FPGA Based Videogame System

[RickBa]

Is it possible for any of these FPGA consoles to apply a patch to a physical cartridge on the fly? For example I insert a Japanese cartridge while applying a translation patch that is stored in the SD card (instead of loading an already patched rom).

[Andromeda Stardust]

The Nt Mini's MMC5 support is complete but a bit buggy and kevtris has not had the time to fix it. The PowerPak does support more than Castlevania III but it suffers from the same bug. The EverDrive's MMC5 support is currently the best implementation, although I haven't had a chance to test it with SimCity yet.

Can't agree with the Everdrive having the best implementation. You can't do anything with Sim City, compared to the NT Mini running it. With the N8 ED, EVERYTHING is garbled. With the NT Mini, well, you can see my pictures above.

 

It is strange, because for me each flash cart offers something. The initial screens show up fine on the PowerPak but are glitchy on the EverDrive. Conversely, the main play screens are too glitchy to play on the PowerPak but fine on the EverDrive (with recent beta firmware).

 

I remember attempting to run the Retro City Rampage ROM demo on the Everdrive. It was so glitchy as unplayable. The Zelda and Mario hacks are too large for either device. Castlevania III might as well run the VRC6 version as that's got superior audio tracks which both drives support. Powerpak has more accurate audio quality even with the new Everdrive mappers.

 

Is it possible for any of these FPGA consoles to apply a patch to a physical cartridge on the fly? For example I insert a Japanese cartridge while applying a translation patch that is stored in the SD card (instead of loading an already patched rom).

This is impossible due to how fpgas interface the cart hardware. It does not dump the rom cart like the Retron devices, which is bad idea for numerous reasons. You can change individual bytes of ROM/RAM using a cheat device or code, or you can pre patch a rom and run it on a flashcart or sd card via jailbreak firmware.

[Andromeda Stardust]

Yeah something happened to my MMC5 implementation when I ported it from the original FPGA NES prototype, to the nt mini. It used to work perfect for all the koei games, but after the port they had various issues. I am guessing the same thing is wrong with Sim City. When I get time I will try to fix it, but have been super busy doing the usual 7 days a week, 12 hour a day grind on the msg. Yep, I worked on xmas day all day too. No breaks or vacations for me.

Take a break. You deserve one.

 

Bob Decrescendo has been known to take "sabbaticals" from 7800 development. Maybe you should too from your fpga work...

[Toth]

Yeah something happened to my MMC5 implementation when I ported it from the original FPGA NES prototype, to the nt mini. It used to work perfect for all the koei games, but after the port they had various issues. I am guessing the same thing is wrong with Sim City. When I get time I will try to fix it, but have been super busy doing the usual 7 days a week, 12 hour a day grind on the msg. Yep, I worked on xmas day all day too. No breaks or vacations for me.

Dang man. I hope you're getting well compensated. They are amazing systems but wouldn't be what they are without your work AND you are still working that many hours on it?

[kevtris]

Dang man. I hope you're getting well compensated. They are amazing systems but wouldn't be what they are without your work AND you are still working that many hours on it?

well they ain't gonna finish themselves. :-)

[F34R]

Yeah something happened to my MMC5 implementation when I ported it from the original FPGA NES prototype, to the nt mini. It used to work perfect for all the koei games, but after the port they had various issues. I am guessing the same thing is wrong with Sim City. When I get time I will try to fix it, but have been super busy doing the usual 7 days a week, 12 hour a day grind on the msg. Yep, I worked on xmas day all day too. No breaks or vacations for me.

I wonder how this would work if I made myself a repro cart.

 

Like this:

 

 

[Tanooki]

That actually has crossed my mind too. I'm considering finding a way to put it on a real cart because the everdrive seems to hate it. If the core on the hi-def nes can play the game correctly I'd be quite tempted since my original style one was put back in the box for safe keeping.

[haightc]

Component output would be ideal because it is the best I have but I would settle for composite. The important criteria is that they could display on a CRT exactly as the original hardware would. I'm mostly interested in them just for being replacement hardware so that I can have new consoles for when the originals are all gone. So, basically to use them the same way the Nt Mini could be used.

If you CRT support HD resolutions you can use the SuperNT use a HDMI to VGA adapter then a VGA to component transcoder. This should introduce no lag, I have my SuperNT connected to my XM2950 via a HDMI to VGA adapter. You may want to take a look at the MiSTer project, the SNES core while not perfect is already pretty good and you can output scaled HDMI and 240p in component, RGBS or RGBHV at the same time. FPGA console like this are about preserving and reimplementation of hardware not specifically about just using using HDMI. In the MiSTer community there are people that say you are stupid if you want to use old CRTs because newer is better and we are dumb purist who should stick with their orginal. This was even the opinion of one of the primary authors fortunately being a community it's not just one person's mindset. Analogue's products are targeted toward the prosumer, enough of us have dollar that demand a DAC/high quality analog situation to not take our money would just be bad business sense. CRT, especially professional users are most likely going to have the most disposable income for novelty items as such.

[Andromeda Stardust]

If you CRT support HD resolutions you can use the SuperNT use a HDMI to VGA adapter then a VGA to component transcoder. This should introduce no lag, I have my SuperNT connected to my XM2950 via a HDMI to VGA adapter. You may want to take a look at the MiSTer project, the SNES core while not perfect is already pretty good and you can output scaled HDMI and 240p in component, RGBS or RGBHV at the same time. FPGA console like this are about preserving and reimplementation of hardware not specifically about just using using HDMI. In the MiSTer community there are people that say you are stupid if you want to use old CRTs because newer is better and we are dumb purist who should stick with their orginal. This was even the opinion of one of the primary authors fortunately being a community it's not just one person's mindset. Analogue's products are targeted toward the prosumer, enough of us have dollar that demand a DAC/high quality analog situation to not take our money would just be bad business sense. CRT, especially professional users are most likely going to have the most disposable income for novelty items as such.

Another possibility, if you have a good late 90s - early 2000s era computer CRT laying around, hook the HDMI to VGA adapter up to that. 720p should be supported by most monitors, and even some max resolution 1024 line / 60fps monitors might accept a 1080p signal with slight vscan overclock, given 10% component tolerances of analog devices. You will want to stretch the picture to maximum width.

 

1280x720p with 5x3 integer pixel multipliers would be ideal. The monitor will squish the widescreen format into a 4x3ish aspect ratio by default, plus there are vertical and horizontal adjustments to get the picture to fill the screen without cropping. Light guns might be possible on a svga or higher CRT, but I doubt it.

 

I wish I'd never gotten rid of that beautiful 19" Viewsonic CRT now that I think about it...

[haightc]

Another possibility, if you have a good late 90s - early 2000s era computer CRT laying around, hook the HDMI to VGA adapter up to that. 720p should be supported by most monitors, and even some max resolution 1024 line / 60fps monitors might accept a 1080p signal with slight vscan overclock, given 10% component tolerances of analog devices. You will want to stretch the picture to maximum width.

 

1280x720p with 5x3 integer pixel multipliers would be ideal. The monitor will squish the widescreen format into a 4x3ish aspect ratio by default, plus there are vertical and horizontal adjustments to get the picture to fill the screen without cropping. Light guns might be possible on a svga or higher CRT, but I doubt it.

 

I wish I'd never gotten rid of that beautiful 19" Viewsonic CRT now that I think about it...

Not all PC CRTs support 480p and 720p. 480p is a interesting case as it has two resolution standard for 4:3 and 16:9, where are 720p and 1080p do not. 480 4:3 happens to be 640x480 happen and VGA resolution. Some of my PC CRTs actually don't support this low of resolution surprisingly, I am curious how do overclock the vsync on the SuperNT? most 480p era console default assume you display was 4:3 not wide, the superNT even in 480p assumes wide you have to stretch it to the max width-wise which which makes it look fine. It would be nice though if the firmware supported 4:3 480p, giving you a little more wiggle room and give an better option for user of PC CRTs. Strangely enough my AVS which is supposed to support 720p only auto setup in 4:3 mode. You still can't play light gun games on either system as-is, it still have to at the original resolution. The timing patched ROMs for NES work great on the CRT. I don't have a light gun (super scope) for the SNES to try with the SuperNT but I suspect the results would be the same. I've notice there is a difference in accuracy even in the dreamcast between 480p and 480i which natively supports it. I am still looking forward to the DAC personally, emulated scan-lines will never look as good as real 240p

[F34R]

That actually has crossed my mind too. I'm considering finding a way to put it on a real cart because the everdrive seems to hate it. If the core on the hi-def nes can play the game correctly I'd be quite tempted since my original style one was put back in the box for safe keeping.

I bought the gear to get it done. Now the wait will be on the shipping times lol.

[Great Hierophant]

Not all PC CRTs support 480p and 720p. 480p is a interesting case as it has two resolution standard for 4:3 and 16:9, where are 720p and 1080p do not. 480 4:3 happens to be 640x480 happen and VGA resolution. Some of my PC CRTs actually don't support this low of resolution surprisingly, I am curious how do overclock the vsync on the SuperNT? most 480p era console default assume you display was 4:3 not wide, the superNT even in 480p assumes wide you have to stretch it to the max width-wise which which makes it look fine. It would be nice though if the firmware supported 4:3 480p, giving you a little more wiggle room and give an better option for user of PC CRTs. Strangely enough my AVS which is supposed to support 720p only auto setup in 4:3 mode. You still can't play light gun games on either system as-is, it still have to at the original resolution. The timing patched ROMs for NES work great on the CRT. I don't have a light gun (super scope) for the SNES to try with the SuperNT but I suspect the results would be the same. I've notice there is a difference in accuracy even in the dreamcast between 480p and 480i which natively supports it. I am still looking forward to the DAC personally, emulated scan-lines will never look as good as real 240p

 

The Super Nt's maximum horizontal resolution in 480p mode is 640 pixels. Essentially the Super Nt is always outputting either 640x480, 1280x720 or 1920x1080. My PC CRT handles the first resolution well but it does not show the higher resolutions properly.

[Andromeda Stardust]

Can't analog monitors just sync to any hscan as long as it's in range? There is no standard horizontal resolution with analog monitors. 720p is in between 600p (800x600) and 768p (1024x768). So I assume it would have worked but I've never tested it.

 

I did slightly "overclock" my old Syncmaster (max resolution 1280x1024 60Hz) by forcing 1400x1050 60Hz so it's not out of the question that some monitors might handle up to 1080p. 1200p displayed "unusable signal". Definitely if the monitor supported 1600x1200 at 60hz it should be possible.

 

Aspect ratios would be fubar obviously.

[Forsaken]

Can't analog monitors just sync to any hscan as long as it's in range? There is no standard horizontal resolution with analog monitors. 720p is in between 600p (800x600) and 768p (1024x768). So I assume it would have worked but I've never tested it.

 

I did slightly "overclock" my old Syncmaster (max resolution 1280x1024 60Hz) by forcing 1400x1050 60Hz so it's not out of the question that some monitors might handle up to 1080p. 1200p displayed "unusable signal". Definitely if the monitor supported 1600x1200 at 60hz it should be possible.

 

Aspect ratios would be fubar obviously.

Yeh, in theory, an analog monitor should be able to do any vertical or horizontal scan frequencies within it's range. So arbitrary vertical resolutions should be possible, as well as non-standard frame rates.

 

And as there is no pixel clock or anything in analog video, the horizontal resolution just rolls off softly, being only a function of how quickly the beam can turn on/off in response to the signal, just like the high frequency response of a sound system. The monitor couldn't care less how many "pixels" there are horizontally, it doesn't know what a pixel is, there's no such thing in analog, all there is is scanning a varying strength signal across a screen. Again, similar to how audio speakers don't care how high the bit rate of the sound file was before it went through a DAC.

[Andromeda Stardust]

Yeh, in theory, an analog monitor should be able to do any vertical or horizontal scan frequencies within it's range. So arbitrary vertical resolutions should be possible, as well as non-standard frame rates.

 

And as there is no pixel clock or anything in analog video, the horizontal resolution just rolls off softly, being only a function of how quickly the beam can turn on/off in response to the signal, just like the high frequency response of a sound system. The monitor couldn't care less how many "pixels" there are horizontally, it doesn't know what a pixel is, there's no such thing in analog, all there is is scanning a varying strength signal across a screen. Again, similar to how audio speakers don't care how high the bit rate of the sound file was before it went through a DAC.

I wish I'd never gotten rid of the Viewsonic crt but cest la vie. An hdmi to vga would warrant experimentation.

 

I am aware there are names for all the supported video standards, ie vga, svga, etc. There is a wikipedia page with numbers and it is astounding.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Display_resolution

Vga monitors do report the supported standards but you are free to try and force the video card or device to send over anything and the monitor will attempt to display it or pop up an "out of range" error.

 

My flat panel Samsung Syncmaster 1600x1200 from 2005 will display 1920x1080p60 over dvi single or dul link despite it exceeds the built in horizontal resolution. It also displays 1280x720p, again in 4x3 squished aspect. However because my dvi monitor does not expressly support widescreen resolutions, and has no audio capability, I cannot use it with Analogue or Retrousb fpga consoles with sound because my monoprice splitter (which I use to siphon audio) refuses to push unsupported display resolutions, resulting in no picture.

[CRTGamingKaraoke]

It's 2019... Almost a year since the first announcement of the DAC... I really hope it hasn't become vaporware at this point.

[Atariboy]

Wasn't it recently reconfirmed? I may be misrepresenting what they said, but the gist as I recall was that the parts were all ordered and are on hand, but by the time that they arrived they were too busy with the Mega SG to bother with it.

 

It's supposed to go to the front burner once the 1st shipment of Mega SG's goes out.

Edited January 1, 2019 by Atariboy

[Andromeda Stardust]

It's 2019... Almost a year since the first announcement of the DAC... I really hope it hasn't become vaporware at this point.

I would personally rather them work on a new console like Turbografx or Atari. I've got all the oldish hardware and only have CRTs which support RF and Composite. And around 90% of consumer grade CRTs ever sold in the USA didn't support anything higher than S-Video.

[Atariboy]

Again, it's developed and the components are in stock. They just have to manufacture and sell them. So I don't see it taking away from a potential new system announcement in late 2019.

[Schizophretard]

I would personally rather them work on a new console like Turbografx or Atari. I've got all the oldish hardware and only have CRTs which support RF and Composite. And around 90% of consumer grade CRTs ever sold in the USA didn't support anything higher than S-Video.

I personally would like to be able to enjoy the consoles they already made instead of them making more that I still can't enjoy.

[Tanooki]

I'm with kosmic, like to see more variety done at the current price point of the sub $200 range. I don't see a practical way about the PC Engine getting HD otherwise still so I'd be all over that. Neo Geo I'd be torn, wouldn't want to dive in there as I like my cabinet too much but had that not been sitting next to me definitely. The thing is, if the parts are there there's no harm in doing the DAC other than the loss of a few weeks to assemble and coordinate shipping such things out.

[Schizophretard]

I'm with kosmic, like to see more variety done at the current price point of the sub $200 range. I don't see a practical way about the PC Engine getting HD otherwise still so I'd be all over that. Neo Geo I'd be torn, wouldn't want to dive in there as I like my cabinet too much but had that not been sitting next to me definitely. The thing is, if the parts are there there's no harm in doing the DAC other than the loss of a few weeks to assemble and coordinate shipping such things out.

Many may be shipped with the consoles.

[F34R]

Ugh. So, apparently I've messed something up, somehow. I can't load anything with the 2600/7800 cores. Was working before, so I'm not sure where I went wrong here. This is with the NT Mini, latest j/b firmware.

[VintageGamer74]

I just ordered my Super NT today! Can't wait for this! Mega SG is next...that and the AVS. ?

[Schizophretard]

I would personally rather them work on a new console like Turbografx or Atari. I've got all the oldish hardware and only have CRTs which support RF and Composite. And around 90% of consumer grade CRTs ever sold in the USA didn't support anything higher than S-Video.

The same kind of reasoning could be ablied to the cartridge port. 90% of all Nintendo and SEGA games exist as ROM files while the other 10% exist on cartridges. Those ROM files already have a huge selection of modern hardware to display them on HDTV through emulation. So, why include a cartridge port? And I don't mean to make it more legal. I mean, who are these consoles catering to that makes a cartridge port a selling point? People that don't mind that it is outputs an emulation like image and just wants high quality replacement hardware with higher accuracy than software based emulation by using an FPGA.

 

So, for me it is pretty much the exact same except it isn't just about playing decades old cartridges with higher than software based emulation accuracy but displaying the games with higher than software based emulation accuracy. I can't see a huge night and day difference between one of these FPGA consoles displaying an image with CRT effects and a software based emulator displaying an image with CRT effects. They both seem visually off in the same way that people would point out the audio being off in an emulator like saying the music doesn't sound the same on original hardware. It just kind of seems like a waste to use an FPGA to achieve greater accuracy than software emulation if it is being prevented by design to not be able to display an identical image as original hardware.

 

Anyway, it is kind of hard for me to believe that it is a minority of us that would like to see emulation rather it is hardware or software based to reach a level of accuracy that it is identical to original hardware and that there is no market for it.