Kismet

Knowing how people are impatient I hope kevtris puts a minimal check in the Mini NT and Super NT so that they can't load each others firmwares by accident.

https://youtu.be/PUwl2h_6Skc?t=14 Hmm The monitor (or capture card) used shows 480p60, 720p60, 1080p60, but no 240p or 2160p (4K), kevtris already said there wouldn't be 4K. (4K would allow for a 9x integer scale) What does the "disable interpolation" do on the scalers submenu? does that have something to do with the interlaced shadows?

For the Mega NT, the Brazilian Sega manufacturer (Tec Toy) still produces Genesis units http://www.tectoy.com.br/console-mega-drive-joystick-cartao-sd-com-22-jogos-expansivel-ate-594-jogos/p/995040461825 . Majesco was the one who produced the Genesis 3 in 1998, not SEGA in North America. I would not put it past SEGA officially licencing a FPGA clone, just doing so might require killing support for flash carts/jailbreaking, so be careful what you wish for. Also to quickly note: http://institucional.tectoy.com.br/faqmd.aspx(google translate) - You can "in theory" add games to the SD card - You can use original cartridges - It is not an emulator - It does not have HDMI, only composite.

The average person is not a linux nerd, and can not setup an Raspberry Pi, let alone pirate all the roms needed to run it. The NT Mini and Super NT let you use existing cartridges/flash carts. People are not going to buy the NT Mini or Super NT just to pirate games, the entire point of the RPi emulators and Kodi-box emulators is to avoid paying for anything. Pirates gravitate to the cheapest solution, even if it's rubbish.

On the Wii/WiiU the sky is a very bright blue. At least on the WiiU's controller. That said, the REC.601 didn't define the color primaries until 2007, but SMPTE C was defined in the 1930's but not adopted until 1987. REC.601 wasn't defined until 1984. The Famicom came out in 1983. So for the most part CRT's manufactured before 1990 had no standard color, and most of them didn't have composite inputs, just antenna (300ohm connectors) which is why the RF converter was a standard part of the Famicom/NES/SFC/SNES. Many of the TV's had like a half dozen knobs in the front to adjust hue, color saturation, etc, while they had several more in the back to adjust sync and overscan. Everyone remembers the "Vertical Hold" knob right? It wasn't until TV's started coming with their own solid-state (cable) tuners, that CRT Televisions started to be more consistent. That's why when people nitpick colors or filters on the 8-bit systems, it's always a taste thing. You will never replicate the look of a CRT on a LCD. The closest you will get is what ever the underlying emulation decides. With the NES, one palette only looks right with half the games, and another looks right with the other half. Depending on which games you played on a vintage CRT will determine if you think it looks wrong. Personally I know the violet sky is the "correct" output, but on a CRT most of us would probably have adjusted the hue, knowing that it is supposed to be blue. Likewise on the Castlevania game, the red-brown would probably be adjusted to look more red. Hence when you see blue in the Wii U, emulation, that's actually the emulators choice for it. However it also emulates all NES games much darker on the HDMI output. This is because the emulation was designed to look best on the Wii U's tablet screen.

That's the thing though, the build quality is not a consistent thing from vendor to vendor, or even product to product, even the software driver can be poor. People have been trained to buy products based on price, not the underlying quality. As a general consideration, a BT device can not have less latency than the same device wired, because the wired device is not supposed go through the radio. However it's entirely possible that simply "plugging in" a wireless device, only activates the charging circuit, and the wireless device continues to communicate over bluetooth.

NT is more commonly known to mean "New Technology/Technologies", as in a re-invention of something. See "Windows NT" and "Zeppelin NT" The next logical thing would be "Mega NT" if it did the SMS/Mega Drive/ Sega CD/32X, etc. Doing the full 32X might be out of reach for a single FPGA however, but that doesn't necessarily prevent implementing the enhanced VDP modes that add more colors to the Sega CD/MD games that otherwise aren't 32X software. Likewise, the power base converter was literately a pin converter, but one VDP mode was not present for a few SG1000 games because it wasn't in the Mega Drive's VDP but was in the SMS. At any rate basically the same PCB but with DE9 connectors for controllers, and a MD cartridge port would probably be what happens, if and when that happens. A pin converter for that could also allow other 9-pin controller devices to work with it. Considering that back in the day you could buy wired aftermarket controllers that worked on the NES and SMS, I'm thinking it would be trivial to have a "rewire" mode that just converts between them without killing the PCB. It would probably require sensing the controller by detecting what it does without power applied (the SNES controller actually works without any power applied (used to do this with the Parallel port adapter) but I presume that was just just a side effect of the power level from the signal pin, and a real SNES might not do that. USB introduces lag when it goes through the ASIC. It's usually not a measurable amount of latency, but depends on the chip used. USB operates, or can operate faster than the SNES controller. Bluetooth (basically wireless USB) on the other hand adds a lot of latency because it's converted from Bluetooth to USB, to whatever it's plugged into. Even when you play with a PS3 or a Wii, the bluetooth controllers on those are laggy, because they often have to compensate for the WiFi the console is also using. Bluetooth uses FHSS where as WiFi uses DSSS. So the more noise, the more latency will be induced from error correction. Non-DECT 2.4Ghz cordless landline phones also blast noise on that frequency. So it's not really possible to evaluate how much 2.4Ghz noise is present when a controller is tested/reviewed, but this is one of the reasons why Microsoft and Logitech made their own 2.4Ghz proprietary interfaces for their keyboards, mice and game controllers. No latency when you don't do the entire bluetooth/usb stack. It also makes the devices cheaper since they're usually driven by that USB dongle and not by the actual device. I've had two Xbox 360 wireless controllers sitting in a drawer that I've only used once. I insist on using my wired controller that I bought, and have got to the point where the left thumb stick has worn through the rubberized coating on it. So I probably won't buy wireless controllers for the Super NT, or if I do, it would probably one that can be played while plugged in. I don't like the weight of the wireless controllers due to the batteries and balance (wireless 360 controllers feel front-heavy) I don't own any 8bitdo stuff, but I see them every so often at BestBuy and sometimes want to buy one just as a PC controller, but I don't care for wireless stuff as I mentioned above. It's likely possible to get a "near-zero" latency with a bluetooth controller if the environment is controlled, but for all practical reasons, people will buy them and not notice a 1 frame lag, but will notice a 2 frame lag, as any game with tight controls (eg mario, megaman, any SHUMP) will feel like you're too slow.

The most common zapper pack-in game was Duck Hunt. Therefor, being able to play that on a CRT should have been a given. It would have been more interesting to find a way to actually use the zapper with a LCD, but we know that is physically impossible owing to how it actually works. One would need to invent a new kind of zapper that works like the wii-mote does and at that point you may as well just play it on the PC with a mouse. Maybe when VR stops sucking someone will come up with the right idea and have a software emulator that uses the motion tracking to replicate this. That's a long way off since we're still on "VR sucks, 2015 edition", requiring $2000 in equipment to not suck/get sick. There are no HDMI SNES options out there currently that are better than the stock SNES +framemeister. Retrobit/Hyperkin are flogging software emulators. Raspberry Pi's are doing the same. They're rubbish, expensive rubbish, trying to cash in on people who don't know better. This is one of the key reasons why people who have built FPGA SNES's have not released the VHDL for the chips, because they knew the people who sell these things would just steal it to build more rubbish knock-offs. As it is, have you seen what the "Supa Retron" looks like? http://atariage.com/forums/topic/268529-super-retron-hd-announced/?p=3904269 That's 90% similar shape to the Super NT, people who don't know better, will end up buying these on eBay/Amazon thinking they're getting the Super NT.

The first one I have, failed around 12 years ago, it was stored in the garage for about 2 years after it was moved 800km, in it's original box. The one my sister bought and later died, was left in her room while she went to college, and died somewhere between then and last year. The SFC I acquired off eBay died literately moments after it had been powered off here. It was shipped from Japan. The one I acquired from the used video game store, was dead when I got it. I figured between all of these I might be able to make one working one, but they all had the same CPU failure. The only working one is the GPM-02 one, from the 1993 production line, all of the dead ones are SHVC-CPU-01. So that is my worry is that if you have a working SNES, currently, it may still end up dead the next time it's packed up and moved. The common thing between all of these is that they were shipped or stored for a long period of time without being powered on. It's very likely as Keatah said, that some kind of thermal/humidity stress results in the CPU chip no longer being sealed and it just goes downhill from there. Since the CPU is not a off-the-shelf part, it can't be replaced with a good one. Any good CPU's are likely on newer boards. The funny thing is, the NES is probably built better, despite having mechanical flaws, and edge connector oxidization that lead to malfunctioning. Time will tell if the N64 has a worse death rate, but there are reports of them starting to die too.

It will be interesting if someone can do a 100% cycle-accurate 8088/8086 to run some of these old games that basically flip out when run on something too fast. Case examples being software designed for the PCjr/Tandy 1000, and original IBM 5150 PC model where they basically blow up on anything faster. (Ultima 2's divide by zero error being the one that comes to mind, but there's plenty of other games that simply run too fast, or emit hissing sound/noise instead of beeps because the PIT is too fast)

The Mini/Jr (SNS-001) is a 1995 1-chip model. AFAIK the 1-chip models do not have this problem. Only SFC/SNES models with SHVC-CPU-01 (which are the original 1990-1991 production models). The 1-chip models are more coveted for their better RGB output, but they're a little more buggy than models that have the CPU and PPU's separate. GPM-02 is the model I have that works is from 1993. Which goes back to the point earlier in the thread about "reference quality", There are at least three known encoder chips, and three versions of PPU2 before getting to the 1-chip models. So ones person's reference model quality is another person's "that doesn't look right".

Did you not see my picture of 3 dead SNES and one dead FC all SHVC-CPU-01 boards? They are ticking time bombs. Meanwhile my two NES systems which have been thrown in junk bins and been thrown around, still work, and they're much older. The first SNES that died was left in it's original packaging for a few years before trying to power it on, so no, the CPU absolutely is a time bomb, and doesn't even need to be powered on to do so. The GPM-02 that I have is the one that works and it only differs from the CPU-01 in revisions the chips and doesn't have the metal RF shield around the APU chips. A GPM-02 is also the one that jwdonal scoped for VeriSNES. So that model might last longer, but I'm not going to assume that it will last another 20 years, since you can't buy CRT's and a lot of analog video equipment is going to disappear over that time.

A HDMI to VGA output is cheaper. A HDMI to RGB PVM is likely the same trick. The Framemeister and OSSC are both FPGA devices, while the reverse isn't.

There is only one device that will play ALL SNES carts and output HDMI. Only the SuperScope games will not be playable and that is no different from the NT Mini by HDMI with the zapper. Hence the only real reason to ask for Analog outputs would be to use the SuperScope. People who have a SuperScope, likely have the physical cartridge, and I'm not aware of any aftermarket ones. The Retron5 and RetroFreak do not play all SNES carts because they do not emulate the SNES hardware interface. They simply do a "dump and run" and then use a software core on a conventional ARM chip. Neither of these devices are accurate or low latency, and I'd probably argue that the RetroFreak is the only one that is even viable. At $200+ USD, both of these. The Super NT is cheaper than the RetroFreak, plays all Super NES games and flash carts, and offers 1080p. The Retron5 probably costs less than $30 to make, and kevtris took one of them apart already and pointed out that it's basically rubbish (The other Retron models use reverse-engineered chips, but only do analog output because that's all they were designed to do.) It's very likely that the Retron 5 developer likely did what they did to cut out these chip manufacturers, which can't play carts with expansion chips either.) So the only competition to the Super NT is in fact the original SNES/SFC.

More like 1. Buy Super NT 2. Throw away broken SNES/FC systems With additional bonus of 3. Throw away rubbish CRT's and LCD panels kept around for their analog inputs. The Framemeister/OSSC would be considered redundant with a SuperNT, and since the SNES is the hardest console to get to work on these, that also solves that issue. Regardless if the SuperNT gets JB'd or not is irrelevant. The matter of fact is that most of the 1990 SHVC-CPU-01 production units are dead or dying either due to CPU chip failure, bad caps, or chassis plastic (yellowing) making them brittle. It's very possible to get a NOS unopened model from 1990, plug it in, and it won't work.

The HD Retrovision cables on a real SNES to a capture card or a CRT is a crapshoot. I bought it specifically so I didn't need to modify the console. At least with the SA7160 I can force certain settings, and I knew it would work in advance because I could send the S-Video's luma through it, I just had no idea what the color would look like till I got the cable. A HDMI 240p mode is not going to be what people think it is. HDMI 240p is 1440x240p or 720x240p as defined in the EIA/CEA-861 extension block. code 8, 240p, DAR 4:3, PAR 8:9, Pixel Clock 27.0 Mhz, 720(1440)x240p @ 59.94/60 Hz At first glance you'd go, "oh that looks right", but then remember the SNES can do interlaced 480i mode too, and how current TV's handle this, typically results in a resync step. Even on the SA7160, can deal with it, but there's a good several seconds where it looks like the software locked up.

You want to know something? If you use HD Retrovision's cable on a real SNES, how the TV or capture card operates is completely up in the air. The European/Japanese models had RGB out to be used with a RGB television, thus it was a known output. But those still sent the digital signal through an analog encoder. But in the US, if you plug one of these Retrovision cables in (Component Cable, results in 1440x240p or 720x240p depending on how your device reacts), you get something that looks like this, uncorrected: Take note of the shape of the black border and the aspect ratio.

Not all SD cards are built equal. Likewise NAND memory (flash) gets slower over time. There are some quite agonizingly slow usb flash drives out there. At least SD cards you know what you are getting. My 3DS's card feels really slow, but that's because I bought the largest fastest card available, and the actual way the 3DS communicates with the card is slow when you just browse what's on the device. It doesn't affect game play. At any rate the SD2SNES, or some more capable follow up is still the solution if the SuperNT doesn't play chip games in JB mode. So let's not get ahead of ourselves and assume anything about the SuperNT's capability beyond what kevtris already said (A6 Cyclone 5.) I've done the math a few times and I think the SuperNT might have the space for it, but that is very largely dependent on how much is used for the HDMI scaler. It is not unreasonable that plugging in some kind of bare second FPGA Cyclone V into the cartridge slot to act as an expansion chip could be done. We know it can be done, because that's what the SD2SNES does on top of emulating a cart. It just doubles the investment cost if that's the way things have to go.

The GB/GBC/GBA all use the same cart connector. The only difference between the GB/GBC and the GBA cart edge is the cart depth. When you place a GB cart in a GBA it sticks out of the GBA/DS about an inch. You know this obviously. As for the link connectors, the SGB2, Gameboy Pocket, Gameboy Light, all use a second generation connector, and the third generation devices (eg GBA/GB Player) can accept the second generation connectors. So it might be easier to acquire the third generation connectors from broken GBA non-backlit devices that I'm sure there's still plenty of them out there gathering dust. edit: Apparently AGB-005 (the official cable that allows 4 player play) is hard to find, though I see a few of them on eBay from 2-20$.

The SD2SNES has the most potential to actually support additional chips or even theoretical ones. The ones it supports so far are the DSP type chips, not the most complex CPU's, and realistically, it is large enough to do the SFX or SA1, but might not happen. Those games might require an as-yet undeveloped followup. The reason it doesn't support it has more to do with cost than anything else, and if you buy a SD2SNES currently, it would already cost more than the Super NT, depending on exchange rates. As it is, simply there is more value with the SD2SNES, and if and when something supports all the chips, that can supplant it, that bridge can be crossed then. Till then that's the only reason the chip carts cost $300 on eBay, while most others cost $10-$40. Literately out of the box. That's the same as how the NT Mini is sold. As I mentioned earlier in the thread and was rudely shouted down earlier. Any JB work would obviously come later, and even if Analogue decided not to support it this time, wouldn't stop anyone from JB'ing it anyways. Kevtris is not the only guy who knows how to program a FPGA either, but why duplicate the work. Short of some hardcore "everything must be open source or it's evil" type of people that you frequently encounter online when you don't GPL software.

You wouldn't do this simply because that's not how the hardware timing works. The point of the FPGA console is to replicate the timing, and hence accuracy. Just on principle, I can pretty much guarantee that the Super NT will only work with cartridges (and flash carts) out of the box. What we're all speculating on is IF it will be JB'd and when, and what do we get with that. Also I think some people are make gross speculations on profit motives of Analogue. Unless they literately come out and say it, let's not put words in their mouths. It's just as likely they can re-use the Super NT PCB for a Mega NT and just remap the cartridge pins, leaving everything else unchanged. This clearly wouldn't work to allow a SegaCD or 32X to work (it's unlikely a 32X would work just based on how it actually worked) AFAIK, the 32X just passes through the analog AV. This means that a real 32X would still require an analog TV. Otherwise the MegaNT would need to have it's own framemeister-like FPGA in it. There goes your latency. This is one of those cases where if someone really wanted to make all the Sega hardware work, they would be better off aiming for the CDX and include 32X as a bonus. Point of interest, the SH2, there is already a core out there, and runs on a Spartan 6 (j-core) with 25K logic elements. So perhaps such a device could in fact support the MD/CD and 32X with two cartridge slots, and use a USB-attached CD/DVD-ROM for real discs. Or just read correctly ripped discs off a sd-card. Aside from the Genesis, they could also do "power base converter" in the same unit thus it having 3 slots. The PBC doesn't actually have any Master System hardware in it, though it can't run SG1000 games. That can be rectified. Likewise the Sega Card and Game Gear could be used on the same device either with yet another slot, or just a pin converter. This is why I think putting words in Analogue's mouth about profits isn't very forward thinking. Why make 4 essentially identical devices, when you can produce one device that runs everything and only have to support one product. The fact that the NT Mini can and does run all the 8-bit games already is not going to destroy a market for a MegaNT that can play 8 and 16-bit games.

1. Donor carts, No it wouldn't be directly possible because of where the chip exists in the cart. The Mask ROM, and SRAM are always connected. At least two pinout maps out there suggest that the south end of the SA1 chip connects to the SNES bus and the north end connects to the MASK ROM along the same bus. The problem I see is that even if the ROM/SRAM is prevented from being accessed by the FPGA CPU, there is nothing stopping the SA1 from accessing it. The most likely scenario here is really to have the SD2SNES or some other flashcart emulate the chip alone if additional FPGA power is needed. But it's likely that all the chips could be emulated by the NT Mini, just not all at the same time (and that's an unlikely configuration.) So you might have to switch between "SNES+SFX","SNES+DSP's","SNES+SA1" modes or something in the same way you'd switch between a GB, SGB, GBC. 2. In theory yes, for practical reasons, unlikely. The SuperFX chip is a RISC CPU that acts like a GPU in modern contexts. In theory you could "overclock" it. The Cx4 chip is a DSP by Capcom DSP1-4 are DSP's by Nintendo S-DD1 is basically a hardware image decompression chip S-RTC is a real time clock SA-1 is a faster 5A22 that acts in parallel with the system CPU, hence this requires roughly the same amount of FPGA space as the main CPU SPC7110 is another image decompression chip plus a RTC ST010,011 and 018 are all CPU's used for AI in games, of which the latter two are only used in Shogi titles, and the 018 is out of reach for a FPGA, having CPU power closer to that of the GBA. If you could access all of them at the same time, you'd jam up the expansion bus, and it's likely that something like the SA-1 and SuperFX would never be able to communicate with each other. Between the SNES and the Amiga, both systems essentially were early attempts at separating the subsystems to make use of parallelism and waste less bus bandwidth. Where as on the PC at the time, absolutely everything went over a single bus, and manual configuration of addresses and IRQ's were needed. There was no parallelism. If you stuck something like a RAM expansion board into an ISA slot, during the memory test you'd get the onboard memory to test at normal speed, but as soon as it hit the expansion board it would be slowed down to the expansion bus speed, a bus that was shared with the video, sound and other things. I imagine on the SNES, if it were possible to stick something like the SuperFX and the S-DD1 on the same bus, you'd have to use the main CPU to pass data between them, thus slowing the bus bandwidth in half. In theory though, it's a FPGA, you could probably overclock all the chips and the bus. But you'd never be able to get a game to work on to different versions of the JB firmware, let alone any software emulators in order to debug it.

For Laptops, Mobile devices and such, HDMI to VGA adapters use one of these (Pretty much every image I can find on the internet shows the same chips or a Continum one): http://www.ite.com.tw/en/product/view?mid=30 And they pull 300+ma from the HDMI port. So they don't work on some lower power devices like the Pi. So yeah, there is a conversion step, but it's too simple to be a frame buffer.

That coax input is the last vestiges of region locking. So if a TV manufacturer decides that they can save money by producing just one television for the world market, that makes economic sense to them. Cord cutting only makes this a more competitive thing to do. So it's very likely you will not see coax inputs on "value" models or high end models, depending on the region. For example, one of the first hits I get for a recommended 4K television is http://www.lg.com/uk/tvs/lg-OLED55E7N, note the UK site. Scroll down the specs and you will see this: Digital TV Reception(Terrestrial,Cable,Satellite) DVB-T2/C/S2 (Main/Sub) and RF In 3 (RF, Sat Main/Sub) So yes, 3 Coax inputs. (The manual only shows two though?) http://www.lg.com/ca_en/tvs/lg-OLED55E7P 1 RF in , no reference to ATSC The manual for both actually gets to the point Manual for the UK model shows this: and Where as the Canada model shows this: Take note that the manual actually says the non-UK model can not receive UltraHD programming, period. You'll have to use an external Tuner whenever it becomes available. If you want a 4K TV where that RF is useful, don't buy one this year. As it is, DVB-T is pretty much the winner for terrestrial broadcast. Though really its a winner among losers since DVB-(T/T2/S/S2/C) is used by Europe and Asia cable and satellite, while ATSC is used by North America OTA only. The DVB-T2 standard for Europe upgrades that from mpeg-2 (h.262) to mpeg-4 part 10 (h.264). Since we're now on h.265 and patents are starting to roll off on h.264, you might start seeing h.264 video as OTA (ATSC 3.0), but likely only in markets that have open spectrum, because otherwise we go through yet another round of "throw out your old equipment, here's a $40 set top box credit" *edit: point if interest, DirectTV uses DVB-S2. However there are no DVB-S capable TV's in North America.

I'm arguing on the basis of that nobody can use the coax input on their TV, and that adds probably $300 to the cost of a television if it's at 4K due to the need to licence the patents for h264 and h265 in ATSC 2.0 and produce hardware decoders. People who have IPTV boxes or separate cable boxes don't need it, and that is nearly 100% of the market for high end televisions. I'd actually make the suggestion that you're not seeing coax inputs on some televisions precisely because it's cheap and there are no ATSC 3.0/QAM chipsets available for mass production. Korea only started this year. What you're asking for is a coax input that is unusable at present, and will likely remain unusable unless you want to only ever receive 720p/1080i on your 4K TV.