FPGA Based Videogame System

[mrnarse]

If theres a JB firmware coming, I wouldnt expect it to be announced or confirmed until it was ready to be released. Right now the top priority is fixing any bugs in the official firmware that might pop up. We have no idea if Kevtris has had the time to work on a JB with work, job, life, Skyrim and other things also competing for time. Even if the cores are easy to port over to the new FPGA, it still has to be integrated into a JB firmwares menus, tested, etc. Just because the first JB firmware came out a week after the NT mini release doesnt mean its the same timeframe for the Super NT.

[Wolf_]

I agree.. I think that is reasonable.. but expecting the NES core and other cores 'just because' is the problem in my opinion. If the jailbreak only offered rom SD loading I'd be ecstatic.

Well the thing is the cores are already written for the nt mini, and whatever code needs to be added to run snes roms already exists because it has built in games so that's already coded for fpga use and on top of that the fpga used in the Super Nt is the same kind as the one used in the nt mini just with more resources. I don't mean to make it sound overly simple to port the cores because I couldn't do it but for the person that wrote them porting them would be as Kevtris himself said in the MLiG stream "easy". Also I really think if the cores didn't happen it would be a company policy and not something decided by Kevtris. If he decided not to do it on his own because he didn't have time or something I'm sure the community would find a way to raise a high enough bounty to motivate him to do so.

 

If the special chip games aren't included in the jb I have no problem hanging onto my sd2snes. Heck if rom support at all isn't added for the snes I wouldn't be that bothered because my sd2snes has me covered. My main concern is that the systems from the nt mini get covered because I'm just not going to buy another mini.

Edited February 12, 2018 by Wolf_

[F34R]

It might not be. He could be paid based on a percentage of sales or for his time, we don't know these things and you can't assume he isn't being paid for his work without evidence.

 

Good luck explaining that to my bank.

 

 

 

 

I can easily enough show that it won't work with roms. If Analogue doesn't release a jailbreak and wants to say "we never confirmed that it would" my bank isn't going to understand what roms are. Every year I spend my tax return and every year my card gets shut off for fraudulent charges because it is "atypical spending habits" and every time I buy a firearm something goes wrong with the transaction because they don't agree with the second amendment. Anger me and I shall unleash the full force of their incompetence upon you. Trust me by the time they finish dealing with the "top experts" my bank employs to waste people's time they will be begging to just take the console back.

 

 

That's literally never going to happen. At the absolute worst after wasting hours of both mine and Analogue's time (totaling a higher cost to them than just accepting the return in the first place) the bank would deny my return. It isn't fraud if I'm telling them exactly what it won't do and they rule in my favor, which they will because even if Analogue has a point about not confirming rom playback they would still be bastards for saying nothing and leaving it up to people to invest in a "non refundable" item to find out for themselves. Also I doubt they want anyone poking around their finances lest the banks find out what shipping the consoles actually cost and where the majority of that $40 shipping charge went.

Analogue doesn't have to say yes or no to anything about jailbreaking. The console in fact, does not support rom loading. That's a fact. Analogue hasn't ever released anything that supports rom loading, that's a fact. Look at the features advertised, does it say anything about jailbreaking, rom loading? Nope. If you try and explain to your bank that you want a charge back on a product that you intentionally bought, received, and is working exactly the way it was built and advertised to work, you're going to lose that battle. Unless of course, your bank simply doesn't want to actually investigate the charge back claim. Banks do not like to lose money because of a false claim.

[SegaSnatcher]

I'm gonna guess Kevtris wants to fix all the bugs first before talking about any jailbreak.

[Wolf_]

Analogue doesn't have to say yes or no to anything about jailbreaking. The console in fact, does not support rom loading. That's a fact. Analogue hasn't ever released anything that supports rom loading, that's a fact. Look at the features advertised, does it say anything about jailbreaking, rom loading? Nope. If you try and explain to your bank that you want a charge back on a product that you intentionally bought, received, and is working exactly the way it was built and advertised to work, you're going to lose that battle. Unless of course, your bank simply doesn't want to actually investigate the charge back claim. Banks do not like to lose money because of a false claim.

Can we drop this already? Banks don't understand tech. The second someone starts talking to them about field programmable gate arrays not performing correctly the mid 40s heavy smoker chick I'm talking to is going to roll her eyes and stamp a paper. It's a bank not a patent office.

[F34R]

Can we drop this already? Banks don't understand tech. The second someone starts talking to them about field programmable gate arrays not performing correctly the mid 40s heavy smoker chick I'm talking to is going to roll her eyes and stamp a paper. It's a bank not a patent office.

I'm just catching up with what has already been said. When you file a claim, yes, the local branch, will stamp a form, and refund you the money. They will then forward what you've told them to their fraud department for an official investigation. That department will look into what the claim was, that's their job. You'll have usually a thirty day window for that. If they find that the product you are whining about is defective, you'll keep the money. When they find out that you filed a claim based on your own wants, and not that the product is misleading, they'll take that money out of your account. Again.

 

Also, if you're in the USA, your complaint is a civil liability, and not a fraudulent product case. Now, I'll drop it. You're raking Analogue and kevtris over the coals, and as long as it's brought up, you're going to be put in your place about it.

[Wolf_]

I'm just catching up with what has already been said. When you file a claim, yes, the local branch, will stamp a form, and refund you the money. They will then forward what you've told them to their fraud department for an official investigation. That department will look into what the claim was, that's their job. You'll have usually a thirty day window for that. If they find that the product you are whining about is defective, you'll keep the money. When they find out that you filed a claim based on your own wants, and not that the product is misleading, they'll take that money out of your account. Again.

 

Also, if you're in the USA, your complaint is a civil liability, and not a fraudulent product case. Now, I'll drop it. You're raking Analogue and kevtris over the coals, and as long as it's brought up, you're going to be put in your place about it.

*deep sigh* You're not "putting anyone in their place" because it would absolutely go through. The people that investigate the claim are still going to hear a bunch of tech jargon they have no clue about, will see that I'm willing to return the product, maybe google search it real fast, still have no clue wtf I'm talking about, and then refund the payment. Also that entire situation doesn't matter because Analogue isn't hanging us out to dry, and it wouldn't effect Kevtris at all. All you're doing is continuing a pointless tangent for no reason. Have you been put in your place enough or should I go on?

[RabidWookie]

Can we drop this already? Banks don't understand tech. The second someone starts talking to them about field programmable gate arrays not performing correctly the mid 40s heavy smoker chick I'm talking to is going to roll her eyes and stamp a paper. It's a bank not a patent office.

So you're going to take advantage of them to scam your money back because the product didn't have a feature that it never was claimed to have, because you sold a product that did have those features and regret it? You do realize that makes you a dishonest thief, right?

[F34R]

*deep sigh* You're not "putting anyone in their place" because it would absolutely go through. The people that investigate the claim are still going to hear a bunch of tech jargon they have no clue about, will see that I'm willing to return the product, maybe google search it real fast, still have no clue wtf I'm talking about, and then refund the payment. Also that entire situation doesn't matter because Analogue isn't hanging us out to dry, and it wouldn't effect Kevtris at all. All you're doing is continuing a pointless tangent for no reason. Have you been put in your place enough or should I go on?

Banks don't have a buyers protection for intentional purchases that aren't defective. They'll see you're willing to return a product is not defective and they'll see the company doesn't allow for buyers remorse returns. Anaologue isn't hanging us out to dry because of anything. They released a product that is doing exactly how they built it and advertised for it. Putting me in my place Lol? My place was bank fraud investigations for almost a decade.

[DarkkOne]

Seriously. Stop engaging with Wolf. He's not looking to be convinced. He's looking to engage in arguing. He's clearly established that he has beliefs about how a process works. Whether or not his beliefs are true, he clearly has no interest in hearing alternative descriptions of that process. He apparently has no moral qualms about lying for the sake of a refund/return, so there's no sense pointing out your disapproval. Just let him do what he wants.

As for me, I really appreciate the Super Nt. A jailbreak would be amazing. Backing up SRAM would be fantastic even without a jailbreak (especially since games like Mario RPG are unlikely to run from ROMs even with a jailbreak). If all we ever get on the Super Nt, though, is just firmware updates fixing bugs, that's more than enough for me - I have one and I'm super happy with it. With my low-latency TV it's the best experience I've had playing SNES games since I got my original one as a kid. I bought it to play SNES cartridges well on a modern TV, which is what they told me it does, and that's what I find it does. I'm thrilled.

[Wolf_]

So you're going to take advantage of them to scam your money back because the product didn't have a feature that it never was claimed to have, because you sold a product that did have those features and regret it? You do realize that makes you a dishonest thief, right?

If someone takes advantage of you then you can either take it or take advantage of them back. But for like the 50th time a jailbreak is obviously coming so it doesn't matter.

[DarkkOne]

Actually, speaking of the Nt Mini, about a million posts ago in this thread it was mentioned that there's a Legend of Zelda Romhack that's unable to save when loaded as a ROM in the Jailbreak.

It's called "Legend of Link" and outside of the content changes, it's described like this:

• Converted from MMC1 to MMC5
• 1MB PRG-ROM
• 1MB CHR-ROM
• 32KB SRAM
• Inserted custom MMC5 irq engine
• Installed custom modified Capcom 6C80 Sound Engine, with DPCM usage

So yeah, pretty heavy changes not just to content, but to the nature of the ROM itself. It works fine in many emulators, but it'd be lovely to play it on the NT Mini.

Just wanted to bring it back up, because seeing this fixed if/when further updates are performed on the NT Mini (or if there is a Super NT jailbreak that supports NES images) would be fantastic.

[gojira54]

Er turrican?

 

 

 

Analogue doesn't have to say yes or no to anything about jailbreaking. The console in fact, does not support rom loading. That's a fact. Analogue hasn't ever released anything that supports rom loading, that's a fact. Look at the features advertised, does it say anything about jailbreaking, rom loading? Nope. If you try and explain to your bank that you want a charge back on a product that you intentionally bought, received, and is working exactly the way it was built and advertised to work, you're going to lose that battle. Unless of course, your bank simply doesn't want to actually investigate the charge back claim. Banks do not like to lose money because of a false claim.

[Smurfish]

 

I understand what you're saying in that you select the NES core, but you'll notice it never loads anything like the other cores because the core is already loaded. Any other core it takes a few seconds and the LED blinks etc etc, not so with the NES core.

 

Edit: I just checked mine again and any other core actually even asks you if you want to load it. The NES core does not because it's already loaded. Point being, the jailbreak is not utilizing some special NES core.

 

Theoretically the Super NT should already have the SNES core on-board. I mean the Super NT ships with Super Turrican and Super Turrican 2 on board. I suspect these are just ROMs. I believe this would mean that it is already running an SNES Core and getting the Super NT to work with non-enhancement chip game ROMs would be fairly straightforward. The jailbreak would theoretically just be allowing SNES ROMs to be run from SD. As far as enhancement chip games, that is where the real work would come in getting the FPGA to run those especially the SuperFX since it is not running on the EverDrive or SD2SNES.

[F34R]

 

Er turrican?

 

 

 

Analogue doesn't have to say yes or no to anything about jailbreaking. The console in fact, does not support rom loading. That's a fact. Analogue hasn't ever released anything that supports rom loading, that's a fact. Look at the features advertised, does it say anything about jailbreaking, rom loading? Nope. If you try and explain to your bank that you want a charge back on a product that you intentionally bought, received, and is working exactly the way it was built and advertised to work, you're going to lose that battle. Unless of course, your bank simply doesn't want to actually investigate the charge back claim. Banks do not like to lose money because of a false claim.

 

Turrican is a licensed game on the Super NT. Never was it advertised as being able to load your own roms on the system.

[haightc]

Honestly I don't care about the option of a JB, if loading a core take as long as a firmware update I'll pass. Compared to SD2SNES loading, the loading of super turrican is pretty slow. There isn't really a way to get SD2SNES level functionality built in the superNT. If you're on the fence about about a SD2SNES because you're waiting for an SD loading jailbreak forget about it. At best what could be implemented would be a partial implementation.

 

As far as next systems, I know a lot of people suggested the MegaDrive/Genesis. If it just supported the genesis with no add-ons it would for sure would be a hard pass. I am also not sure how successful it would be, the Genesis would have a bit of an uphill battle but already has an FPGA implementation via MIST(er). What would say the NeoGeo might be a more practical build and as mention before SNK ports to everything. Also NeoGeo fans are used to shelling out $500+ per new home brew game. The NeoGeoX still sells used for over a 100 USD despite being a terrible emulation hand held. I am sorry you tubers, there is little nothing redeemable about this POS. They could probably charge whatever they want for a hardware exact clone and I bet people would buy it.

 

I am really looking forward the the DAC add-on as I still prefer CRTs. The Super NT works fine as is and I have only tried it on our living room flat panel. It look forward to seeing what it looks like at 720p and 480p on my JVC professional monitor.

 

Someone was talking about StarFox earlier. I actually found StarFox way easier on the SNES classic. I played some star fox on my SuperNT last night and thought it was odd that it runs in a smaller window than SNES games do normally. Even at 5x there is tons of unused screen real estate. Running StarFox on my SFC on a CRT it is full screen and runs at higher frame rate.

[kevtris]

Can we drop this already? Banks don't understand tech. The second someone starts talking to them about field programmable gate arrays not performing correctly the mid 40s heavy smoker chick I'm talking to is going to roll her eyes and stamp a paper. It's a bank not a patent office.

You're the one that keeps perpetuating it. Please stop it. It's clogging the thread up with your talk of bank fraud.

[Albert]

I have kicked Wolf_ from this thread. I will clean up his mess when I have some time later to sort through it.

 

..Al

[Riptide]

Actually, speaking of the Nt Mini, about a million posts ago in this thread it was mentioned that there's a Legend of Zelda Romhack that's unable to save when loaded as a ROM in the Jailbreak.

 

It's called "Legend of Link" and outside of the content changes, it's described like this:

• Converted from MMC1 to MMC5
• 1MB PRG-ROM
• 1MB CHR-ROM
• 32KB SRAM
• Inserted custom MMC5 irq engine
• Installed custom modified Capcom 6C80 Sound Engine, with DPCM usage

So yeah, pretty heavy changes not just to content, but to the nature of the ROM itself. It works fine in many emulators, but it'd be lovely to play it on the NT Mini.

 

Just wanted to bring it back up, because seeing this fixed if/when further updates are performed on the NT Mini (or if there is a Super NT jailbreak that supports NES images) would be fantastic.

 

I agree and personally would really love to play that on the mini, but I gotta admit if I were kevtris it wouldn't be on the top of my priority list. The legend of link as well as one other mmc5 mario rom hack both don't save properly iirc, but they also aren't retail carts so who knows if they implemented mmc5 correctly or not. I do know there exists repo carts made of them; I'd be curious if they work correctly in the nt mini but I'm not sure what I'd do with that knowledge in either outcome. If I were kevtris I'd probably be working on ironing out all the Super NT bugs popping up (not that there are a ton) and then maybe the S-video/composite issue in the nt mini's jailbroken firmware.

 

 

As far as next systems, I know a lot of people suggested the MegaDrive/Genesis. If it just supported the genesis with no add-ons it would for sure would be a hard pass. I am also not sure how successful it would be, the Genesis would have a bit of an uphill battle but already has an FPGA implementation via MIST(er). What would say the NeoGeo might be a more practical build and as mention before SNK ports to everything. Also NeoGeo fans are used to shelling out $500+ per new home brew game. The NeoGeoX still sells used for over a 100 USD despite being a terrible emulation hand held. I am sorry you tubers, there is little nothing redeemable about this POS. They could probably charge whatever they want for a hardware exact clone and I bet people would buy it.

 

I am really looking forward the the DAC add-on as I still prefer CRTs. The Super NT works fine as is and I have only tried it on our living room flat panel. It look forward to seeing what it looks like at 720p and 480p on my JVC professional monitor.

 

Someone was talking about StarFox earlier. I actually found StarFox way easier on the SNES classic. I played some star fox on my SuperNT last night and thought it was odd that it runs in a smaller window than SNES games do normally. Even at 5x there is tons of unused screen real estate. Running StarFox on my SFC on a CRT it is full screen and runs at higher frame rate.

RE genesis: just an fyi if you missed it from the livestream but kevtris said 32X was a definite no go, and CD would be very difficult.

 

What JVC CRT do you have that can do 720p out of curiosity? Love my little 16.5'' JVC but it only goes up to 480i.

[Loukey]

Yeah. Im on the bubble if I should buy a 32x now. I give Kevtris infinite credit so I am sure he could reverse engineer it if analogue does release an eventual genesis FPGA system it would feel incomplete to me without access to the 32x games and the Sega CD games. Of course I get that releasing a mechanical drive system for posterity is a shaker proposition to being with so. . . Meh I can just see buying the whole genesis stack from eBay in my future

[DarkkOne]

 

I agree and personally would really love to play that on the mini, but I gotta admit if I were kevtris it wouldn't be on the top of my priority list. The legend of link as well as one other mmc5 mario rom hack both don't save properly iirc, but they also aren't retail carts so who knows if they implemented mmc5 correctly or not. I do know there exists repo carts made of them; I'd be curious if they work correctly in the nt mini but I'm not sure what I'd do with that knowledge in either outcome. If I were kevtris I'd probably be working on ironing out all the Super NT bugs popping up (not that there are a ton) and then maybe the S-video/composite issue in the nt mini's jailbroken firmware.

 

I'd imagine reprocarts would work fine, since that aspect of things is handled by the cartridge, in those cases. In terms of "implementing the MMC5", it's a piece of hardware (or a virtual representation of one) right? So it's actually either the emulator, the cartridge, or in the case of the Nt Mini, the core that implements the MMC5. If it works on repro carts with a real MMC5 chip in them, then almost certainly the issue is the Nt Mini core behaving differently than the real chip does, if the problem lies in the MMC5 implementation. My guess is that it's the SRAM size as the problem. 32 KB is a *lot* and I'm wondering if it's just outside the range the Nt Mini expected to deal with (as I think it's larger than any commercial game used). I'm pretty sure the Mario hack is in a similar situation with the SRAM.

[Maarek_Stele]

Honestly I don't care about the option of a JB, if loading a core take as long as a firmware update I'll pass. Compared to SD2SNES loading, the loading of super turrican is pretty slow. There isn't really a way to get SD2SNES level functionality built in the superNT. If you're on the fence about about a SD2SNES because you're waiting for an SD loading jailbreak forget about it. At best what could be implemented would be a partial implementation.

 

As far as next systems, I know a lot of people suggested the MegaDrive/Genesis. If it just supported the genesis with no add-ons it would for sure would be a hard pass. I am also not sure how successful it would be, the Genesis would have a bit of an uphill battle but already has an FPGA implementation via MIST(er). What would say the NeoGeo might be a more practical build and as mention before SNK ports to everything. Also NeoGeo fans are used to shelling out $500+ per new home brew game. The NeoGeoX still sells used for over a 100 USD despite being a terrible emulation hand held. I am sorry you tubers, there is little nothing redeemable about this POS. They could probably charge whatever they want for a hardware exact clone and I bet people would buy it.

 

I am really looking forward the the DAC add-on as I still prefer CRTs. The Super NT works fine as is and I have only tried it on our living room flat panel. It look forward to seeing what it looks like at 720p and 480p on my JVC professional monitor.

 

Someone was talking about StarFox earlier. I actually found StarFox way easier on the SNES classic. I played some star fox on my SuperNT last night and thought it was odd that it runs in a smaller window than SNES games do normally. Even at 5x there is tons of unused screen real estate. Running StarFox on my SFC on a CRT it is full screen and runs at higher frame rate.

Your comment about Starfox was interesting to me. I decided to pop in my cart on my SNES running through an OSSC to my low lag LCD and it does not use the entire screen like other games do in 5x mode that way either so it is more a function of the cart than the Super NT for sure. I think it has mostly to do with the fact that even with the superFX chip the SNES could BARELY drive a true 3d game like StarFox..

[lekrang]

Wow, this got out of hand quickly.

Sorry everyone for bringing up the subject of JB in this thread again and speculating about it.

My intentions was not to start this thread war

[katanaswordfish]

Hey Kevtris,

 

My Super NT just arrived a few hours ago and, while I haven't had time to really dig into it yet, I just wanted to congratulate you on another successful project and thank you for all of the other stuff that you've done for the community. I don't post here often, in fact I think my last post here was made simply to express my interest in the "zimba 3000" and to throw my opinions into the initial poll, and frankly it's amazing to think of how far things have come in what seems like a relatively short time. Even though the Super NT doesn't quite realize the full concept of the Z3k as a truly shape shifting FPGA mega-console as of now, I just want to say that I'm really glad to have been able to support your work in some form and to buy what seems to be arguably the best option around to play Super Nintendo games to date. The SNES is among my favorite consoles, with such a massive and awesome library of games that I know that I'll easily get hundreds and hundreds of hours of enjoyment out of this device. Also, as someone who also loves listening to emulated chiptunes and stuff like that, thanks for all of your work on that front for many years with things like NSF.

 

As for everyone else, relax a little, all right? Try to take a break from constantly thinking about what you want and instead focus a little bit on what you have. As someone who doesn't own physical copies of some of his favorite games, I'm just as hopeful and excited about the prospect of a "jailbreak" patch as the next person here. But I think there is a line where "hope and excitement" starts to become "greed and entitlement", which some people here are beginning to straddle. Don't instantly argue with that, just think about it for a second. Those of us who have a Super NT got exactly what has been advertised so far - not a Z3k, not an Nt mini, but a kick ass little Super NT that plays some of the greatest games of all time with (I've heard) is stunningly accurate, responsive, and compatible. I'd be lying if I said I didn't want a jailbreak to play ROMs, or to load up other cores, etc., but it's also important to realize desire for more will always exist and you can't just let that desire dominate you. Kevtris created a great device, and people want more. He may at some point unlock the potential of the Super NT, and some people will still want more - more bells, more whistles, more games, more cores, etc... That's natural to some extent as we're all fans of these consoles and games, but it's also an urge that we have to fight against because it ultimately leads to taking things for granted. I'd love to have a device that takes full advantage of the size and flexibility of the hardware that Kevtris put on it, with fun things like the Nt Mini has, but I know (just like we all know deep down) that neither Kevtris nor Analogue owe us anything beyond what we paid for; a great little HDMI SNES!

 

I think this is a great time to be into retro games, because of the hard work of people like Kevtris (and I'm sure many others who make emulators, hacks, formats, modkits, etc.). But let's all take some time to step back from wanting "the next shiny thing", to appreciate what we have, and to give credit where credit is due. If you're hopeful and excited about the idea of a Nt Mini-esque jailbreak firmware (as I am, and as most of us probably are) then please continue to be, but please also take care not to step across that line where we become greedy and entitled, don't be rude and don't take things for granted - just play the games that you have on cartridge so far, enjoy them, and wait patiently for Kevtris to do whatever it is that he wants to do.

[genfuyung]

MLIG livestream with me in it starting in a few mins: https://www.youtube.com/c/mylifeingaming/live

Your appearance needed more yellow box.