Retroblox

[cacophony]

Bob's interview with Bryan from Polymega:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DjLv_lLCN-s

[Flojomojo]

Ugh, it's an hour long. Highlights?

[thetick1]

Ugh, it's an hour long. Highlights?

 

Lots of baffling with bullshit....trying to sound smart. Talking about FPGA having a software timing issue with memory? WTF it is an off the shelf Xilinx FPGA development board ? You fix the timing dumb ass that is the point of FPGAs. Get someone who actually worked on ASIC or FPGA design and fix it. Also bullshit about when chips become available.. so not shipping until August or September.

 

So he said it may not be the system for you if want configuration or modding.....Argh. Bitched about tension between retro gamers and commercial companies with intellectual property and somehow Polymega is magic going to fix this by doting all i's and preventing privacy by cashing cdroms/cartridges. He wants a nice interface kids can use. Crying about need to preserve content. Claimed to create own BIOS for all CD ROM systems? Yea right. He just blew off question about which emulators saying no one would want to know. WFH? Anyone who is not a moron would ask that for each platform supported. Later he mentioned for NES claims to be licensing Mesen. Blew off CRT/filter photo issues saying he was flattered the filtering looked good.

 

Stupid commentator summed it so it's like a Recon 5 that doesn't suck. Argh

Summed up in one sentence: This Bryon moron gets an major A+ in ass kissing to the dumb retro gamer.

Edited April 28, 2019 by thetick1

[godslabrat]

Thanks for that. I don't have the time or temperament to listen to him this week. But yeah, his entire attitude is "I'm counting on you to not know what I'm talking about."

 

The weird one for me is this system not being ideal if you don't like modding. It's a PC! The only thing more adaptable than a PC is freakin' play-doh!

[cybercylon]

I might skim that video, but thank you for the summary.

 

Comparing it to the Retron 5.... well the Retron 5 exists as a product you can buy, despite it's short comings. I don't remember Hyperkin begging for money before it was done either.

 

I am sure IF the Polymega makes it out, someone will figure out how to hack it.

[Flojomojo]

Did they address Polymega's behavior on Twitter?

[mr_me]

 

Lots of baffling with bullshit....trying to sound smart. Talking about FPGA having a software timing issue with memory? WTF it is an off the shelf Xilinx FPGA development board ? You fix the timing dumb ass that is the point of FPGAs. Get someone who actually worked on ASIC or FPGA design and fix it. Also bullshit about when chips become available.. so not shipping until August or September.

 

...

Just to clarify, he was talking about their hybrid emulation idea having memory timing issues interfacing directly with a cartridge. It has been previously discussed on atariage how difficult it is to do this. When people hear FPGA, they think hardware emulation but in this case the fpga is not being used for emulation. It's being used to interface between the cartridge and the software emulator which they couldn't get to work. He did say that they have not completely abandoned their hybrid emulation idea and might come back to it in a future product. This was within the first 15min of the interview.

 

Edit:

And I don't think their hybrid emulation prototype board is an off the shelf xylinx fpga development board.

Edited April 28, 2019 by mr_me

[godslabrat]

Just to clarify, he was talking about their hybrid emulation idea having memory timing issues interfacing directly with a cartridge. It has been previously discussed on atariage how difficult it is to do this. When people hear FPGA, they think hardware emulation but in this case the fpga is not being used for emulation. It's being used to interface between the cartridge and the software emulator which they couldn't get to work. He did say that they have not completely abandoned their hybrid emulation idea and might come back to it in a future product. This was within the first 15min of the interview.

We (and others, I imagine) brought this up numerous times. The response was "Just wait, you'll see." Well, we waited and apparently we were right enough that they changed the design and seriously downgraded expectations (and attempted to do so on-the-sly).

 

So that doesn't get a pass. They promised a Tesla, sold us a 2003 Ford Focus for the same price, and want a pat on the back for being new and innovative.

 

Homey don't play dat.

Edited April 28, 2019 by godslabrat

[mr_me]

Yes they discussed the mistake of when they announced abandoning hybrid emulation and when they started taking orders.

 

I'll add that I don't think hybrid emulation affects disc based system, just cartridge based systems. Nor does it affect the quality of the emulation. It's still the same software emulation.

Edited April 28, 2019 by mr_me

[godslabrat]

Yes they discussed the mistake of when they announced abandoning hybrid emulation and when they started taking orders.

 

I'll add that I don't think hybrid emulation affects disc based system, just cartridge based systems. Nor does it affect the quality of the emulation. It's still the same software emulation.

Yeah, blowing every opportunity to communicate a radical change in design until after money starts flowing. That's a "mistake".

 

It's like calling a six-car pileup a wrong turn.

[thetick1]

Just to clarify, he was talking about their hybrid emulation idea having memory timing issues interfacing directly with a cartridge. It has been previously discussed on atariage how difficult it is to do this. When people hear FPGA, they think hardware emulation but in this case the fpga is not being used for emulation. It's being used to interface between the cartridge and the software emulator which they couldn't get to work. He did say that they have not completely abandoned their hybrid emulation idea and might come back to it in a future product. This was within the first 15min of the interview.

 

Edit:

And I don't think their hybrid emulation prototype board is an off the shelf xylinx fpga development board.

 

Thanks for some clarification as I have developed commercial products using Altera and Xilinx SDKs over the years. I did glance at the board he was holding and it looks like an off the shelf FPGA SDK development board with PCIe slot. Do you have any evidence it's a custom board ?

Edited April 28, 2019 by thetick1

[thetick1]

Did they address Polymega's behavior on Twitter?

 

Byron just laughed and said something like and just paraphrasing from my memory ...he should not have been so harsh, but if they attack us we are going to attach back.

[mr_me]

 

Thanks for some clarification as I have developed commercial products using Altera and Xilinx SDKs over the years. I did glance at the board he was holding and it looks like an off the shelf FPGA SDK development board with PCIe slot. Do you have any evidence it's a custom board ?

Maybe it's not. Which development board do you think it is? Do they have edge connectors like that? So those are two pcie slots below the polymega name. Maybe there's a picture somewhere for comparison.

[Flojomojo]

Byron just laughed and said something like and just paraphrasing from my memory ...he should not have been so harsh, but if they attack us we are going to attach back.

Polymega has zero standing for attacking anyone. Analogue released several good products. Water is wet.

[thetick1]

Maybe it's not. Which development board do you think it is? Do they have edge connectors like that? So those are two pcie slots below the polymega name. Maybe there's a picture somewhere for comparison.

 

There is an ANSI standard for FPGA Mezzanine Cards with many vendors. I have not done any recent Xilinx work since the standard but there are many many options since the standard was adopted.

Edited April 28, 2019 by thetick1

[thetick1]

Polymega has zero standing for attacking anyone. Analogue released several good products. Water is wet.

 

Yea the guy claims to have done QA testing at Interplay and he certainly googled a few gaming buzzwords. He has a pleasant marketing -" I'll tell you what I think you want to hear" - mentality. That makes him think he's an expert at hardware development and emulation. He appears to have the skills of the common marketroid conman and no engineering/development background whatsoever.

Edited April 28, 2019 by thetick1

[atm94404]

A couple highlights (as in milk squirting out my nose trying to contain my laughter):

 

"people who want a 60fps UI"- yeah, because the game selection screen is the part everyone wants optimized

 

"this is a 14-layer PCB"- because that's the magic number to make it a legitimate product? Bryan is clearly not an engineer but a "big idea guy" a la Mike Kennedy.

 

He actually name drops Playmaji's FORMER CTO (so the guy had no involvement in the current SFF PC version) and BRAGS he's now the CTO at Atari. Bringing up the guy responsible for the "new" Atari VCS DUMPSTER FIRE is supposed to impress us?

[godslabrat]

Yea the guy claims to have done QA testing at Interplay and he certainly googled a few gaming buzzwords. He has a pleasant marketing -" I'll tell you what I think you want to hear" - mentality. That makes him think he's an expert at hardware development and emulation. He appears to have the skills of the common marketroid conman and no engineering/development background whatsoever.

Simple as that!

[Newsdee]

If I am not mistaken, the Retron 5 and the Retro Freak both use an FPGA (or CPLD? can't remember) to help dump the carts.

 

 

A Retron that doesn't suck... that is basically the Retro Freak

[mr_me]

 

There is an ANSI standard for FPGA Mezzanine Cards with many vendors. I have not done any recent Xilinx work since the standard but there are many many options since the standard was adopted.

The edge connector does look like a DIMM connector. Is that what you're talking about.

 

If I am not mistaken, the Retron 5 and the Retro Freak both use an FPGA (or CPLD? can't remember) to help dump the carts.

 

...

The idea with hybrid emulation is that the software emulator interacts with the cartridge directly so ROMs don't have to be dumped. Edited April 29, 2019 by mr_me

[godslabrat]

The edge connector does look like a DIMM connector. Is that what you're talking about.The idea with hybrid emulation is that the software emulator interacts with the cartridge directly so ROMs don't have to be dumped.

That's the idea. It seems to have never been more than an idea, though.

[Newsdee]

The idea with hybrid emulation is that the software emulator interacts with the cartridge directly so ROMs don't have to be dumped.

Right, but having an FPGA on board does not automatically mean this kind of "hybrid emulation" is being used.

 

Whoever came up with that idea for their marketing department(/person) doesn't seem to know much EE... it's one thing to interface with lower speed hardware (e.g. a gamepad controlled by a human) but you'd need a very beefy processor to interface with the data rates of a ROM chip or RAM.

 

An FPGA core is not subject to that problem as it can use paralell processing. This video shows an example of that:

https://youtu.be/CVq_jzj_u8U

 

I wonder, it's possible the maker/idea guy of this thing saw that FPGAs could interfave directly with carts, but then had trouble finding FPGA developers that would work for him. So perhaps he made up the term while looking for a software developer (the term does exist already but is not limited to this use). I can imagine said developer probably told him it wasn't viable (rightly so), and then they dropped the term and pretend they never used it.

Edited April 30, 2019 by Newsdee

[mr_me]

According to the interview, the concept of hybrid emulation came from an experienced engineer. Unfortunately they started selling it before they had a proof of concept.

 

The mist video explains the difference between hardware emulation and software emulation. Fortunately, we do have beefy processors and the quality of software emulation can be excellent as is hardware emulation. Hardware emulation has advantages like better cartridge compatibility since you don't have to emulate the cartridge. However the more advanced the system, you're more likely to see software emulation well before hardware emulation e.g. nintendo 64.

 

As mentioned previously, hybrid emulation doesn't improve the quality of software emulation. It might help with cartridge compatibility since you don't have to emulate the cartridge in software and I don't think it does anything for disc based systems. It would still be a nice technical achievement, if they can do it.

Edited April 30, 2019 by mr_me

[Keatah]

According to the interview, the concept of hybrid emulation came from an experienced engineer. Unfortunately they started selling it before they had a proof of concept.

 

Yeh well I'm an experienced engineer and there is NO LIMIT to the amount of bullshit I can make up.

[mr_me]

 

Yeh well I'm an experienced engineer and there is NO LIMIT to the amount of bullshit I can make up.

Are you talking about work or atariage.