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FPGA Based Videogame System


kevtris

Interest in an FPGA Videogame System  

682 members have voted

  1. 1. I would pay....

  2. 2. I Would Like Support for...

  3. 3. Games Should Run From...

    • SD Card / USB Memory Sticks
    • Original Cartridges
    • Hopes and Dreams
  4. 4. The Video Inteface Should be...


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Where I would love to see Sega CD and PCE Super CD2 / Duo CD support on this console, I just don't think its doable. I've not seen anyone successfully do anything for optical media other than the USB-GDROM controller. I'm not a hardware guy so I have no idea. I'm just going under the assumption if it was doable we would see more than emulators out there on the market.

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Would love to see the Zimba come to fruition, and if it is as good as I think it will be, it will be an awesome way to save shelf space.

 

.. there is no market for a new cartridge-based console, given all the costs/limitations. They have no one to blame but themselves but they don't want to accept the truth.

 

Z3K appeals to fans of real classic games - that's a given. I wonder how well it will attract new customers and if that metric is a deciding factor for production or not?

I don't see much room for a new cartridge system, especially with the contemporary smartphone being the #1 choice in gaming platforms. I don't know who to "blame" for this though. I do know can’t simply pin it on the consumer. The average consumer is being incessantly bombarded with persuasive advertising unlike anything in years past. It’s no wonder they ignore old-school.

 

 

And the modern consumer loves digital downloads. And my highly random and informal survey I did this summer says so. +90% of 150-200 townsfolk I asked say they don't want to bother with physical media and the hassles of setting up a box with wires and controllers, accounts and logins, updates and patches. When I mentioned the old-school stuff, they immediately said the stuff is too old, rickety, and ebay junk that needs a-fixing. Not surprisingly, the more well-to-do the interviewee the more they said they don't want to bother and were outright disinterested in talking about used consoles of a bygone era.

 

When I pried into the cartridge thing, most said they heard of how it was done in the old days and some recanted that their parents had that or they themselves did. 3 actually had their childhood systems still to this day; and that opened up further questions to which all of'em said it was packed away. Nobody was interested in new cartridges citing inconvenience as the #1 detractor. Other reasons were fear of losing the cartridge or having to wait for a mail-order delivery since no store sells cartridges anymore. Some said cartridges were boring.

 

On the other hand everyone was quick to extol the virtues of tablet and smartphone gaming. Convenience, cost, no hardware fussing, easily replaceable, incredibly huge selection of cheap simple games. And the list rolled on into more minutiae. Some were even unaware of how automatic updates worked. And others said they just get rid of an app that needed updating - just get the new version and be done with it. No updating!! :ponder:

 

 

Where I would love to see Sega CD and PCE Super CD2 / Duo CD support on this console, I just don't think its doable. I've not seen anyone successfully do anything for optical media other than the USB-GDROM controller. I'm not a hardware guy so I have no idea. I'm just going under the assumption if it was doable we would see more than emulators out there on the market.

 

Oh it's doable, don't kid yourself. The question is does anyone actually want to take the necessary time and energy to make it happen?

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A new system could allow cartridge ROMs to be offloaded onto flash memory in the system (perhaps with a way to register this was done to avoid piracy). Now you have (1) a nice collectible with accompanying media, (2) a backup in case something ever happens to the flash memory, and (3) a game which can still be loaded off a menu based software system while your collectible is safely tucked away...

Edited by doug0909
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And as I suggested in the other thread, there may also be a way to do necessary software patches, like a slot for an SD card with patch information for all games (and unlike modern patches this would allow games to be played in their original form... Just don't put anything on the SD card...)

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If Zimba 3000 displays games in 240p and have component + composite video outputs I'm in!

 

Yep I already have that. My cores all emit their video in exactly the same way the original system did, down to the clock cycle. This includes stuff like the Channel F which outputs 263 scanlines (instead of the more usual 262), and the RCA Studio 2's strange video scanline timing.

 

Here's a pie in the sky thought. Could it have a scan line generator?

 

I already have this on the Hi Def NES adapter, so all that stuff on there will directly transfer to this.

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Yep I already have that. My cores all emit their video in exactly the same way the original system did, down to the clock cycle. This includes stuff like the Channel F which outputs 263 scanlines (instead of the more usual 262), and the RCA Studio 2's strange video scanline timing.

 

Thanks for your reply Kevtris!!

I was planning to buy a Nintendo Wii to emulate old consoles in 240p -- but now I'll wait for Zumba 3000's release. :)

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Yep I already have that. My cores all emit their video in exactly the same way the original system did, down to the clock cycle. This includes stuff like the Channel F which outputs 263 scanlines (instead of the more usual 262), and the RCA Studio 2's strange video scanline timing.

 

If you get this up and running before I get a chance to fix my busted Channel F...well, then I will have no choice but to buy your product.

FYI - the Channel F has been in the closet, broken for at least three years, so don't rush on my account. :D

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Yep I already have that. My cores all emit their video in exactly the same way the original system did, down to the clock cycle. This includes stuff like the Channel F which outputs 263 scanlines (instead of the more usual 262), and the RCA Studio 2's strange video scanline timing.

 

Was just wondering about PAL cores, in particular if you have or intend to do Atari 2600 and NES? NTSC isn't a problem if I'm using ROMs off an SD card as almost all TVs over here since the early 90s have been able to do both. Just for when using cores with my original PAL carts, I still have all my original ones from 80s and 90s that would be nice to use. If I remember correctly the PAL 2600 pallette is completely different and speeds an issue with the NES.

 

How's the progress going? Will you be doing more youtube videos on this showing progress like on the hi-def NES? Whilst on the subject of hi-def NES, do you know if/when they will be sold in kit form?

 

Thanks

Edited by Radfoo
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Was just wondering about PAL cores, in particular if you have or intend to do Atari 2600 and NES? NTSC isn't a problem if I'm using ROMs off an SD card as almost all TVs over here since the early 90s have been able to do both. Just for when using cores with my original PAL carts, I still have all my original ones from 80s and 90s that would be nice to use. If I remember correctly the PAL 2600 pallette is completely different and speeds an issue with the NES.

 

How's the progress going? Will you be doing more youtube videos on this showing progress like on the hi-def NES? Whilst on the subject of hi-def NES, do you know if/when they will be sold in kit form?

 

Thanks

 

Yes I fully intend to do PAL cores too. previously, I didn't have a PAL capable monitor, which kinda put the kibosh on doing those. I have PAL timing/audio done for NES because it's in the Hi Def NES adapter. Also, the 2600 core came later so it supports PAL. The timing on PAL 2600 is the same as NTSC as far as I know, with the difference that you just emit 312 scanlines instead of the usual 262. There's a second burst oscillator for the PAL burst from what I recall. There's a palette for PAL since that obviously is totally different from NTSC.

 

Fortunately, most systems that have a PAL mode are just small changes to the NTSC version, so I don't anticipate any problems there.

 

The Hi Def NES kit will be sold soon; the website's going now I think. The main holdup is me finishing the updates. I want to release the update before we sell them in general circulation.

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I'm curious how difficult it would be to program the Super FX or SA-1 chip of a select few SNES carts into an FPGA based system. From my understanding, the designer of the SD2SNES multicart apparently never finished incorporating Super FX support, although it probably is possible on the FPGA used. However, he mentioned that SA-1 support probably wouldn't work on the hardware he had.

 

Anyway, if anyone can finish a fully-supported SNES FPGA core, it's gotta be Kevtris. I'm really excited about the prospect of this idea after having followed the Hidef NES for quite a while. I'd be willing to spend probably 250+ on this kind of a project, especially if it captures the 16-bit glory of SNES/Genesis in 1080p.

 

Also, it's annoying when some other uninformed people compare the Hidef NES or projects such as this with just using a Framemeister or upscaler/converter box. Clearly, they don't understand the loss incurred by analog video outputs.

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I'm curious how difficult it would be to program the Super FX or SA-1 chip of a select few SNES carts into an FPGA based system. From my understanding, the designer of the SD2SNES multicart apparently never finished incorporating Super FX support, although it probably is possible on the FPGA used. However, he mentioned that SA-1 support probably wouldn't work on the hardware he had.

 

Anyway, if anyone can finish a fully-supported SNES FPGA core, it's gotta be Kevtris. I'm really excited about the prospect of this idea after having followed the Hidef NES for quite a while. I'd be willing to spend probably 250+ on this kind of a project, especially if it captures the 16-bit glory of SNES/Genesis in 1080p.

 

Also, it's annoying when some other uninformed people compare the Hidef NES or projects such as this with just using a Framemeister or upscaler/converter box. Clearly, they don't understand the loss incurred by analog video outputs.

 

Yes, I wanted to eventually try my hand at doing the expansion stuff for SNES. I would be really happy to see super mario RPG or kirby's dreamland 3 running on my FPGA. First though I would have to get a decently debugged SNES rolling though. Those expansion chips are pretty insane in their own right, but at least good documentation exists for them so it'll be a "simple" matter of programming... i.e. a long hard slog through the verilog mines.

 

I think people just don't like the idea of having to buy something else to get better HDMI out of their NES. they are kinda committed to RGB+upscaling now because they probably have several modified systems and use RGB on genny/snes/etc.

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The Hi Def NES kit will be sold soon; the website's going now I think. The main holdup is me finishing the updates. I want to release the update before we sell them in general circulation.

Yes, get those game glitches fixed on the HDMI addon. Everdrive compatibility is a must too. If it works on real hardware it should work on your implementation, even if flash carts are redundant. Harmony carts would still be needed for instance for 2600 melody support unless you can implement the ARM coprocessor.

 

One thing I'm wondering about the FPGAs. Consoles used a large variety of different clock oscillators. Does the FPGA need all of these various clock crystals on board in order to work? The NTSC and PAL burst rates are a given, but each console seemed to have a different clock divider and many consoles had multiple clocks for various CPUs. And timings need to be extremely accurate, like 5 digit tolerance in many cases. How do you implement all these different speeds without a separate clock crystal for like every console ever made? Or do you have like just one incredibly fast clock for the FPGA simply divide the signal by fractional amounts as needed?

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Yes, get those game glitches fixed on the HDMI addon. Everdrive compatibility is a must too. If it works on real hardware it should work on your implementation, even if flash carts are redundant. Harmony carts would still be needed for instance for 2600 melody support unless you can implement the ARM coprocessor.

 

One thing I'm wondering about the FPGAs. Consoles used a large variety of different clock oscillators. Does the FPGA need all of these various clock crystals on board in order to work? The NTSC and PAL burst rates are a given, but each console seemed to have a different clock divider and many consoles had multiple clocks for various CPUs. And timings need to be extremely accurate, like 5 digit tolerance in many cases. How do you implement all these different speeds without a separate clock crystal for like every console ever made? Or do you have like just one incredibly fast clock for the FPGA simply divide the signal by fractional amounts as needed?

 

The ED has been fixed apparently. It wasn't really my fault that it didn't work. Everything else I tried other than the ED worked, and ironically the early everdrive rev worked! that's what I tested with and it worked so I didn't know it was incompatible until it was shipping in the nt's. The only real remaining problem is Castlevania 3 but I figured that one out so I will implement that into the update I will release.

 

As for clocking, the cyclone v has an awesome fractional-N PLL in it so I can generate any clock, down to the Hz pretty much. My last FPGA board had an external fractional N PLL so I could dial in any frequency I wanted. That's how I could support all the various clock rates. The cyclone v has a 32 bit fractional N and the chip I used on the last FPGA board was 24 bits, which was enough for around 2-3Hz of resolution at the clock rates of interest.

 

For the Z3K, I was going to have a 74.25MHz oscillator on the board feeding into the scaler and the system FPGAs and use a dual clocking scheme so that the scaler generates the clock for HDMI modes and the system FPGA generates the clock for the analog modes. The former will use a phase accumulator (which is how the HDMI adapter works), and the latter will use the fractional N PLL on the cyclone v for high accuracy which is required for the analog outputs. The scaler FPGA will most likely be a Max 10 which does not have a fractional N PLL... it's very similar to the cyclone 3 I got on the HDMI adapter and I will do the same kind of clocking methodology there to accurately align the frame rate of the target with the HDMI. I will use the clock switchover mode on the PLL in the scaler chip to properly lock onto the target system's video for analog modes, so the same HW will function for both in the system FPGA. This is basically an exact analog for how things work right now on the Hi Def NES adapter so I know it works.

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Thanks for the info. So it basically uses fractional clocks to generate all the signals like I suspected. Those FPGAs are truly powerful hardware.

 

And it's ironic the Everdrive worked with BIOSv3 and not BIOSv4. Works on clones even but somehow locks up with breakout mods such as CopyNES and HDMI NES! As a result, I can only use it on my AV Famicom or Super Retro Trio despite having necessary adapters. And I've got PowerPak for my NES. My ED was a launch model with v3 OS but I updated it a few weeks after they dropped. Krikzz pulled the v4 update and never publicly released the v3 update for people to downgrade their Everdrives but apparently developers and beta testers have access somehow. Looks like the OS v13 only fixes the Everdrives for people with the v3 BIOS which is odd. I sent mine back to Kirkzz a couple months back to reflash it because it quit working unexpectedly. I still don't know what BIOS version I've got and I'm not going to tamper with it and risk bricking it again. Mine is a gold painted Famicom Deluxe Edition Preorder (serial #007) from Stone Age Gamer so it's somewhat collectible. It's getting a bit of paint chipping on the edges now but only because I've used it.

Edited by stardust4ever
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Wow, 181 voters and counting... I never thought I'd see a poll on the AtariAge forums get so much attention. :D

I registered just to vote in the poll :3

 

A project like this may not appeal to casual retro gamers or people doing emulation boxes (Raspberry Pi 2 setup < $60 delivered), but for everyone else this is a no-brainer. Even if it were just for NES, $250 would be immediately justified for having an accurate console that outputs HDMI and essentially has what would be the best flash cart possible built in. An NES loaded that way would already cost more than that. 1000+ orders would be a cinch if properly advertised.

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I registered just to vote in the poll :3

 

A project like this may not appeal to casual retro gamers or people doing emulation boxes (Raspberry Pi 2 setup < $60 delivered), but for everyone else this is a no-brainer. Even if it were just for NES, $250 would be immediately justified for having an accurate console that outputs HDMI and essentially has what would be the best flash cart possible built in. An NES loaded that way would already cost more than that. 1000+ orders would be a cinch if properly advertised.

You should check out the AVS. I think it's right up your alley...

http://nintendoage.com/forum/messageview.cfm?catid=7&threadid=92557

 

B01817B5-F2E5-E47C-FB09137106CACA6F.png

CB27D08A-01A8-69B7-4515AF4BA9FC0C1F.png

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You should check out the AVS. I think it's right up your alley...

http://nintendoage.com/forum/messageview.cfm?catid=7&threadid=92557

 

B01817B5-F2E5-E47C-FB09137106CACA6F.png

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Looks pretty sweet! I'm torn between the N64 HDMI mod, the AVS, and the NES HDMI mod. School's made me broke so I gotta choose one :3

 

Shhh don't let marketers get involved or they're going to start releasing one machine per core with the same innards :-D

Hmm...could these cores be translated to an ASIC? Because if made in bulk (e.g. if Kevtris licensed the cores to one of the clone makers), these would be really cheap and accurate clone consoles. Can't be updated or have a lot of bells and whistles, but if the cores are 100% tested it'd be a good option for people only interested in a few consoles.

Edited by SnoopKatt
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Hmm...could these cores be translated to an ASIC? Because if made in bulk (e.g. if Kevtris licensed the cores to one of the clone makers), these would be really cheap and accurate clone consoles. Can't be updated or have a lot of bells and whistles, but if the cores are 100% tested it'd be a good option for people only interested in a few consoles.

I think that's how to the C64 DTV came about, originally FPGA C-One then the ASIC. If not directly, certainly the knowledge learnt created a low cost game/joystick in a box combo.

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Looks pretty sweet! I'm torn between the N64 HDMI mod, the AVS, and the NES HDMI mod. School's made me broke so I gotta choose one :3

 

Hmm...could these cores be translated to an ASIC? Because if made in bulk (e.g. if Kevtris licensed the cores to one of the clone makers), these would be really cheap and accurate clone consoles. Can't be updated or have a lot of bells and whistles, but if the cores are 100% tested it'd be a good option for people only interested in a few consoles.

Well if said clone company wanna pay the $10,000+ or whatever Kevtris wants for his core, to master an ASIC chip with it and throw in a cart or SD slot and HDMI jack, knock themselves out. Prolly cripple Brian Parker aka Bunnyboy aka RetroUSB's release of the AVS though...

 

I do want the AVS now. When Kevtris release is all-in-one kit in a couple years, I'll buy one of those as well. :D

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Well if said clone company wanna pay the $10,000+ or whatever Kevtris wants for his core, to master an ASIC chip with it and throw in a cart or SD slot and HDMI jack, knock themselves out. Prolly cripple Brian Parker aka Bunnyboy aka RetroUSB's release of the AVS though...

 

I do want the AVS now. When Kevtris release is all-in-one kit in a couple years, I'll buy one of those as well. :D

I'm pretty torn on that one... He's put a lot of hard work into it, but the AVS is definitely beyond what a regular NES can do between four score and all of the other goodies he's adding in. I'd guess that while a clone with composite output wouldn't cost more than $20-$30, HDMI models would be a bit more since they would probably need beefier chips, so it wouldn't be competition at a 1/5th of the price.

 

I'm definitely down for both too... I hope AVS pre-orders open soon!

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