products to spend the last 30 or so years of life left to me playing around with. 

If you've read this and it has helped you understand who the V4 is for, and you think that is you - I recommend you snap one up. You're unlikely to regret it. 

 Today on Facebook,  The Cautious Optimist links to an article on Democracies and Double Standards that addresses Fauci's lies about mask efficacy in the early days of the epidemic: 

They pursue the question just far enough to prove the point they are after - and then they all stop asking questions. They see that beyond the point where they stopped asking, they start revealing truths they do not want to face.  

That isn't just their fault, as much as it is our own. 

"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."

The mainstream press has recently been on a crusade to expose that this quote was Ben Franklin writing on behalf of the Pennsylvania General Assembly to the Penns family, the proprietary family of the Pennsylvania colony, in regards to a tax dispute.

Frankly, I don’t think the context Franklin came up with the idea matters, as the concept applies broadly to many, perhaps any scenario where someone barters to trade us increased security for decreased liberty. Pointing out that Ben Franklin didn’t mean this as a manifesto against 2^ndAmendment Gun control legislation doesn’t make the quote any less effectivewhen employed as a criticism against those laws.

It is an example of the sophist intellectual dishonesty of the political Left when they try to discredit the quote. I don’t care about the words or who said them or what issue they were said in relation to. The words resonate with a concept rich in moral truth.

I do not trust anyone who would deny the obvious and manifest truth of this quote. Anyone who claims to not see – is certainly trying to trade you the illusion of a little personal safety in exchange for an unfair transaction in your personal liberties.

Today I did something I have been meaning to get around to for a while, but I've had other projects going on. I recently purchased a Pi 400 - just for the nostalgia of having a simple computer that is built into a case with keyboard. I knew I didn't need another Amiga, but I also knew that I was going to load it up with FS-UAE and play around with that, as well as the other projects I have in mind for owning yet another Pi. The RPi 400 is a pretty neat little box - and so far I'm really enjoying playing around with it. 

They're all in this picture somewhere.

MiSTer running ao486 and Myst on Win98

The A500 with Classic 520

In fact, I've taken .hdf files and copied them onto CF so that my emulators, real Amigas, and MiSTers can run the exact same image/drives - and I've taken CF cards and copied them to .hdf images to go the other way. Execution between the MiSTer and the genuine hardware is virtually impossible to tell apart. The differences are in directing my TCP/IP stack to go out over the UART on MiSTer vs. over parallel on the Plipbox on a real Amiga for Ethernet access - hardware things like that. Once you do that, though - the experience FTPing, surfing the web, or telneting into retro-BBSes feels identical, as well.  Configured nearly identically, running the same hard drives/hard drive images - the machines perform nearly identically - excepting actually physically different hardware differences. 

But not the Pi 400. I configured FS-UAE as nearly identical to the physical machines as possible. 68ec020, 3.14 ROM, same drive images, configured as the same drives, same amount of chip and fast ram. Then I booted up and launched "State of the Art" by Spaceballs.



And at first I was thinking - "this is pretty good. It doesn't seem..." 

Then I started noticing some graphic artifacts and glitches on the display I didn't remember being bothered by on MiSTer or a real Amiga. I wanted to consider that maybe the glitches are just more noticeable because of the UAE upscaling filter displaying on a 27" LCD - but the genuine Amigas are all on 27" Acer 15khz LCDs via db23 to db15 vga adapters. There is upscaling going on on all of the comparable machines too. So I fired up the MiSTer - and these glitches and artifacts are simply absent on its display. It is obvious to me, the Pi is not as fast redrawing the screen. You can see it struggling to redraw the lines as it updates frames.

I fired up the MiSTer, and the graphic artifacts and glitches were absent. Everything was far smoother. Fades and transitions were clean and did not stutter or jerk or pause.  

A little further into he demo, there is a silhouette of a woman dancing on a background that fades from green to light blue, right before a transition to 3 geometric shapes pulsating around the screen. Here there is an interesting observation. Those frames, the woman and the 3 geometric shapes, glitch on my MiSTer, but they also glitch on my genuine Amiga. The screen is kind of offset, with a ghost of itself on the top part of the screen - like a horizontal sync issue. Like PAL trying to display on NTSC, maybe.

Here on MiSTer - but Identical on an NTSC A500

Here on the Pi400 on FS-UAE

As the figure divides into these 3 shapes, the Pi slows down markedly

Just be prepared for a lot of this.

submitted by /u/JZP1120

/r/libertarian reddit

 Anyone who has interacted with Libertarians has probably at some point heard the phrase, 

"I may not agree with what you are saying, but I'd fight to defend your right to say it." 

Lately, it seems the voice of a lot of Libertarians aligns more clearly with the political Left on this issue. 

"I can situationally split hairs to decide just vs. unjust expression, attitude or opinion - and if unjust - I will stand aside as you are silenced." 

Since the riots in Autumn, I have been warning my friends on the political right, "if people are so disenfranchised and feel so hopeless because of their position that they are willing to resort to insurrection and tear down the symbols of their State - that speaks to a real problem. Comfortable people do not riot." 

I believe that about the BLM movement, the AntiFA movement, and I believe that about the riot in D.C. yesterday. 

Yet, on the Reddit Libertarian sub, I encounter posts like the one above. 

I saw countless Libertarians during the BLM and AntiFA riots celebrating the civil disobedience, justifying it as a valid response to the hopelessness that the rioters felt. They supported the destruction of billions of dollars of personal property - they supported events that resulted in innocent citizens being beaten, even killed. They supported mobs demanding that patrons at restaurants raise their fists and chant "Black Lives Matter." This went on for months. Dozens of innocent people lost their lives. Small businesses were burnt to the ground. 

And they called anyone who disagreed "statists" and "bootlickers". 

Yesterday, an angry mob of disenfranchised citizens who feel so desperate and unrepresented stormed the Capitol and engaged in violent protest. We can assume that their motivations were not materially different than the protesters who burnt down entire cities this past fall and winter. 

These same "Libertarians" are now claiming this one is "high crime," and "treason" - a "perversion of the Democratic process of the nation." They're celebrating the use of force by the police against the protesters, claiming the enjoyed watching it. 

Very few ACTUAL Libertarians are brave enough to stand up and call this hypocrisy out: 

At no time in the history of the United States could this be said before. It isn't the riots and unrest that made this happen. It isn't Trump, or Biden, or Democrats, or Republicans. It isn't Hollywood programming us to accept social ideas. This has been going on since the founding of our nation. We've constantly moved the needle as a society on who has access to the ideals of American values. Every decade or our nation's history has been better for more people than the previous decade, and very rarely has the needle of this progress moved backwards. 

But there is also no doubt that not only are white males losing their influence and power in our society - but the needle is also moving backwards for them as a group. They can openly be stereotyped, their characteristics and habits and beliefs and values and behavior used as caricatures in comedy, exaggerated, used as foils in entertainment. It is acceptable to say and believe things about whites that are not acceptable about any other group in society today. 

People of Color are not "out of the woods," for facing obstacles and discrimination and hostility in our society based just on the color of their skin. 

White men (and white people in general) are justifiably fighting desperately not to have their status reduced to the point where they face the same threats, if they're not facing them already. 

Both claims can be true. Both claims are demonstrably true based on the desperation displayed by segments of our society. 

The BLM/AnitFA riots were months on end of lawlessness, violence, protest and destruction, most aimed at society itself. Those riots did more self-harm to their community than to the targets of the anger manifest in those riots. 

The riot in DC yesterday actually came too close to comfort to those actually responsible for the division and anger in the United States today. 

Yet the BLM/AntiFA riots - that mostly hurt ourselves - are "standing up to the system" and threatening the actual system was "a threat to Democracy."

I'm not saying this is a correct or incorrect assessment of either set of events. 

I am saying that in December 1773, depending on your perspective - either: 

A bunch of insurgent rebels and terrorists attacked the dock in Boston, rioted and destroyed material goods owned by legitimate merchants and business interests and set off a series of events that led to the destruction of the government of the colonies of the United States. 

And by yet another, a band of patriots frustrated by the injustice of a corrupt government rebelled with cause and drove out a tyrannical Government to be replaced by one intended to serve as subjects to the citizens, instead of the other way around. 

In either case, insurgents or patriots, those who engaged in the Boston Tea Party were driven by a conviction that their government was so corrupt and disinterested in their welfare that in their desperation they felt that violence was the only course of option left open to them. 

This is the detail that is being overlooked in ALL of the civil disobedience, protest and rioting. If they are justified or not - both sides are so angry and desperate, have lost so much faith in the mechanism of the system, that they believe violence is the only option left to them. 

Rather than taking sides about when violence is justified or not - maybe we should figure out how to have dialog that prevents the violence from ever erupting? 

 

 "How do you think he does it, I don't know... what makes him so good?"

For a long time people have called me some variation of a PC wizard. In the past, it has always meant, "he is really good at computers," but lately - I feel like being a PC wizard has actually become perceived as something like being a master at arcane mystical knowledge that is unknowable and out of reach to the majority of the population. 

Recently I put up a private-blog and web/telnet BBS at: 

http://wallofhate.com 

(Note, I had you directed to the landing page, which is just a webpage, and just plain old HTML in HTTP, to allow the broadest range of users to connect without dire warnings. This has been corrected and the link now works.) 

Feel free to visit and create an account if you want to hear even more of my thoughts, ramblings, opinions and experiences. 

I had decided, like many of my friends and associates - that I had lost faith and trust in the large corporations that increasingly have a choke-hold on the flow of information on the Internet. John Gilmore is famously quoted as saying, "The Internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it". This is true. The decentralized design of TCP/IP, the backbone protocol of Internet traffic - is designed to break traffic into packets, and send those packets out over multiple routes to the destination, and to reroute if one route is broken or unreachable. Sites like Facebook and Twitter became whirlpools of self-contained Internet traffic - destinations like a digital Hotel California, where you can check in any time you want, but you can never leave. The trick is, you opt into this Faustian agreement - by simply becoming so consumed with all of the content contained within Facebook's network that you seldom venture outside it. When you do, you go to some other dominant destination. Twitter, Google, Amazon. They don't need to worry about the Internet routing around censorship, because you're only consuming data within their private networks, which they control the flow of information within. Increasingly, they assure you that anything outside of their network is "fake news," is "untrusted". It hasn't been "fact-checked". 

So, I put up an alternative. The number one reason people tell me they don't visit the website is because they get an ominous warning in their browser that "This site's identity can't be verified and may be trying to steal your information." 

The problem seems to be that people don't understand the frightening message their browser puts up when they hit a site that has a self-signed certificate. They think maybe their browser knows something they don't - that it has detected some sign that the site has been faked. If the user knows the site and received the site address from a trusted source - their web browser knows less than they do about the authenticity of the site. All the browser knows is that the site has a cert that is self-signed and not issued by an official Certificate Authority. That is literally all the dire warning about "attackers trying to steal your information" means. Your web browser doesn't know this - it just knows that this is something that attackers trying to steal your information sometimes do. 

Increasingly - this results in a troubling situation. It reinforces the tendency of average users to stick to large, official corporate websites and to run away from safe, but self-signed ones . Certificates become more like a license and registration to host a "reputable website". A secure SSL/TLS website is a secure SSL/TLS website - even if it is a scam site, the data transferred is encrypted. If you were connected to a scam website, other cybercriminals in between would not be able to see the encrypted data transferred between you and the scam site, if it were over a SSL/TLS connection. Only the cybercriminals on the other end would have access to that data.  SSL/TLS is secure, regardless of it the site is self-signed or used a CA verified cert. So self-signed sites are more like pirate radio. Unlicensed and unregistered sites that haven't gone through an official verification process. In the early days there was a lot of talk about the "Democratization of the web," and how it would allow everyone to have a voice that can reach anyone else. SSL/TLS is, perhaps unintentionally working against that goal at this point. More accurately, it may be being intentionally abused by the Big Tech industry to silence voices that Big Tech doesn't want heard. If so, all that Big Tech is doing is using consumer ignorance about the technology to scare them away from sites that do not use CA issued certificates. This is probably not healthy overall for the web, for the consumer, or for the spread of knowledge. Too few big corporations control the flow of information in our society - and unfortunately SSL/TLS has become a tool that helps them maintain this control. 

SSL/TLS is necessary and a good thing - but consumers need to understand it better - and browser companies should consider changing their warnings or linking to better descriptions of what those warnings mean. If they're going to scare the public about sites that do not have CA issued certs, maybe it should be their responsibility to educate the public better, as well. Right now their approach is either lazy or intentionally disingenuous. One is irresponsible, the other approaches being evil. The question I increasingly find myself asking is who is bigger threat to me, the scammers that want to steal my money, or the corporations that seem to want to steal my voice?