FPGA Based Videogame System

[CZroe]

 

If they rerelease the Mini in some capacity, a pack in (or exclusive run) dogbone, with just the A and B buttons, would be awesome. I love me some dogbone and really don't want to play NES any other way.

*scratches chin*

 

Hmmm...

 

...Nintendo’s dogbone came with a cost-reduced toploader redesign of the NES (NES-101) so it would be particularly fitting for Analogue and 8bitdo to make their own “ANt-101” together. Of course, a cost-reduced version will probably have no bundled controller but might have an “optional matching controller” available like they did for the Super Nt. [emoji4]

 

I do feel it probably needs more buttons to support some of the other cores.

Edited March 1, 2018 by CZroe

[Karbuncle]

I recognize that picture from Facebook. You might recognize mine:

 

 

 

 

 

(click for full-res)

 

Glad to see yours is going to better use than mine! Wish I could help but my hearing sucks.

 

 

 

 

:-)

[Andromeda Stardust]

Nintendo's trademark is on the button layout primarily, and pattern.

 

To be fair, the rectangular corners are hard on the hands. With the SNES I find instead the bottom of the controller pushes into the middle or ring finger depending how tight you grip it, hence why the PSX and later all have grips that double as spaces for the vibration motors. However the XBOX360 controller misses the mark a little as well (battery operated is too heavy, D-pad is useless (has "hat" style movement which is fine for menus, but awful for 2D game's))

 

The SNES is a bit more obvious

 

angled start and select buttons, background around the ABXY buttons.

Nintendo's trademark is on the button layout primarily, and pattern.

 

To be fair, the rectangular corners are hard on the hands. With the SNES I find instead the bottom of the controller pushes into the middle or ring finger depending how tight you grip it, hence why the PSX and later all have grips that double as spaces for the vibration motors. However the XBOX360 controller misses the mark a little as well (battery operated is too heavy, D-pad is useless (has "hat" style movement which is fine for menus, but awful for 2D game's))

 

The SNES is a bit more obvious

 

angled start and select buttons, background around the ABXY buttons.

I'm still a bit bummed that 8bitdo discontinued the old style nes30 and fc30 controllers. The fc30 controller was loads better than the nes one which had even sharper corners than the oem nes controllers, and the cross pattern on the nes one just looked derpy. I decided to buy another 8bitdo controller but instead of the matching scheme to my na purple super nt, I got the new sn pro controller which sports switch compatibility including motion control. I haven't yet invested in any of the "pro" versions and that dual stick snes one is the best yet, and the only clone switch controller I know of that supports motion. Get one now before they axe the classic styling altogether. We'll see how it fares.

 

 

I also bought another snes receiver on ebay (ships from china) for $17 usd which was much cheaper than any of the amazon resellers. So now I've got one classic mini receiver, two nes receivers (with old beta firmware to use a+b), two snes receivers, a discontinued nes30, a discontinued fc30, a discontinued snes30, and the new switch compatible sn pro. I think I'm good for a while...

[Andromeda Stardust]

Borti and I are in agreement that the amp effectively replaces the filtering circuit such that it it not needed, especially since the signal is being sent to internal SNES mixing/filtering anyway. However, testing has revealed that the sound output is nearly perfectly intact in a SNES junior when compared to digital playback in Higan. See the two graphs below showing the sound signature of the same track in both:

Now compare the same playback in the Super Nt:

Note the filtering in the upper rage seems much more aggressive. These pic are courtesy of Qwertymodo, but I'm going to be comparing direct capture results on my own SNES systems. I'm using a revision "F" SD2SNES that I upgraded with the sound amp myself as seen below:

I will be doing a volume diagnostic test using the following:

1. Revision "APU" Super NES

2. Revision "1CHIP-03" Super NES

3. Revision "Junior" Super NES

4. Super Nt. revision 4.3

 

I'll also be measuring relative volume levels between all 4 devices to determine what setting the "Cart Volume" should be ideally set at for the Super Nt. I'll let you know how it all turns out, but for now, I thought those sound spectrum images were interesting to compare against.

Judging by the graphs, there appears to be noise generated right around 15-16khz, ironically near the h-scan rate of crts and ntsc video. This also is near the halfway point of the spc 32khz frequency. Meaning noise above 16khz is reflected over. Notice the symetrical patterns. My 37-year old ears are sensitive to about 17khz so i can still hear sounds like 15khz crt scan noise (used to drive me bonkers as a kid whenever I was in a room with one of those afflicted sets - not all crts buzz at 15khz but those that did were obnoxious).

 

I would argue that these noise patterns are in the analog design aside from the fact that higan produces them too. And I can hear the near ultrasonic buzz of my real snes through hifi speakers, but it is fairly low in volume compared to the actual audio output. Since the spc audio processor on stock snes hardware runs at 32khz, it cannot reproduce content above 16khz so what you hear/see is in fact noise artifacts.

 

Kevtris adc presumably runs at the same 48khz as the upscaled 2:3 ratio digitally upscaled spc, so it would be capable of generating tones up to 24khz. However, tones above 24khz will produce alias artifacts in the audible spectrum. However the audio filter applied to the msu-1 output seems to have a cutoff of 10khz, below the 16khz limit of the spc and well below the cutoff limit of 24khz for 48khz sampled pcm.

 

The filter is likely an analog rc circuit present on the super nt motherboard, tuned to 10khz. The resultant output is fed into the adc. Simple mod idea for less agressive lowpass filtering of gameboy and/or msu-1 audio. Find the capacitor responsible for the lowpass filter and replace it with a cap equal to one half it's value. This will place the cutoff at 20khz, between the spc limit and the adc limit. Alias artifacts will be almost non-existent and the msu-1 / game boy sound will be richer in harmonic content above 10khz.

 

So yeah, void your warranty and mod your super nt for superior cart bus audio.

[SegaSnatcher]

Again, not asking for confirmation for future products, but if one was to implement a Neo-Geo via FPGA could it be made to accept both AVS and MVS carts?

[Andromeda Stardust]

Again, not asking for confirmation for future products, but if one was to implement a Neo-Geo via FPGA could it be made to accept both AVS and MVS carts?

Wouldn't this require grand total of four card connectors?

[SegaSnatcher]

Wouldn't this require grand total of four card connectors?

No, its the same cart slot in regards to number of pins, but I believe, like the PC-Engine/TG-16 the data lines are in the reverse order or something.

 

Edited March 1, 2018 by SegaSnatcher

[Andromeda Stardust]

No, its the same cart slot. I believe its simply a matter of a different Bios. With Darksoft's Neo-Geo Flash cart you can play either AES or MVS games on an MVS system.

I believe the same is true for the NeoSD.

 

What I meant was the mvs and aes carts have two slots each so the system would need a total of 4 card slots to accomodate both cartridge types. I assume the only difference between an mvs and aes cart is the pinout, like nes and famicom?

[SegaSnatcher]

What I meant was the mvs and aes carts have two slots each so the system would need a total of 4 card slots to accomodate both cartridge types. I assume the only difference between an mvs and aes cart is the pinout, like nes and famicom?

I believe its the same number of pins just in reverse order. Perhaps via software the datalines can be changed depending on whether you have a AES or MVS cart inserted.

 

Edit: Rats I was wrong, MVS slot has more pins than AES.

Edited March 1, 2018 by SegaSnatcher

[ErebusMaligan]

I'm still a bit bummed that 8bitdo discontinued the old style nes30 and fc30 controllers. The fc30 controller was loads better than the nes one which had even sharper corners than the oem nes controllers, and the cross pattern on the nes one just looked derpy. I decided to buy another 8bitdo controller but instead of the matching scheme to my na purple super nt, I got the new sn pro controller which sports switch compatibility including motion control. I haven't yet invested in any of the "pro" versions and that dual stick snes one is the best yet, and the only clone switch controller I know of that supports motion. Get one now before they axe the classic styling altogether. We'll see how it fares.

 

The pro versions are very slightly cramped, but overall not bad controllers. The DPad was a bit better than either of the snes30 and nes30 controllers i have, which out of the box are basically so bad as to be unusable. The snes30 I was able to mostly fix the dpad by opening it up and masking off part of the dpad contacts with electrical tape to make up and down not trigger left and right so easily... but i still never use it. PS4 controllers are just way more comfortable overall and work great with the 8bitdo receivers.

 

The receivers are amazing given how many consoles you can get converters from Console to SNES. The controllers though, need work.

[Andromeda Stardust]

The pro versions are very slightly cramped, but overall not bad controllers. The DPad was a bit better than either of the snes30 and nes30 controllers i have, which out of the box are basically so bad as to be unusable. The snes30 I was able to mostly fix the dpad by opening it up and masking off part of the dpad contacts with electrical tape to make up and down not trigger left and right so easily... but i still never use it. PS4 controllers are just way more comfortable overall and work great with the 8bitdo receivers.

 

The receivers are amazing given how many consoles you can get converters from Console to SNES. The controllers though, need work.

I never had any issues with my 8bitdo dpads on either of my three existing controllers.

[SegaSnatcher]

What I meant was the mvs and aes carts have two slots each so the system would need a total of 4 card slots to accomodate both cartridge types. I assume the only difference between an mvs and aes cart is the pinout, like nes and famicom?

So, now that I have that knowledge, I would think they would either be forced to use dual cartridge slots, or just go MVS and let people turn on AES mode. It would probably come with some kind of unibios as well.

[ErebusMaligan]

I never had any issues with my 8bitdo dpads on either of my three existing controllers.

 

The way mine seem to work is that up or down has about a 20 degree range on the circle, and anything outside of that will go left/right. So playing contra for instance in the first level if you try to duck under the bullets of the turrets as you are walking toward them, only about 40% of the time the down press would take, the rest of the time just walking straight into the stream of bullets. Even on something like zelda where there is a grid like movement to it, it would be annoyingly inprecise. It's a common problem with their controllers if you read reviews, even on their own forums people have brought it up. Not sure if it's just individual ones being worse than others, but the way the dpad contacts are printed on the pcb is different than an original controller, and some people commented that this is the reason for the problems with it.

[Karbuncle]

 

So yeah, void your warranty and mod your super nt for superior cart bus audio.

I don't intend to do ANY modding of my Super Nt. I'm only interested in fidelity results. If it turns out that using a 1CHIP SNES console results in superior sound quality for MSU1 games, I want to make certain that's the case. It's purely for posterity, and possibly on the off chance that Kevtris has any sort of control over cart audio filtering in the Super Nt. If he doesn't, then it may just be a simple case where 'technically' the best experience for MSU1 audio quality is Higan or a 1CHIP console. Not a major issue though, but more a curiosity at this point.

[Andromeda Stardust]

I don't intend to do ANY modding of my Super Nt. I'm only interested in fidelity results. If it turns out that using a 1CHIP SNES console results in superior sound quality for MSU1 games, I want to make certain that's the case. It's purely for posterity, and possibly on the off chance that Kevtris has any sort of control over cart audio filtering in the Super Nt. If he doesn't, then it may just be a simple case where 'technically' the best experience for MSU1 audio quality is Higan or a 1CHIP console. Not a major issue though, but more a curiosity at this point.

Presumably the low pass filter prior to the adc exists as discrete analog components so the only way to modify it's behavior would be to physically change their component values or redesign the circuit. Kevtris himself said that bypassing the analog filtering causes audible alias artifacting due to the presence of ultrasonic content. So the low pass mutes some of the audio beyond 10khz. You'll lose a bit of ambience but no real musical notes, just some harmonics. The NES triangle waveform has distinctive harmonic content audible when used as a bass line, and I can hear that 16th harmonic vanish as the pitch of the triangle waveform goes up, due to it hitting the NES own low pass filter. The Av famicom has superior sound and video to the na tosster models, but unfortunately has a slightly weaker high pass filter on it. This makes the lowest triangle bass notes on nes more fuller than the av famicom. I wanna drop in a larger cap to enhance the bass on my av fami, but i don't know which cap to swap out...

 

And for the record, I could give two craps sbout ms-1 hacks with injected redbook audio or fmv cutscenes which imo don't belong and feel out of place in an snes game. Super Gameboy is where it's at, and it's full of rich harmonic content.

[SegaSnatcher]

I don't intend to do ANY modding of my Super Nt. I'm only interested in fidelity results. If it turns out that using a 1CHIP SNES console results in superior sound quality for MSU1 games, I want to make certain that's the case. It's purely for posterity, and possibly on the off chance that Kevtris has any sort of control over cart audio filtering in the Super Nt. If he doesn't, then it may just be a simple case where 'technically' the best experience for MSU1 audio quality is Higan or a 1CHIP console. Not a major issue though, but more a curiosity at this point.

I had no issues with MSU1 audio quality on the Super NT vs my OG SNES. The difference has to be pretty subtle.

[SegaSnatcher]

Presumably the low pass filter prior to the adc exists as discrete analog components so the only way to modify it's behavior would be to physically change their component values or redesign the circuit. Kevtris himself said that bypassing the analog filtering causes audible alias artifacting due to the presence of ultrasonic content. So the low pass mutes some of the audio beyond 10khz. You'll lose a bit of ambience but no real musical notes, just some harmonics. The NES triangle waveform has distinctive harmonic content audible when used as a bass line, and I can hear that 16th harmonic vanish as the pitch of the triangle waveform goes up, due to it hitting the NES own low pass filter. The Av famicom has superior sound and video to the na tosster models, but unfortunately has a slightly weaker high pass filter on it. This makes the lowest triangle bass notes on nes more fuller than the av famicom. I wanna drop in a larger cap to enhance the bass on my av fami, but i don't know which cap to swap out...

That is exactly why Sega implemented such a strong LPF for the Genesis with its YM2612 audio chip. Once you get to a certain frequency it just sounds awful. Ace, who designed the Mega Amp talks about this via RetroRGB's interview.

 

https://youtu.be/hxa-kmwoqyg?t=178

 

 

[Jakir]

All I know is using my wired snes controller on the 240p test suite lag test I averaged under a frame of lag on my display (which means 0 or extremely minor lag in addition to what the display is measured at) and with the 8bitdo controller I averaged 1.5-2 frames of lag so I'm betting that means the 8bitdo controllers add a frame of lag. Which isn't bad by any means, in most games you won't even notice 2 frames of lag (assuming your tv is as good as mine) but I really prefer wired controllers anyways. They are faster (at least on the snes), the batteries never die when you are doing something important/need to be charged when you finally have time to sit down and game, and if cable length is an issue the controller extension cables add literally 0 lag because the controller bus still easily polls the controller the same number of times per second. Also there is no fussing about the button placement or d-pad patents or whatever because the wired layout is the one that seems to perform the best because it can use all the oem pattents.

The wired world just seems so much simpler.

[Andromeda Stardust]

And for the record, I could give two craps sbout ms-1 hacks with injected redbook audio or fmv cutscenes which imo don't belong and feel out of place in an snes game. Super Gameboy is where it's at, and it's full of rich harmonic content.

Look at the opening sequence in this msu-1 Ledgend of Zelda hack. FMV sequences ripped directly from cartoon series that have absolutely nothing to do with the plot of the game. Apple orchards, gimme a break...

https://youtube.com/watch?v=8AKSoDFUSKA

[mrnarse]

All I know is using my wired snes controller on the 240p test suite lag test I averaged under a frame of lag on my display (which means 0 or extremely minor lag in addition to what the display is measured at) and with the 8bitdo controller I averaged 1.5-2 frames of lag so I'm betting that means the 8bitdo controllers add a frame of lag. Which isn't bad by any means, in most games you won't even notice 2 frames of lag (assuming your tv is as good as mine) but I really prefer wired controllers anyways. They are faster (at least on the snes), the batteries never die when you are doing something important/need to be charged when you finally have time to sit down and game, and if cable length is an issue the controller extension cables add literally 0 lag because the controller bus still easily polls the controller the same number of times per second. Also there is no fussing about the button placement or d-pad patents or whatever because the wired layout is the one that seems to perform the best because it can use all the oem pattents.

The wired world just seems so much simpler.

My experience was different. I did the 240p test suite lag test using the Super NT on my HDTV with the SFC30 controller and got 32 milliseconds average lag. I then did it with a wired asciiPad and got 30 milliseconds. So about 2 frames of lag on my TV for both wired and wireless.

[Jakir]

Look at the opening sequence in this msu-1 Ledgend of Zelda hack. FMV sequences ripped directly from cartoon series that have absolutely nothing to do with the plot of the game. Apple orchards, gimme a break...

https://youtube.com/watch?v=8AKSoDFUSKA

Speak for yourself, I think that is flipping awesome!

 

Edit: Also it totally has to do with the plot of the game and fits very well. Link's uncle being a retired soldier fits a very well known trope that soldiers become farmers to nurture life to cope with how sickened they are when they remember having to take it. And Link going from a simple farmhand to being a hero also fits with many Zelda games in the series.

Edited March 1, 2018 by Jakir

[RabidWookie]

 

well said. earlier this week i got off my arse and fixed the sram batts in yoshi island and smrpg. and starting fresh playing through these games again on my super nt. i debated the snes mini or real hw and chose the later. though the mini consoles with their curated game collections are nice, they are more or less shelf fodder at this point. i was at work last friday and all i could think about was coming home and playing yoshi and smrpg, 25+ years old games with freshly installed cr2032s.

 

my retrofreak and retrobit generations are going up in marketplace soon. im done with software emulation, save for my portapi mame cab, if i ever pull myself away from the super nt long enough to reinstall it.

Is there a way to install battery holders in carts, so you don't have to keep soldering every time you replace the battery?

[SegaSnatcher]

Is there a way to install battery holders in carts, so you don't have to keep soldering every time you replace the battery?

Yes, just install one of these.

 

https://www.ebay.com/itm/291953521907

[Forsaken]

I don't intend to do ANY modding of my Super Nt. I'm only interested in fidelity results. If it turns out that using a 1CHIP SNES console results in superior sound quality for MSU1 games, I want to make certain that's the case. It's purely for posterity, and possibly on the off chance that Kevtris has any sort of control over cart audio filtering in the Super Nt. If he doesn't, then it may just be a simple case where 'technically' the best experience for MSU1 audio quality is Higan or a 1CHIP console. Not a major issue though, but more a curiosity at this point.

What's over 10khz in those shots looks like noise to me. But then it would be weird that the Higan would be replicating the noise. Are you sure the signal level into the analyzer from both is the same? It looks to me like the level from the SNT might be a bit lower, which might be putting that aliased high frequency stuff below the analyzer's floor.

[mrpopsicleman]

FMV sequences ripped directly from cartoon series that have absolutely nothing to do with the plot of the game.

It's not from any actual series. It's a fan produced anime called "ZELDAMOTION" based Akira Himekawa's manga of A Link to the Past.