FPGA Based Videogame System

[Tanooki]

If they never did an NT Mini again, that is kevtris right? They (he) still does produce that HiDef NES module for around $150 with all you need for it other than doing the mod work to the NES itself. It is an option, it's the one I took. I prefer my upgraded toploader over the alternatives.

[cybercylon]

I assume that required soldering skills, which I am not very good at. Not that I don't want to learn but I really don't have space to work to deal with the fumes and mess.

[brentonius]

I absolutely love my AVS. But if the NT Mini came out at an affordable $200ish I'd snap one up. For sure. Without a thought. With a violent leg-ripping knee-jerk.

[Forsaken]

I assume that required soldering skills, which I am not very good at. Not that I don't want to learn but I really don't have space to work to deal with the fumes and mess.

A Hi-Def NES mod would be a very bad first soldering project. I did my own, successfully, but I already had a lot of soldering experience.

 

The hard thing about Hi-Def NES is removing the CPU and PPU chips from the two sided PCB without ripping up any traces. The desoldering is really tricky. People often struggle for hours trying to get all the solder off so the pins are free, finally decide they're going to have to force it, and come to find out there was still solder bonding some pins to the traces, and said traces come off the PCB along with the chip. And sometimes people overheat and destroy the chips themselves in the struggle.

[Jimjans]

A Hi-Def NES mod would be a very bad first soldering project. I did my own, successfully, but I already had a lot of soldering experience.

 

The hard thing about Hi-Def NES is removing the CPU and PPU chips from the two sided PCB without ripping up any traces. The desoldering is really tricky. People often struggle for hours trying to get all the solder off so the pins are free, finally decide they're going to have to force it, and come to find out there was still solder bonding some pins to the traces, and said traces come off the PCB along with the chip. And sometimes people overheat and destroy the chips themselves in the struggle.

 

Not with the right desoldering tools bought a cheap second hand pace desoldering station I think it take like 10min to remove the cpu and ppu , I gave 250$ for a pace sx-80 and a mbt pace pps 85-AE station..

Edited May 27, 2018 by Jimjans

[Tanooki]

I paid a member on the site here who offered to do mine for a more than reasonable price as long as I mailed him the system and the parts along with it, then paid return shipping. That's over my head, I'm basic when it's soldering time, stuff like reattaching wires, cold solder joint repair, even popping a big game rom off a genesis cartridge pcb for a swap (tengen game death fix.) The thing is just fantastic with that HiDef NES update. I went and paid a little extra for the replaced caps and the little led for the power switch as my old RCA modded top loader I swapped out to pay for it had that. Looking at it from the front it looks normal, I think it still can do lame RF, but it discretely has a little hdmi port out the back so you would never know really it was changed without using it.

[RetrogamerX]

I love my AVS as well, but the NT Mini is just an amazing piece of hardware. If I had to choose one it would be the NT Mini all day long. The AVS just doesn't even compare. imho of course

[Fafner]

 

You sure you did it right? I just tried it from scratch right now on an empty SD card, and it started up Starfox and Stunt Race FX fine. The redguy GSU pack should overwrite 2 original files within the \SD2SNES folder: i.e. FIRMWARE.IMG and MENU.BIN

 

 

 

p.s. On a somewhat unrelated note.. if you're doing this from scratch don't forget about the .BIN files needed for stuff like Mario Kart & Pilotwings to work. I just got so used to those files already being present in the Smokemonster packs, I forgot about them. More info here.

So...

Turns out it was the SD card!

Tried with another SD card and it works like a champ!

[SegaSnatcher]

I love my AVS as well, but the NT Mini is just an amazing piece of hardware. If I had to choose one it would be the NT Mini all day long. The AVS just doesn't even compare. imho of course

Feature wise its definitely a step below, but the actual implementation of the NES via FPGA is pretty much equal.

[Tanooki]

I wouldn't call it below unless you're hard up to do e-peen measuring over high scores. I'm with him I'd take it over that any day.

[cacophony]

I wouldn't call it below unless you're hard up to do e-peen measuring over high scores. I'm with him I'd take it over that any day.

 

I think he meant that the AVS was a step below

[Forsaken]

 

Not with the right desoldering tools bought a cheap second hand pace desoldering station I think it take like 10min to remove the cpu and ppu , I gave 250$ for a pace sx-80 and a mbt pace pps 85-AE station..

Yeh, good equipment makes all the difference, but $250 for equipment just to install a $150 kit doesn't make sense. Owning that stuff only makes sense for a serious electronics hobbyist, not somebody that just wants a Hi-Def NES. For a lot of people, paying some other guy $80 to install it really is the most practical solution.

[Jimjans]

Yeh, good equipment makes all the difference, but $250 for equipment just to install a $150 kit doesn't make sense. Owning that stuff only makes sense for a serious electronics hobbyist, not somebody that just wants a Hi-Def NES. For a lot of people, paying some other guy $80 to install it really is the most practical solution.

 

Yes but when you collecting consoles its handy to do it yourself change caps , rgb mods and repairs..

[Andromeda Stardust]

I assume that required soldering skills, which I am not very good at. Not that I don't want to learn but I really don't have space to work to deal with the fumes and mess.

That and the fact that the HiDef NES kit requires you to remove both the CPU and the PPU without damaging either the chips or the board. Desoldering DIP chips is a pain in the ass even for experienced modders. I've done chip removal before (my NES has the CPU socketed for the RetroUSB CopyUSB kit, also transplanted a DPS1 for my Super Everdrive and repaired a dead Panic Restaurant).

 

I would not recommend anything involving desoldering of chips, or surface mount / fine pitch parts, as a beginner project. One guy splashed solder everywhere ruining his NES just trying to install a 47k resistor between pin 3 and 9 of the expansion connector for PowerPak audio. I don't even understand how it's possible to mess that one up. Someone offered to take it off his hands for the cost of shipping. I imagine it was quite salvageable once he removed the excees solder.

 

 

A Hi-Def NES mod would be a very bad first soldering project. I did my own, successfully, but I already had a lot of soldering experience.

 

The hard thing about Hi-Def NES is removing the CPU and PPU chips from the two sided PCB without ripping up any traces. The desoldering is really tricky. People often struggle for hours trying to get all the solder off so the pins are free, finally decide they're going to have to force it, and come to find out there was still solder bonding some pins to the traces, and said traces come off the PCB along with the chip. And sometimes people overheat and destroy the chips themselves in the struggle.

This, pretty much. I actually broke a pin on my NES CPU while performing the CopyNES install. I was able to repair it fortunately by soldering on a scrap component lead to the stub that was left behind. Others aren't so lucky. And yes, I had lots of experience using a soldering iron.

 

Part of the issue may have been using a $17 Radio Shack brand desoldering iron with a bulb sucker attachment. Some more expensive kits have an electric vacuum sucker and thermally regulated tips. However if you're like most guys who work a low end job and just tinker in your free time (ie not a "professional" modder), you aren't going to afford one of the nicer $300 professional desolder / rework stations.

 

Given their expertise and level of investment required to get set up, it isn't a bad deal to pay someone online $100+ labor on a quality mod install. The guys who do paid mod work typically have a lot of pro level tools at their disposal, so a 15 minute job for them may as well be an agonizing 2 hours for us.

 

Of course if you're planning to send in your NES in to get modded with a $150 kit plus $100 labor and return shipping, that AVS shipped from RetroUSB around $200 starts to look quite tempting. I would argue the toploader isn't entirely necessary as a candidate for the HiDef NES. You can also get a cheaper Toaster NES with a Blinking Light Win installed. About 95% of reliability issues stem from the loading tray and lockout chips. Replace the tray and defeat the lockout chip and you've got yourself a solid system that's pretty much built like a tank and indestructable.

[Andromeda Stardust]

I wouldn't call it below unless you're hard up to do e-peen measuring over high scores. I'm with him I'd take it over that any day.

It's not about measuring e-peens, or setting official records, it's about having fun.

 

Some of my scores are pretty abysmal (like getting 7k in Famicom Galaxian, or 20k+ in Pacman), and though I'll admit I'm not a competitive gamer, I feel the feature has been underutilized and would have been fun if more people used it. A couple of homebrew games I actually posted top high scores as the only other people it seems who posted scores were the developers testing the scoreboard function to ensure that GAME X works.

 

There were also issues initially that the scoreboard didn't differentiate between say Nintendo Tetris, Tengen Tetris, and BPS Tetris, ditto for Namco / Tengen Ms Pacman, but those have been resolved. Internally the server stores the checksum of the game cart so game variations can be split if needed, even if it shows the same title in the database.

 

Though ever since my laptop screen broke, I haven't used scoreboard much as I don't have a working PC except my giant desktop which is no fun to try and hook the AVS up in the computer room. I want to play comfortably in the bedroom or living room.

 

I wish there was a way to run the AVS off a Raspberry Pi or smart device so it isn't tethered to a PC. I think a lot more people would use scoreboard.

[SnoopKatt]

I wish there was a way to run the AVS off a Raspberry Pi or smart device so it isn't tethered to a PC. I think a lot more people would use scoreboard.

 

Agreed. If he released the source code I'd be down to give it a stab.

[Kismet]

Alright, to jump back two months ago when I got the first SGB2. The original one I was sent didn't work, and it sounded like it was damaging the SNT due to the noises made by the springs in the SNT. The one I got today from a different seller (off Amazon) works fine and has no wear on it. So I'm going to say the problem with the original one I got is that the cartridge edge is either worn or shorted.

 

The new one also doesn't result in a deathgrip by the SNT. The only issue is the analog noise when the audio is turned on. So that was to be expected.

[Tanooki]

Kosmic, that's me, the $15 radio shack kit and it's towards the lingering days of its life. It got hot enough I can't even get the damned iron tip out of it anymore and it got so bad I let it heat up for awhile and used another tool to shave a new tip into it. I can't afford without a sacrifice a $300 kit I'd rarely use so I couldn't justify it. Thankfully I was given a sweetheart of a deal so it wasn't $100 I had to pay to get what I had done on mine and I'm grateful for that as it's amazing. He even with skill and pro level tools had a hell of a time with it as a bad case of murphy's law broke out on what had been a well working stock system but it was handled in the end in what I'd call an above and beyond situation.

 

I don't want to get more into why I made the peen comment on scoreboard, but if you're a fan that's fine. To me it ranks right in there with mindless trophies/achievements to brag about or waste time on just to say it was done. I never saw the merit or value in them as to me showing the age here it just was good enough knowing you accomplished something and/or got the nicest score ever at that point. You either chose to keep that to yourself or shared with a friend telling them like kids would do in the 80s/90s marveling over beating some old Mario game or whatever. It never felt encouraged or was forced.

[Andromeda Stardust]

Kosmic, that's me, the $15 radio shack kit and it's towards the lingering days of its life. It got hot enough I can't even get the damned iron tip out of it anymore and it got so bad I let it heat up for awhile and used another tool to shave a new tip into it. I can't afford without a sacrifice a $300 kit I'd rarely use so I couldn't justify it. Thankfully I was given a sweetheart of a deal so it wasn't $100 I had to pay to get what I had done on mine and I'm grateful for that as it's amazing. He even with skill and pro level tools had a hell of a time with it as a bad case of murphy's law broke out on what had been a well working stock system but it was handled in the end in what I'd call an above and beyond situation.

And yeah, I do believe the RadioShack Iron gets worse instead of better with time. I had a time getting it to do anything the last time I used it I couldn't even desolder a simple 3-pin regulator chip. I finally just held the tip off my Weller Iron sideways while ***gently*** tugging on the backside with a pliers. It slid right out. Last actual DIP chip I tried to remove last year was a Ballblazer I ended up putting the PCB in the oven at 400 suspended over a pie pan with paper clips, and immediately removed it after the chip dropped. The desolder iron is a junk tool now but it worked well enough in the beginning, and would likely work well again if I could simply walk down the street to buy fresh tips. But you are right. I ain't spending top dollar on a desolder kit I'll rarely use, nor am I investing in a micro-soldering station or hot air gun to work on modern SMT chips. I sent my N64 off to a pro installer to get the UltraHDMI mod and it was worth the money.

 

I don't want to get more into why I made the peen comment on scoreboard, but if you're a fan that's fine. To me it ranks right in there with mindless trophies/achievements to brag about or waste time on just to say it was done. I never saw the merit or value in them as to me showing the age here it just was good enough knowing you accomplished something and/or got the nicest score ever at that point. You either chose to keep that to yourself or shared with a friend telling them like kids would do in the 80s/90s marveling over beating some old Mario game or whatever. It never felt encouraged or was forced.

Tanooki, let's agree to move on. The less said on this subject, the better. I would probably also have had animosity towards anything NA related if I was in your shoes. Besides Scoreboard is not a requirement to have a good time, just a bonus. I don't pretend it's the best thing since sliced bread. The wow factor of submitting scores wore off within a few weeks. Sometimes I'd just test games to see if they worked and submit a lame-o score, then have like my best game ever when it wasn't even set up to log my gameplay.

[Toth]

Seeing as though the SNT is already jailbroken what prevents someone from porting the nes core to the SNT? Is that no one simply knows how to do it or is some part of the process encrypted or something? I am really clueless about it but just curious as I always thought jailbreaking something was the hard part (like with phones or whatever)?

[kwnage]

Seeing as though the SNT is already jailbroken what prevents someone from porting the nes core to the SNT? Is that no one simply knows how to do it or is some part of the process encrypted or something? I am really clueless about it but just curious as I always thought jailbreaking something was the hard part (like with phones or whatever)?

It's not that easy. The term "jailbreak" is used quite loosely. In fact the jailbreak firmware doesn't make it any easier to port other cores to it. In its current state it's just a name for a different firmware that's enabled to load SNES roms from an SD card. It's different from an iPhone or Playstation 4 jailbreak in the sense that there's no OS running on it that you could code homebrew software for to make it play NES games or something. You'll at least need to know what the individual pins of the FPGA are connected to, then you may be able to program it to do something different/useful, but then again you could just buy an FPGA development kit and do whatever you want with it...

Edited May 29, 2018 by kwnage

[Newsdee]

Exactly. While one could reverse engineer it, there isn't much point when you can get a DE10 Nano board and add a memory expansion to run the MiSTer cores. Those cores are less polished than the NT, but are open source so are an easier starting point.

 

What is different in Kevtris' case is that he analyzed the original hardware and built his own clones. If another guy like that comes around, I think it's likely he will prefer to work on his own platform rather than looking at the NT or open source.

 

Independent cores for the NT are unlikely for now. I'd be happy to be proven wrong, though.

Edited May 30, 2018 by Newsdee

[Tanooki]

Kosmic -- I just wish the N64 HDMI mod wasn't so much worse no the wallet than the NES and the Super NT too, for me I think it would cost me both combined to get into it and for a system I'm warm on at best. I'd love to have it, maybe I'd even use the system if it were done but it's a big fat IF against a budget. I'd be better off if Nintendo did do a N64 CE system, that I could be inspired to do the dumb hack on with a bypass thumb drive/usb combo setup and just run the library that way and just keep the goodies I have. My N64 library has just 24 US and 2 JP games, that's it, but they're some of the very best. I'd play many more if they weren't so shite on a LCD.

 

On the other, I don't have any animosity over anything NA related, hadn't even really thought about that parallel even if bunnyboy was a big poster back then as he was always nice to me and I did have his powerpak and a few of the old games (still have I Am Kid Dracula) he did too. I just don't find the design or the scoreboard appealing, and I would have until what I got rather run an original system and used a honeybee for FC stuff than use it, same with the retron5 and almost a retrofreak before I went the route I did instead (hidefnes+ED N8.) Like you said, the scoreboard has no appeal other than the original luster that will burn off in weeks, and I realized that as a non-starter to me so the value was never there. I'm more an OEM guy with stuff almost all the time, but on rare occasion I do make a compromise or so(super nt), or find a middle road (hidefnes.) At times even a kit with some nice emulators work marvels on a handheld like the GBA too but that's it.

[Shadowgate]

Seeing as though the SNT is already jailbroken what prevents someone from porting the nes core to the SNT? Is that no one simply knows how to do it or is some part of the process encrypted or something? I am really clueless about it but just curious as I always thought jailbreaking something was the hard part (like with phones or whatever)?

 

None of the cores are open source. The only person messing with those cores is Kevtris. Whatever agreements he has made with Analogue isn't public.

 

It's a little odd the cores even made it out to begin with. There is obviously a lot of money to be made off FPGA based systems. Will those cores be sold individually? Made into a whole new system or multiple systems? No one knows.

 

A lot of people want a plastic version of the NT Mini at a reduced price but I don't see that happening. One that plays NES games only seems hopeful but seeing all the cores offered for free would be an odd choice after the huge success of the Super NT.

[Newsdee]

It's a little odd the cores even made it out to begin with. There is obviously a lot of money to be made off FPGA based systems. Will those cores be sold individually? Made into a whole new system or multiple systems? No one knows.

 

I'm not so sure there is a lot of money for it beyond a few popular consoles.

 

The SNES was notoriously hard to emulate faithfully (see bsnes/higan discussions) so a cheap but high quality "turnkey" solution that takes carts makes a lot of sense. It has more legitimacy than an emulator box that just reads ROMs, and feels easier to use than a PC. It certainly has a hip factor that makes you more interesting with your friends.

 

Does that carry over to all systems? Maybe Genesis and the PCEngine, NeoGeo definitely, but others I'm not too sure. Earlier 8bit consoles were rather simple and have less of a mass appeal.

 

There would be fellow nerds like me that would buy those systems anyway (if price is reasonable), but I know we wouldn't be enough to make a big market.