FPGA Based Videogame System

[atmn]

About the same (different gen FPGA though), and MiST does no HDMI but it has VGA.

 

Nt Mini is 25K LE of a Cyclone V (5CEA2) while MiST has 25K LE of a Cyclone III (EP3C25). LEs are counted based on an equivalent 4-LUT which has not actually being used in many years so the real independent/usable LE counts is lower but each LE may be more powerful (for some definition of powerful), depending on design it can be a bad thing or a good thing hence why I stated generically that they are about the same.

Kevtris already mentioned how many LEs the HDMI portion sucks in, leaving less available for the actual core, MiST has no such problem obviously but not everyone likes the VGA out.

Should it be possible to add some 16-bit cores but with analogue out only? Take the HDMI out resources for the core..

[funkwad]

Great article on Kevtris...Respect!!

 

https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/kevtris-kevin-horton-cyrogenics-retro-gaming

[phoenixdownita]

Should it be possible to add some 16-bit cores but with analogue out only? Take the HDMI out resources for the core..

Probably but ask kevtris, also one of the defining characteristic it's the support of HDMI once that is dropped I am not sure the allure to be the same.

 

I understand everyone would like his preferred FPGA board to run anything and everything under the sun but it may just be unrealistic or unpractical.

 

Kevtris develops his own cores not sure how far off the Amiga/Atari-ST are if anywhere at all.

We know the TG16/PCE hasn't really started and I do not know how quickly kevtris can whip up a brand new core from the ground up, by his own words the currently released cores have been worked-on/ironed-out for many years and in doing so he has perfected many components that are somewhat reused here and there (6502, Z80, 9918/28/29, AY-3-8910, SN76489) that allow some easier development of similar enough systems, he did also develop stunning fidelity custom chips as well (NES Audio, PPU, NES mappers + sound, custom SMS gfx modes etc....) but for those other systems (the 16bits) aside the CPU (68K mostly) it's all custom chips (no reuse there) so unless he heavily borrows from the open-cores out there it may take a while and so far it has not been his style, he seems to deeply enjoy doing it all and given the results can you blame him?

 

I think he invented that you could slightly accelerate/slow-down the host system to achieve perfect HDMI timing .... that's totally his original contribution afaik and to be frank that is key to obtain no-stutter/no-lag HDMI rendering.

[Namdor]

Great article on Kevtris...Respect!!

 

https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/kevtris-kevin-horton-cyrogenics-retro-gaming

Article was great. Kevtris is getting the attention he deserves. Thank you Kevin.

 

The drawing of Kevin was near perfect. I added a little something I think brings it a little closer to perfection.

[funkwad]

Issue report -

 

Analogue out to CRT (PVM) with Firmwares after update 1.5- for the 7800 core - I'm noticing some significant 'bowing' happening on my display. Almost as if it's running a unique type of resolution that is making my PVM struggle.

 

Here's a couple of screen shots. Note the Green line at the bottom right, and on the second screen - the title is off /over-stretched cutting off the right side of the title screen. I attempted several OSD adjustments but couldn't get anything that looked 'proper'

 

https://app.box.com/s/mz9x7x9f8e1z6mehv4h3k2e3fqrlkqyj

 

https://app.box.com/s/q9t96owyy4o3koqpcnvbcucv5e08i2hk

 

Here's the same game looking proper when i reverted to Firmware 1.5

 

https://app.box.com/s/auas7pzu1t4vlmf98jal7l5zqxc7magn

 

I noted there was an update on version 1.7 to address 7800 core S-Vid and Compsite outs. I'm wondering if this may have negatively affected RGB out for 7800 core?

 

ok - let me know if you have any questions. Thank you

[Wolf_]

Issue report -

 

Analogue out to CRT (PVM) with Firmwares after update 1.5- for the 7800 core - I'm noticing some significant 'bowing' happening on my display. Almost as if it's running a unique type of resolution that is making my PVM struggle.

 

Here's a couple of screen shots. Note the Green line at the bottom right, and on the second screen - the title is off /over-stretched cutting off the right side of the title screen. I attempted several OSD adjustments but couldn't get anything that looked 'proper'

 

https://app.box.com/s/mz9x7x9f8e1z6mehv4h3k2e3fqrlkqyj

 

https://app.box.com/s/q9t96owyy4o3koqpcnvbcucv5e08i2hk

 

Here's the same game looking proper when i reverted to Firmware 1.5

 

https://app.box.com/s/auas7pzu1t4vlmf98jal7l5zqxc7magn

 

I noted there was an update on version 1.7 to address 7800 core S-Vid and Compsite outs. I'm wondering if this may have negatively affected RGB out for 7800 core?

 

ok - let me know if you have any questions. Thank you

First step to troubleshooting is to always use the most up to date firmware.

[funkwad]

First step to troubleshooting is to always use the most up to date firmware.

ya think? I definitely tried the latest and had the same problem. "Analogue out to CRT (PVM) with Firmwares after update 1.5- for the 7800 core . . ."

[Wolf_]

ya think? I definitely tried the latest and had the same problem. "Analogue out to CRT (PVM) with Firmwares after update 1.5- for the 7800 core . . ."

Ah, misread that.

[Fafner]

 

Wolf_ and I have released a complete Analogue NT Mini Jailbreak Pack over at the site where the EverDrive Packs are released. Everything is included, so it's just copy/paste to an SD for a full setup. All credit goes to Wolf_ for compiling over the last few months

Can't seem to run Atarivox stuff.

Did I miss something?

I checked the box for it in the core settings?

[Wolf_]

Can't seem to run Atarivox stuff.

Did I miss something?

I checked the box for it in the core settings?

Unfortunately the atarivox bios files don't seem to be obtainable. If anyone has them feel free to send them to me but as far as I can tell no one does.

[Smoke Monster]

Yeah, we don't have Atarivox bios, and even if we did, the device is still being actively sold so I couldn't include them anyways. I imagine that Kev coded compatibility in with the hopes that some day in the future the Atarivox bios are made public.

[Fafner]

Ohhhhh...

Thanks!

Gonna hafta keep an eye out

[rezb1t]

The makers of atarivox should offer the BIOS with the product, I'd honestly buy one just to get the BIOS for my NT mini.

 

Of course... There's nothing really preventing someone from sharing it after they buy it if they did that, so it's probably not going to happen.

[genfuyung]

The makers of atarivox should offer the BIOS with the product, I'd honestly buy one just to get the BIOS for my NT mini.

 

Of course... There's nothing really preventing someone from sharing it after they buy it if they did that, so it's probably not going to happen.

I would buy it if they offered that too.

[Flangle]

I would buy it if they offered that too.

Tertiary agreement.

[Andromeda Stardust]

The makers of atarivox should offer the BIOS with the product, I'd honestly buy one just to get the BIOS for my NT mini.

 

Of course... There's nothing really preventing someone from sharing it after they buy it if they did that, so it's probably not going to happen.

Then one person dumps the BIOS online and flashes it to a PIC micor and starts selling bootleg Speakjets for $5 instead of $20. The Speakjet guys are literrally selling a $4 PIC Micro with firmware they created flashed into it, for $20 each. So when you buy the AtariVox on AtariAge store for $40, literally half of the cost goes to the Speakjet chip. If we consider the Speakjet chip a piece of software rather than hardware, they are selling the read-protected chips as a kind of physical DRM because noone so far can dump the contents of the chip. It is a fairly lucrative business and they are not going to give out the source, because then anyone could go out and make their own speakjet chips.

[funkwad]

all this Atarivox discussion - I remember when I tried to get one a couple of years ago, they were hard to come by / not available online. I traveled from Sacramento to Portland Retro Gaming expo most specifically to grab one as Albert had a few he was selling at show only. not sure if they're more readily available. BTW, only game I have good Atarivox action on is Juno First - any others?

[fishbob]

I've been buying/using a bunch of 3rd party wired controllers from Amazon with the Analogue NT Mini. I just wanted to know If there are any utilities/roms that will help test them?

[Smoke Monster]

all this Atarivox discussion - I remember when I tried to get one a couple of years ago, they were hard to come by / not available online.

I bought my Atarivox+ (for my Vectrex w/VecMulti and VecFlash) from the AtariAge store last year, which is the official source. You just have to check the store regularly until they're back in stock, since they are produced in batches.

[NE146]

Really having fun playing around with the obscure systems..Just realized Cosmic Fighter on the Gamate is a complete and utter clone of good old 2600 DEMON ATTACK. I mean really in all respects.. pretty funny.

 

Speaking of VCS.. I have to say playing them in 1080p is amazing. I have such a better time playing VCS titles when they look this good. The closest I could get was maybe playing the VCS emulator on an original Xbox output over component to an hdtv.. but this beats it.

[atmn]

I've been buying/using a bunch of 3rd party wired controllers from Amazon with the Analogue NT Mini. I just wanted to know If there are any utilities/roms that will help test them?

Found out that if you press down on player1 dpad while booting the system you get into a controller test.

[Wolf_]

Found out that if you press down on player1 dpad while booting the system you get into a controller test.

Also if you use the nt mini smokemonster pack many of the more popular system have a "tools/test carts" folder and those will test a whole bunch of things including controller inputs.

[retro_fan]

Should it be possible to add some 16-bit cores but with analogue out only? Take the HDMI out resources for the core..

Very good question!

 

[atmn: Should it be possible to add some 16-bit cores but with analogue out only?]

 

Probably but ask kevtris, also one of the defining characteristic it's the support of HDMI once that is dropped I am not sure the allure to be the same.

 

[...]

Probably the allure won't be the same, but even for the preservation and all-in-one console aspect I think it would be worth it. And I guess even HDMI lovers would agree that it's better to have an additional analog-only Nt mini core than no core at all. Aside from this, the more people test cores the better, and remember that such analog-only Nt mini cores would be used by the Z3K which is going to support HDMI for even these more powerful consoles.

 

Let's see what kevtris would say.

Edited April 6, 2017 by retro_fan

[rezb1t]

From what I understand, the NT mini has 2 fpgas and one is used for the video scaling. I don't think it would be very practical to use both fpgas together as different components of a console. Maybe I'm wrong though.

 

Kevtris would know, for sure.

Edited April 6, 2017 by rezb1t

[Great Hierophant]

Then one person dumps the BIOS online and flashes it to a PIC micor and starts selling bootleg Speakjets for $5 instead of $20. The Speakjet guys are literrally selling a $4 PIC Micro with firmware they created flashed into it, for $20 each. So when you buy the AtariVox on AtariAge store for $40, literally half of the cost goes to the Speakjet chip. If we consider the Speakjet chip a piece of software rather than hardware, they are selling the read-protected chips as a kind of physical DRM because noone so far can dump the contents of the chip. It is a fairly lucrative business and they are not going to give out the source, because then anyone could go out and make their own speakjet chips.

 

The AtariVox+ sells for $45.00, when in stock at AtariAge. The SpeakJet chip itself sells for $24.95 each, $23.70 in batches of 25 and $22.46 in batches of 100. It has 256 bytes of EEPROM which can be used for configuration and storing phonetic sequences. It is almost certainly available to the Atari 2600. The PIC16F87 microcontroller contains 7,168 bytes of program Flash memory, which should be readable without difficulty, and 256 bytes of data EEPROM memory, which can be protected. Finally, the 27LC256 is a 32KB EEPROM used for storing high scores. It is likely that the parts and boards cost $30.00, so the developers aren't making too much off these boards. Reverse engineering the board and making a cheaper work-alike is more likely than a straight clone given the cost of the SpeakJet. Kevtris was able to dump all the non-volatile memory required to make the AtariVox+ run, but he is a genius. While he isn't the only one with the capabilities to dump, the Atari community tends to be very respectful of its developer's wishes.