FPGA Based Videogame System

[Mattelot]

Turbo might be reasonable if you're going for card-only, but once you start going boxed or complete, prices really shoot up.

 

I think the best bet with the Neo Geo is getting a consolized MVS, an AES with a MVS converter, an AES with a Neo SD, or any of those combinations with a MVS multi-cart. Still not cheap (probably looking at $700 - $1000 for an AES and Neo SD together), but at least you won't have to buy expensive carts individually.

 

Of course, I always toss this out there--if you don't want to go all-in on the Neo-Geo, a Neo-Geo CD is a good, cheap alternative. Systems are still $150 - $200 and it reads backups (and even if you want original CDs, they aren't that expensive comparatively). Just stay away from the later-gen fighting games.

 

I'm still undecided on Neo Geo. It was never a console I eye-balled while growing up. I now own all consoles I eye-balled when growing up but never owned (#1 being Sega CD). I know some people are collecting stuff because they want everything. I have an agenda on what I collect and anything more is just icing on the cake. Who knows... maybe after I get everything I've wanted, I'll get motivated to buy other systems that I had no interest in like Colecovision (saw one at Goodwill a few months ago for $150 lol....)

 

 

Relatively cheap. The market even 10-15 years ago was very different. Especially for the few who made trips to Japan and used brokers to find items. Games that went for $10 back then are going for hundreds now. You have to understand that these collectors didn't just buy up their collection back then and hoarded it all this time. People who kept their passion going through the years have witnessed the market slowly going to heck. Especially the last few years as new ways of playing are introduced. It's completely changed collecting and a lot of people resent it. CRT televisions and old systems were treated as junk and it was the days you could find entire collections while dumpster diving. Ordering gaming items international was very strange back then and the used market was wide open. Many Japanese live fairly spartan so the used stores were unbelievably stocked with mint condition stuff.

 

Neogeo has pretty much always been a rich person market. Bargain basement compared to what people are paying now but getitng the arcade experience at home has always been very specialized and elitist. Some scary people love the Neogeo.

 

I just hope more companies pick up on the fact that retro-gaming is really growing and develop more products that cater to them. The NT mini and the future expansion cable for the Super NT to allow us to use CRT, I would love to see a possible "retro-gaming TV" such as a 20" PVM style/quality TV with multiple inputs.

[Sbeehive]

IIRC there was a business case looked into for this, and a 19" would cost about $2200.00 in retrogamer quantities. There's lots of specialized and large equipment that would need to be designed and built from scratch.

 

Keatah can you share your source for this? That is incredibly interesting.

 

I'd love to see CRT's in some kind of manufacturing again.... Especially given that my poor PVM is on the outs (brightness issues... hoping it isn't the flyback but it probably is). 2200 is about the price of a new high-end record player (Technics). I'd also be willing to bet there would be a lot of arcade operators willing to put down some money into new CRT's.

 

Personally I would pay that much for something that "could" last me decades... Given that my ASUS PG279Q cost me a little under half of that and is already showing signs of death at 2 years old.

 

Imagine an Analogue interactive FPGA TV?

[kwnage]

I'd also be willing to bet there would be a lot of arcade operators willing to put down some money into new CRT's.

 

They'd rather put cheapass scalers and LCDs into their cabs. I guess the average arcade operator operates an arcade to earn money, not to spend huge amounts of money on replacing CRTs if there's a cheaper alternative and most people wouldn't notice the difference anyways...

[Mattelot]

 

They'd rather put cheapass scalers and LCDs into their cabs. I guess the average arcade operator operates an arcade to earn money, not to spend huge amounts of money on replacing CRTs if there's a cheaper alternative and most people wouldn't notice the difference anyways...

 

Very sad but true on both accounts. They're in it to make money and not many enthusiasts will be around to comment. Even if they did, the person working (owner or not) would just say "that's how I bought it."

[Shin_K]

 

 

Wait, is there a working decompressed version of Street Fighter Alpha 2 floating around? I was only aware of Star Ocean.

All the files to make one are there, just like the SO files to make the 96Mbit rom.

 

I hear SFA2 on Nintendo New 3DS SFC Virtual Console has decompressed assets and SDD1 calls disabled too.

 

That's how DarkAkuma got it to run on the regular snes classic mini emulator.

 

Personally I've owned both PAL and JP version of the game for like 15years, and I don't care that much about that game or version of that game, but being able to run it on super NT jb fw would be cool. Same for Star Ocean.

[bozo55]

It's an FS2735, and it has input lag of only about 3ms, independently measured, has a stroboscopic backlight to greatly reduce motion blurring, and doesn't exhibit any ghosting or trailing at all showing 60hz material. The main con is that it actually runs at 120hz when showing 60hz material, so when your eye follows something moving quickly, you see two closely overlaid copies of it, very much like looking at 30hz content on a 60hz CRT back in the day, only not quite that bad, because the double images are only half as far apart as that for any given rate of motion. This motion blur reduction can be turned off, but I found that with it off, the screen is prone to temporary image retention, probably because it actually runs at 60hz that way, and the screen is really engineered to be run much faster than that. I'd rather see two closely overlaid sharp images than a single smeared out one anyways.

 

It's 1440p, but that's a perfect 2x 720p for scanlines.

 

The color accuracy is not perfect, the blue primary in particular hits way too far towards purple, and I think too saturated, but I use an older DVDO iScan Duo processor for it's color management engine to color correct it.

 

I also use the iScan for other things such as zooming/stretching the image, converting chromaticity and video levels, tweaking brightness/contrast/hue/saturation, auto-switching between 8 HDMI inputs and 8 analog inputs which include everything, even in foreign formats like PAL, and an amazing amount of other features. It does all this with less than 8ms additional lag when in game mode, and it seems to be essentially zero lag when in locked source->input framerate mode, a mode that's really cool btw, it will lock HDMI output framerate to whatever an input is, such as the 60.09 from an OG SNES will be passed right through with zero buffering to the monitor at 60.09hz, which the Eizo has no issue with btw. It's scaling of 240p is awful though, awful, I'd deem it useless due to the "ringing". It does a really nice job of 480i/p though, even passes 480i with less than 8ms lag in exchange for a lot more roughness, but it does a shockingly good job, it has some kind of voodoo to keep a very acceptable picture from interlaced video without even a single full frame of buffering.

 

The lag is so low with this setup that I'm able to stop the roulette on all cherries in the American Super Mario Bros 2 at least 10% of the time, and stop at least the first wheel on a cherry half the time, which is about as good as I ever did on a CRT. (The "wheels" in the OG game show one item per frame, and stop instantly when you press the button, so with a quick eye and low lag, you can stop it on what you want).

 

This pair has me in video heaven, for the first time ever, I feel like I'm not trading off anything significant from CRT in using an LCD.

 

 

That display sounds very similar to my Asus PG279Q. Great displays. But I found that using Impulse mode on my Sony 55W950B is even better, once your eyes adjust to the flicker. I don't sense any motion blur anymore and it makes playing on my Sony 20" FS120 via component seem pointless, at least with an upscaled 720p image.

Edited February 21, 2018 by bozo55

[Great Hierophant]

Hey all. Came across this small graphical glitch in Donkey Kong Country in an early stage called Barrel Cannon Canyon in the first area. While I've played this game a few times on real hardware and emulators over the years, I don't really remember if this is something that existed on the original hardware. Here's an, admittedly pretty low-quality off-screen screenshot:

 

https://i.imgur.com/KxV7yi9.jpg

 

It looks like there is some kind of transparency issue on a few tiles in the entrance cave at the very start of the level. When you move around you can see it's the background layer because it parallax scrolls. It's not a big deal really, but it was something that I noticed in this play-through that I've never noticed before. Is this a glitch that exists on regular hardware?

 

US Donkey Kong Country, played off cartridge.

Area 1, "Barrel Cannon Canyon", Start.

Super NT firmware JB6.

It does, I saw it on a CRT with a real SNES console. It is easy to miss on a CRT but much more noticeable on an LCD.

[trismegistus]

 

I have triggered it using the real cartridge on the Super NT. This was on an earlier firmware, though... whichever one was current as of February 11. The method I used was to start at the Sanctuary, dash out the front door, go east to the graveyard, push the tombstone, face down and use a bomb to blast myself backwards into the hole.

In case anyone still cares, I've just successfully triggered the Houlihan room on the current jailbroken firmware, too.

[illuminerdi]

...with a USB port for an external CD-ROM. Even if it can’t play directly off it, you should be able to dump from it. It’s the feature I want most from Open PS2 Loader, since so many HDD-capable PS2s have bad disc drives (would basically make them useful as PS2s again).

 

Same here. A USB CD-ROM port would do many things. First off it would give people the option to add a Sega CD very CHEAPLY. You can get a USB CD/DVD reader for about $20. Compare that to the cost of an authentic Sega CD unit which starts around $50 and is 25 years old. This is a *mechanical* device. Unlike solid state devices such as carts, CD drives fail at a MUCH higher rate because they have moving parts.

 

In other words, adding USB CD Drive capability is practically necessary to preserve the possibility of using authentic discs as Sega CD units fall further into disrepair. It also opens up some nice aftermarket possibilities such as faster load times and buffering to prevent things like audio skipping or pausing while a track is restarted, etc.

 

I do think any Sega Genesis clone should include a pin-compatible expansion port for anyone who DOES have a working Sega CD and wants to go completely old-school on it, but IMO leaving out the possibility of hooking up a cheap USB CD reader would be a huge missed opportunity...

[leods]

BTW, I am reverted to Firmware 4.0, and I got that buy where video Settings don't apply once. It was selected to 4x vert, but screen was 4.5x. So I go into the menu and sure enough, 4x vert is selected there. I select it again, and it corrects the size to 4x as should have been.

 

I did revert from 4.1 though. Not sure thether that's relevant, my console has had all firmwares flashed...

[cfillak]

All this CRT talk makes me grateful that my friend hooked me up with a NIB BVM20F1U for 60 bucks from the broadcaster he works at. It'll probably be the last CRT I own, unless I can miraculously find maybe a 24 inch multiformat monitor for a decent price. It'd be nice to play GameCube at native 480p for the first time ever. The only things I don't like about the monitor I got is that it doesn't do composite or s-video without an expensive expansion card, and that it's a little bit small for light gun games.

 

As for Sega CD, the only action I've seen anywhere about an ODE solution (ie, just replacing the optical drive on the Sega CD unit, not replacing the whole unit) is from Cybdyn Systems, the company behind the PS-IO flashcart/ODE:

http://www.cybdyn-systems.com.au/forum/viewtopic.php?f=78&t=502

 

The company seems to have some interest in taking a crack at it, but only after they've fully gotten tooled up for mass production of PS-IO and their next project DC-IO for Dreamcast (Both of which I'm pretty excited about).

[scott64]

Speaking of removing the PC from the equation.. How do you guys charge your wireless controllers? Can i connect it to my TV's usb port or a phone charger plugged into the wall? I'm afraid to try until I know that will work and google wasn't any help.

[Toth]

Speaking of removing the PC from the equation.. How do you guys charge your wireless controllers? Can i connect it to my TV's usb port or a phone charger plugged into the wall? I'm afraid to try until I know that will work and google wasn't any help.

I use any micro USB charger I have laying around. Most of them are from old cell phones. The USB from the TV would work fine as well.

Edited February 21, 2018 by Toth

[leods]

Speaking of removing the PC from the equation.. How do you guys charge your wireless controllers? Can i connect it to my TV's usb port or a phone charger plugged into the wall? I'm afraid to try until I know that will work and google wasn't any help.

My setup is a 4 port Phone charger with the SNT plugged into that and then I can charge my tablet and the other controllers on the other ports. The controllers charge just fine through that. At least in my experience. The SNT is working flawless with this setup. It does provide 2A to each port.

[CZroe]

 

I think maybe you've missed my point, but I'll rephrase it. The software used back in 1997 was early versions of Nero burning rom. You had to use a SCSI drive to both read and write a disc with the subcode. Now tell me, exactly how much more complex this is than copyNES. When you copy a ROM off a cart, you basically do "get address 0x0000, 0x0004, 0x0008, 0x000A, etc" and there is nothing in the way except maybe those darn expansion chips.

You are describing how to dump an NES ROM. I was very deliberately comparing it to CopyNES in both complexity and execution, since CopyNES is on Nt Mini jailbroken FW and dumps from the cartridge. CopyNES has to dump them through the mapper and has to support every possible configuration to compare to an optical drive that dumps any Sega CD or TG-CD disc. It isn’t like dropping the individual chips into an EPROM reader with appropriate pin adapters.

 

If only it were that easy to dump and define a typical NES cartridge through the mapper hardware! Instead we need pre-made scripts and hardware definitions from reverse-engineered hardware that a typical user would not typically know to specify manually (you have to specify with CopyNES). A RetroN5 gets around this with even more complexity and engineering to identify a game based on what little it can see without knowing the mapper, then uses a database of all known games to cross-reference all the other settings. Quite a bit of work, especially if you count all of Kevtris’ work describing the different mappers and all the work building such a database, etc. CopyNES would need to do all that too if it were to directly compare to a basic disc dumper. It’s not reinventing the wheel to count all that towards the complexity of CopyNES because Kevtris literally created the documentation for all the mappers and such in the first place. Making the CopyNES functionally equivalent to a basic USB disc dumper that uses established libraries on the built-in ARM CPU is a lot more complicated, since we’d be adding even more (RetroN5-style dumping).

 

With a CD-ROM, current models are USB drives which are always just USB bridge chips with EIDE/SATA drives in them. So you need to implement the entire USB subsystem needed to implement UASP or you need to implement all the Mass Storage device drivers.

Yep... and there’s absolutely no issue with that. EIDE/SATA DVD drives can easily read everything they need to dump Sega CD, TG-CD, PS2 DVD, etc. Not sure why we’re talking about the capabilities of older EIDE CD drives versus older SCSI drives because that isn’t even a consideration. We’re talking about a USB port for connecting a DVD drive that can dump standard CDs/DVDs with nothing fancy.

 

Yes, they need to add USB CD support, which is something I already said. It would be very easy to do with an ARM CPU and a small Linux kernel. OPL already supports USB Mass Storage for copying off USB thumbdrives and HDDs and adding USB CD-ROM support however PS2 Linux would do it should be relatively easy. I’m not talking about reinventing the wheel.

 

Like, we're talking about the difference between a memory device (eg a rom or ram storage unit) and "USB attached mass storage device"

You are. I keep trying to talk about adding a USB port with the ability to dump. How the SD card is accessed on existing devices isn’t terribly relevant to me, since a future device like this can use USB card readers for all I care. [emoji4] FPGAs are available with ARM chips and can easily support USB devices using open-source drivers for all of this.

 

Maybe there's no point to implementing all this stuff in FPGA. Maybe it's better to just use an off-the-shelf linux SoC, since all these drivers and cruft will be in it already. Then reduce ripping down to the equivalent of a bin/wav/cue image that the FPGA SegaCD sees as simply a file system or audio tracks as if there was a disc.

Exactly, but as I keep pointing out: FPGAs typically have an embedded ARM SOC. It’s how they pull off the stuff that can’t directly be replicated in configurable logic. Adding a USB port for a DVD-ROM wouldn’t really be any harder than adding one for a mouse, keyboard, or gamepad. The libraries to support them on ARM are freely available. Heck, so are the libraries to dump discs... built in to most desktop Linux builds (probably not embedded kernels but the code can be added). Maybe I’m talking out of my rear, but I see enough embedded Linux devices with USB support for optical drives, gamepads, keyboard, mouse, etc that I have to assume it’s easier to add and less complex on a software level than writing CopyNES from scratch (recall that Kevtris is the one who documented and reverse-engineered most NES mappers in the first place).

 

 

I'm still undecided on Neo Geo. It was never a console I eye-balled while growing up. I now own all consoles I eye-balled when growing up but never owned (#1 being Sega CD)...

If you ever saw an arcade machine running Samurai Shodown or Puzzle Bobble or Metal Slug, then you essentially did see that console. [emoji6]

•Cartridge-based

•Arcade carts were bit-for-bit identical to home carts

•BIOS simply adjusted the presentation a bit (Insert Coin to Press Start, for example) but could be set to free-play anyway

•Even has a memory card slot to function as the home version did

 

There really wasn’t much distinguishing them.

 

 

They'd rather put cheapass scalers and LCDs into their cabs. I guess the average arcade operator operates an arcade to earn money, not to spend huge amounts of money on replacing CRTs if there's a cheaper alternative and most people wouldn't notice the difference anyways...

Yep, hence, the $15 GBS-8200, 8220, etc. The VGA scaling isn’t terrible but they still rely on LCDs with VGA scalers (two scalers!). With modern TVs now dropping ALL analog inputs, there will probably be a CGA/240p RGB to digital converter soon (HDMI, Display Port, DVI, etc).

 

All the files to make one are there, just like the SO files to make the 96Mbit rom.

 

I hear SFA2 on Nintendo New 3DS SFC Virtual Console has decompressed assets and SDD1 calls disabled too.

 

That's how DarkAkuma got it to run on the regular snes classic mini emulator.

 

Personally I've owned both PAL and JP version of the game for like 15years, and I don't care that much about that game or version of that game, but being able to run it on super NT jb fw would be cool. Same for Star Ocean.

IIRC, you needed decompressed graphics packs when support for the game was first added to ZSNES and SNES9x, So we’ve had them from the start of SDD1 game support in emulators.

 

All this CRT talk makes me grateful that my friend hooked me up with a NIB BVM20F1U for 60 bucks from the broadcaster he works at. It'll probably be the last CRT I own, unless I can miraculously find maybe a 24 inch multiformat monitor for a decent price. It'd be nice to play GameCube at native 480p for the first time ever. The only things I don't like about the monitor I got is that it doesn't do composite or s-video without an expensive expansion card, and that it's a little bit small for light gun games.

 

As for Sega CD, the only action I've seen anywhere about an ODE solution (ie, just replacing the optical drive on the Sega CD unit, not replacing the whole unit) is from Cybdyn Systems, the company behind the PS-IO flashcart/ODE:

http://www.cybdyn-systems.com.au/forum/viewtopic.php?f=78&t=502

 

The company seems to have some interest in taking a crack at it, but only after they've fully gotten tooled up for mass production of PS-IO and their next project DC-IO for Dreamcast (Both of which I'm pretty excited about).

Thanks for this. The prospect of refurbishing the drive multiple times over the years is why I haven’t bothered to replace the fuse in my SegaCD in almost 15 years.

 

Speaking of removing the PC from the equation.. How do you guys charge your wireless controllers? Can i connect it to my TV's usb port or a phone charger plugged into the wall? I'm afraid to try until I know that will work and google wasn't any help.

They wouldn’t use micro USB if micro USB wasn’t generally safe to use. That said, I’ve seen some horror stories about what you find inside of the cheap or counterfeit USB chargers, so stick with a good brand for anything expensive. Edited February 21, 2018 by CZroe

[Namdor]

@Kevtris. Loving my Super NT. I was wondering if you had considered making a core for MSX 1 or 2 for the NT mini? I'd really like to be able to play games like the original Metal Gear, Castlevania and SD Snatcher.

 

Thanks

[thirdkind]

 

Same here. A USB CD-ROM port would do many things. First off it would give people the option to add a Sega CD very CHEAPLY. You can get a USB CD/DVD reader for about $20. Compare that to the cost of an authentic Sega CD unit which starts around $50 and is 25 years old. This is a *mechanical* device. Unlike solid state devices such as carts, CD drives fail at a MUCH higher rate because they have moving parts.

 

In other words, adding USB CD Drive capability is practically necessary to preserve the possibility of using authentic discs as Sega CD units fall further into disrepair. It also opens up some nice aftermarket possibilities such as faster load times and buffering to prevent things like audio skipping or pausing while a track is restarted, etc.

 

I do think any Sega Genesis clone should include a pin-compatible expansion port for anyone who DOES have a working Sega CD and wants to go completely old-school on it, but IMO leaving out the possibility of hooking up a cheap USB CD reader would be a huge missed opportunity...

 

 

The challenge with the Sega CD is that it's more than just a drive attachment like the Turbo CD. It has its own processors that extend the capabilities of the Genesis. Therefore, it would require an FPGA solution of its own, meaning it can't simply be replaced by a cheap USB CD-ROM drive.

 

Here's my ideal scenario:

 

1. A Genesis FPGA console to serve as the core, with an SD card slot (just like the Nt Mini and Super Nt) and expansion port

2. A Sega CD FPGA that connects to the expansion port, and has its own USB port

 

If the Sega CD FPGA could read the Genesis FPGA SD card slot through the expansion port, there would be no need to include one in the Sega CD FPGA, reducing costs. It could use the Genesis FPGA SD card for both firmware updates and loading bin/cue rips of Sega CDs. The USB port on the Sega CD FPGA would allow the connection of a standard CD-ROM drive for reading actual Sega CD discs, and perhaps ripping them to SD.

 

Like the SSDS3 at its $300 USD price point, the Sega CD FPGA could be a pricier accessory for enthusiasts that costs more than the Genesis FPGA (just like the original Sega CD cost more than the Genesis) since it will sell in lower quantities.

[D3ltax55]

Im using the 720p option. Why didn't they let you extend the height more then 720 SO I can fill the screen? They let you extend past 1080 fight in 1080p mode. Im on firmware 4.0.

[bikerspade]

Im using the 720p option. Why didn't they let you extend the height more then 720 SO I can fill the screen? They let you extend past 1080 fight in 1080p mode. Im on firmware 4.0.

Probably because 720 is a nice clean multiple of 240. The next multiple of 960 would probably discard too many rows to be practical.

[DarkkOne]

Probably because 720 is a nice clean multiple of 240. The next multiple of 960 would probably discard too many rows to be practical.

 

The SNES doesn't actually fill the full 720 pixels typically, because most (all?) games are actually a little letterboxed, if I recall. So I can understand a desire to set it a little higher than 720 height, though at that point you may as well just use 1080p, because either way you're going to want interpolation.

[bozo55]

Im using the 720p option. Why didn't they let you extend the height more then 720 SO I can fill the screen? They let you extend past 1080 fight in 1080p mode. Im on firmware 4.0.

 

I used HDMI +1 size on my Sony to solve that. But it would be nice so I could fill my 1440p PC display.

[zeroG]

Im using the 720p option. Why didn't they let you extend the height more then 720 SO I can fill the screen? They let you extend past 1080 fight in 1080p mode. Im on firmware 4.0.

 

If you use 720p you probably use scanlines (the main reason to go for 720p). Scanlines work best if you don't use vertical interpolation and without interpolation 720p is the only rational resolution, because the next step would be 960p. Games use less than 240 pixels, so you get small black borders on the top and bottom.

[bozo55]

 

If you use 720p you probably use scanlines (the main reason to go for 720p). Scanlines work best if you don't use vertical interpolation and without interpolation 720p is the only rational resolution, because the next step would be 960p. Games use less than 240 pixels, so you get small black borders on the top and bottom.

I had a feeling it might look bad and that's why it's not an option. I wish I could just see how bad it looks and decide for myself if I want to use the 721-800 line range.

[DarkkOne]

I had a feeling it might look bad and that's why it's not an option. I wish I could just see how bad it looks and decide for myself if I want to use the 721-800 line range.

If you want to "get an idea" you can shrink *down* either from 720p or 1080p and see what it looks like at non-integer values.

[CZroe]

 

I used HDMI +1 size on my Sony to solve that. But it would be nice so I could fill my 1440p PC display.

Ain’t gunna git no inturger scale like ‘at, partna’.

 

Ya durn rernt it.