FPGA Based Videogame System

[orion4096]

Some random comments on the SNT:

- It doesn't seem to support no buttons (disable) for the reset hotkey. I could set an unlikely button combination, but would prefer to completely disable it.

- Scalers appear to cause a pixel shift of the whole screen (up and to the right?). Seems like it would be possible to also delay the sync when buffered pixels are used for the scalers - assuming that's the problem. Maybe it's just my imagination.

- My snes classic to snes adapter uses a constant offset from Latch assertion for a I2C bus for next Latch assertion. Works great in the game, but seems to sample multiple inputs for each press in the menu system. Not a SNT problem, but I'll have to figure if the sample rate is changing in the menu and come up with a fix for my bug.

- SD2SNES operations over USB seem to work great with a custom SD2SNES FW. Save states work as well as they do on a 1-chip. Only thing I noticed was an occasional 2s hang after a load - perhaps to due to different APU timing. The save state patch is full of races and not well tested.

- I'm a little disappointed the cart bus doesn't get traffic during the 2 included games. I assume that's on purpose unless I have a bug in the SD2SNES FW.

 

Overall I'm extremely happy with it. Great work!

Edited February 10, 2018 by orion4096

[Shadowgate]

Should I stick to 720p if using scan lines? I can't seem to get them looking right in 1080p. I'm starting to like the hybrid scan lines but they just look odd no matter what I try in 1080p

[cfillak]

Should I stick to 720p if using scan lines? I can't seem to get them looking right in 1080p. I'm starting to like the hybrid scan lines but they just look odd no matter what I try in 1080p

Scanlines are going to look fucked up if you're not using an integer vertical scale in 1080p mode. I'm not sure what the default setting is, but with 4x = 4*240=960p you'll get some black bars on top and bottom but none of the image cropped out. 5x = 5*240 = 1200p, you'll get some of the image cropped from the top and bottom, and depending on the game it may or may not matter.

[z3razerviper]

i just got my shipment notification about 30 min ago....had the unit since yesterday

 

I hope a jailbreak comes soon. I only really care about roms while extra cores would be nice...roms are by far the most important thing to me.

 

I cant find my super metroid cart....

Edited February 10, 2018 by z3razerviper

[Wolf_]

i just got my shipment notification about 30 min ago....had the unit since yesterday

 

I hope a jailbreak comes soon. I only really care about roms while extra cores would be nice...roms are by far the most important thing to me.

*Disclaimer: This is not a confirmation of a jailbreak, just an assumption that the jailbreak will be released after 1 week like with the release of the Nt Mini.

[Sho]

I got my Super NT. The 240p test suite is a great SNES ROM for testing visual quality, sound, and lag. The manual lag test shows an input lag reading that is purely the lag caused by my old Samsung flatscreen TV (35ms). On a lagless HDMI flatscreen, Id expect to be able to get around 8ms, the time it takes to draw half a frame. An original SNES hooked up via composite to this TV has an 80ms lag due to the TVs laggy built-in upscaler.

 

857D346F-5C62-4FE2-BDC6-5763CBC01EA1.jpeg

 

Oh nice! That's awesome that the 240PTest Suite works, espcially since Kevtris stated that he didn't even know about the carts existence earlier when I asked him.

 

Can't wait to see the numbers my 2016 OLED pulls.

[Kismet]

 

 

I hope a jailbreak comes soon. I only really care about roms while extra cores would be nice...roms are by far the most important thing to me.

 

 

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.

[Wolf_]

 

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.

That shouldn't be an issue as Analogue isn't falsely creating shortages to drive up demand for their product. Pre-orders are available right now at normal price. (Who could have predicted that? Shame they didn't keep any magical reserve units that would have made much less sense.)

[Atariboy]

It's not like this is out of production. It's a non-issue if some are listed on Ebay since more are coming including a second run just weeks from now.

[Retro Reloaded]

Listen up now!

 

I'm gonna ask what is possibly the smartest/dumbest questions ever.

 

Will it ever be possible to create a Super gameboy style SNES cart that houses a Gameboy Advance FPGA board?

 

I'm no expert but wasn't the super Gameboys actually just Gameboys in SNES carts with video pass through and controller input?

 

With the GBA being 32 bit I'm guessing that it would be way too hard to ask a decent price for such a thing though...

 

Will it ever be possible though???

[Andromeda Stardust]

Listen up now!

 

I'm gonna ask what is possibly the smartest/dumbest questions ever.

 

Will it ever be possible to create a Super gameboy style SNES cart that houses a Gameboy Advance FPGA board?

 

I'm no expert but wasn't the super Gameboys actually just Gameboys in SNES carts with video pass through and controller input?

 

With the GBA being 32 bit I'm guessing that it would be way too hard to ask a decent price for such a thing though...

 

Will it ever be possible though???

No.

 

GBA is much more complex spritewise than an SNES, and the SNES PPU cannot reproduce the full GBA picture onscreen. The Super Game Boy is possible because the Game Boy hardware is much simpler than the SNES hardware. The Game Boy is monochrome 4 shades of gray, which special enhanced games could assign SNES color pallets to the in game sprites, as well as borders rendered in 16-bit graphics. The Super Game Boy will run fine on the Super NT but a GBA player would be impossible. Even GBC would be pushing it I think.

 

The similar accessory Super Retro Advance released by Retrobit is a Game Boy Advance on a chip with composite only, and outputs video natively on Super Retro Trio / Duo, or other SNES clones which can pass composite output to the TV. Usage on a real SNES requires a TRRS AV cable with the red/white/yellow jacks as no video can be captured from the back since the SNES PPU is not initialized. There would be no way to output HDMI off the SRA without an upscaler. If an FPGA core for Game Boy Advance is created, it would require much more powerful hardware than the Super NT, and why on earth would it need to be an add-on? If the FPGA hardware was sufficient, all that is needed is a pin adapter and possibly a step down 5V/3.3V voltage converter.

[AtariNerd]

So, anyone brave/dumb enough to hook their unit up to another device with an OS and a USB port, capable of supplying the needed power and checked to see if the USB cable indeed just supplies power or if other communication occurs, like access to a mass memory storage (say the SD slot or other), perhaps with a text message that has a caution about such reckless behavior and not to do it again. I'd seriously advise against it and am just having some fun, but was just curious.

 

*waits to be reprimanded for even mentioning the idea*

[Retro Reloaded]

No.

 

GBA is much more complex spritewise than an SNES, and the SNES PPU cannot reproduce the full GBA picture onscreen. The Super Game Boy is possible because the Game Boy hardware is much simpler than the SNES hardware. The Game Boy is monochrome 4 shades of gray, which special enhanced games could assign SNES color pallets to the in game sprites, as well as borders rendered in 16-bit graphics. The Super Game Boy will run fine on the Super NT but a GBA player would be impossible. Even GBC would be pushing it I think.

 

The similar accessory Super Retro Advance released by Retrobit is a Game Boy Advance on a chip with composite only, and outputs video natively on Super Retro Trio / Duo, or other SNES clones which can pass composite output to the TV. Usage on a real SNES requires a TRRS AV cable with the red/white/yellow jacks as no video can be captured from the back since the SNES PPU is not initialized. There would be no way to output HDMI off the SRA without an upscaler. If an FPGA core for Game Boy Advance is created, it would require much more powerful hardware than the Super NT, and why on earth would it need to be an add-on? If the FPGA hardware was sufficient, all that is needed is a pin adapter and possibly a step down 5V/3.3V voltage converter.

Thanks, I wasn't sure if the SNES was actually converting the Gameboy sprites or just kinda passing the sprites over to be displayed on screen.

It's a shame that that can never happen.

 

Here's hoping that Analogue's next console can handle the GBA then!

[scott64]

Yeah GBA and SNES's library belong on the same machine imo. One day..

[Kismet]

Will it ever be possible to create a Super gameboy style SNES cart that houses a Gameboy Advance FPGA board?

 

 

Yes and no.

 

It would be possible to create a "FPGA cart", and put any game console that has a maximum 256x224 resolution in it. The GBA is 240x160. Both do 15-bit color.

 

But because of the bus speed, it would not be possible to push a 256x224x15bpp@60fps image from the GBA framebuffer to the SNES. If you note, the MSU-1 only does 240x144@30fps

 

So while it would be possible to make something that could output video through the SNES PPU's, it would likely be a less difficult thing to simply have the FPGA cart tell the FPGA Super NT to just bypass everything and route it directly to the upscaler (thus the Super NT ends up being more like an OSSC + controller inputs for the FPGA cart.) Thus it would not work on a real SNES.

 

Who knows, maybe a "dummy core" could be made where the Super NT just takes a digital NTSC/PAL input sent along the data bus as Ypbpr/RGB and lets it use the same scaler/filter. Thus sticking something like a "MiSTer" cart would allow it to use MiSTer cores.

Edited February 10, 2018 by Kismet

[Retro Reloaded]

Yes and no.

 

It would be possible to create a "FPGA cart", and put any game console that has a maximum 256x224 resolution in it. The GBA is 240x160. Both do 15-bit color.

 

But because of the bus speed, it would not be possible to push a 256x224x15bpp@60fps image from the GBA framebuffer to the SNES. If you note, the MSU-1 only does 240x144@30fps

 

So while it would be possible to make something that could output video through the SNES PPU's, it would likely be a less difficult thing to simply have the FPGA cart tell the FPGA Super NT to just bypass everything and route it directly to the upscaler (thus the Super NT ends up being more like an OSSC + controller inputs for the FPGA cart.) Thus it would not work on a real SNES.

 

Who knows, maybe a "dummy core" could be made where the Super NT just takes a digital NTSC/PAL input sent along the data bus as Ypbpr/RGB and lets it use the same scaler/filter. Thus sticking something like a "MiSTer" cart would allow it to use MiSTer cores.

I think I understand...

There would have to be a handshake between the FPGA on the cart and the FPGA on the Super NT that tells the Super NT to let audio/video and controller input be handled between the two of them in tandem. Seems a little involved...

Edited February 10, 2018 by Retro Reloaded

[SegaSnatcher]

I got my Super NT. The 240p test suite is a great SNES ROM for testing visual quality, sound, and lag. The manual lag test shows an input lag reading that is purely the lag caused by my old Samsung flatscreen TV (35ms). On a lagless HDMI flatscreen, Id expect to be able to get around 8ms, the time it takes to draw half a frame. An original SNES hooked up via composite to this TV has an 80ms lag due to the TVs laggy built-in upscaler.

 

857D346F-5C62-4FE2-BDC6-5763CBC01EA1.jpeg

The only Flatscreen display that might give only 8ms of lag is a PC monitor. The lowest rated flatscreen TV I've seen hit around 14ms.

[snatcher1996]

 

Compared to other Hummingbird based shooters, maybe. But when compared to core Genesis based shmups like MUSHA, Thunder Force IV, Gley Lancer etc.. not so much.

 

Again, Virtua Fighter and Space Harrier are better enjoyed on Saturn.

 

The problem with Virtua Racing is it isn't Outrun, Super Hang-on, Sega Rally, or Daytona USA.

 

Comparing Kolibri to Musha is like comparing Street Fighter to Streets of Rage. Apples and oranges. Further proof you never played the game but just unreflectively reiterate what you read elsewhere.

 

And no, the titles you mention are not better enjoyed on Saturn. I know since I own them. Why would you even play Virtua Fighter on the Saturn if you can play a version of it or even Virtua Fighter 4 on PS2?

 

These are all great titles in their own right.

[Wolf_]

So, anyone brave/dumb enough to hook their unit up to another device with an OS and a USB port, capable of supplying the needed power and checked to see if the USB cable indeed just supplies power or if other communication occurs, like access to a mass memory storage (say the SD slot or other), perhaps with a text message that has a caution about such reckless behavior and not to do it again. I'd seriously advise against it and am just having some fun, but was just curious.

 

*waits to be reprimanded for even mentioning the idea*

Uh... what the hell are you actually trying to accomplish?

 

The sd card slot is just a regular sd card slot if you want to write something to the sd card you can just use an sd card reader.

 

As for the usb cable, if it is a data cable it will be marked as such. Note the little picture showing the data flow:

 

Data or power cables can be used to charge the only difference is what pins are populated (obviously a charging only cable can't send data and won't have the data flow icon on it but that is the only difference).

 

Regardless of which cable you use you still won't be communicating with the Super Nt itself though because it doesn't have any kind usb hub interface (software) so it wouldn't know what to do with any data you sent it (and probably doesn't even have the data pins populated). As far as sending data to the console all it can do is read data from the sd card or cartridge slots.

Edited February 10, 2018 by Wolf_

[snatcher1996]

Kolibri is not a traditional shooter, so comparing it to traditional sci-fi shooters is like comparing Ecco to Metroid. It's an exploration heavy nature game with shooter mechanics. It's not MUSHA.

 

Virtua Fighter and Space Harrier games being great on Saturn is irrelevant to a discussion of great games on the 32X. Your logic is like saying the NES Mario games can be ignored or aren't great games worth playing because Mario All-Stars exists on SNES. It's silly.

 

Virtua Racing is Virtua Racing, and it's a great game. There's room for lots of different great Sega racing games. Your logic is especially ironic considering you're in a thread about preserving great old games arguing that great old games can be ignored if something better came along later.

 

Exactly.

[Kismet]

As for the usb cable, if it is a data cable it will be marked as such. Note the little picture showing the data flow:

 

 

Data or power cables can be used to charge the only difference is what pins are populated (obviously a charging only cable can't send data and won't have the data flow icon on it but that is the only difference).

 

 

 

That's not how USB cables work at all.

 

http://www.usb.org/developers/docs/

 

All USB cables must support data transfer and power.

 

On the device side, USB cables may be used for power or power+data. Devices with their own power supply are supposed to supply power to other devices plugged into them. "USB chargers" are simply USB ports with no data features. They can supply more power power if the D+/D- pins indicate such. The cables are meaningless except for what speed they can transfer data at.

 

Some devices may have a proprietary connector instead of another micro-usb or usb-c connector.

 

For example, Apple's chargers simply have the USB 2.0 image on them. But they still are data cables.

 

 

Notice "with power delivery" shows the USB icon with a background of a battery. That is on the host device side. USB-IF does not licence "charge only" cables. If you have "charge only" cables, (eg came with a USB wall wart) they will not look any different from any other USB cable.

Edited February 10, 2018 by Kismet

[Wolf_]

Regardless, you are not going to use it to talk with your Super Nt.

Edited February 10, 2018 by Wolf_

[TheFooj]

Hmm, So i tried to do the 3.9 firmware update, following the instructions to the letter, but now it's just stuck flashing the LED red in sets of 4. Is it bricked? don't know what to do.

[kevtris]

Hmm, So i tried to do the 3.9 firmware update, following the instructions to the letter, but now it's just stuck flashing the LED red in sets of 4. Is it bricked? don't know what to do.

 

This means the system detected a corrupt firmware image on the SD card. Try reloading the file onto the SD card, and/or trying another SD card. If that fails, re-download and unzip the update file.

 

So, anyone brave/dumb enough to hook their unit up to another device with an OS and a USB port, capable of supplying the needed power and checked to see if the USB cable indeed just supplies power or if other communication occurs, like access to a mass memory storage (say the SD slot or other), perhaps with a text message that has a caution about such reckless behavior and not to do it again. I'd seriously advise against it and am just having some fun, but was just curious.

 

*waits to be reprimanded for even mentioning the idea*

 

The USB port is power only. The data lines are not connected.

[leods]

Kevtris, I asked before but I think you didn't see it. I am thinking of using the Super NT with a different poser Suppply. Is there anything I should be careful with? are these quick charge USB chargers safe? Am I fine as long as the PSU provides 2A and isn't crap?

 

I'm thinking of buying one of those multi-pot units, so I can use the SNT, and also power up other devices/recharge phones etc..