kevtris

Why are all the chip labels obscured and/or photoshopped out? Not trying to cause trouble, but I suggest not using 1990's era chips like that 64 pin shrink DIP. Unless you have a huge stock of known good ones, getting those in production is going to be extremely difficult. Going by the specs, it's probably one of those Yamaha MSX(2) chips like a Y8950. Those are going to be unobtanium for anything over a few dozen to hundred boards. Your supplier might give you a "chip shaped object" with the correct number laser engraved on it but it will be different silicon, rejects, or worse. I've been burned by this before and it wasn't fun. Anyways, keep up the good work! btw, the NES has 5 audio channels, and the SMS has 4.

These systems aren't outputting sharp edge pixel art usually. They are generally 3D style games which is fairly similar content to TV/movies. In the case of classic videogames, we generally do not want the pixels to be antialiased :-)

TVs and monitors (and blu-ray players) are optimized to scale video sources for things like TV and movie content. Scaling videogames is a bit more difficult, because you generally wish to retrain the pixel edges. Passing sharp edge pixels through a typical scaler will fuzz them out. I can see a big difference in how my various monitors and TVs scale 480p vs. 720p or 1080p on pixel art. This is why scaling the output in an FPGA will beat any scaler on a typical TV or monitor- they simply are not designed to scale this content. Also, when upscaling to non-integer ratios, you need to keep a tight leash on the interpolation to prevent it getting fuzzy. Most people seem to like the sharp edge pixels. Also, the scalers on FPGAs can be more flexible in another way a TV/monitor/blu-ray player typically cannot- they can give you very fine control over the width (and sometimes height) so you can tweak it to suit your tastes and monitor. I learned a lot of people are sensitive to aspect ratio issues, and really like having the fine X width control to tweak it 'just so'. Just my 2 bits (1/4 byte).

Don't forget that level 20 is N64, for a cool $8 million. (check the html for a list of the hidden reward tiers. they go up to level 20). level 10 is an "Advanced social network" for only $3.25 million. For some reason, 3DO is below N64, at level 19 for $7 million.

Thanks for that. I guess they didn't like my comment. Oh well. Sorry 'bout that. I don't want to see their project fail, or wish them ill will, but so far they haven't really produced much in the way of evidence that hybrid emulation is going to work. I stand by what I said about their FPGA board: it's just a development thing and is not anything you'd ever ship in a product. Not that there is anything wrong with this- you need to make dev boards- but they seemed to be showing it off like this was the guts. Also, going by their FAQ, there's not even an FPGA inside it now, and hybrid emulation isn't either. I will quote their FAQ here since people seem to be having issues with their site: (sorry about the formatting, for some reason it got all screwy when I pasted it in)

After checking out the pictures, it's just a stock AMD CPU development board. There's nothing Atari-custom about it. All they did was buy / loan a dev board from AMD, install an operating system and run existing applications. This is little more than someone buying a motherboard from Newegg, plugging some things into it, installing Windows and running Steam. This must've taken them what, 4-5 hours tops? You can see a similar dev board here for another AMD CPU: http://www.legitreviews.com/amd-shows-32nm-fusion-llano-apus-running-avp_1443 They photoshopped out the part/model number, because you'd been able to search for it and see that it's just a stock board AMD uses for development. If this was designed for Atari, wouldn't it have their name/logo on it? This is barely one step up from the Chameleon- they showed off a PCI card. Atari's just showing off the motherboard instead of an expansion card. :-) Hah, for kicks I searched ebay. This board looks extremely similar (albeit in red instead of green), but most of the stuff is in the same place. The same power supplies, little plug in boards, heatsink/fan, connectors, parts, the works. Checking the stuff they photoshopped out, one of the things is the date. I think it is just about readable near the ©. So much for a "prototype"! https://www.ebay.com/itm/AMD-Gardenia-109-C75111-00B-02-Evaluation-Board-for-Merlin-Falcon/282942630214?epid=22018654408&hash=item41e0b1e946:g:~LkAAOSwpFda441m I am not sure what the extensions on their PCB are, with all the jumpers and connectors, but it seems "added on" to the above ebay board's design. All the little buttons/connectors/jumpers all match up between the two boards. I am curious now what CPU that really is now. Them photoshopping the name/number off is quite suspicious, because it has the part number and chip name, going by the ebay board. I just can't get over how the two boards are nearly identical... lol.

I found it again. The datasheet for the video chip (a MC6847) has the schematic for getting composite video out. It's here: http://bitsavers.org/components/motorola/_dataBooks/1983_8-Bit_Microprocessor_and_Peripheral_Data.pdf It is on page 524 of the PDF (3-480 in the databook). The video chip is an MC6847. They use the video modulator chip to generate the composite. Fortunately, that chip is right on the pcb (MC1372) so you do not need to buy it. I removed all the parts connected to pins 8, 10, 12, 13, and 14 of that chip, and then used the holes from the removed parts to build the circuit they show. They use a 1N3064 diode, but you can use a 1N4148 or similar signal diode instead. They show a 2N4401/4403 which is pretty common (and the two transistors I tend to use for NPN/PNP respectively), but any small signal transistors should work, such as the 2N3904/3906 or other similar TO-92 transistors. What they are doing is disabling the RF portion of the MC1372, so that you get baseband video out of it, instead of the usual channel 3/4 stuff. The datasheet for the MC1372 is here for reference: https://console5.com/techwiki/images/f/f8/MC1372.pdf If you still have issues I can take pictures of my mod, but I just followed the schematic they list in the datasheet for the MC6847 video chip.

haha I like it! I should've worn my Zimba Labs t-shirt. oh well, I didn't think about it. I thought the video was going to be focused on my head so the shirt wouldn't matter so much. That and it's really hot up in my work room, 80-85F is typical so I have to dress for the occasion. I did, I lost 50 pounds in the last 7-8 months or so using the "kevtris diet". (the secret is eating less, zero snacks,and no sugar sodapop. some exercise can't hurt either). I want to get rid of another 20 or so to get to my target weight. Started out at 220, 170 now and I want to be 150.

You say that like it's a bad thing. I have to put food on the table and pay the mortgage and pay my bills. You might not see it as a "real" job, but I sure do- I have to work hours, meet goals, pay taxes, and all that. Why don't YOU release your own FPGA videogame systems to compete if you have such a beef with it, or bankroll me if you don't like where I spend my hours. When it was just a hobby project, things were a lot different. I had months and years to work on things without a deadline. With deadlines, it's no longer "fun" as before, and is a defacto job that I HAVE to get done in a certain time frame with no excuses. Even the thing you love the most can turn into drudgery if you HAVE to get it done and are under time and other pressures to produce. Without Analogue, I seriously doubt you'd be able to buy any of my work today. Being able to create things and get them released, AND get paid is a pretty awesome thing. As for support, I think I have provided excellent "after release" support so far. There's been many updates released for the nt mini and super nt since their initial release. I do plan on getting back to both at some point when I get time. The problem is time is a huge concern right now and there's only so many hours in the day. I was hoping to add Intellivision to the nt mini for example, but I got hung up with some hard debugging on another project, so the time window I had to add it closed. By the time I was done with the debug job, I had to move right to the next thing. I am a perfectionist but I have to temper it with time constraints unfortunately. Sorry 'bout that.

yeah sorry I am under an NDA so I can't say squat unfortunately.

Yep, I bought several back when they had them. I am fairly sure the console itself was $4.99. it came with a warranty card and was in a plastic bag. They were mint/brand new condition. Someone bought all the controllers thinking they were snes compatible, from what I recall. I managed to get 1 or 2 though before that happened. Inside the console itself, it's a tour de force of UMC parts. All the RAM chips, asics, RAMDAC (video), etc. were made by UMC. The cartridges have a lockout chip on that too which I haven't investigated a whole lot. It seems to use A0/D0 and 2 or 3 signals to the ASIC from what I recall. Without the chip, the system won't boot. I dumped 9 or 10 of the carts and own a few. Fortunately they had standard 16 bit mask ROMs in them in DIP packages. And before anyone asks, yes I would like to FPGAize it some day. lol.

It's fine to make everyone wait for information. That is, until money changes hands. Once it happens, that is the point they need to be up front and answer questions, especially important ones like what the product is actually going to be and what it is going to do.

Sorry about the lack of updates and radio silence but I've been hard at work on stuff and can't really discuss anything. I haven't forgotten about anyone, but I am busy working all the time again.

Don't forget the haters from Atariage, too! I have to say that was the first time I had seen the words "kevtris" and "lust" in the same sentence though. chortle. Cue the "Official Atariage Hater's Brigade" badge. http://polymega.com/forums/topic/hybrid-emulation/page/2/#post-32746 (I have a screenshot in case it gets edited) Re: someone asked earlier in the thread what I thought about their PCB. Well, it's obviously a development board and not anything finished. It has a Xilinx Spartan 6, and appears to be an XC6SLX25T in a 484 BGA, so 24K LEs, 958K bit BRAM, and 250 IOs. The board has two .1" ribbon cable connectors on it (similar to IDE cables) which I assume would connect to the modules, and everything else seems to be what I thought it was last time. I see what looks like a serial configuration flash ROM, a bunch of power supplies and lots of test points and some LEDs. It's interesting that they showed this board off but not what it plugs into. This is just a development board though, so it will obviously be vastly shrunk down with all/most of the test points and LEDs removed, and different connectors that would plug into the modules. I'd hope some major cost reduction on the power supplies too. As it is, the modules most likely cannot directly plug into this board, since this board is designed for ribbon cables by the looks of it. Of course this is all just a bunch of guessing so take what you will from that. I found a good high-rez picture of the PCB here: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Dfm2c7GU0AACBsm.jpg:orig

That, and several vcs youtube videos have been embedded in the thread, so google is most likely tracking that way, too.

thanks! I just turned prefetching off in FF now as well.

After I upgraded to the latest version of Firefox awhile back, I keep getting the following message sometimes: "Prefetching or precaching is not allowed. If you have Google Accelerator enabled, please disable" I am using Firefox, so I am not using Google Accelerator. This happens if I visit the last page of a thread and hit the "previous page" link, then hit back on my browser (to go to the last page of the thread so I can read it in order). i.e. if a thread has 150 pages, I click the "last page" link in the forum thread list, then hit "previous page" to go to page 149, then "previous page" again to go to page 148, which would be where I left off reading it. After reading page 148, I hit back on the browser which should take me to page 149, but instead I get the above message. I have to refresh the page and then the page is viewable. Likewise, hitting back again should get me now to page 150 which is the end of the thread, so hitting back once more returns me to the forum thread list. The weird thing is the previous pages should be precached by my browser anyways as I visited them in reverse order. I guess I tend to view the ends of forum threads in RPN format. Not all the time will it give this error, but it's been happening for over a month now since I upgraded Firefox. I have been reading forums in this fashion for quite awhile now and haven't had any problems up to that point. It does not happen on any other forum.

Speaking of copyrights and licensing, did Hyperkin ever resolve the issue with using open source emulator code without attribution or licensing on the Retron 5? Several of the emulators used had no commercial used allowed clauses in their licensing terms including Genesis Plus GX and SNES9X. https://www.libretro.com/index.php/retroarch-license-violations/

re: modding the APF for composite video, it is possible and I did do the modification. The data sheet for the video chip has a schematic for doing it, which is what I followed. All the parts to do the modification are inside the system already (it repurposes the RF modulator chip) so just a few parts are needed to do it. I ended up desoldering the un-needed parts and using the existing holes for the new parts to add the mod with a minimal amount of extra wiring. And no hot melt required. I can post pics if anyone is interested and scare up the datasheet too probably.

Those piezo discs had really rotten attachment, so it's a common problem for the wire to fall off. You can't solder it back on once it falls off, at least the point where it rips off. You can attempt to solder it to a new section that's silvered, but it will be really tough and it will probably fall off again. Fortunately those discs are replaceable with new ones that don't have this issue. Conductive epoxy might work pretty good vs. soldering, but I have not tried it. The problem is the disc is brass, with a ceramic crystal on it, and the top of said crystal is metalized, and the metalization is silver usually. It is poorly attached and it will just fall off real easy, especially at the age those things are now. Looks like they are all over ebay, in various sizes for cheap. Look for "piezo disc".

It sounds like they are vetting all the posts to the forum then, to prevent anything they perceive as negative getting through. Not saying that's what they are doing but it does sound fairly suspicious.

I know what it stands for, but I can't tell ya :-)

A friend found this. wonder if they got the idea from here? It's a two-part board; a plug in part and the base part, called the "larg" (cringe at the name). The base + plugin looks like this: The plugin board itself: And a flyer about the system here (with a few more pics) https://www.mouser.com/datasheet/2/762/LARG2_FLYER-962367.pdf

Yeah I'm kicking around, reading the thread every day but busy working on stuff I can't talk about :-)

looool! Is this like Krusty the Klown's endorsement of the Ribwich? "I don't mind the taste!"