harbaum

Ah yes, SD card writing ... i think i also need to look at that ...

I can confirm this and i think i am to blame. The latest builds use some simulated sd card. This is due to the fact that the sd card is not directly connected to the FPGA in the MiST. In previous cores foft used some nasty (but obviously more reliable) hack to access the sd card. In the latest version he uses my fake sd card. This seems to be unstable from build to build. The *_RGB cores e.g. do atually work. So does the 5200 VGA core. I'll have a close look at this. Perhaps foft can trigger a rebuild for the two VGA cores until he gets working versions. This may be a little difficult to understand. FPGA cores are not always built or "synthesized" in exact the same way. There's some randomness involved when the computer converts the human written FPGA description into the FPGA core you can finally download. Some logic may be wired in slightly different ways from build to build. This usually doesn't harm. But in case there's something implemented in a not so clever way this tiny differences can cause a core to work or fail. Consider e.g. you generate two signals inside the FPGA in one place to change at exactly the same time and compare their state at another place inside the FPGA. The wiring inside the FPGA may be slightly different from build to build causing one of the two connections for the two signals just to be a tiny little bit shorter than the other one. If you now rely on one signal to change before the other one you have a 50% chance that this actually works since the signal you expect to arrive later actually was built using a longer wire inside the FPGA. I probably did something like that in my SD card implementation foft is using ... and now i need to do some bug hunting.

Garbled screen with f12 imho means the rom wasn't loaded. Are you sure the roms are all in place?

I now understand that this is normal for a 5200 without rom selected. It boots into bios and tries to read the cartridge rom name from the rom which isn't there. It reads garbage and displays that where the rom cartridge name os supposed to be displayed. Once you select a rom everything should be fine. How is this handled on a real 5200? Can this even be switched on without cartridge inserted? What does it then display?

I've seen these sssssss with previous versions as well. You should probably keep in mind that this is a work in progress.

Support for the 5200daptor is now in the latest firmware. This maps the additional controller buttons to keyboard events. As a result the core will equally well work with a simple analog gamepad + keyboard and the cx52 connected via a 5200daptor. This will be just plug 'n play. The 2600daptor is also supported by the mist now. But so far only the basic digital joystick has been tested as i still need to find a cheap pair of paddles on ebay.

Anyone with a spare pair of Atari paddles here?

I already received a CX52 joystick. Now i am waiting for the 5200daptor to arrive. Once i have all that i'll asap make the firmware support all those many buttons on the device. The plan is to map all but the main fire buttons to keyboard events. This way the core will directly be able to support a combination of keyboard+4-button-pad as well as the cx52+5200daptor. I'll also add support for the 2600daptor and a pair of paddles. This isn't useful for the 5200 but the mists 2600 core will have a need for this and the atari 800 as well.

I just ordered a 5200daptor with matching joystick and a 2600daptor. I plan to add support for both of them to the mist asap so it's possible to use the real thing without any soldering or the like. Does anyone have a spare pair of paddles to be used with the 2600daptor? And since you mentioned the OneChipMSX port Alastair is doing i'd like to mention that he's also porting it to the mist.

Great news indeed. While I expect the analog stick and four buttons to work nicely on the mist using the 5200daptor most of the buttons won't work as the mist only supports 4 joystick buttons ATM. But I am sure we can find a solution for that.

Now that atari-forum.com is temporarily down I need some other place to publish the latest mist news. It's been months since I posted here last time. In the meantime the STEroids mode was finished boosting the mist to Atari TT speed. There's now also a sm194 compatible hirez video mode with up to 1280*1024 pixels. The mist is now available with built-in midi and the latest core updates have fixed all know midi issues. In summary the mist is a cubase compatible machine with perfect midi timing, high speed, much memory (14mb st ram) and high resolution. It never meant to be a perfect music box but by now it's exactly that. It also got alternate computer and console cores from zx81 over zx spectrum, c64, colecovision, Atari xl, Atari VCS, apple 2, amiga to sega master system. And I am sure I forgot some ... This is the mist after slightly over a year after first public availability. I wonder what the next year will bring ...

Why not? Go for it! All MIST incl. the Atari ST cores are open source and can be ported. Unlike many of the MCC216 cores which are kept closed.

You forgot the cpu speeder and fast ram cards you want for most of them. You need kickstart/tos switcher cards, several floppy disk drives for all of them, flicker fixer and VGA converters for all of them. For most also at least two hard disks, USB interfaces etc etc. You need a flash cart for the comnsoles. And you need seperate NTSC and PAL versions of most devices. Only then you have the equivalent of the hardware a FPGA board brings ... Plus you just get a new device for free every now and then.

Start a demo/game with fast horizontal scrolling on an emulator and on a fpga board and compare yourself. You'll be surprised ...

For the records: scrameta.net is online again and new a800 cores for the MiST are e.g. available here: http://www.scrameta.net/autobuild/20140619/mist/build_NTSC_VGA/out/