FPGA Based Videogame System

[Wolf_]

Modern placement machines have no preference for orientation. Early ones absolutely did.

 

Additionally I believe (but cannot confirm) it was early layout software that liked right angles, 0, 90, 180, 270, 360. Anything in between simply wasn't available. And of course there is aesthetic influence of the engineer doing it up.

 

People also tend to work in grids. Look at most city layouts, there's a regular grid. Like boards. Like microchips. Wonder when we'll see complex chips like uP have non-linear curved wiring? If ever. I know they do it in micro gas-chromatographs and other chemical analyzers. RF too, RF hates right angles - too many radiating points. That's why you see USB data lines curved on a board full of straight traces.

 

 

[atmn]

 

 

Whole Europe are like the Boston mess.

 

Remembered the first time in NYC, it was a breeze to walk around. And the actual adresses make sense, first city i've ever been that logic in that way. At least Manhattan.

 

 

 

Well, on topic. Are there any news on the Intv-core? Maybe the paid work could be programming 500 Hi-Def kits?

 

Wish there was a Hi-Def NES Deluxe or something with space to implement analoge outputs as well as 5x, custom palettes and such..

[Andromeda Stardust]

 

People also tend to work in grids. Look at most city layouts, there's a regular grid. Like boards. Like microchips. Wonder when we'll see complex chips like uP have non-linear curved wiring? If ever. I know they do it in micro gas-chromatographs and other chemical analyzers. RF too, RF hates right angles - too many radiating points. That's why you see USB data lines curved on a board full of straight traces.

Yeah but typically those curves are in 45 degree increments. Sometimes I love looking at old PCBs. The CX-40 joystick, the CX-80 trackball, and early NES controllers all have these beautiful curvy traces, where everything in the past 30 years is ridgid and angular.

 

I kinda love the honeybee. They built their houses out of hexagons. Humans seem to love the rectangle, rarely seen in nature.

[Keatah]

While maybe not the clearest examples, these are from hand drawn masks.

 

And these are other amusing ways of wiring up parts.

 

And I love diodes! First electronic part I could equate to my Mini-Labs pump kit. A one-way valve. And the mystery of how it could pick up radio stations without power! And I could see inside them. Though I think resistors were the first parts I truly understood - they slowed down the electricity.

Edited April 20, 2017 by Keatah

[fishbob]

I have been trying to game save with the NES core the game super Mario bros and I not getting how to do it. This is what I have done:

 

1. select+down ( which brings up the folder where the rom is )

 

2a. select ( really exit? B-yes A-back and doesn't get me where I want to be)

 

2b start ( which allows me to get to the core menu )

 

In the core menu there is a selection for ram saving and its set to prompt.

 

But I don't get a prompt or know when it happens.

[killersquirel]

Do you mean Super MARIO Bros. 3? The first one doesn't save. Go into your options and check off the option for it to always ask to save a game. When you go to the menu by pressing select + down on any game that has a save it will prompt you asking if you would like to save the game. Press the B button to save or The A button to not save the game.

[fishbob]

Do you mean Super MARIO Bros. 3? The first one doesn't save. Go into your options and check off the option for it to always ask to save a game. When you go to the menu by pressing select + down on any game that has a save it will prompt you asking if you would like to save the game. Press the B button to save or The A button to not save the game.

I meant Super Mario Bros. That explains why I didn't see a prompt. Thanks

[Sneakyturtleegg]

I know this is a Rom hack/patch, but Zelda the Legend of link loads and plays on the NT Mini, but won't save. It is MMC5/Mapper 5; PRG:64; CHR:128; Battery-backed SRAM; Submapper is set to 0; PRG RAM under battery = 32k. I suspect it has something to do with the Nes 2.0 submapper. Does anyone know if editing a submapper is a quick fix to get it to save?

Edited April 21, 2017 by Sneakyturtleegg

[Andromeda Stardust]

While maybe not the clearest examples, these are from hand drawn masks.

sl7.JPG$(KGrHqYOKocE6vyuSoknBQ5Cph2(0g~~60_1.JPG

 

And these are other amusing ways of wiring up parts.

2715642_orig.jpg6849022_orig.jpg

 

And I love diodes! First electronic part I could equate to my Mini-Labs pump kit. A one-way valve. And the mystery of how it could pick up radio stations without power! And I could see inside them. Though I think resistors were the first parts I truly understood - they slowed down the electricity.

800px-Germanium_Diode_1N60.jpgcrystal-radio-germanium-diode.gifdiode-2598193.jpgsl9.JPG

Technically resistors don't slow down electricity. It passes through wires at nearly the speed of light. Resistance just makes it harder to pass. And man, those are some funky designs. Are they from your collection of odd vintage stuff, or around the web?

[Andromeda Stardust]

Do you mean Super MARIO Bros. 3? The first one doesn't save. Go into your options and check off the option for it to always ask to save a game. When you go to the menu by pressing select + down on any game that has a save it will prompt you asking if you would like to save the game. Press the B button to save or The A button to not save the game.

None of the NES Marios save. Except FDS Lost Levels which only store the completion count.

[Keatah]

Technically resistors don't slow down electricity. It passes through wires at nearly the speed of light. Resistance just makes it harder to pass. And man, those are some funky designs. Are they from your collection of odd vintage stuff, or around the web?

 

I pulled it from the web. Though I still have some stuff like it. The round one is mechanical ram. There's a hard disk in there with hundreds of heads and it is from a battleship ballistic computer. Look up Librascope.

 

I know how resistors work, but slowing the electrons down was the best a 5 year old kid could do back then!

[Andromeda Stardust]

I pulled it from the web. Though I still have some stuff like it. The round one is mechanical ram. There's a hard disk in there with hundreds of heads and it is from a battleship ballistic computer. Look up Librascope.

 

I know how resistors work, but slowing the electrons down was the best a 5 year old kid could do back then!

Electrons travel fast; there's just less of them!

[Asaki]

Cool, I'm getting spam about Kevtris in my Facebook feed now @_@ https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/kevtris-kevin-horton-cyrogenics-retro-gaming?utm_source=mbfb

[cacophony]

I know this is a Rom hack/patch, but Zelda the Legend of link loads and plays on the NT Mini, but won't save. It is MMC5/Mapper 5; PRG:64; CHR:128; Battery-backed SRAM; Submapper is set to 0; PRG RAM under battery = 32k. I suspect it has something to do with the Nes 2.0 submapper. Does anyone know if editing a submapper is a quick fix to get it to save?

 

Can you try it and let us know? (I would if I had any idea how to do it) A number of us were hoping for a way to make saves work on this rom.

[rezb1t]

I tried giving Legend of Link an iNES 2.0 submapper of 1 but it didn't seem to help things

Edited April 21, 2017 by rezb1t

[Sneakyturtleegg]

I tried giving Legend of Link an iNES 2.0 submapper of 1 also. I am stumped. Just looking to see if anyone else had any luck.

[RevQuixo]

Do we know the version that we are using is properly patched...it looks like the author released an IPS for it as recently as this January.

 

I just freshly patched it..let me give it a shot...nope it says it saves, but then it doesn't find the save when it loads,

Edited April 21, 2017 by RevQuixo

[kevtris]

Hi,

 

Not seeing a normal "Friday" update - from sir Kevtris

 

Is it safe to conclude this "wraps" the regular weekly jailbrake updates for the NT Mini?

 

I'd really like to see the 7800 resolution issue fixed for analogue/15 khz output, since 1.5. Did anyone else have the issue I mentioned? really tweaked my PVM running 7800

 

Ok - totally understood on the change in frequency of updates due to Kevtris's other priorities...just curious if there's any formal feedback/tracking of exceptions/issues.

 

BTW - the Nintendo Classic has been discontinued....long live the new flesh (aka the NT Mini)

 

Yeah unfortunately I didn't have time to release the last two cores yet. They require more processing to get them onto the mini and right now I'm back to working 10-12 hour days, 7 days a week on paid stuff so it will be awhile. When I do get a break I don't really feel like touching anything else.

 

The 7800 outputs 320 pixels across so the menu gets higher resolution because of it. I tested it on my PVM and it seemed to work OK. The 7800 is a pain because of this higher resolution and all the extra special casing it took to make it work.

 

Kevtris,

 

I mentioned a while back that I dumped all of my NES games using the CopyNES Mini. I was able to get all of my games dumped and verified against the No-Intro DAT file by stripping the header bytes (their checksums exclude the header). However, looking a little closer, I see that about half of them differ from my previously downloaded/verified ROMs in the header, with the Mirroring bit the differnce for most (if not all). It seems that nearly all the ROMs dumped via CopyNES Mini are set for Vertical mirroring, while most of the download ROMs use Horizontal.

 

Mega Man 2 is one such example. The downloaded ROM uses Horizontal mirroring, and according to http://datacrystal.romhacking.net/wiki/Mega_Man_IIthat's correct (NesCartDB, for comparison, lists mirroring as "Mapper Ctrl" for this game). My dumped version is Vertical, though. The dumped version still plays fine on both the Nt Mini as well as an emulator.

 

So... I'm not sure if there's some bug here or not. The difference doesn't seem consequential, but I'd like to understand what's going on. After going through all this trouble, I'd like my dumps to at least be accurate. :-)

 

Can you weigh in here? I can certainly provide more info if you'd like (eg., see if there's a common mapper/plugin used in all of the game with this difference, etc.).

 

Yeah the mirroring bit defaults to vertical if no mirroring is specified (i.e. it's mapper controlled). This shouldn't matter, since the mapper controls it, so it isn't used. I could see it causing problems trying to CRC/verify the ROM against an existing one, however. This was answered in another post but I thought I'd say it too.

[Wolf_]

 

Yeah unfortunately I didn't have time to release the last two cores yet.

Does that mean we won't be getting the FDS, Atari 5200, Atari Lynx, Wonderswan, NeoGeo Pocket Color, or TurboGrafx-16? Or simply that those are the last two cores you've got mostly ironed out and the rest may still be a thing but with a more significant delay?

[kevtris]

Has anybody had any luck with the master system micro machines game?

I unsuccessfully tried a bunch of different core settings, and am digging up various copies of it now.

 

You need to change the extension of the file to make it use the codemasters mapper. This is discussed in the readme file under the sms or gg directory.

 

Some of the GG versions of SMS games were actually using the SMS mode of the GG (literally the GG runs the game as an SMS game and does scaling at the display level only), if this is one of those I am not surprised it has issues either way or maybe kevtris core for the GG does not implement SMS mode as it has an SMS core after all (like he did for 7800 core, no 2600 mode).

 

Again the VDP2 may have made it to NTSC land in SMS2 form but not sure if the 60Hz would allow it to run fine in that config (as mentioned if MicroMachines behaves like Xenon 2 it only kind of works but not really), we'll let kevtris chime in.

 

I fully support the mode that codemasters used- In fact I played through about half of Cosmic Spacehead. This uses the new video mode (224 high). I didn't test micromachines though, but I tested 2 of the other codemasters games and they seemed to work OK.

 

 

All of the work on the Nt Mini cores will directly benefit the Z3K, so it seemed pretty relevant to this thread.

 

Yes, that is why the updates are here. the mini is my FPGA "Dev board" of choice right now since it exists, you can buy it, and people have been using it. Even if the cores will eventually be on the Z3K. I will have posts about that in here when the time comes.

 

Got a design question I've been wondering about.

 

Whats the benefit to place a square shaped IC such as the FPGA.s at a 45 degree angle on the PCB?

 

Others answered this, but it is because of route-ability. By turning the chip 45 degrees, it exposes two sides or rows of the chip at once to each cardinal direction. The only slight downside is the height/width of the package "grows" by 1.41 times, due to the hypotenuse of the right triangle created by the diagonal dimension of the package, but this is a small price to pay for 2x the visible pins/pads/balls. I usually turn large chips 45 degrees this way. This can be seen on the hi def, and that cart emulator board I made awhile back.

[kevtris]

Yeah but typically those curves are in 45 degree increments. Sometimes I love looking at old PCBs. The CX-40 joystick, the CX-80 trackball, and early NES controllers all have these beautiful curvy traces, where everything in the past 30 years is ridgid and angular.

 

I kinda love the honeybee. They built their houses out of hexagons. Humans seem to love the rectangle, rarely seen in nature.

 

45 degree angle increments is fairly close to optimal packing density on a PCB with the least amount of effort to do. This is the best tradeoff between the amount of work required to get the maximum packing. There's some "topographical" routing software that will do curvy traces that can supposidly achieve a higher packing density and it looks kinda neat (sort of like old hand routed boards) but it's still fairly new, and it isn't so easy to do by hand I don't think. If you ever watch me route a PCB on a video you will see me do things like push and shove a stack of 20-30 routes, or adjust the side of a 45 degree angled section on 20 routes at once. This gets really hard if not impossible to do with a topographical router.

 

Cool, I'm getting spam about Kevtris in my Facebook feed now @_@ https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/kevtris-kevin-horton-cyrogenics-retro-gaming?utm_source=mbfb

 

Nice. You can never have enough kevtris in your diet.

 

Do we know the version that we are using is properly patched...it looks like the author released an IPS for it as recently as this January.

 

I just freshly patched it..let me give it a shot...nope it says it saves, but then it doesn't find the save when it loads,

 

Yeah sorry, it's most likely my fault. I am not saving the right span of memory or something. I haven't had time to look at it at all, or touch anything nt mini related. Sorry 'bout that.

[funkwad]

The 7800 outputs 320 pixels across so the menu gets higher resolution because of it. I tested it on my PVM and it seemed to work OK. The 7800 is a pain because of this higher resolution and all the extra special casing it took to make it work..

 

 

Thanks for the update Kevtris - Just to be clear - the concern I noted was post the 1.5 update - something changed in the 7800 core where the displayed output changed. If I run 7800 from version 1.5 I don't have the 'odd screen stretch' issue, but anything after it gets out of whack. I posted some pictures earlier for reference. I can repost if you want. I'm curious if anyone else experienced the same issue or noted it.

[Reaperman]

 

You need to change the extension of the file to make it use the codemasters mapper. This is discussed in the readme file under the sms or gg directory.

 

 

Awesome news--that'll teach me not to RTFM.

I've been spending time with the gb/gbc/nes versions, and they all drive very differently. Luckily, most of the game is track memorization.

 

Still having a blast with this thing. I even picked up a new capture device, what to torture youtube viewers with.

[Andromeda Stardust]

Cool, I'm getting spam about Kevtris in my Facebook feed now @_@ https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/kevtris-kevin-horton-cyrogenics-retro-gaming?utm_source=mbfb

That's not spam, that's progress!

[Andromeda Stardust]

 

Yeah unfortunately I didn't have time to release the last two cores yet. They require more processing to get them onto the mini and right now I'm back to working 10-12 hour days, 7 days a week on paid stuff so it will be awhile. When I do get a break I don't really feel like touching anything else.

Don't overwork yourself. Your health is more important than a bunch of impatient fanboiz.