Kismet

I hope kevtris holds off for a few months if he's planning on it at all. That's all we need are eBay scalpers doing what they did with the SNES mini classic.

It's not really possible to do that. Speculating back and forth, a FPGA Mega NT would likely support running the 32X, but you'd still need analog output from the 32X. When you add the SegaCD into it, it becomes too complicated just from timing variables. This is why you've never seen the 32X or Sega CD drive get any kind of re-issue, despite the Genesis III and other licenced clones having no problem dealing with the core system. However, adding a "Sega CD" expansion port to a theoretical MegaNT is actually more doable than the 32X. But doing so is kinda fruitless since you don't want to use an original unit (they can catch fire, and require various mounting brackets) and are slow. What you instead want is to have a USAP (USB SCSI Protocol basically) connected disc that rips the game, not plays it directly. Some kind of "SegaCD Brain" that you could store the images on, or licence directly from Sega to stick in the cartridge slot would solve that and have it's own FGPA re-implementation of the rest of the SegaCD minus the physical drive. Kinda like a MSU-1 for the Mega drive. The 32X is harder to deal with and while I think it's within reach of current generations of FPGA's, it certainly would not be worth doing unless the Saturn was also being considered due to the overlap in part requirements. That's just all we need, is an add-on for the FPGA MegaNT that costs more than the original consoles combined. Hence you'd end up with basically a "SegaCD" module or a "32X/Saturn" module, while using the base MegaNT for it's upscaling ability. But this is putting the cart way ahead of the horse. It's more likely that a SD2SNES style cartridge slot addon would be created to run the SegaCD software if such a FPGA Mega Drive were to become available rather than trying to get any real drive to work. It's basically impossible to play a game built for a 1X/2X cd/dvd drive on a PC without first ripping it to the machine, so you may as well just rip it properly, or convince sega to make "virtual console" style images of their software to use on it. Like my feeling here is that SEGA would love any free money it could get from licencing software it has, and since they don't make their own hardware, they really have no excuse not to short of going "Sorry we already licenced that to X company, ask them"

There is one person in this thread who insists that NT means Nintendo, when NT is more commonly known to be "New Technology". Nobody would assume NT means Nintendo except someone who bought the original Analogue NT. From trademark perspective they would never want to suggest that anyway. The 8-bit system in Japan was called Famicom (Family Computer). The system on this side was called NES (Nintendo Entertainment System). It just so happens that Nintendo's product names for the NES, SNES, and N64, have the N mean Nintendo. There's no T in there. I keep calling a potential mega drive, MegaNT because that is the next logical progression of both Mega being > Super and Mega Drive > Super Nintendo. Microsoft does not have a claim on "NT" by itself, only "Windows NT", if you go through the TESS trademark database you'll only find "NT" used as stylized logos. Meanwhile Analogue: Goods and Services IC 028. US 022 023 038 050. G & S: Arcade games; Controllers for game consoles; Joysticks for video games; Video game consoles. FIRST USE: 20110104. FIRST USE IN COMMERCE: 20110104 Registration Number 5086599 Registration Date November 22, 2016 Owner (REGISTRANT) Analogue, LLC LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY WASHINGTON SUITE 210 110 Cherry Street SEATTLE WASHINGTON 98104 (LAST LISTED OWNER) ANALOGUE, INC. CORPORATION DELAWARE 110 CHERRY STREET, 210 SEATTLE WASHINGTON 98104

There will be no pleasing everyone. Cartridge slots are more fragile than just stuffing a SD2SNES in the cart slot and leaving it there. If the Super NT never gets a JB firmware, you can be sure people will find a way to create a "Super Gameboy"-like device using the SD2SNES or it's successor to allow the Super NT to play anything that fits in the 256x224 resolution like the PCE and NES.

That appears to be what happened to mine >_< , UPS Standard

I ordered on October 16th Thank you very much. No shipping notice at all yet. It's very likely whoever got their systems already in 2 days, ordered it first. Go check your order for a tracking number if it's been sent. My order was "Shipping method DHL Express 2" , but if I am to assume that means 2 days, then it's obviously not shipped yet.

They probably were earlier up in the order list. Mine's in the 5000's and still nothing. (Let's see if it gets here before the games I ordered off eBay last night do )

The L+R audio and the B bus pins are also available on the cartridge bus, so no, we're not missing anything. At least as far as I know. The only two things on that block diagram that suggest otherwise is the direct connection between the expansion connector and the WRAM, and the L+R audio going to the RF modulator as well as the amplifier. I know there is an actual pin-by-pin schematic done out there, I'm just pointing out that the way things are in the SNES, the only thing that used the expansion bus was the BS-X and the SNES-CD (SuperDisc/Playstation prototype), and none of that functionality actually needs to to be on the expansion connector since the SD2SNES can do the BS-X features from the cartridge bus side. It's more likely that at least with the SNES-CD/BS-X devices, the actual power supply, for the cd-rom and satellite were designed to not be the mess the SegaCD and later 32X wound up being with the daisy chained power supply and video/audio connectors. That said, you could probably emulate the SuperDisc on it with the SD2SNES if you really really wanted to. http://problemkaputt.de/fullsnes.htm#snescartcdromdrive, not much point since the MSU-1 can do it better and only people with the SD2SNES can use the MSU-1 on real hardware anyway. Which is why a similar idea would likely be doable on a theoretical MegaNT. If you look up the pinout for the Sega Genesis expansion port, the pins all correlate with the cartridge bus (but not all the address lines.) Which also explains why the SegaCD and 32X have the rats nest of cables, they don't have any way of passing stereo audio through the cartridge connector (apparently those pins aren't used?) But since we're talking about a FPGA, yes a FPGA console could in theory be made to connect to a "sega cd cartridge" though the cartridge port at some point if the expansion bus doesn't exist. I'm not aware of any Sega CD games that also require a game cartridge, just a few games that can use the 32X if plugged in.

The 32X doesn't need to be "figured out", there are already SH-2 cores for FPGA's. http://j-core.org/

Type "Walmart counterfeits" into google and get back to me.

Just because you stick your fingers in your ears and scream "Nothing to see here" doesn't mean it's not happening. It's a lot easier to shut down a Japanese or an American clone than it is for any of the rubbish that is sold directly from hong kong.

Actually it's been updated a lot, but you need to get a dailybuild, eg http://blog.yesterplay80.net/dosbox-ece-en/ The problem however is that DosBOX by it's very nature is not even a "software PC emulator", it's a "dos emulator", if you try to run something like 8088MPH on it, major fail. No benchmarks run on it actually have it approximate anything resembling an 8088, or an 80486. Like it's more of a wistful "try it, it should work, if not, screw with the settings until you lose interest." Out of the box MT-32 support doesn't exist, and trying to by a real MT-32 is basically impossible now. It would be nice to have a FPGA system that actually replicates the machine accurately, but it's not like the accuracy is as much of a problem as the NES or SNES is. What I'm I'm trying to point out here is that there is a huge library of software that currently has no accurate emulator, and a system that could do that + more as pre-packaged disk images+deltas (eg save games) would legitimize additional software sources such as the Amiga, Apple II and C64 where currently nobody wants to buy a SoC software emulator, and GOG doesn't have the option of licencing emulator firmware on a per-title basis. Anyway it's just an idea, that's something I'd like to see, because that is where there is money, and I would pay money for. Think big, and then implement smaller things on the platform rather than sit around and wait for Intel to release better FPGA's big enough to emulate 32-bit systems. edit: That MCC-TV doesn't appear to have HDMI output, and I already mentioned MiST in the previous post.

From a legal perspective the only justification for Analogue, or anyone really to do a FPGA NeoGeo console would be if they could at least licence one of the games. If kevtris just wants to build one for the sake of doing it, that's his prerogative, but don't believe for a second that just because he can, that it will be come a mass-market item like the NT Mini or Super NT, or whatever MegaNT comes after it. What Analog built first was the CMVS, which was a just the MVS board in a console space, instead of an arcade cabinet. In that case it was using existing parts out there. But it does support the idea like the Analog NT (which rebuilt NES parts originally) can evolve into the NT Mini. The most logical, obvious things is to build a FPGA for the Sega systems (SG1000/SG3000/Master System/GameGear/Genesis) because those can all be hit with one unit, without the 32X and CD unit. It's very likely that Analogue could licence pretty much all of SEGA's original software as Sega does not have a notorious reputation for being anti-consumer. They just have a reputation for not caring enough about the quality of products they put their brand on. The Master System's that I had access to as a kid had different pack-in games (in fact we didn't realize it had a pack in game until it was turned on by accident without a cartridge in it, and we had more fun with Safari hunt than anything else.) So it's not unreasonable to licence those games, even if a lot of those are shovelware. It just wouldn't make the Analogue product as compelling though unless they could get at least one of the Sonic games. As for the SegaCD games, I think that is something doable, but you would quite literately need to find a supplier to make 1X cd-rom's if we're still barking up the accuracy tree. A USB USAP DVD-ROM is as close as you get to viable, and even then it's likely to have the exact same problem that playing segacd/psx/ps2 games on a PC cd-rom does, that it will keep spinning up and down and re-seeking due to overshoot. Rather you want the drive to just straight rip the game and store the raw sectors on flash media or in ram (at 2-16 minutes per disc), and that still adds a problem with playing analog audio at 1x, because when you play an audio disc on these systems, it just tells the cd drive to "play/seek track X" and lets the analog audio path go from there. The 32X on the other hand still sits in the cartridge slot and you can still plug in genesis games into it, but it uses a separate video path, so even using a real 32X on a FPGA console would be an issue. It's not like the Super Gameboy which pushes video and audio through the system PPU, but rather the 32X has an internal genlock, which means that the only way to play a 32X is by sending a composite/RGB signal to the 32X and then to an analog CRT or back into a separate OSSC-type of circuit, thus defeating the entire point of playing on a HDMI screen. Tectoy still sells licenced Sega 16-bit consoles, but what they sell at present is more like a Retron5 that only plays MS/MD games. So there is precedent for Sega doing this, but it may also just be a loophole in the licence that Sega somehow gave them perpetual rights to make hardware in Brazil due to the insane import costs of hardware into Brazil. I don't think a GB/GBC/SGB FPGA is in the cards, that's Nintendo's next "classic" since they already registered a trademark for it. Perhaps as an add-on to the SuperNT (eg a SuperGameboy2 but better, by supporting the GBC too,) but kevtris already stated somewhere earlier in this thread that parts for the GB/GBC/GBA are difficult to get, particularly the link cables. So any FPGA project would likely have to come up with some other way of linking the devices (eg an unpowered usb-c connector) but it would only work with other FPGA systems. My personal opinion here is to wait until a GBA can be done in FPGA/FPGA+SoC and then do all of them at once and fake-implement the link cable/wireless adapter/infrared over ethernet (eg Layer 2) or over TCP/IP (Layer 3), then all you need is a ethernet switch/hub. That would also allow software emulators to play with the hardware simulators in theory. But that's also probably getting too far ahead. In this thread the "ARM is out of reach" is repeated a few times, because it IS out of reach for the SD2SNES while still having any other functionality, and would also be out of reach for the SuperNT, as an expansion chip, though likely not as likely as the central processor. Though it's also very likely that it's much harder to reverse engineer an ARM core than licence it, which is why the GBA knockoffs tend to be able to get away with what they do, they're just off-the-shelf arm chips or arm SoC's (like the Revo K101), but lack any ability to play both the GB/GBC and GBA carts and have compatibility issues around the parts they don't actually have in the SoC. The fact that kevtris already has cores for many of the 8-bit systems would logically suggest Analogue might have more success building a FPGA computer platform (C64/Apple II/Atari.) Making something as an alternative to DosBOX with all the hardware support (Eg CGA/EGA/VGA/Tandy/Soundblaster/Roland MT-32) in one unit with an HDMI output would be legally the easiest thing to get away with, since GOG sells those games already. Now imagine a "Retro Computer" FPGA system that also plays Apple II, C64, Amiga, Atari, basically anything that firmware can be licensed for, that opens up an entire additional pool of games that are so far only available to pirates and collectors.

The Bleem! case did not legitimize emulators. It only set a precedent on what kind of reverse engineering is not copyright infringement. Contrary to what piracy sites will tell you, it's still not legal to download games for 24 hours. Nintendo has not changed it's stance on emulation https://www.nintendo.com/corp/legal.jsp They say that, and the NES/SNES Mini in fact does that, and the "fully loaded" hacked mini's on eBay are in fact full of unauthorized copies of their games. We're going to go around and circles here again if everyone don't recognize this. Nintendo can tie up Analogue in court costs and time, and kiss any further FPGA consoles ever being made. So it is in Analogue best interest to NEVER include the ability to play pirated roms from the internet, because like in the Grokster case, there is no way to ensure that people aren't. And if you all think it's not going to happen, go back to kotaku.com/5030319/nintendo-and-54-companies-battle-evil-r4-in-court and www.kitguru.net/gaming/console-desktop-pc/matthew-wilson/nintendo-wins-groundbreaking-case-against-modded-3ds-cartridge-seller/ , That last link is from 10 months ago, and after the NT Mini Jailbreak. So it's very likely that the Analogues consoles are on Nintendo's radar, so everyone please stop thinking that Nintendo doesn't care. They absolutely do, and have a history of being anti-consumer.

If Nintendo was actually making enough of them they could claim that "that unlicensed device was made only to play pirated Nintendo software", because that IS what people are doing with the mini's, and a device that can play the pirated games by itself, but more accurately becomes a threat to the sales of the mini and any future Virtual Console store, despite the mini's being a hot piracy device itself due to bad engineering. If the SuperNT can do it's own backups, that makes it no different than the iPod and ripping your own music. The catch is that djinn is ALREADY out of the bottle, because you can already do this with the everdrive/sd2snes, and if a copy function exists on the SuperNT, there is nothing stopping anyone from loading the rom on the everdrive, and then going to the console menu and copy it. One game at a time. So people complaining that they can't play their pirated games, there are already means of doing so, and their unwillingness to buy one of those tools tells me that they don't have any SNES legit games at all, thus buying the SuperNT alone will get them nothing but the two preloaded games. That is why they are whining. Personally, I'd rather Nintendo get a clue here and release their own FPGA console.

There's probably other difficulties with doing that, the NES and SNES has a market for making controllers that work on the original NES/SNES controller bus, where as Atari and Sega does not, and 8bit do has expressed no interest in doing so. Like, 8bitdo is very fond of the SNES style pads, and pretty much is the only thing they make, and they work on the PC and Nintendo Switch. If Analogue decides to make a MegaNT that works with SEGA carts, it's not much of a stretch to add an Atari cart slot to the same unit and still use the same controller ports. 8bitdo or some other aftermarket accessory maker could take that up. Or maybe 8bit do could just a 9pin controller adapter for the sega connectors, and go "use the SNES style controllers"

Probably not at the same time. The SD2SNES from what I understand basically has all the expansion chips available at all time, but can't turn all of them on at the same time since there are bus limitations.

Someone doesn't know the value of an engineer's time. Those numbers probably need another zero on them at least.

I was not talking about patents, I was talking about copyright infringement (because people loading the mini classics with pirated games is a bad thing.) Nintendo can not presently claim that the NT Mini or Super NT, or RetroUSB AVS are "harming" them, because the NES Classic and SNES Classic are both impossible to buy except from scalpers on eBay. By releasing the SuperNT, it actually creates an alternative to buying either/both. If Nintendo wants a piece of that pie, they should take every game on the mini's and release their own flash cart for the SuperNT, likewise SquareEnix, Capcom, Konami, Altus, etc. That is essentially free money for the price of a USB drive or SD card, depending on what arrangement they can swing with Analogue. Maybe SquareEnix could have a version of the SuperNT firmware built that protects their games on the SD card (as in can't be ripped back off the card) and they can sell those cards, and cut Nintendo completely out of their own Virtual Console market.

That's probably something that could be made to be supported if kevtris has one, but my feeling on this is that it's probably a hack. According to this: https://web.archive.org/web/20150420003507/https://assemblergames.com/forums/showthread.php?48386-Sound-fixes-for-the-Tototek-GBA-SNES-AD-Adapter, they probably cheaped out somewhere and the SNES by default mutes it. It also apparently only sends mono audio on the V1.0's . Video actually appears to be a hack to the composite output of a SNES and could not be supported that way. So IMO, if you plug it in, and have the audio not muted, the audio would probably work if the SNES is powered on. Though what it seems like is that these devices are simply meant to sit in the SNES slot to use the SNES controllers and don't even need the SNES or clone to be powered on. I probably wouldn't recommend using it since it doesn't actually "run" anything on the console, it relies being connected to the SNES bus, which obviously doesn't exist the same way as the original console does.

I would not assume that. From an "amount of work required to do this" perspective, you'd only want to support other cores on one device, otherwise as additional Analogue consoles come out, the amount of work required to maintain it becomes exponential. I could be wrong and it's just something in a build pipeline kevtris has, but the NT Mini and the SuperNT aren't simply running a different size FPGA. AS the FPGA is in the same family, it's more likely that Analogue stops making the existing NT Mini once they run out of Aluminum shells, and releases a plastic shell version, the logical thing to do would be to use the same FPGA/HDMI arrangement as the SuperNT then and thus all the cores would work on both.

The actual SGB/SGB2 might have constantly running DAC's. The SD2SNES does not send anything to those pins unless the MSU-1 is engaged AFAIK.

That's intentional. Just like the NT Mini. No legitimate American product would include such features out of the box because of "MGM Studios, Inc. v. Grokster, Ltd.", eg "Court unanimously concurred that Grokster could be liable for inducing copyright infringement" There is a difference between "this thing only plays SNES carts out of the box" and "this thing doesn't need any snes carts, just steal them off the internet", type of notoriety a product gets once it's discovered that piracy is easy to do with it. As an example, there once was this cheap DVD player imported from china that could be put in RCE0 mode and thus people first bought it to play cheaper imported/counterfeit DVD's, and later people just made their own discs using pirated content which also worked on it. All the early DVD players up to that point wouldn't play recordable media. Likewise there are similar things like HDMI splitters which let you capture HDMI signals using any legitimate device key plugged into the other side, and there are also macrovision stripping tools that were simply called "signal stabilizers" So generally you don't want to produce a product for sale in the US that will see more use as a piracy tool. It's completely above board to change the firmware (which is what people do to make DVD and Blueray drives RCE0) that adds features that were not originally offered, as long as the manufacturer doesn't adopt or endorse it over their own firmware. They included games in the distributed firmware because they've been legitimately licensed. I expect, but don't care if/when it happens that anything produced for the NT Mini will get ported to the SuperNT, but if people are complaining that they can't play their pirated games on the device, they need to stop and think about what they are saying about themselves. Like the most obvious thing for a JB firmware to do first is a "CopyCart" mode as the only way to put the games on the device, and have it actually check for chip carts so it refuses the copy process for games that will be broken. Later JB firmware with other cores could use a hash database of which games will not work with the current version of the core. That should keep the complaints down to people who actually have the real carts, and those who know what they are getting into with a hacked/fan game not in the hash table. Right now Nintendo can not claim damages from this device, because they at present aren't even producing enough SNES Mini's to meet demand.

Maybe use 18Mbits of SRAM then, $30 per unit. At any rate, counting chickens before they're hatched. If people want the SuperNT they should get it before the scalpers buy them up. Don't wait around for the next thing.

Well there's three ways it can be done (same for the Sega CD, CDi and Atari Jaguar) 1) Most obvious, have a USB port marked "CD-ROM/DVD-ROM ONLY" that will allow original discs to be used, but due to DRM, may not actually work with original discs, only copies. 1-alternative) Plugin a USB flash image that has been setup to look like a CD-ROM image (an iso9660 formatted hard drive.) 2) Next, and fastest solution, Plug in a M.2 SSD directly. If you need to load the drive, either put it inside your machine or use a USAP USB3 external chassis. 3) Most compatible, Any USB 2.0 drive formatted as FAT32, or SDXC/SDHC-Card formatted as FAT32 Creating an actual interface to the actual cd-rom accessories is probably a poor investment choice since even if people have these devices, they are not going to work forever as they have mechanical wearing parts. But it's not much of a leap to create a USB interface for those devices too. So USB3 could be the solution for all of those. However it's very likely because the SegaCD has it's own CPU in it, it there would be too much difficulty in maintaining timings to actually connect it to a base unit. Like there's something of a gordian knot to solve with the Sega devices that means either the 32X or CD unit do not get support, or they get support but the end product costs like $800 as three or more FPGA's end up needing to be in it. Looking at what the SuperNT should be able to do, the theoretical thing to do would be to have a SD2GENS or something that actually emulates the CD unit on an expansion bus designed for the MegaNT to emulate a CD-ROM and not actually on the cartridge bus, thus leaving room for a SD232X or something to be developed at a later date, if ever.