FPGA Based Videogame System

[Andromeda Stardust]

On 8/18/2019 at 2:42 AM, Slipard said:

@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.

Salty... ?

[atmn]

15 hours ago, Jurai said:

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

 

 

Kind of cool in a sense, but its like the same as having an original Mega Drive hooked up with an RGB CRT.

 

I would be hyped if this setup was possible with HDMI-out.

Edited August 19, 2019 by atmn

[mario64]

2 hours ago, atmn said:

Kind of cool in a sense, but its like the same as having an original Mega Drive hooked up with an RGB CRT.

 

I would be hyped if this setup was possible with HDMI-out.

Yeah. Need to hear more details on this. Potentially very exciting though

[ApolloBoy]

12 hours ago, atmn said:

Kind of cool in a sense, but its like the same as having an original Mega Drive hooked up with an RGB CRT.

A Mega Drive that can also play SG-1000 and Game Gear games as well as ColecoVision games with jailbroken firmware...

[atmn]

2 hours ago, ApolloBoy said:

A Mega Drive that can also play SG-1000 and Game Gear games as well as ColecoVision games with jailbroken firmware...

Sure thing, never questioned that, but that has nothing to do with the 32x support, the only thing this adds to the table is making 2 setups redundant.

 

Maybe its possible to play 32x games directly from SD from a jailbroken firmware? With a 32x attached of course.

That would be relevant at least.

 

[Toth]

You don't need that riser do you?

[CZroe]

  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.

The gist of it was that the performance penalty of not being truly 16-bit did not affect the final product in a meaningful way from the end user's perspective and ROM/RAM was expanded with memory mappers, thus, it was 16-bit in the most meaningful way for consumers (graphics). The 8-bit CPU certainly wasn't bottlenecking the shooters with 16-bit sprites all over the screen when even the SNES would slow down significantly with less.

 

 

It's a bit like giving the NES PPU an expanded color palette and 16-bit bus with dedicated ROM and VRAM, where graphical assets are almost the only thing you'd want 16-bits for with the limited RAM/ROM capacities of the day. It's like you said: Once loaded into VRAM it could really tear through it. I don't know if the PCE/TG16 works this way, but since the NES and other systems show it's possible to map ROM to the video memory and use even less actual RAM, ROM essentially becomes expanded RAM that contains what you would otherwise have to write into RAM anyway (assuming it would even fit).

 

 

Regardless, 16-bit addressing allows for a larger memory address range for larger tiles with more color and more frames/tiles simultaneously accessible in the memory map to construct the rich, 16-bit graphics with. That's why I'm saying it was 16-bit in the only way that really mattered at the time for games.

[CZroe]

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:
 

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. 

 
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?

Blame it on the entitled class driving success out of the country. No wonder Catalonia wanted to secceed. By cracking down on Catalonia they really left the business types no other refuge. They are essentially punished for staying in Spain.

@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.

I disagree. You'd have to pay one way or the other. If they stayed in Spain then their prices would have had to go up. Problem is, prices would have had to go up for the entire world just to satisfy one part. I think they made the right call.

Kind of cool in a sense, but its like the same as having an original Mega Drive hooked up with an RGB CRT.   I would be hyped if this setup was possible with HDMI-out.

Not quite the same, since there are no jailbars and you get all of the Mega Sg's other features. From there, I'm fine using HDRV cables into RetroTink 2X or OSSC. Good excuse to get one if you haven't already because, well, there's your HDMI.

[CZroe]

Sure thing, never questioned that, but that has nothing to do with the 32x support, the only thing this adds to the table is making 2 setups redundant.
 
Maybe its possible to play 32x games directly from SD from a jailbroken firmware? With a 32x attached of course.
That would be relevant at least.

Doubt it, since the bottom slot cannot simply pass through to the top.

You don't need that riser do you?

It wouldn't be very stable, but you definitely don't need it.

I've heard that the prototype for the MegaSD attachment which enables 32X CD games will not fit because in mounts the cart vertically and the cart is too tall. Hopefully they will orient the cart differently or make a different adapter. I kinda hoped it mounted the cart horizontally so I could 3D print a mock Sega CD2 to contain it except sized for the Mega Sg.

[Kaide]

2 hours ago, CZroe said:

It's a bit like giving the NES PPU an expanded color palette and 16-bit bus with dedicated ROM and VRAM, where graphical assets are almost the only thing you'd want 16-bits for with the limited RAM/ROM capacities of the day. It's like you said: Once loaded into VRAM it could really tear through it. I don't know if the PCE/TG16 works this way, but since the NES and other systems show it's possible to map ROM to the video memory and use even less actual RAM, ROM essentially becomes expanded RAM that contains what you would otherwise have to write into RAM anyway (assuming it would even fit).

 

 

Regardless, 16-bit addressing allows for a larger memory address range for larger tiles with more color and more frames/tiles simultaneously accessible in the memory map to construct the rich, 16-bit graphics with. That's why I'm saying it was 16-bit in the only way that really mattered at the time for games.

 

It doesn't. There's no DMA access for the PCE VDP to the CPU's data bus. The VDP had some DMA functionality for bulk transfers within VRAM itself that would be faster than trying to move things around using the CPU, and would use DMA to access VRAM, but that was about it. And yes, it doesn't match a lot of VDP designs of 8-bit computers and other consoles. But it does mean that the VDP generally didn't have to fight the CPU for access to VRAM unless doing bulk loads. Just at the cost of time spent loading up VRAM with tile data. Also weird is that it stored tile data in a planar format, despite using color indexes. So each row of an 8x8 tile was 4 bytes, and you had to load all 4 bytes in order to know what color even one pixel was. A lot of the VDP design suggests that they went wide/parallel in their design in order to improve fill rate at lower clock speeds. Not that 16-bit itself actually made anything possible here.

 

I'm totally confused by the "assuming it would even fit" comment. VDPs have always been limited in what they can access and the size of their sprite/tile table. The trick there has always been to load just what you need. Generally this would be what you need for a level or screen between opportunities to load new tile data. Or abusing palette swaps and duplicate tiles to compress the data.  

 

Also, I should point out that the 8-bit systems did use 16-bit addressing. It's how you got a 64K logical address space in the first place. Both the SNES and Genesis had 24-bit physical addressing. The 68k with a clean 24-bit logical address space was a nice CPU to work with (helps that it was designed with 32-bit in mind, so registers were 32-bit despite only having a 16-bit ALU), while the 5A22 used the DB register to form the top byte of the 24-bit addresses. That lead the SNES to have a rather nasty beast of a memory map to avoid having to modify the DB register too often. If anything the PC Engine, despite being limited to 16-bit logical addresses, had a much easier bank switching setup to work with to provide 21-bits of physical addressing. One that my old TI-83 mimics with it's Z80 chip.

 

Honestly, 16-bit by itself isn't really a panacea. It does enable some things, yes. But a lot of the CPU designs of the era weren't pure 8-bit or 16-bit. They never really were, and couldn't afford to be with RAM needs outstripping the ability to address it (even with 32-bit, the desire to address >4GB hit long before 64-bit CPUs with 64-bit ALUs were a thing). It was however, a very clever bit of marketing to draw a more stark line between the consoles of the 80s and early 90s.

Edited August 20, 2019 by Kaide

[CZroe]

I'm totally confused by the "assuming it would even fit" comment. VDPs have always been limited in what they can access and the size of their sprite/tile table. The trick there has always been to load just what you need. Generally this would be what you need for a level or screen between opportunities to load new tile data. Or abusing palette swaps and duplicate tiles to compress the data.

I was saying that if the RAM capacity were limited by cost, having graphical assets from ROM mapped to memory potentially enables more than would fit in RAM alone. That's especially the case if the cost of memory comes down over time while the original amount was somewhat limited. You explained that it was not set up like this for PCE/TG16 (can't map ROM to graphics RAM) but this certainly happened with the NES. Heck, rather than map ROM to RAM, many NES games out-right expanded the graphics RAM using CHR-RAM in the cartridge where the CHR-ROM would often go. Obviously they would programaticaly change the CHR-RAM contents dynamically during runtime so all graphics had to be stored on program ROM (PRG-ROM).

My understanding with 8 vs 16 bit graphics is that you can't address much memory with only 8 bits, which is the primary way a 16-bit graphics chip improves so much over an 8-bit one. Virtually everything on screen needs to be in memory at once so bank switching and memory mappers aren't as useful for expanding the graphical capabilities. Sure, you can change mapping for each level or even change for each frame to create certain kinds of animation but that only gets you so far. It seems to me that the leap in graphical fidelity between 8-bit and 16-bit consoles is chiefly because of the expanded memory address range afforded by a 16bit graphics chip... a bit like increasing the bit depth on a bitmap file. I may be way off but it also seems to me that an 8-bit CPU wasn't really the bottleneck back then for the next generation of games, since an 8-bit CPU seemed more than capable for most games. Street Fighter II and all the Arcade Card titles really seemed to show that for PCE/TG16.

Also, I should point out that the 8-bit systems did use 16-bit addressing. It's how you got a 64K logical address space in the first place. Both the SNES and Genesis had 24-bit physical addressing. The 68k with a clean 24-bit logical address space was a nice CPU to work with (helps that it was designed with 32-bit in mind, so registers were 32-bit despite only having a 16-bit ALU), while the 5A22 used the DB register to form the top byte of the 24-bit addresses. That lead the SNES to have a rather nasty beast of a memory map to avoid having to modify the DB register too often. If anything the PC Engine, despite being limited to 16-bit logical addresses, had a much easier bank switching setup to work with to provide 21-bits of physical addressing. One that my old TI-83 mimics with it's Z80 chip.
 
Honestly, 16-bit by itself isn't really a panacea. It does enable some things, yes. But a lot of the CPU designs of the era weren't pure 8-bit or 16-bit. They never really were, and couldn't afford to be with RAM needs outstripping the ability to address it (even with 32-bit, the desire to address >4GB hit long before 64-bit CPUs with 64-bit ALUs were a thing). It was however, a very clever bit of marketing to draw a more stark line between the consoles of the 80s and early 90s.

Yeah. I was one of those people frustrated that my Win32 SLI setup couldn't even effectively use 3GB RAM thanks to all the reserved I/O addresses using more than a GB. SLI made it particularly bad because Windows used a full range of system memory I/O addresses for the memory on the graphics cards. Two 512MB GPUs demanded a full GB of I/O addresses in addition to the ones reserved for all the other hardware and drivers. My 32-bit system with 4GB RAM effectively had ~2.5GB, which sounds like a huge waste.

[Kaide]

 

2 hours ago, CZroe said:

My understanding with 8 vs 16 bit graphics is that you can't address much memory with only 8 bits, which is the primary way a 16-bit graphics chip improves so much over an 8-bit one. Virtually everything on screen needs to be in memory at once so bank switching and memory mappers aren't as useful for expanding the graphical capabilities. Sure, you can change mapping for each level or even change for each frame to create certain kinds of animation but that only gets you so far. It seems to me that the leap in graphical fidelity between 8-bit and 16-bit consoles is chiefly because of the expanded memory address range afforded by a 16bit graphics chip... a bit like increasing the bit depth on a bitmap file.

 

And as I pointed out, 8-bit CPUs/VDPs don't use 8-bit addressing, it's not enough. VDPs since they are more custom can be a little weird too. The NES' PPU uses 14-bits for addressing to cover both 2KB of VRAM and the CHR memory, even though it could have also used 16-bits like the CPU. 

 

More bits per pixel, a wider color palette, more color palettes to pick from, more sprites per scan line, and on screen. All those contribute to the leap in graphical fidelity. Beyond that, it's just a case of how you get there. You need more throughput to handle this, and a bigger VDP/PPU die. You can get more throughput by upping the clock speed, but will your VRAM keep up? Can you get stuff manufactured at tolerances good enough to run at the new clock speed? Or do you go wider and start using 16-bit data buses to move data more quickly? Moving towards 16-bit data buses makes a lot of sense there once you aren't pushing two data buses across the cartridge slot.

 

NOTE: While looking at the better documented SNES schematics, I realize I may have made a mistake after realizing the DMA controller was embedded in the CPU. If the PC Engine CPU has a DMA controller, that is how the VRAM would have been bulk populated, very similar to the SNES. I mistakenly thought the DMA at this point in time wouldn't have been integrated into the CPU die. That's my mistake for assuming it was integrated as part of an SoC or more modern CPUs. TIL.

 

Also interesting, the Commodore 64's VDP used a 12-bit data bus to read from Color RAM and VRAM at the same time and speed things up. Neat.

 

2 hours ago, CZroe said:

Yeah. I was one of those people frustrated that my Win32 SLI setup couldn't even effectively use 3GB RAM thanks to all the reserved I/O addresses using more than a GB. SLI made it particularly bad because Windows used a full range of system memory I/O addresses for the memory on the graphics cards. Two 512MB GPUs demanded a full GB of I/O addresses in addition to the ones reserved for all the other hardware and drivers. My 32-bit system with 4GB RAM effectively had ~2.5GB, which sounds like a huge waste.

I'm not sure, but that should have been "per process". PAE was supported in XP and later, so that should be able to address more than 4GB of RAM. And protected memory meant each app had its own address space, so there's no reason you can't allocate 6GB of RAM on a 32-bit CPU with PAE support across your processes. That said, Windows did some really goofy memory mapping in the day, and I never kept a close eye on things. I do remember the I/O mapping nonsense.

Edited August 20, 2019 by Kaide

[Slipard]

5 hours ago, CZroe said:

Blame it on the entitled class driving success out of the country. No wonder Catalonia wanted to secceed. By cracking down on Catalonia they really left the business types no other refuge. They are essentially punished for staying in Spain.

I disagree. You'd have to pay one way or the other. If they stayed in Spain then their prices would have had to go up. Problem is, prices would have had to go up for the entire world just to satisfy one part. I think they made the right call.

Not quite the same, since there are no jailbars and you get all of the Mega Sg's other features. From there, I'm fine using HDRV cables into RetroTink 2X or OSSC. Good excuse to get one if you haven't already because, well, there's your HDMI.

That they move out of Spain is not a concern for me. And the entitled class was elected AFAIK, so don't blame them, they are doing what people asked for. The real concern is the move to Andorra and especially the way they did it, like bandits.

 

First, they informed customers AFTER doing so and on their site where I don't spend my time, like most people. Sending a mail beforehand would have been the least of the courtesies.

 

Second, they dit it with only THEIR concern in mind, not their customers.

 

That shows all the disdain they have for their customers, because they take the money and then they issue a big fuck you. Here is why:

 

First, such a move from a country to another is not something you do overnight. It was obviously planned and not informing customers of the inevitable consequences was a first fuck you to them.

Second, with careful planning, they could easily operate from Andorra for most of the business aspects, while having a room somewhere in Spain or France, even, where to receive, stock and ship the goods. The volumes they do allow that and it is a simple thing to do. I did such a setup on my time. So, easy solution that allows benefit for Terraonion (they have to get all benefits they can, no question about that) but also for the customers (Terraonion benefits shouldn't be obtained at the customers' detriment). Second fuck you to the customers.

 

It's a question of balance, and Terraonion moved like scalpers: all for us, nothing for you. That's pure disdain, a really big fuck you to all their customers.

 

So, yeah, please, Chinese (or anybody competent, I don't discriminate) bootleggers, do your job and sell me bootlegs of Terraonion products. I'll buy without any remorse, because it's only fair that when someone says fuck you to you, you answer fuck you to them too. Always a question of balance.

 

It's just common sense that when you buy a product with an estimated delivery time and a given shipping place, you expect the product to come on time and from where you were told it would be shipping. This is deception, here, and I pay the cost of their disdain to me. I won't forget that.

Edited August 20, 2019 by Slipard

[CZroe]

That they move out of Spain is not a concern for me. And the entitled class was elected AFAIK, so don't blame them, they are doing what people asked for. The real concern is the move to Andorra and especially the way they did it, like bandits.

 

First, they informed customers AFTER doing so and on their site where I don't spend my time, like most people. Sending a mail beforehand would have been the least of the courtesies.

 

Second, they dit it with only THEIR concern in mind, not their customers.

 

That shows all the disdain they have for their customers, because they take the money and then they issue a big fuck you. Here is why:

 

First, such a move from a country to another is not something you do overnight. It was obviously planned and not informing customers of the inevitable consequences was a first fuck you to them.

 

Second, with careful planning, they could easily operate from Andorra for most of the business aspects, while having a room somewhere in Spain or France, even, where to receive, stock and ship the goods. The volumes they do allow that and it is a simple thing to do. I did such a setup on my time. So, easy solution that allows benefit for Terraonion (they have to get all benefits they can, no question about that) but also for the customers (Terraonion benefits shouldn't be obtained at the customers' detriment). Second fuck you to the customers.

 

It's a question of balance, and Terraonion moved like scalpers: all for us, nothing for you. That's pure disdain, a really big fuck you to all their customers.

 

So, yeah, please, Chinese (or anybody competent, I don't discriminate) bootleggers, do your job and sell me bootlegs of Terraonion products. I'll buy without any remorse, because it's only fair that when someone says fuck you to you, you answer fuck you to them too. Always a question of balance.

 

It's just common sense that when you buy a product with an estimated delivery time and a given shipping place, you expect the product to come on time and from where you were told it would be shipping. This is deception, here, and I pay the cost of their disdain to me. I won't forget that.

I got an unexpected "foreign transaction fee" here in the USA when I pre-ordered my Super Nt because the payment processor was in Hong Kong. It was made worse because I got two. The company (Analogue), its figurehead (Chris Tabor), and its Chief Engineer (Kevin "Kevtris" Horton) are all US-based so I had no way to anticipate this. Though it was not nearly as high, it was a similar issue. Now: suppose it was as high. Would you say the same about Analogue and hope they get ruined by some rogue bootlegger in China?

 

It sucks that this blind-sided you but, as I explained, they likely would have had to bill everyone more if they had not moved. If they did ship out of Spain for EU customers it is likely they still would have had to significantly raise the price for EU customers. Now we know to expect this for EU buyers, so thanks for the warning.

 

I probably would've done the same thing.

 

[Slipard]

12 hours ago, CZroe said:

I got an unexpected "foreign transaction fee" here in the USA when I pre-ordered my Super Nt because the payment processor was in Hong Kong. It was made worse because I got two. The company (Analogue), its figurehead (Chris Tabor), and its Chief Engineer (Kevin "Kevtris" Horton) are all US-based so I had no way to anticipate this. Though it was not nearly as high, it was a similar issue. Now: suppose it was as high. Would you say the same about Analogue and hope they get ruined by some rogue bootlegger in China?

 

It sucks that this blind-sided you but, as I explained, they likely would have had to bill everyone more if they had not moved. If they did ship out of Spain for EU customers it is likely they still would have had to significantly raise the price for EU customers. Now we know to expect this for EU buyers, so thanks for the warning.

I already explained how they could have shipped from Europa union without raising prices, I won't repeat.

 

As for the payment processor, why using one from HK? Analogue is to blame for that, yes, since it's the company's decision. I wouldn't blame Kevtris for that, he's an engineer, but that's the thing with a company: if the people in charge make bad decisions, shit stains everyone in the company. Welcome to real life!

 

I wonder: are you a millennial or something? Because you seem to lack an understanding of responsibility. When you make a decision, you have to weight all the parameters, or at least the one you can weight. Unannounced supplemental fees charged to the customer are a parameter you can anticipate and address beforehand, especially when the products are this expansive and when they already charge us more than twice the actual cost of the shipping.

 

You wanna have me write it? Then I will: if Analogue gets bootlegged by China, I won't cry for them. Twice I asked for the cart protectors for my Gold Analogue Nt. Twice they said they were sending them. Never got anything. I am still waiting for a NT Mini rerelease. We are all waiting for the promised carts adapters for the Mega Sg. DAC seems to be coming, but until it is officially available, it remains a promise yet to be achieved. They ripped me off three times with overoverpriced (I emphasize the word with a repetition) shipping rates, to the point I won't be surprised the shipping fee for the DAC will be higher than the DAC's price itself. Believe me, I'll report back about it. And their product are not priced cheap. I don't mind paying for quality, but quality doesn't stop at the product, it concerns the whole service. Products are top quality, thank you Kevtris; service and communication are a fan continuously provided with fresh dog shit, fuck you Analogue.

 

I don't mean to be a perpetual bashing Angry Nerd here. I love Analogue's products and I expect to love the first Terraonion one I bought, if I ever receive it. And I highly respect Kevtris, as a guy for everything I saw him publicly do and say (I follow his personal site almost since it went public, basically; yes, I am that old, *sigh*) and as an engineer, for all the incredible work he's doing and has done. I even am sad for him to have to work with Analogue, where he gets funded for his video games engineering, but also gets stained by Analogue's commercial malpractices.

 

But that's the thing: when there is malpractice, you can't expect people to basically keep they pants on their ankles with their body in a position I won't even begin to describe here. From the moment you start your company, customers desserve respect. And while I can understand a company can face problems – and I never complained, here or elsewhere, about these issues –, when poor decisions are made, that mustn't be hidden under the carpet, otherwise it will just escalate. Especially when NOTHING is done to address these issues. They are on purpose. That's where the fuck you consumers stands and where the loyalty vanishes.

 

On a side note, you don't seem to fully understand why I use the Chinese bootleggers line, so i will explain furthermore.

 

First, I use a cliché: Chinese aren't the only bootleggers and I use this cliché only because it is effective. But I feel it is important to point out that bootleggers are everywhere in the world and they even often say there are China based to cover themselves under the cliché. But, yeah, China and even Asia are not the sole bootleg providers in the world. It is always good to remind that.

Second, do I really want to buy and use China knockoff? Frankly, no. Do China knockoff hurt companies? Hell, yes. So why using that line? Because, in niche markets like this one, a bootleg appears first because there is an appeal for customers to go that route. That can be the cheapest price, but that can also be availability or just the way companies fuck the consumers. Bad practices words spread faster than good ones and if you want loyalty from your consumers, you have to be loyal to your consumers too.

 

To use an easy example, the current feud between USA and China is because both countries are not loyal to each other. That was to be expected from Trump, a businessman, but also from Xi Jinping and his party, being able to hold the power only because China's booming unfair economy benefits to the people too. That's where egoism directs us, while loyalty and honesty, all with good communication, would avoid that while allowing EVERYONE to be happy.

 

So, yeah, I would rather have Analogue and Terraonion fix the issues rather than relying to bootleg alternatives, but that's not up only to me.

 

*cough*Or, pay an higher price for FPGA products directly made and sold by Kevtris, independently of Analogue and Terraonion.*cough*

Edited August 21, 2019 by Slipard

[ErebusMaligan]

As far as the whole andorra thing, maybe I'm not understanding how this works.  In order to ship from somewhere that is in the EU, wouldn't that country have to pay the customs fees/import taxes whatever to receive the product in the first place before they shipped it out?  Wouldn't this naturally lead to the item then having to be sold at a higher cost anyway?

 

I would agree that often from both of these companies communication is poor to non-existent, but I think you are overreaching to call any of it malpractice, vs just being perpetually marginal when it comes to running a business.  I too am still wondering where these cartridge adapters are... but meh.

 

 

2 hours ago, Slipard said:

I wonder: are you a millennial or something? Because you seem to lack an understanding of responsibility.

 

This is non-sequitur, and a douchey one at that.   Also I strongly suspect, that like most people you don't realize just how old millenials are.  The oldest in that age group is quickly approaching 40.  Basically most of the interest in gaming from the NES through all pre-hdmi consoles is largely due to millenials existing.

 

 

2 hours ago, Slipard said:

And their product are not priced cheap.

 

This is a matter of opinion, not a fact.  Comparatively I'd say their more recent line of products actually is priced quite cheaply.  I'd say if $200 USD breaks the bank for you, you should not be wasting money on retro video gaming stuff to begin with, it's probably better spent elsewhere like food/shelter.

 

 

2 hours ago, Slipard said:

I don't mean to be a perpetual bashing Angry Nerd here.

 

Well if your goal was to avoid this, this giant ranting wall of text pretty much missed the mark of being rational.

 

 

 

 

 

[CZroe]

 

 

 

 

I already explained how they could have shipped from Europa union without raising prices, I won't repeat.

No you didn't. If they moved a portion of their operations back into Spain and got severely taxed on their profits then they would have to pass that cost on to EU consumers and raise the price.

 

You can't squeeze the balloon on one end without inflating the other. You mistakenly dismissed Spain's taxes and focused entirely on your own EU/import taxes in order to claim that they could ship from the EU without raising prices. This is overly simplistic and assumptive in order to support your notion that they are wrong to do it. Yes, I'm being pretty assumptive myself when imagining how it might be justified, but I think it's a lot more reasonable to assume they had a good reason (and consider what it might be) than to assume they are just bad and want to hurt their potential customers for no reason. What sense would that make?

 

I'm sure they picked Andora for a very good reason. When you tax the productive parts of society so much that they consider leaving the country then you typically need to pass even more laws to discourage that, like forcing them to pay Spain's taxes if they remain in the EU and any part of their business is still in Spain. Perhaps there is an exception for businesses outside the EU operating in Spain, which is why a US company can do business there without being taxed into oblivion. Terra Onion chose the closest non-EU country and there is probably a reason for that.

 

I don't like any of this either. I openly desire free markets and have a pretty extreme Libertarian position on that. I see this as the obvious and predictable consequence of government intrusion into the free market and can't fault Terra Onion for responding as they needed to in order to remain in business.

 

Honestly, I was surprised to see them make it this far in Spain without being some big business with preferential treatment. Their ambitions are more in-line with hobbyists/enthusiasts except they are also somewhat proficient in what it takes to get products to market. Sometimes, that means moving.

 

I'm sure they weighed the pros and cons of raising the price on the entire world versus raising the cost for EU customers. As unfortunate as it is for EU customers, I see it as savvy. They are willing to make the tough decisions that are best for the company and their customers. This allows the company to go on making what the customers want with their talents. That's the market at work.

 

 

 

[Jagasian]

Trump-like typing detected.

[Slipard]

15 hours ago, ErebusMaligan said:

As far as the whole andorra thing, maybe I'm not understanding how this works.  In order to ship from somewhere that is in the EU, wouldn't that country have to pay the customs fees/import taxes whatever to receive the product in the first place before they shipped it out?  Wouldn't this naturally lead to the item then having to be sold at a higher cost anyway?

 

I would agree that often from both of these companies communication is poor to non-existent, but I think you are overreaching to call any of it malpractice, vs just being perpetually marginal when it comes to running a business.  I too am still wondering where these cartridge adapters are... but meh.

 

This is non-sequitur, and a douchey one at that.   Also I strongly suspect, that like most people you don't realize just how old millenials are.  The oldest in that age group is quickly approaching 40.  Basically most of the interest in gaming from the NES through all pre-hdmi consoles is largely due to millenials existing.

 

This is a matter of opinion, not a fact.  Comparatively I'd say their more recent line of products actually is priced quite cheaply.  I'd say if $200 USD breaks the bank for you, you should not be wasting money on retro video gaming stuff to begin with, it's probably better spent elsewhere like food/shelter.

 

Well if your goal was to avoid this, this giant ranting wall of text pretty much missed the mark of being rational.

I will help you. Since the products are manufactured in the E.U., as stated on their homepage, which means outside of Andorra – and I believe it, as Andorra hasn't the needed place to do that –, then if you get a storage place in the E.U., everything stays in the E.U. and you don't need to import them into Andorra. You can do your shipping from E.U. while still have all other activities in Andorra and as such, remain an Andorra based society. It's quite common practice.

 

BTW, Andorra is located on the European continent, but Andorra is NOT E.U., which the whole problem here and that then lead us to malpractice, which is easy to define: while an error is something unexpected, a malpractice is something you deliberately do while knowing it will go against the interest of your consumers. Poor communication is a choice, not an unexpected error. Vaporware is another malpractice. Customer support not doing what they say they will do is malpractice. Third-party shipping society sending wrong packages is an unexpected error to Analogue, same as some consoles not working right is another error that you can't avoid due to manufacturing processes. The later one was correctly addressed so far, but the former one, just read this topic, has been questionable.

 

Then for the price, it shows a lot about you... The problem is not being able to afford it or not and the value of an object is not dependent of the purchasing power of the customer. I guess you are so used to pay an absurd price for your smartphone that you are disconnected to real word pricing. As such, the products being pricey is a fact and I am not asking for a cheaper price, but just for a customer service on par with the price, not something where I feel like I bought a crappy Chinese bootleg on eBay or Alibaba.

 

If you like it deep inside of you, glad you found your passion; on my side, I won't beyond the reason, thank you.

 

Oh, and thank you too for the parts about the millennial and rationality, this was a very good laugh for starting the day. Louis C.K. should be worried of you. ?

 

@CZroe: you really to have trouble understanding, everything has already been said and you are just coming back to answered topics without any new argument. ?

 

Now, if you really want to discuss this further, open a thread or PM me politely. Otherwise, let's get back to the subject: FPGA consoles and how to help Kevtris to be funded enough to jailbreak from Analogue and release his Zimba 3000. ?

[ErebusMaligan]

This was a legitimate complaint:

 

21 hours ago, Slipard said:

Twice I asked for the cart protectors for my Gold Analogue Nt. Twice they said they were sending them. Never got anything.

 

You have every right to complain about this.   This is shitty behavior.  Pretty much everything else you have said across all of your posts is gibberish.

 

I think, you are proceeding from many unverified assumptions.  Some of which collectively border on a persecution complex.

 

The biggest of these seems to be confusing indifference at worst, with ill intent.  Just because a company does something you don't agree with, or doesn't end well, doesn't necessarily mean they are out to screw their customers. It could simply be a result of mistakes, poor planning, or optimistic estimation that leads to a failure to deliver.   None of those things are malpractice without intent.

 

As for the running a company vs shipping from a different country, I don't know enough about the laws and taxes involved to say you couldn't do this effectively.  However, even from your basic description there is additional cost to the business to maintain a second location to store and ship the items from, employment costs for doing that, etc.  So it seems like the item would need to cost more to compensate.  Logistically it would probably be at least annoying as well, so why would they want to do this?

 

 

3 hours ago, Slipard said:

Then for the price, it shows a lot about you... The problem is not being able to afford it or not and the value of an object is not dependent of the purchasing power of the customer. I guess you are so used to pay an absurd price for your smartphone that you are disconnected to real word pricing.

 

Just like your millenial comment... WTF are you talking about?!?  How is any of this relevant, what do smartphones have to do with anything?  What makes you assume that anybody definitely has one, and/or cares about keeping up with the latest one?  Honestly it just sounds like you are impoverished or overly cheap, and bitter about it.

 

The value of something is literally defined by the value assigned to it by the people purchasing it.  So in a very real way it is absolutely dependent on the purchasing power of the customer, combined with the value they place on the item.  If the item was overpriced, it wouldn't sell sufficiently, by definition, and the price would have to come down.  Basic supply and demand in a small market, without many outside influencing factors, is not a hard concept to grasp.

 

3 hours ago, Slipard said:

Oh, and thank you too for the parts about the millennial and rationality, this was a very good laugh for starting the day.

I'm not sure what the joke was... the oldest millennials are currently 38 years old.  If you argument is that millennials are just inherently more irrational than other pseudo-generations, regardless of their age or experience, that's just idiotic.  If you think millennial is just a stand-in term for anybody young that you don't like... again, idiotic.

 

3 hours ago, Slipard said:

Otherwise, let's get back to the subject: FPGA consoles and how to help Kevtris to be funded enough to jailbreak from Analogue

 

While I can agree wholeheartedly that the conversation should return to FPGA stuff and less about whining about the inequities of life, is Kevtris really looking to break away from analogue?  While you might view analogue as the devil for reasons that are suspect at best, the rest of the community seems to appreciate the products that have come out of that partnership.  Kevtris has not been particularly vocal one way or another about what he thinks about the relationship other than that he can get paid to do this stuff which is a plus.

 

Also, whether terraonion was deliberately plotting with the illuminati to try to screw EU customers or not... it hasn't stopped me from enjoying my Mega SD.  And despite Analogue being the devil's son's college roommate or whatever the line of reasoning seems to be,  I've been enjoying it on my Mega SG.

 

[jamon1567]

5 hours ago, ErebusMaligan said:

While I can agree wholeheartedly that the conversation should return to FPGA stuff and less about whining about the inequities of life, is Kevtris really looking to break away from analogue?  While you might view analogue as the devil for reasons that are suspect at best, the rest of the community seems to appreciate the products that have come out of that partnership.  Kevtris has not been particularly vocal one way or another about what he thinks about the relationship other than that he can get paid to do this stuff which is a plus.

Pretty sure Kevtris has said on this thread a few times that the partnership with Analogue has worked out in his and everyone elses favor. Kevtris sticks to the engineering, Analogue handles the business side. This is what has allowed all of his products to come to market. All the people here that complain about EVIL CORPORATIONS really just need to stop. Its childish and embarrassing. 

[Newsdee]

3 minutes ago, jamon1567 said:

This is what has allowed all of his products to come to market. 

One has to give credit to Analogue for risking and taking the (previously) empty niche of high-quality clones and hardware emulation.

 

No product is perfect, but the Analogue devices (and the AVS) make many other commercial emulation products seem like half-baked toys. It's good to have a high bar to compare. 

[Andromeda Stardust]

On 8/21/2019 at 9:30 AM, ErebusMaligan said:

 

This is non-sequitur, and a douchey one at that.   Also I strongly suspect, that like most people you don't realize just how old millenials are.  The oldest in that age group is quickly approaching 40.  Basically most of the interest in gaming from the NES through all pre-hdmi consoles is largely due to millenials existing.

 

The NES generation is Gen Y. Atari was Gen X, Playstation was Millenials. We had our own unique identity as teens in the 90s. Now it's been glossed over and erased by kids who grew up with smartphones in their hands. Honestly we have more in common IMO with Gen X but I digress. I refuse to be lumped in with the smartphone kids. Ditto for the Flower Children of the 60s came between the Baby Boomers and the Gen Xers lost their voice as well for the same reason. Sitting on the cusp of a generation gap but you really do not identify with either. Population curves be damned. Tons of kids were born during the lulls between population surges.

 

Or maybe I'm just getting salty. I'm only 38, growing on 14 [!] and going through a midlife identity crisis. I'm not quite an old fart yet, dangit! Call me back in 40 years when I'm 78, then we can talk old farts... ?

[ErebusMaligan]

14 minutes ago, Kosmic Stardust said:

The NES generation is Gen Y. Atari was Gen X, Playstation was Millenials.

Gen Y and Millenial are different names for the same generation born starting 1980-1982  and ending 1994-1996 depending on who you ask. 

 

Although I would agree that this grouping doesn't make much sense as due to the rate of technology change, even people 3-4 years apart had vastly different experiences growing up.

 

Edit:  So if you are 38, you are in fact a millenial.

Edited August 22, 2019 by ErebusMaligan
Added comment

[CZroe]

@CZroe: you really to have trouble understanding, everything has already been said and you are just coming back to answered topics without any new argument. [emoji53]

 

Now, if you really want to discuss this further, open a thread or PM me politely. Otherwise, let's get back to the subject: FPGA consoles and how to help Kevtris to be funded enough to jailbreak from Analogue and release his Zimba 3000. [emoji16]

Dismissal will only help your reputation in this argument if people agree with your reasoning... and you didn't actually provide any. It's pretty clear that my response was a lot more than that and you just didn't want to accept or respond to it. Only option left was to dismiss it and pretend it was justified.

 

It sucks that you and other EU members had to pay another 85€ or whatever it was (no small amount!) but there is simply no motive for deliberately screwing EU customers and, barring additional information, we have to assume that it was a reasoned decision based on factors you aren't considering (or even aware of).

 

Gen Y and Millenial are different names for the same generation born starting 1980-1982  and ending 1994-1996 depending on who you ask. 

 

Although I would agree that this grouping doesn't make much sense as due to the rate of technology change, even people 3-4 years apart had vastly different experiences growing up.

 

Edit:  So if you are 38, you are in fact a millenial.

"In fact" according to the US government (Census?), sure, but the word was defined differently before they decided to apply it to a whole generation. The word was first popularized to mean "people who had their formative years in the 2000s." You know... were you a '80s kid, '90s, kid, or a millennial?

 

The government applies that to the entire generation that started in 1980 because it includes those people who identify with that decade, not because "millennial" accurately describes someone born in 1980. That's why it is both "Generation Y" and "The Millennial Generation."

 

 

LOL! I grew up with a rotary phone too.

 

Anyway, back on topic: how hard could it be for someone to whip up the right kind of cable and demo 32X support with the prototype analog adapters? I mean, what do they have them for if they aren't even testing that?! I have to assume they are testing it since they already have 3D printed risers and such, so they must be under some kind of NDA. What secret could there possibly be unless the FPGA on the analog adapter does something completely unexpected?

 

I'm not suggesting a 32X core or else there would be a digital output and the testers wouldn't bother with an actual 32X but, seriously: what could it be?