FPGA Based Videogame System

[Andromeda Stardust]

On 8/10/2019 at 9:44 AM, SegaSnatcher said:

1. Honestly, consoles with a ton of cart ports are ugly.  I think offering adapters for all those pre Famicom/NES cores Kevtris has makes the most sense.  It makes the console cheaper and they won't have as much limitations on how they can design it. 

Cart adapters increase versatility, however for some systems, cart ports are already getting flakey, so adding additional failure points into the mix can potentially cause headaches. Ask anyone who's ever cobbled Famicom/NES adapters and genies / lock on carts / whatever together. At some point, reliability of the tower is diminished.

 

I have seen good, bad, and ugly when it comes to systems with multiple cart ports. I really like RetroUSB's AVS with it's top loading / side loading hybrid design for NES and Famicom carts, which also cleverly prevents dual insertion by intersecting the slots at right angels.

 

Janky 3rd party solutions like the Retron5 can be shitastic though. If cart adapters are to be utilized, perhaps the PCIe slot or generic socket provide a base for the adapters. At the very least a lockout system needs to be employed preventing fpga adapters from being inserted into vintage consoles they are not intended for, potentially causing damage or frying both system and cartridge.

[Andromeda Stardust]

5 hours ago, CZroe said:

Sure, but targeting a subset of the market of flash cart users who likely already have the original console could be very limiting. Go Blue Ocean!

They've shown that they can do licensing and distribution agreements with software rights holders. A core store with an eShop for games could be big even without Big N on board. Pie in the sky here, but I'd also love to see netplay for classic titles if they were involved with the Neo Geo 2/3.

Not sure how a vc style "Rom shop" would work given the existence of jailbreak firmware. Of course it may be like rooting an android or jailbreaking an apple.

 

Installing the jailbreak firmware effectively blocks the store, or the shop functionality is not included therein.

 

Then you have encryption to think about. IP owners would want to protect their content from piracy, regardless if the roms are "out there" or not.

 

The logistics of allowing consumers the rights to do whatever with their device, and simultaneously protecting IP holders, is an ongoing issue.

 

Not to mention creating an online infrastructure is prohibitively expensive. But yeah, pie in the sky as you said.

[Atariboy]

Anyone have any ideas what I'm doing wrong with my screen size settings on my Super NT? I save them but they disappear upon powering the system down.

 

I was just reading a comment on YouTube from someone wishing the Super NT would save some sort of setting after watching a video about the most recent jailbreak update. Was confused then, but think I understand now. Does it not really retain this stuff when powered down? What exactly am I saving when I select to save?

[SegaSnatcher]

2 minutes ago, Atariboy said:

Anyone have any ideas what I'm doing wrong with my screen size settings on my Super NT? I save them but they disappear upon powering the system down.

 

I was just reading a comment on YouTube from someone wishing the Super NT would save some sort of setting after watching a video about the most recent jailbreak update. Was confused then, but think I understand now. Does it not really retain this stuff when powered down? What exactly am I saving when I select to save?

I think it might be a bug.  I've been holding off new firmware for a future fix.  

[Ricdeau]

5 minutes ago, Atariboy said:

Anyone have any ideas what I'm doing wrong with my screen size settings on my Super NT? I save them but they disappear upon powering the system down.

 

I was just reading a comment on YouTube from someone wishing the Super NT would save some sort of setting after watching a video about the most recent jailbreak update. Was confused then, but think I understand now. Does it not really retain this stuff when powered down? What exactly am I saving when I select to save?

It appears to be a bug. I encountered the same thing. Previously all settings were saved as one would expect, but in this firmware the video settings flip back to default until you go in to the video settings submenus and then it will apply the saved settings. In answer to your question all of settings are saved, but the bug looks to prevent the video settings from being apply automatically until you go into one of the submenus in the Video section. Like go into scanlines or scalers and then it'll apply your video settings.

 

I assume it will be an easy fix.

[phoenixdownita]

3 hours ago, Ricdeau said:

It appears to be a bug. I encountered the same thing. Previously all settings were saved as one would expect, but in this firmware the video settings flip back to default until you go in to the video settings submenus and then it will apply the saved settings. In answer to your question all of settings are saved, but the bug looks to prevent the video settings from being apply automatically until you go into one of the submenus in the Video section. Like go into scanlines or scalers and then it'll apply your video settings.

 

I assume it will be an easy fix.

Does it apply both to official as well as JB?

[Atariboy]

Thanks for the explanation. Hopefully it's fixed soon.

 

I think I've found my first Super NT bug after a year or so of playing on this. Been playing some PAL exclusives off SD card and couldn't use my hotkey to bring up the Super NT menu when I had FIFA Road to the Cup '98 running.

 

Never had Down + Select fail to bring up the menu on any other rom or real cartridge. 

[mario64]

1 hour ago, phoenixdownita said:

Does it apply both to official as well as JB?

I don't seem to be having this issue with official FW. My settings are present upon power off/reboot as expected

[CZroe]

Not sure how a vc style "Rom shop" would work given the existence of jailbreak firmware. Of course it may be like rooting an android or jailbreaking an apple.
 
Installing the jailbreak firmware effectively blocks the store, or the shop functionality is not included therein.
 
Then you have encryption to think about. IP owners would want to protect their content from piracy, regardless if the roms are "out there" or not.
 
The logistics of allowing consumers the rights to do whatever with their device, and simultaneously protecting IP holders, is an ongoing issue.
 
Not to mention creating an online infrastructure is prohibitively expensive. But yeah, pie in the sky as you said.

The thing is, SNK is already making the Neo Geo 2/3. The fact that it will link with the Neo Geo Mini implies that you will be able to play those titles on/with it in some way. They are already promising new games for it which means that they will definitely want a software distribution system of some kind and it would be hard to argue against digital for cost savings on a niche product.

The "pie in the sky" part is hoping that they learned from the Neo Geo Mini and decided not to use a simple SOC for emulating their classic games and would, instead, make everyone happy by partnering with Analogue for an FPGA console. If they had done that for the Neo Geo X then pretty much all of the complaints would have been invalid. NG Mini certainly didn't satisfy anyone who disliked the NGX, so there is a glimmer of hope.

[Drunk_Caterpillar]

While this might be outside the scope of this thread, it's worth mentioning that the EverDrive N8 will apparently be getting updated mapper support back ported from the N8 Pro. I only bring it up because I think those carts have FPGAs in them too...

 

http://krikzz.com/forum/index.php?topic=7811.msg70298#msg70298

[spoonman]

On 8/11/2019 at 9:19 AM, Pixelboy said:

The Atari Lynx is not 8-bit, and also, not many SG-1000 games were sold outside of Japan (Australia got many, but it didn't go much further than that geographically) so there's very little incentive to add an SG-1000 cartridge port to an FPGA console released mostly for the North-American market.

Correct. It utilizes a 16-bit CMOS chip, but has 8-bit DAC for sound. It does have some nice video effects (scaling and rotation), but the graphics aren't really on par with other 16-bit graphics (TG-16, Genesis, Neo•Geo, SNES) as it only displays 16 simultaneous colors. I'd also group the TG-16/PCE with 16-bit consoles though it uses an 8-bit CPU. Intellivision is 16-bit, but I'd group that with the Atari 2600, 5200, and ColecoVision.

 

Analogue is already producing cart adapters for the Mega Sg, so it wouldn't be unfeasible for them to produce more. 

[kevtris]

16 minutes ago, spoonman said:

Correct. It utilizes a 16-bit CMOS chip, but has 8-bit DAC for sound. It does have some nice video effects (scaling and rotation), but the graphics aren't really on par with other 16-bit graphics (TG-16, Genesis, Neo•Geo, SNES) as it only displays 16 simultaneous colors. I'd also group the TG-16/PCE with 16-bit consoles though it uses an 8-bit CPU. Intellivision is 16-bit, but I'd group that with the Atari 2600, 5200, and ColecoVision.

 

Analogue is already producing cart adapters for the Mega Sg, so it wouldn't be unfeasible for them to produce more. 

The lynx is 8 bits, it uses a 65C02 as its CPU.  I'd consider the TG-16 an 8 bit machine also, regardless of the marketing, because its CPU is also 8 bits.  The intv is indeed a 16 bit CPU, however, even though the ROMs were usually 10 bits wide (but don't have to be).  They got away with this, since there's 1024 opcodes (2^10).  To represent 16 bit values there's an extension instruction.   Interestingly, the ROMs must return 0's for the upper 6 bits, or else nothing will work properly.

[CZroe]

The lynx is 8 bits, it uses a 65C02 as its CPU.  I'd consider the TG-16 an 8 bit machine also, regardless of the marketing, because its CPU is also 8 bits.  The intv is indeed a 16 bit CPU, however, even though the ROMs were usually 10 bits wide (but don't have to be).  They got away with this, since there's 1024 opcodes (2^10).  To represent 16 bit values there's an extension instruction.   Interestingly, the ROMs must return 0's for the upper 6 bits, or else nothing will work properly.

I look at it this way:
For the end user, the "bits" mostly mattered and improved things in two ways.
1. How much memory a CPU could address simultaneously.
2. How many colors and sprites and tiles it could address.
...definitely wasn't about the kind of math going on in the CPU.

If it had an 8bit CPU but a 16bit graphics chip for 16bit colors/sprites/tiles and the RAM could be bank switched such that it didn't really limit things, it was functionally 16bit as far as gamers were concerned since that was the benefit they expected from a 16bit console.

Still, I'm amazed PCE/TG16 was essentially able to play Neo Geo games with an 8bit CPU and an Arcade Card (more RAM). Yes, it didn't have to load the whole game at once but I'm still surprised it was able to fit all the sprites and animation for Art of Fighting in RAM addressed by an 8bit CPU (remember: without hardware scaling it had to fit the small and large versions of the sprites/animations and the background). Perhaps the 16bit graphics chip accesses a 16bit data bus on the card directly?

[Kaide]

31 minutes ago, CZroe said:

I look at it this way:
For the end user, the "bits" mostly mattered and improved things in two ways.
1. How much memory a CPU could address simultaneously.
2. How many colors and sprites and tiles it could address.
...definitely wasn't about the kind of math going on in the CPU.

If it had an 8bit CPU but a 16bit graphics chip for 16bit colors/sprites/tiles and the RAM could be bank switched such that it didn't really limit things, it was functionally 16bit as far as gamers were concerned since that was the benefit they expected from a 16bit console.

Still, I'm amazed PCE/TG16 was essentially able to play Neo Geo games with an 8bit CPU and an Arcade Card (more RAM). Yes, it didn't have to load the whole game at once but I'm still surprised it was able to fit all the sprites and animation for Art of Fighting in RAM addressed by an 8bit CPU (remember: without hardware scaling it had to fit the small and large versions of the sprites/animations and the background). Perhaps the 16bit graphics chip accesses a 16bit data bus on the card directly?

 

This reads really poorly, TBH. It took me a few read-throughs to get at what you are really trying to say, and it's easy to read some technical errors into what you wrote here, FYI. But generally, you don't need a 16-bit data bus to load 16-bit words. But you certainly take a penalty having to load two halves of the word across the data bus (like the Z80 does).

 

I'm a little rusty, but it looks like the VDP is setup with 16-bit data access to VRAM. It has pins for a 16-bit data bus with the CPU, but it operates in 8-bit mode in the PC Engine. So when the CPU wants to load tile data into VRAM, it will write them a byte at a time to a 16-bit register in the VDP, and the VDP will write out the 16-bit word. So loading the tile data is going to be a perf hit, but once it's loaded, the VDP can tear through it much faster. But having 64kB of VRAM is definitely nothing to sneeze at, even with later 8-bit systems having 16kB of VRAM (Master System). That all definitely impacts the quality of the sprites (and how many can be on screen at a time) more than the CPU being 8-bit or not.

 

And heck, the 5A22 was a bit of a weird beast, being a 16-bit processor with an 8-bit data bus. To the point that it was sometimes beneficial to put it into 8-bit mode to avoid the second cycle needed for a load/store. But at least you could do 16-bit math on it without contortions. Fun.

[Slipard]

I didn't want to blow the whistle out, but between AMD and Terraonion, my two spendings of the summer won't make it for my summer and that just questions why I am working so hard the rest of the year:

 

Quote

Your order with the reference SCAMMEDYOU has been picked up and being processed by DHL.

Before the package moves in the DHL system, local customs will need to process the order and then turn it over to DHL.

Due to the sheer number of shipments being sent out, this process could take up to 3 weeks to complete

Also during this time frame your tracking number may show as invalid. Rest assured the number is valid and once DHL fully processes it it will become active. We appreciate your patience during this period.

.
Thank you for shopping with Terraonion!

(The reference have been edited with irony.)

 

So, what? Even Analogue with the Mega Sg hasn't come this far with problems; does Spain need Donald Trump to make it great again?

 

I don't think I have been intentionally scammed, but still, three weeks for the customs to do their job? There's something fishy in the story that Terraonion doesn't want us to know before they either fixed it or are done filling bankruptcy due to some arisen legalities. 

Edited August 17, 2019 by Slipard

[brentonius]

6 minutes ago, Slipard said:

I didn't want to blow the whistle out, but between AMD and Terraonion, my two spendings of the summer won't make it for my summer and that just questions why I am working so hard the rest of the year:

 

(The reference have been edited with irony.)

 

So, what? Even Analogue with the Mega Sg hasn't come this far with problems; does Spain need Donald Trump to make it great again?

 

I don't think I have been intentionally scammed, but still, three weeks for the customs to do their job? There's something fishy in the story that Terraonion doesn't want us to know before they either fixed it or are done filling bankruptcy due to some arisen legalities. 

Here’s some info from terra onion:

 

Terraonion has moved to Andorra and since DHL doesn't have an office in Andorra, all packages get transported to them for processing. Also, local customs in Andorra are not use to processing a lot of outbound packages for export. They are clearing about 45 per day. So when we drop off several hundred at one time, it takes them multiple days to clear.

After that it goes into the DHL system for processing on it's way.


The bottom line is this: From the time a package "ships" till the time it arrives to you is going to possibly be 2 to 3 weeks. Once we get all of the MegaSD orders shipped, shipping shouldn't be an issue. But for now packages are going to take a while to process.

Don't be alarmed if the package sets in Andorra for a while. That's customs. Don't be alarmed if it sets in DHL for a while. That's normal since the packages have to be transferred to DHL in Spain. 

Also if you see shipping exceptions or clearance events: Ignore them. It's processing through DHL.

If your tracking isn't active at first, again, give it some time.

 

 

[kevtris]

I can vouch for the customs in Andorra being the weak link on shipping.  My mega sd was stuck in Andorra customs for around 12 days, then it made the rest of the trip in 2 days.  Quality is top notch on the box, cart, and PCB design. 

[atmn]

2 hours ago, kevtris said:

I can vouch for the customs in Andorra being the weak link on shipping.  My mega sd was stuck in Andorra customs for around 12 days, then it made the rest of the trip in 2 days.  Quality is top notch on the box, cart, and PCB design. 

Exactly the same for me, took 10 days for the tracking number to get active, then it took 2 days to Sweden.

AND 80USD in customs and fees since its outside EU.

MUCH better for me if they still shipped from Spain.

 

I would wait next time to get a TO product to a EU reseller... if they make something more fun to have.

[cybercylon]

I am not sure if I want or need a MegaSD yet, but if that time comes, I'll wait until SAG has them.

[Slipard]

5 hours ago, atmn said:

AND 80USD in customs and fees since its outside EU.

MUCH better for me if they still shipped from Spain.

WHAT? Are you kidding me? It's totally ludicrous!

Especially since they could easily ship it from outside Andorra...

First and probably last time I order something from them. Other items of interest are sold out anyway, so not a big deal.

[atmn]

4 hours ago, Slipard said:

WHAT? Are you kidding me? It's totally ludicrous!

Especially since they could easily ship it from outside Andorra...

First and probably last time I order something from them. Other items of interest are sold out anyway, so not a big deal.

 

Ye, I got totally screwed on this one. Ordered a NeoSD and a SSDS3 from them while they still shipped from Spain, I honestly thought they still shipped from EU.

 

Don't know why Andorra? Better for US customers?

 

As a swede, Im used to being tax-robbed, not the end of the world.

Next time I'll wait for some German site or something.

 

And next time I'll for sure will support my dear country with some more tax is for the DAC. Any info what happens if using it with some HDMI switch? Could it work with a passive physical switch?

Edited August 17, 2019 by atmn

[Kismet]

On 8/8/2019 at 11:16 PM, phoenixdownita said:

Me very confused.

 

The oddball refresh rate is due to how the original console was wired wrt clock sources, Kevtris is replicating that, if you want exactly 50Hz to use the DAC to go to OSSC to go to HDMI, you already have it in the actual MegaSg/SuperNt HDMI, unless you really really like OSSC scanlines or such but that defeats the purpose.

 

It seems we want all eight combinations:

HDMI at 50, 60 and the original 50ish and 60ish (last 2 just in case your HDMI set might support them)

DAC at original 50ish, 60ish and then perfect 50 and 60 (last 2 so you could say you could do:

HDMI -> DAC -> OSSC|XRGBMini|RetroTink2x -> HDMI for whatever reason you may want to do it)

 

Maybe kevtris will enable all of them just so he can sleep at night.

 

Seems to me the logical thing would be to have the "HDMI" part of the DAC report itself to the SNT/MSG/Future-console-here via the EDID and have the FPGA devices output the native output straight to the DAC device. If connected to anything else, then just report the capability based on the NTSC/PAL switch.

 

You shouldn't need an OSSC/XRGBMini with the DAC. But people do strange things in the name of wanting a consistent experience.

 

 

[Slipard]

@atmn

 

Andorra is better for nobody, but maybe themselves for their own taxes? But doing so, they alienated all customers in the world, while they could before at least content European customers. They would clearly benefit from either have products stocked outside Andorra or have retailers in Europa and USA.

 

But right now, this is a dick move : we pay taxes and we can't even have fun with our PRICEY and PRICIER order while we are on holidays. Thank you Terraonion: if China produces bootlegs of your products, I will actually consider this option.

[Drunk_Caterpillar]

On 8/17/2019 at 2:12 AM, kevtris said:

I can vouch for the customs in Andorra being the weak link on shipping.  My mega sd was stuck in Andorra customs for around 12 days, then it made the rest of the trip in 2 days.  Quality is top notch on the box, cart, and PCB design. 

Likewise. The new patch that fixes a few lingering issues and adds SVP support makes it just about perfect. Still think I'm going to use the MegaSg jailbreak for SMS/GG/SG-1000 ROMs but for Genesis and SegaCD the experience is flawless, as far as I can see.

Edited August 18, 2019 by Drunk_Caterpillar

[Jurai]

Smokemonster is apparently confirming that the 32X is going to work with the MegaSG with the DAC fyi -