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FPGA Based Videogame System


kevtris

Interest in an FPGA Videogame System  

682 members have voted

  1. 1. I would pay....

  2. 2. I Would Like Support for...

  3. 3. Games Should Run From...

    • SD Card / USB Memory Sticks
    • Original Cartridges
    • Hopes and Dreams
  4. 4. The Video Inteface Should be...


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@Kaide That may be true about MAME, but what about this (as I mentioned in one of my previous posts) ? I have cloned the repo to my hard drive and searched through it and couldn't find any sort of list of games or checksums/hashes/etc. I even searched the binary release in a hex editor and couldn't find anything there either. Over at that friend's place where he has it set up, we threw every home brew, prototype, and demo we could find at it and it just ran them, so it seems the author of that core found a more abstract/generalized approach, which leads me to believe that there is some way of determining what a game needs (what mappers, etc) from the main ROM data itself, which might be worth more study.

Edited by blzmarcel
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7 hours ago, blzmarcel said:

@Kaide That may be true about MAME, but what about this (as I mentioned in one of my previous posts) ? I have cloned the repo to my hard drive and searched through it and couldn't find any sort of list of games or checksums/hashes/etc. I even searched the binary release in a hex editor and couldn't find anything there either. Over at that friend's place where he has it set up, we threw every home brew, prototype, and demo we could find at it and it just ran them, so it seems the author of that core found a more abstract/generalized approach, which leads me to believe that there is some way of determining what a game needs (what mappers, etc) from the main ROM data itself, which might be worth more study.

You are asking the wrong person to explain someone else’s design, TBH. That said, the behavior is there, on the line starting with: ”CONSTANT MAPS : arr_jmap := (”

 

Best I can figure from a closed issue on the GitHub, and from the VHD files (it’s been nearly two decades since I last used VHDL, mind you) is that it defaults to mapper 0, unless the CRC matches one of the CRCs in this array. If it matches one of those CRCs, it uses the mapper index specified. 
 

This trick really only works if the dump is a known one. If it isn’t known, then it assumes mapper 0. Since the vast majority of Intellivision games use mapper zero, based on the spreadsheet the author references, this effectively works. Still not ideal from an engineering perspective, but “good enough” so long as you aren’t dumping your own ROMs.

Edited by Kaide
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Forgive me if this has already been discussed but has anything been mentioned in regard to getting Paprium running on a Mega SG via firmware updates or the like?  Mostly just curious if this is even possible to do with a firmware update, by other means, or even at all.  Has anything been said in the discord channels?

 

 

Llink for those whom aren’t familiar with Paprium 

 

http://www.paprium.com

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1 hour ago, aspiring_gh0st said:

Forgive me if this has already been discussed but has anything been mentioned in regard to getting Paprium running on a Mega SG via firmware updates or the like?  Mostly just curious if this is even possible to do with a firmware update, by other means, or even at all.  Has anything been said in the discord channels?

 

 

Llink for those whom aren’t familiar with Paprium 

 

http://www.paprium.com

I’ve seen no mention of it at all.  I would like to know this as well.  I’ve done Google searches with no answer. You’re actually the first person that actually asked as far as I know.

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3 hours ago, RetrogamerX said:

I’ve seen no mention of it at all.  I would like to know this as well.  I’ve done Google searches with no answer. You’re actually the first person that actually asked as far as I know.

Yeah I’ve been coming up short searching Google as well. 
 

I haven’t been keeping up with the Discord channel so thought I’d check in here to see if anyone who’s active in the Discord has heard anything. 
 

I’ll be sure and post something if I come across any viable information. 

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Looking at the jailbreak page, it's been over a year since the last firmware update. So I wouldn't suggest anyone holding their breath.

 

I suspect someday we'll see some improvements since Kevtris is obviously a perfectionist, but I see no reason to expect it to be anytime soon.

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9 hours ago, aspiring_gh0st said:

Forgive me if this has already been discussed but has anything been mentioned in regard to getting Paprium running on a Mega SG via firmware updates or the like?  Mostly just curious if this is even possible to do with a firmware update, by other means, or even at all.  Has anything been said in the discord channels?

 

 

Llink for those whom aren’t familiar with Paprium 

 

http://www.paprium.com

I submitted a support ticket to Analog on their page and got this response:

 

I would suggest folks interested in seeing this working also submit tickets.

 

if only 2 people care about it I imagine it will be lower priority than if a lot of folks are affected by it.

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On 1/1/2021 at 1:58 PM, aspiring_gh0st said:

Forgive me if this has already been discussed but has anything been mentioned in regard to getting Paprium running on a Mega SG via firmware updates or the like?  Mostly just curious if this is even possible to do with a firmware update, by other means, or even at all.  Has anything been said in the discord channels?

 

 

Llink for those whom aren’t familiar with Paprium 

 

http://www.paprium.com

On Discord I think they are trying to get Kevtris a copy (or he's getting it himself) to look at.

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29 minutes ago, XtraSmiley said:

Yeah, I clearly have no idea what I am doing!  I blame it on old man brain. What happened to BBS'? You young kids and your discord this and braided that...

Hahaha. That's okay. I am 42 but feel like I am 99 sometimes. Getting harder to keep up with technology. :)

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Almost there. I accepted the invite. Now I can see the channel and I can load the link given earlier but the analogue-mega-sg server shows a padlock icon and says it can't load the messages. :P

UPDATE:
Hah. Figured it out by starting in the readme server. :)

Edited by dashv
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12 hours ago, XtraSmiley said:

Yeah, I clearly have no idea what I am doing!  I blame it on old man brain. What happened to BBS'? You young kids and your discord this and braided that...

I'm 52 but I guess around here that might potentially count for young. :lol: 

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I just got to messing around with the FDS RAM adapter and FDSStick on an Nt Mini.  Does anyone know of a guide to setting the audio properly for the FDS to sound authentic?  There seem to be two options I can set.  FDS Expansion Audio, which I assume I want enabled, and Cartridge Audio Volume, which I also probably want turned up to some point?  The sound of games changes pretty drastically depending on the volume of the cartridge audio and once cartridge audio gets high enough the FDS expansion audio setting doesn't seem to really change the sound at all if I disable it.  

Edited by Toth
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I just got to messing around with the FDS RAM adapter and FDSStick on an Nt Mini.  Does anyone know of a guide to setting the audio properly for the FDS to sound authentic?  There seem to be two options I can set.  FDS Expansion Audio, which I assume I want enabled, and Cartridge Audio Volume, which I also probably want turned up to some point?  The sound of games changes pretty drastically depending on the volume of the cartridge audio and once cartridge audio gets high enough the FDS expansion audio setting doesn't seem to really change the sound at all if I disable it.  
You can get original audio from the RAM adapter by enabling Cartridge Audio but it will me digitized analog. If you want digital audio then you need to enable the FPGA replication of the FDS audio hardware. Despite what MLiG says, it's best to leave Cartridge Audio disabled if you aren't using it so that you aren't encoding and injecting analog noise into your digital audio when you aren't even using it.
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20 minutes ago, CZroe said:
16 hours ago, Toth said:
I just got to messing around with the FDS RAM adapter and FDSStick on an Nt Mini.  Does anyone know of a guide to setting the audio properly for the FDS to sound authentic?  There seem to be two options I can set.  FDS Expansion Audio, which I assume I want enabled, and Cartridge Audio Volume, which I also probably want turned up to some point?  The sound of games changes pretty drastically depending on the volume of the cartridge audio and once cartridge audio gets high enough the FDS expansion audio setting doesn't seem to really change the sound at all if I disable it.  

You can get original audio from the RAM adapter by enabling Cartridge Audio but it will me digitized analog. If you want digital audio then you need to enable the FPGA replication of the FDS audio hardware. Despite what MLiG says, it's best to leave Cartridge Audio disabled if you aren't using it so that you aren't encoding and injecting analog noise into your digital audio when you aren't even using it.

Ok, thanks for the info about disabling it.  I would have just left it enabled even though I wouldn't be using it much.

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Hello gentlemen, long time lurker here.

 

Yesterday I had quite the surprise when my authentic cartridge of Castlevania melted in my NT Mini Noir. I have a detailed post on r/AnalogueInc but the running theories is an electrical short or because the cartridge uses the less common Konami-made blue PCB, the NT mini was feeding it too much voltage.

 

I tested again today on my NES and Noir, but I was unable to reproduce the event. But I know folks in here are really knowledgeable, has anyone ever experienced or heard of this happening on original hardware? It's left me absolutely paranoid to play the Noir again. I've reached out to Analogue support and expect to hear from them sometime this week.

 

Part of me hopes this is the cartridge's fault but this is also the company that shipped cartridge adapters that bricked MegaSG's so who knows?

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 1/10/2021 at 8:41 PM, Chindabin said:

Hello gentlemen, long time lurker here.

 

Yesterday I had quite the surprise when my authentic cartridge of Castlevania melted in my NT Mini Noir. I have a detailed post on r/AnalogueInc but the running theories is an electrical short or because the cartridge uses the less common Konami-made blue PCB, the NT mini was feeding it too much voltage.

 

I tested again today on my NES and Noir, but I was unable to reproduce the event. But I know folks in here are really knowledgeable, has anyone ever experienced or heard of this happening on original hardware? It's left me absolutely paranoid to play the Noir again. I've reached out to Analogue support and expect to hear from them sometime this week.

 

Part of me hopes this is the cartridge's fault but this is also the company that shipped cartridge adapters that bricked MegaSG's so who knows?

 

I am not completely understanding what you are saying here. So, you said that the NT Mini Noir "melted" your Castlevania cartridge. But then you tested the melted cartridge again today and you were not able to reproduce the melting? How does the cartridge work OK now if it is melted?

 

Can you please upload some pictures of this melting issue?

 

EDIT: Nevermind, I found your post here:

 

 

No, I cannot say I have ever heard of that before. Perhaps the chip in the cartridge is just failing?

 

Edited by eightbit
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On 1/18/2021 at 8:15 PM, eightbit said:

 

I am not completely understanding what you are saying here. So, you said that the NT Mini Noir "melted" your Castlevania cartridge. But then you tested the melted cartridge again today and you were not able to reproduce the melting? How does the cartridge work OK now if it is melted?

 

Can you please upload some pictures of this melting issue?

 

EDIT: Nevermind, I found your post here:

 

 

No, I cannot say I have ever heard of that before. Perhaps the chip in the cartridge is just failing?

 

This sounds like perhaps the ROM chip itself was failing for an unknown reason (consider the age of NES and SNES era hardware, and this isn't an unreasonable assumption), one of the redditors mentioned they had blue PCB capcom carts fail as well, and another mentioned the CIC lockout being disabled could cause it. 

 

It would be kind of amusing if capcom had invented a kill switch to kill the cart if played without a CIC with the assumption that it's an illegal copy, but that seems like too much effort. Capcom did make suicide tricks exist on their arcade boards, but for a cart? Unheard of.

 

In my opinion it's most likely the EPROM itself and maybe Capcom used non-5V EPROM's or had a mixture of them. Without someone going out there and finding a few more of those exact carts and trying them on the same Super NT, we probably will never know. I'd assume that the firmware voltage switch could prevent any further overheating.

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