FPGA Based Videogame System

[cacophony]

Since there's been a few reports of the super powerpak not working, I would like to buy one if someone has one for sale at a reasonable price. PM with details if so. I can't fix it if I can't test one and I'd rather just buy vs. borrowing, but I can borrow if it's the only option. I just will have no way to verify it continues to work after updates.

Any comment on whether loading custom firmware from non-Analogue sources would be potentially problematic? I think I know the answer but it would be nice to hear some sort of confirmation.

[jamon1567]

 

Ok thank you, I am still on the fence about it, really want it to be 2 tone like the artist renderings.

I am currently poundering if I wait for more SFC editions to be on pre-order which would most likely mean getting mine around April or grabbing a black one for the 1st of March.

Decisions... decisions...

 

Go for the black my friend. I ordered a SFC before changing my mind and ordering black. When I started to see the pictures I was concerned I'd made the wrong choice, but in hand this thing looks great and you won't be disappointed.

 

Edit: Of course I have mine in my living room with all of my current generation systems and hardware, so it's a very nice match. Very similar to the PS4. If I were gonna buy one for use with all my original hardware which is setup on my BVM, I'd probably go with the SFC. But I'll tell ya what....the pics of the classic look great too, but alas they're sold out as well

Edited February 14, 2018 by jamon1567

[NE146]

I can finally say "finally"..

 

 

I know there's others but I feel like I'm one of the last in line of the early-orders. Haven't even gotten to try yet.. but I think it looks great. It really brings out the dinginess of the original!

 

[DadsGlasses]

Congrats! Glad it finally made it!

 

 

I can finally say "finally"..

 

2018-02-14 18.27.02.jpg

 

I know there's others but I feel like I'm one of the last in line of the early-orders. Haven't even gotten to try yet.. but I think it looks great. It really brings out the dinginess of the original!

 

[bozo55]

Just got my unit, and love it. Shell quality is amazing except for one thing I noticed... the controller plugs do not latch into the port. You don't get that satisfying click and the controllers are not held in as securely.

Edited February 14, 2018 by bozo55

[SegaSnatcher]

Just got my unit, and love it. Shell quality is amazing except for one thing I noticed... the controller plugs do not latch into the port. You don't get that satisfying click and the controllers are not held in as securely.

Well, they definitely aren't loose either. I've given them a good test tug and they stay in place just fine.

[Toth]

Mine are the same. My nt mini plugs also feel the same. They just sort of slide in. Secure but not too snug. No click or anything.

Edited February 15, 2018 by Toth

[Andromeda Stardust]

Yeah, Im in a similar boat. Had mine longer, and itd be nice to not need the cart for translation patches, but itd be rough losing the titles the flash carts support that this jailbreak doesnt. And the height/width bug seems nasty. Id need to play with that a bit.

 

 

Except to hit the target aspect ratio, there is no fundamental difference to pixel AR when talking about this adjustment. That might be why it goes downhill, if you are working from a different definition of the term from others. No, the SNES doesnt use square pixels, and yes it can maybe be a bit weird that the buffers height/width in pixels is a 8:7 ratio (256/224), while the pixel aspect is also 8:7. But the end result of the final image with a 8:7 PAR is a 64/49 ratio, or 1.306(...) which is what the SNES uses.

And 64:49 is extremely close to 64:48 which factors down to a 4:3 aspect ratio.

 

 

JUST IN CASE... the jailbreak was not written by Kevtris, I would feel more comfortable with the SD2SNES since it won't brick your system and void the warranty. Analogue specifically said that Kevtris's firmware would not void the warranty. "Unbrickable" or not, someone will always find a way to break something.

Of course he wrote the jailbreak, but he will disavow any knowledge of it which is why he used smokemonster / github as a release portal.

 

I'm still open-minded about it. Things that are "unbrickable", unbreakable, uncrashable... someone always finds a way to do it and even on accident. An expensive item like the NT, I would be much more comfortable with a jailbreak from the person who wrote the original firmware.

 

I did "hack" my SNES mini because I had no real choice as there wasn't going to be any "official" hack coming.

Well at the very least, you cannot brick it by sticking files on the SD card, however you might "brick" it in other ways, like giving it a bath, sticking in microwave, or striking it with lightning!

[afx_acid]

I just updated to the official firmware 4.1 and started up Super Turrican Directors Cut and immediately noticed lots of graphical glitches that weren't happening with the factory firmware. Invisible enemies and explosions not appearing. Anyone else seeing this?

 

Edit: appears to be working fine right now. Maybe I encountered a small bug in the games code

 

Yes, I've seen glitched/garbled powerup sprites, sometimes they appear roughly three times the height of a normal powerup sprite. Not sure what's happening there and I hadn't tried the game prior to firmware update to 4.1 so I'm not sure if this was an issue before.

[CZroe]

It hasn't updated in almost a year. There's nothing new, and hasn't been for a while.

Yeah, but this Nt Mini is new-to-me and not jail broken yet.

 

http://blog.kevtris.org/blogfiles/?C=M;O=D

Thanks!

 

ah, cool, i'll have another look, thanks. Will probably use a proper plug, travel adapters never seem particularly good/safe. Just don't know how they think a USA plug is somehow "worldwide".

Uhh, there is no “worldwide” set of prongs. “Worldwide” has always referred to the electrical compatibility. If it supports 100-240v, 50 and 60hz, it’s “worldwide.” I recently took a trip to Qatar, Thailand, Japan, various South Pacific islands, etc and never even had to break out my prong adapters. Yes, all their plugs were different from my US/Japan plugs but most were designed to accommodate those also (holes shaped to fit round prongs and parallel blades). The biggest issue I had was that nearly no Japanese outlets had ground prongs and I had specifically replaced the two-prong piece from my Apple 12w USB charger with a three-prong cord from a MacBook charger, so: MY FAULT.

 

Just got my unit, and love it. Shell quality is amazing except for one thing I noticed... the controller plugs do not latch into the port. You don't get that satisfying click and the controllers are not held in as securely.

It’s intentional. Nt Mini has the same loose controller ports. I like not having to wrench when I only have one hand.

[Karbuncle]

Except to hit the target aspect ratio, there is no fundamental difference to pixel AR when talking about this adjustment. That might be why it goes downhill, if you are working from a different definition of the term from others. No, the SNES doesnt use square pixels, and yes it can maybe be a bit weird that the buffers height/width in pixels is a 8:7 ratio (256/224), while the pixel aspect is also 8:7. But the end result of the final image with a 8:7 PAR is a 64/49 ratio, or 1.306(...) which is what the SNES uses.

 

 

 

The confusion is more simple: When people see the formula "256 * 8/7" and don't know what it means, they fall back to the typical thing they have heard of 8:7 being a square pixel SNES image. They then think that's what the formula refers to, and start arguing that it's a square pixel output and not an aspect-correction formula. I then have to explain the difference; that it's NOT 8:7 but actually 256 * 8/7 and that they are confusing the two terms. For example in 4x, 8:7 is 1024x896, while "256 * 8/7" is 1170x896.

Edited February 15, 2018 by Karbuncle

[Kaide]

And 64:49 is extremely close to 64:48 which factors down to a 4:3 aspect ratio.

 

Yeah, "good enough" territory. I'm a little surprised that Nintendo didn't address the limitations that made it a no-go to use a PAR of 7:6 with the SNES, really.

 

The confusion is more simple: When people see the formula "256 * 8/7" and don't know what it means, they fall back to the typical thing they have heard of 8:7 being a square pixel SNES image. They then think that's what the formula refers to, and start arguing that it's a square pixel output and not an aspect-correction formula. I then have to explain the difference; that it's NOT 8:7 but actually 256 * 8/7 and that they are confusing the two terms. For example in 4x, 8:7 is 1024x896, while "256 * 8/7" is 1170x896.

 

This adds some context that makes it a bit easier to understand what you are trying to say. But this is also why us old folks (at least those who've dabbled in signal processing and video) refer to PAR and DAR as different things. In this case, I almost want a third term like "buffer aspect ratio" so that it's easier to explain that PAR * BAR = DAR, and that they are all related to one another.

 

But I just want to point out that the bit that stuck out at me was when you said "think you're talking about 8:7 pixel AR", which made me go "what?". I actually went to re-read sources because it contradicted everything about the math you also presented, and I thought I had misunderstood something fundamental about the NES/SNES pixel processing. But honestly, I'm not entirely sure you can easily get the average Joe/Jane to understand what's really going on without at least introducing the concept of non-square pixels.

 

I can finally say "finally"..

 

2018-02-14 18.27.02.jpg

 

I know there's others but I feel like I'm one of the last in line of the early-orders. Haven't even gotten to try yet.. but I think it looks great. It really brings out the dinginess of the original!

 

 

 

Was a flash used on this? That white seems brighter than intended on the Super NT?

Edited February 15, 2018 by Kaide

[Kismet]

Of course he wrote the jailbreak, but he will disavow any knowledge of it which is why he used smokemonster / github as a release portal.

 

 

 

You don't know that. And quite frankly I find the suggestion that kevtris would leak such a thing without officially announcing it to be troubling. So I'm going to go with "someone who knows PIC32 disassembled/decompiled it, found a hidden menu item, and unhid it"

 

There are at least three people that have existing skills that could be used to program the SuperNT other than kevtris. jwdonal, bunnyboy (RetroUSB AVS) , ikari (SD2SNES).

 

Consider the source.

[Aeana]

@kevtris what is the preferred way to report bugs with games? I don't want to make things less convenient here. I just wanted to mention that the text boxes in Front Mission: Gun Hazard have invisible text in both the original Japanese version and the English patched version.

[cacophony]

 

You don't know that. And quite frankly I find the suggestion that kevtris would leak such a thing without officially announcing it to be troubling. So I'm going to go with "someone who knows PIC32 disassembled/decompiled it, found a hidden menu item, and unhid it"

 

There are at least three people that have existing skills that could be used to program the SuperNT other than kevtris. jwdonal, bunnyboy (RetroUSB AVS) , ikari (SD2SNES).

 

Consider the source.

Im curious what you mean be consider the source

 

Im not jumping to conclusions but if Kevtris hadnt been behind it wouldnt he have said that? There wouldnt really be much point in keeping things mysterious.

 

Edit: uggg for some reason posts from my phone always drop punctuation

Edited February 15, 2018 by cacophony

[simbin]

Im not jumping to conclusions but if Kevtris hadnt been behind it wouldnt he have said that? There wouldnt really be much point in keeping things mysterious.

 

Maybe he has an agreement with Analogue to not discuss anything that hasn't already been officially stated.

[Kismet]

Im curious what you mean be consider the source

 

Im not jumping to conclusions but if Kevtris hadnt been behind it wouldnt he have said that? There wouldnt really be much point in keeping things mysterious.

 

Edit: uggg for some reason posts from my phone always drop punctuation

 

The source (smokemonster) is the same source for the gamepacks people are fond of. He did not dump the games himself, he just found whatever was the least damaged version to put in the pack. The same is likely for firmware blobs. It's likely you'll see the unofficial SuperNT firmware blobs showing up in those packs just to ensure that people who download the pack can make it work on the SuperNT.

 

But someone had to either know the menu item was in there, or found it through reverse engineering. It's also very likely that the SD card loading was designed to straight-up use the data from a Everdrive or SD2SNES otherwise there would be no provision for importing the saves the way they are setup. It's pretty much impossible to add such features if they were not already in there.

 

So what I'm saying is that the firmware is very likely just "unhiding" features that actually already exist, not something someone added to it.

Edited February 15, 2018 by Kismet

[DarkkOne]

@kevtris what is the preferred way to report bugs with games? I don't want to make things less convenient here. I just wanted to mention that the text boxes in Front Mission: Gun Hazard have invisible text in both the original Japanese version and the English patched version.

Probably just a standard support request on the Analogue.co site.

[Newsdee]

Can anybody test for special chip support on the JB firmware? Does it support DSP games at least? (it's only ~18 games but pretty good ones)

 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Super_NES_enhancement_chips#DSP

Edited February 15, 2018 by Newsdee

[AtariNerd]

Kevin might have a time window he needs to abide by, before he can officially announce his intentions or may not be at liberty to do so and may decide to go through intermediaries to avoid a direct connection. If he is involved, this "leak" might be considered a nice Valentine preview and teaser of things to come, over time, while he works out the kinks. Or it might wind up being a one-off. Being able to play games that work on base hardware is a nice plus anyway one looks at it, even if support for some of the enhancement chips will likely never materialize. (Will personally order a flash-cart, eventually...for what I can't scavenge, barter or trade for that is relatively affordable (cheap ), otherwise. Whoever it was who released it - thank you. Just hope you and Kev see eye-to-eye , even if it is via mirror.

[DadsGlasses]

Interesting note:

 

Flashback The Quest for Identity did NOT work for me when I tried to play it using my Super Everdrive. However it DID work when I took the sd card from my Super Everdrive and plugged it into the ST with new Jailbreak firmware.

[mrpopsicleman]

Can anybody test for special chip support on the JB firmware? Does it support DSP games at least? (it's only ~18 games but pretty good ones)

 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Super_NES_enhancement_chips#DSP

As of right now, nothing works other than vanilla SNES games with no enhancement chips (which is what the vast majority of SNES games are). You'll get a message that says "Enhancement Chip Not Supported" if you try to run them.

 

Also, it's worth noting that the no S-DD1/96Mbit hacks of Star Ocean also don't work on the jailbreak firmware. They'll load, but only to a black screen.

Edited February 15, 2018 by mrpopsicleman

[kevtris]

@kevtris what is the preferred way to report bugs with games? I don't want to make things less convenient here. I just wanted to mention that the text boxes in Front Mission: Gun Hazard have invisible text in both the original Japanese version and the English patched version.

yes it's been reported a few times, I ahve it on the list to check out

[DarkkOne]

As of right now, nothing works other than vanilla SNES games with no enhancement chips (which is what the vast majority of SNES games are). You'll get an message that says "Enhancement Chip Not Supported" if you try to run them.

That's particularly interesting, because it means it at least detects them and fails gracefully rather than just failing blindly. Also, and it's quibbling over language, but that phrasing rather than "Enhancement Chips Aren't Supported" suggests that there's an expectation that some *will* be at some point. I mean, I think many of us kinda hoped/guessed that some will be, but it's nice to see some hints of detection and such already in place.

[NoKnownOrigin]

Lon just posted a quick video about the JB firmware that basically goes over all the important stuff. He did the upgrade the exact way I did.