FPGA Based Videogame System

[Sneakyturtleegg]

He is trolling guys. Has been since he started posing here.

[kevtris]

As mentioned earlier, I managed to get the super powerpak to work on the super nt. Bunnyboy lent me two of his personal units but I have to return those, but I got a hold of one to keep so I can make sure it will continue to work on future versions of the firmware. I am not sure how many people have a super powerpak and a super nt, but they can rest easy now. hehe.

[kevtris]

 

 

Didn’t someone say that there is a bug with PAL composite video on the latest jailbreak firmware for the Nt mini? I’d test but I don’t have the cables.

 

@Kevtris dunno if you can confirm?

Apparently PAL composite works properly on version 1.7 or earlier so says Great Hierophant. I have not had time to check it out personally. So the fix is to use earlier firmware for now. RGB/component works OK in all versions for PAL, however.

[KRiSX]

why the hell would you connect it via composite to an xrgb? thats just dumb

[Sho]

I just got third new Analogue NT Mini for warranty, why the hell they send me faulty shit, look dat shit!! I just cancel my Super NT orders, cause they sell people full of shit!

 

Conclusion is that you have no idea what you are doing. You shouldn't even be using the Framemeister with it.

 

Hook it up directly to your TV, lol.

Edited February 23, 2018 by Sho

[z3razerviper]

Hello Everyone,

I am trying to convince myself that a SD2SNES is a good buy. What are the major pros and cons (besides price) for each. I know FX chip support is a no go on both but the SD2SNES supports quite a few of the other external chips. Does it look like future jail breaks will support everything the SD2SNES currently supports? Is it even capable of doing so technically?

[phoenixdownita]

Not sure why so many people think the CoreStore is dead.

Having one FPGA console on sale for each core Kevtris has done is not a good business decision, there may be space for 3 or 4 but one for each ain't gonna make a lot of sense.

With the Nt Mini discontinued the RetroUSB AVS is the only FPGA based NES console available, somehow I don't think Analogue is ready to just concede that market.

The Nt Mini imho was too expensive, the CoreStore brought it up to "I really would like one" territory, the SuperNt is even more powerful and far cheaper and unless big N steps/stepped in I don't see why Analogue would not want to double or triple the sales "by allowing kevtris to support the NES" .... as a minimum.

 

So told if Analogue decides that 20K units (or whatever) is the production limit then there's gotta be another unit coming.

Kevtris released/donated 10Y of his own personal development time with the CoreStore on the Nt Mini and I seriously doubt he would like it to see reserved to only a handful of people (Nt Mini owners to be obvious for now).

 

Yep there's space for an FPGA Genesis/SMS/GG combo for sure and I actually like the 9 pin joystick connectors more ... in case Atari 2600/7800/ColecoVision were to make an appeareance ... you know.

 

Time will tell, I just would hate for 10Y of painstakingly genius work to be reserved to entertain just a few.

 

Also let's address the big elephant in the room, Analogue needs kevtris, kevtris does NOT need Analogue (pity the Hortonworks® name is already taken) .... and I am a patient man, I waited 20 years to play NeoGeo ROMS on a real NeoGeo (thanks NeoSD) .... I personally don't mind if another decade has to pass to get a Zimba 3000 (and I mean the concept of a single versatile FPGA based console) or whatever would make sense then .... somehow somewhere there's a little fairy looking out for me and I can hear her whisper "kevtris will do it" ... I believe that's the same one that was telling wolf the JB fw would come ... she was right once she may be right again.

[DarkkOne]

Most TVs that are capable of an integer scale will not do it by simply setting the resolution to a whole integer that divides evenly into 4k. You have to disable overscan simulation, which is often hidden/obfuscated. What is your TV model?

The image is slightly enlarged/cropped by default. They don’t even want you to know it’s doing this at all.

Not an issue here. I have it in the appropriate mode. What I'm talking about is postprocessing filtering. If you input 720p into a 1080p screen, or 1080p into a 4k screen, both are upscaling. Instead of using nearest neighbor, they tend to use algorithms that introduce a little bit of softness in their upscaling. For video this is typically seen as improving the image, because nearest neighbor tends to be ugly. For content that's meant to maintain sharpness, this unfortunately loses a tiny bit of sharpness. 1080p->4k doesn't lose much. 720p->1080p loses more. Unfortunately, despite it being an integer multiple, 720p->4k often loses a lot of sharpness because of the filtering. I've never yet seen a TV that allows you to set it to use nearest neighbor scaling for its upscaling, though there's no reason why they'd be impossible or anything. But yeah, 720p upscaled to 4k is typically going to soften the image noticeably.

[zeroG]

And if I really wanted to play those special versions of the games, I always can get the SD2SNES, which I plan on eventually. (Are there even any hacks/patches for special-chip games?)

 

SD2SNES essentially gives you Star Ocean (translated hacked version), Mega Man X2+3 and Mega Man X3 "Fully Playable Zero hack".

DSP-Support (Everdrive DSP and SD2SNES) essentially gives you Mario Kart (+hacks) and Pilot Wings.

There are English translations for "Far Side of Eden Zero" and "Marvelous: Mouhitotsu no Takarajima". Popular hacks are available for Mario RPG, Mega Man X3, Mario Kart and Yoshi's Island.

So if you own a SD2SNES you would need repros for Mario RPG hacks, Yoshi's Island hacks, Far Side of Eden Zero (translation), Marvelous (translation) and Star Fox 2.

You would also need original carts (or repros) for Kirby Super Star, Kirby's Dream Land 3, Parodius 3 - Jikkyou Oshaberi Parodius, Super Mario RPG, Star Fox and Yoshi's Island.

Edited February 23, 2018 by zeroG

[Radfoo]

It was never complete? what wasn't complete about it? from what I recall, I got all games to work on it. It also supports the FM expansion audio.

It works great, but I think he is referring to PAL, many games were not released on NTSC (when I last tried PAL did not work).

 

Thanks

Edited February 23, 2018 by Radfoo

[CZroe]

Not sure why so many people think the CoreStore is dead.

Having one FPGA console on sale for each core Kevtris has done is not a good business decision, there may be space for 3 or 4 but one for each ain't gonna make a lot of sense.

With the Nt Mini discontinued the RetroUSB AVS is the only FPGA based NES console available, somehow I don't think Analogue is ready to just concede that market.

The Nt Mini imho was too expensive, the CoreStore brought it up to "I really would like one" territory, the SuperNt is even more powerful and far cheaper and unless big N steps/stepped in I don't see why Analogue would not want to double or triple the sales "by allowing kevtris to support the NES" .... as a minimum.

 

So told if Analogue decides that 20K units (or whatever) is the production limit then there's gotta be another unit coming.

Kevtris released/donated 10Y of his own personal development time with the CoreStore on the Nt Mini and I seriously doubt he would like it to see reserved to only a handful of people (Nt Mini owners to be obvious for now).

 

Yep there's space for an FPGA Genesis/SMS/GG combo for sure and I actually like the 9 pin joystick connectors more ... in case Atari 2600/7800/ColecoVision were to make an appeareance ... you know.

 

Time will tell, I just would hate for 10Y of painstakingly genius work to be reserved to entertain just a few.

 

Also let's address the big elephant in the room, Analogue needs kevtris, kevtris does NOT need Analogue (pity the Hortonworks® name is already taken) .... and I am a patient man, I waited 20 years to play NeoGeo ROMS on a real NeoGeo (thanks NeoSD) .... I personally don't mind if another decade has to pass to get a Zimba 3000 (and I mean the concept of a single versatile FPGA based console) or whatever would make sense then .... somehow somewhere there's a little fairy looking out for me and I can hear her whisper "kevtris will do it" ... I believe that's the same one that was telling wolf the JB fw would come ... she was right once she may be right again.

Your premise is based on the Analogue Nt Mini being discontinued. There’s good reason to believe it’s not along with a good explanation for it being currently unavailable: 8bitdo discontinued the NES30.

 

8bitdo is even sweeping it under the rug, deleting all pictures and calling it “N30” on their product support pages. Since Analogue hasn’t removed the product page, I expect we might see it again.

 

...and, oh yeah: Bung Multi Game Xchanger series (original or MGD², I can’t recall) had a NeoGeo adapter for playing NeoGeo ROMs on AES decades ago. Wouldn’t support the late titles, I’m sure.

[leods]

So I did a bunch of testing of the sreen size options on the Super Nt. There is one thing I didn't understand at all:

 

Why does the 1:1 aspect ratio option makes the screen perfectly square, making it the exact same ammount of total pixels high and wide for the image? What is the use scenario for that?

 

Why isn't there in the basic menu (no advance mode) an option to do pixel perfect scaling, that makes each pixel exactly as high as it is wide?

 

Was this already talked about and I missed it? I can't possibly go through 50 pages of speculation searching for this now.

[NoKnownOrigin]

So I did a bunch of testing of the sreen size options on the Super Nt. There is one thing I didn't understand at all:

 

Why does the 1:1 aspect ratio option makes the screen perfectly square, making it the exact same ammount of total pixels high and wide for the image? What is the use scenario for that?

 

Why isn't there in the basic menu (no advance mode) an option to do pixel perfect scaling, that makes each pixel exactly as high as it is wide?

 

Was this already talked about and I missed it? I can't possibly go through 50 pages of speculation searching for this now.

 

Huh weird, I always assumed the 1:1 mode was the pixel perfect scaling mode you are talking about, but it doesn't look like it is. It sets the vertical and horizontal to 960 (in 4x) when the horizontal should be 1024. So this isn't really a 1:1 mode it is a 0.9375:1 mode.

 

I had never set the Super Nt to this mode before but, if it was setup to actually be the correct ratio, it would be useful for Super GameBoy.

 

Edit: I think this maybe is the point? I guess the Super GameBoy aspect ratio is slightly wide?

Edited February 23, 2018 by NoKnownOrigin

[kwnage]

 

I have a 4K TV. In 720p it's noticeably less sharp than in 1080p. Even though it's a integer upscale, most TVs don't do nearest neighbor scaling, they apply some filtering, because the vast majority of content doesn't benefit from sharp pixels. I definitely still use 1080p mode.

 

Panasonic 4K TVs do nearest neighbor scaling for 1080p if you enable "1080p Pixel by 4pixels" mode. At least mine does, it's a TX-65EXW784.

720p however still gets filtered, I wish there was an option to enable nearest neighbor scaling for 720p, as well.

 

So I did a bunch of testing of the sreen size options on the Super Nt. There is one thing I didn't understand at all:

 

Why does the 1:1 aspect ratio option makes the screen perfectly square, making it the exact same ammount of total pixels high and wide for the image? What is the use scenario for that?

 

Why isn't there in the basic menu (no advance mode) an option to do pixel perfect scaling, that makes each pixel exactly as high as it is wide?

 

Was this already talked about and I missed it? I can't possibly go through 50 pages of speculation searching for this now.

 

This confused me too, at first. You can achieve square pixels by enabling advanced mode and moving the slider until it reads "3x, 4x" and so on, do the same with the other slider and you'll have square pixels.

Edited February 23, 2018 by kwnage

[leods]

I was surprised. I was recording a video about scaling on the system, and when I got to that part, and tested shimmering, there was shimmering. So I was like: WTF? And then I took a look at the advanced options, and sure enough, it sets the image to this weird scaling.

 

I don't really remember anyone talking about this before. How does this behave on the NT Mini? I even installed firmware 4.1 to see wether that was still the case (as I use 4.0) and it's still the exact same.

 

?

 

And BTW guys, can you please finally stop the speculation and the whole back and forth for a while? It's a terrible pain in the ass to go through all this stuff just to get to the actual reports. Kevtris isn't doing anything else till he is satisfied with the Super NT. So help him get this done, and once Kevin says Firmware x.x is final for the time being, you can go back to speculation again, without hindering the general bug reporting and features discussion on the system. I beg you.

[rule_z]

It seems that my quest is finally over, Analogue has just sent me a new PCB in replacement, this should fix everything

[leods]

It seems that my quest is finally over, Analogue has just sent me a new PCB in replacement, this should fix everything

I heard of other people with defective consoles, and they were taken care of also. I was finding it strange this wasn't being solved, as they seem to be generally good at support. Maybe just a bit of a misunderstanding, or internally a bit of lack of communication. Glad that's solved.

 

Kevtris said in my stream, that you can lift up just the corners of the rubber to take the screws out, and when you're done, the rubber should still glue back to place without need to add extra glue or anything.

 

Edit: are video option profiles in the "to do" list? This might be a pain in the ass to make, but it would actually be really cool to be able to save a handful of video profiles that we could quickly swap. So I could have one profile for the Super Game Boy, one for games where 5x hight doesn't lose any special information, one for other games, one for scanlines.

 

I don't mean the profiles should identify the carts. That's ridiculous. But it would be cool if we could save them, and then change on the menu. Much quicker than going through all different options of size, resolution, scanlines, deinterlacing etc..

Edited February 23, 2018 by leods

[rule_z]

Great, thanks for the info

[kwnage]

Kevtris said in my stream, that you can lift up just the corners of the rubber to take the screws out, and when you're done, the rubber should still glue back to place without need to add extra glue or anything.

 

That's exactly what I do with Xbox Classic consoles... I don't get why people remove the rubber pads completely rather than just lifting the corners enough to get a screwdriver in.

Edited February 23, 2018 by kwnage

[Kismet]

 

That's exactly what I do with Xbox Classic consoles... I don't get why people remove the rubber pads completely rather than just lifting the corners enough to get a screwdriver in.

 

They probably don't know where the screws are.

[Kismet]

 

Edit: are video option profiles in the "to do" list? This might be a pain in the ass to make, but it would actually be really cool to be able to save a handful of video profiles that we could quickly swap. So I could have one profile for the Super Game Boy, one for games where 5x hight doesn't lose any special information, one for other games, one for scanlines.

 

I don't mean the profiles should identify the carts. That's ridiculous. But it would be cool if we could save them, and then change on the menu. Much quicker than going through all different options of size, resolution, scanlines, deinterlacing etc..

 

What I would like is a separate monitor/device and cartridge profile.

 

eg the Super NT remembers what monitor it's plugged into and that becomes the "base" profile, and then the cartridge profiles (eg read the cart checksum) override the base profile. Though it might not really be possible to do that with plugged in carts.

[Mattelot]

I'm sorry, but at this point I blame user error. Your setup must be whack, because I doubt you could have that much bad luck. Three faulty Analogue NT Minis, I highly doubt that.

 

I've questioned your motive since your original posts about hooking up your HDMI enabled console into a framemeister via composite. Your setup makes zero sense.

 

I agree with this. Not just because the NT mini is a very solid piece of hardware but because of my background in AV. I was at Gamestop once and watched a lady who looked (I apologize for the term but it's the only one I can think of) like trailer trash. She brought in a Xbox One that she bought preowned and said it stopped working. She said "this is the 5th one I've brought back." From the rest of her explanation, I'm 99% sure she had a bad power strip. It makes me wonder how many warranty complaints were really user-fault.

[Riptide]

Does it still have the same problem with Ninja Gaiden that Hi-Def NES had?https://youtu.be/xBF3kP2CL7Y

I forgot to test before selling the Nt Mini I had a few days ago (couldn’t ignore $1,200).

Not sure, I havent played that game enough to get to that part. I didn't see that during the intro so I'm assuming you have to play a few levels before getting to that bit?

[romevi]

 

 

SD2SNES essentially gives you Star Ocean (translated hacked version), Mega Man X2+3 and Mega Man X3 "Fully Playable Zero hack".

DSP-Support (Everdrive DSP and SD2SNES) essentially gives you Mario Kart (+hacks) and Pilot Wings.

There are English translations for "Far Side of Eden Zero" and "Marvelous: Mouhitotsu no Takarajima". Popular hacks are available for Mario RPG, Mega Man X3, Mario Kart and Yoshi's Island.

So if you own a SD2SNES you would need repros for Mario RPG hacks, Yoshi's Island hacks, Far Side of Eden Zero (translation), Marvelous (translation) and Star Fox 2.

You would also need original carts (or repros) for Kirby Super Star, Kirby's Dream Land 3, Parodius 3 - Jikkyou Oshaberi Parodius, Super Mario RPG, Star Fox and Yoshi's Island.

 

 

I'm confused.

I've never owned nor operated an SD2SNES, but I looked up some info on their site. According to this:

https://sd2snes.de/blog/compatibility,

Star Ocean, Far Side of Eden Zero, Marvelous, Mario RPG, Yoshi's Island, the Star Fox titles, Kirby DML3, and Super Star are incompatible. But do they work now?

[Chronos30]

No, that's why they said you'd need repros (reproduction carts).