phoenixdownita Posted February 20, 2016 Author Share Posted February 20, 2016 (edited) How many FPGA cores are there for INTV? I only know of the kevtris one ..... Edited February 20, 2016 by phoenixdownita 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
triverse Posted February 20, 2016 Share Posted February 20, 2016 (edited) Just wanted to drop in and let everyone know about another site covering the developments concerning the Coleco Chameleon. They source my site, Retro Gaming Magazine, claiming I apparently landed an interview with Mike. I did not get an exclusive interview with Mike Kennedy- my e-mails must be going to his trash/spam folder. http://blogjob.com/oneangrygamer/2016/02/coleco-chameleon-kickstarter-gets-underway-february-26th/ added a new post covering the Kickstarter Reward tiers, what the pack-in could be and a little more: http://retrogamingmagazine.com/2016/02/20/coleco-chameleon-kickstarter-reward-tiers-announced-updating/ Edited February 20, 2016 by triverse Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Nathan Strum Posted February 20, 2016 Share Posted February 20, 2016 (edited) Both of these kinds of people are sure to be far between in my opinion. No serious retrogamer is gonna get a cart with 15 games and 2 controllers for 75$ with 3 more carts in the series for 20-30$ each. We can guarantee that the Intellivision package will look the same. That means that anyone getting the first 15 games from both the CV and Inty compilation + 2 controllers for each will have to shell out an quite astounding 150$, and then there is still 6 carts to go for a complete set of both... Just in: Kickstarter Reward #7 $250: INTELLIVISION LOVERS RETAIL BUNDLE. Includes black Coleco Chameleon video game system, one Coleco Chameleon USB controller, HDMI cable, AC adapter + the pack-in game (yet to reveal) + Intellivision Collection #1 (15-Game Multicart) + Elektronite Intellivision Game Collection (6-Game Multicart) + TWO exclusive USB Intellivision style controllers and game collection controller overlays. .... overlays ..... they've got to be reproing from the same vendor that did the AtGAmes one c'mon So here's a question (which has no answer): If they're breaking up the Intellivision and ColecoVision game collections into multiple retail packages... will the USB controllers that actually allow you to play the games come bundled with the cartridges? Or are they separate purchases? Because if they're bundled - are they bundled with all of the collections, or just the first one? If just the first one, then you're stuck buying that one, even if you don't want it. If they're bundled with all of them, you're going to end up paying for extra controllers you don't need. If they're not bundled, then this could be an issue with having them in stock (how many times have you gone into a store lately and actually found the gaming accessory you were looking for on the first try?). This isn't Sony, Nintendo or Microsoft we're talking about here, either. This is a company with zero retail experience. It would make far more sense to just pile them all on one cartridge, and include two controllers. Like, oh... a Flashback. You know the one - the one that will be sitting on the shelf right above the Chameleon for less than 1/3 the price? Yeah. That one. But then again, I have no confidence this will ever actually reach retail stores, so it's probably not a big deal anyway. Second question - given the similarity of ColecoVision/Intellivision controllers (two fire buttons, 12 digit keypad, control disc-thing) - wouldn't it make more sense to make a universal controller that worked for both systems? Yes, the overlays would have to be re-worked so they all fit, but I would think the advantages would far outweigh the negatives. Plus, they could actually use it as an opportunity to improve the controller, and make it something gamers might actually want to buy to use elsewhere. And as an aside, did anyone notice they're name-dropping Tetris now on their Team/Contact page? (See Phil Adam's entry.) Edited February 20, 2016 by Nathan Strum Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AE35 Posted February 20, 2016 Share Posted February 20, 2016 I have no insight into Piko Interactive, but it is a company I will not buy anything from. Not after watching how they engage in this scam. It is very off-putting to me. However, they seem to be getting off easy...maybe they're some sort of celebs? /Nicholas Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Retro Nick Posted February 20, 2016 Share Posted February 20, 2016 Ok, this is interesting. I checked their FB this morning, and even though my comments were still missing, I was able to post new comments again. I posted a quick "when do we get to meet the hardware team? Can't wait!" comment, and it was deleted in seconds, and I'm back to being blocked from making new comments. Do we have a Facebook expert here? Is it possible that all of our names are part of a script that just automatically deletes/blocks us? Is that even possible? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Retro Nick Posted February 20, 2016 Share Posted February 20, 2016 I have no insight into Piko Interactive, but it is a company I will not buy anything from. Not after watching how they engage in this scam. It is very off-putting to me. However, they seem to be getting off easy...maybe they're some sort of celebs? /Nicholas I have never dealt with Piko myself, he WAS burned by the Mike when his games weren't mentioned during the RVGS Indiegogo campaign. He seems to be taking a pretty neutral, yet cautious stance this time. Piko, if you read this, don't go down with Mike's sinking ship. Keep your integrity. Don't be suprised if he burns your bridge, AGAIN. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Glimglam Posted February 20, 2016 Share Posted February 20, 2016 Just in: Kickstarter Reward #7 $250: INTELLIVISION LOVERS RETAIL BUNDLE. Includes black Coleco Chameleon video game system, one Coleco Chameleon USB controller, HDMI cable, AC adapter + the pack-in game (yet to reveal) + Intellivision Collection #1 (15-Game Multicart) + Elektronite Intellivision Game Collection (6-Game Multicart) + TWO exclusive USB Intellivision style controllers and game collection controller overlays. .... overlays ..... they've got to be reproing from the same vendor that did the AtGAmes one c'mon Are they really just swapping out the rewards from previous levels with different stuff altogether at higher tiers? This is not how reward tiers work. Why charge more money for something and offering nowhere near as much in return? I guess now we'll be hearing about how acquiring all the rights to what they're peddling is forcing them to jack up the cost to compensate... And darn it, I wanna know what that pack-in game is. I bet they "worked miracles" in getting it to knock my socks off. It mentions a six-game "Elektronite" games bundle, too. I googled the name, and it looks to be some kind of homebrew game publisher. Here's their Facebook, and a store selling their games that I found. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
8th lutz Posted February 20, 2016 Share Posted February 20, 2016 Are they really just swapping out the rewards from previous levels with different stuff altogether at higher tiers? This is not how reward tiers work. Why charge more money for something and offering nowhere near as much in return? I guess now we'll be hearing about how acquiring all the rights to what they're peddling is forcing them to jack up the cost to compensate... And darn it, I wanna know what that pack-in game is. I bet they "worked miracles" in getting it to knock my socks off. It mentions a six-game "Elektronite" games bundle, too. I googled the name, and it looks to be some kind of homebrew game publisher. Here's their Facebook, and a store selling their games that I found. The person who owns Elektronite actually is a member here on Atariage. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
enoofu Posted February 20, 2016 Share Posted February 20, 2016 I have no insight into Piko Interactive, but it is a company I will not buy anything from. Not after watching how they engage in this scam. It is very off-putting to me. However, they seem to be getting off easy...maybe they're some sort of celebs? /Nicholas How is Piko Interactive involved with the crazy stuff Mike does? Piko Interactive is just a 3rd party vendor that sells games even to Mike, and not actually involved with the project. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Reaperman Posted February 20, 2016 Share Posted February 20, 2016 4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Retro Nick Posted February 20, 2016 Share Posted February 20, 2016 (edited) If he were to jump on the bandwagon, and parrot everything Mike says, or take it upon himself to blindly white knight the system, then he would make himself "involved". IMHO, he has not taken a side. I didn't mean to imply that Piko is a first party, or anything. EDIT: I need to pay closer attention to who is being quoted. Edited February 20, 2016 by Retro Nick Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jaybird3rd Posted February 20, 2016 Share Posted February 20, 2016 Ok, this is interesting. I checked their FB this morning, and even though my comments were still missing, I was able to post new comments again. I posted a quick "when do we get to meet the hardware team? Can't wait!" comment, and it was deleted in seconds, and I'm back to being blocked from making new comments. Do we have a Facebook expert here? Is it possible that all of our names are part of a script that just automatically deletes/blocks us? Is that even possible? I wouldn't be surprised if they're automatically deleting messages that contain incendiary words; you know, the kind of words that those haters always use ... words like "how?" and "when?", and especially "why?". 8 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
triverse Posted February 20, 2016 Share Posted February 20, 2016 From my personal experience, the company that we have to be concerned about drinking too much Chameleon-Aid is CollectorVision. For proof, check out Jean-Francois' comments to my post a few days ago. https://www.facebook.com/Scenic7PR/posts/10207477997284688?pnref=story 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
phoenixdownita Posted February 20, 2016 Author Share Posted February 20, 2016 (edited) Once upon a time it was said that on KS you can't have tiers that involve stuff that do not have a prototype yet (or are not your own) and can't use KS to fund the proto either. So where are these CV and INTV controllers via USB coming from? I haven't seen them showing any proto of them (at least the official CC controller has been showed somewhat). Maybe the AtGames Flashback CV and INTV ctrls were simple USB disguised in a 9 pin din connector, so it's easy to convert them, but be as it may the CC guys are promising stuff that it is supposed to be built as part of the KS with no proto ...... again!!! But hey, wait for the KS day, everything will be revealed. EDIT: their censorship took a bathroom break or something! Edited February 20, 2016 by phoenixdownita 6 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
phoenixdownita Posted February 20, 2016 Author Share Posted February 20, 2016 I have no insight into Piko Interactive, but it is a company I will not buy anything from. Not after watching how they engage in this scam. It is very off-putting to me. However, they seem to be getting off easy...maybe they're some sort of celebs? /Nicholas What? Piko is a member here and he's been very straight forward, he clarified what concerns he is keeping to himself, the fact that the board he had at the ToyFair was actually for something else (he mentioned lootcrate). So I see no evidence of them being in any way in on it. Not sure what gave you that impression. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dj_convoy Posted February 20, 2016 Share Posted February 20, 2016 I love that the least bit of healthy skepticism is now construed as "hate." When did we lose the capacity to think critically? If the Chameleon is so great; prove it. There's no more trust, nor should there be. There's too much that's gone wrong, been fishy or outright been false. No more "sitting back and enjoying the ride." Put up, or for the love of Atari, shut up. 6 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MotoRacer Posted February 20, 2016 Share Posted February 20, 2016 If snes minis suddenly are worth 300 bucks on eBay, you'll know they couldn't figure out the snes' FPGA and just shoved 100,000 mini snes consoles in their jaguar shells. Haha 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keatah Posted February 20, 2016 Share Posted February 20, 2016 Dumb Question time; Okay, so it looks like everyone's just going to be rehashing the same lack of news from now until the kickstarter, I thought it might be a good time to ask a dumb question. Maybe I am not the only one wondering about this… At the risk of sounding trollish, I want to ask - What's the big deal with FPGA? Why is it considered the "gold standard" for emulation? If we had a gate level specification of, say, the SNES video chip, then I guess anyone could implement it with gate arrays, and we would be confident that the implementation would be accurate. But, we don't have a gate level spec. The SNES video chip is a "black box" to us - all we have are the results of people's experiments ("when I write to this address, this happened)" and people's ideas about what is going on inside. So. the FPGA programmer has to try and recreate the design based on this incomplete knowledge. I imagine the quality and accuracy of the result is more dependent on the experience and skill of the programmer than anything else. There is nothing magical about using a gate array that makes this redesigned chip automatically more accurate than a software emulation of that chip, is there? It seems to me that software emulation is : 1. cheaper. 2. understood and supported by more people than gate array programming. 3. Easier to update. Why should I want a FPGA? Catsfolly Just about all of contemporary emulation is simulation of a black box. All functions are looked at and simulated. There is no "hardware recreation" in an FPGA, only the functionality - at the black box level. Simple things like 74LS04 parts are well understood. Custom video and sound chips, less. FPGA has the advantage that it can have several simulated chips running at the same time. Whereas with software most everything is done serially. Though very quickly. The accuracy of any given emulation more or less comes down to how much research into the target hardware the developer has done and how much information (data sheets, decapped photos of ICs, source code and microcode, schematics, timing diagrams) is available. Software emulation is indeed cheaper, understood by more people, and definitely easier to update. The bad thing with FPGA is you need to purchase specialty hardware. And you still need a PC to support all the miscellaneous functions like loading, saving, organizing, configuring settings, management of images and cores, and more. At the very least the PC is needed for filling SD cards and getting data to and from the FPGA. Right now there is no compelling reason to go with FPGA over software other than that some timings may be more consistent. Other gains are overshadowed by inconveniences. Availability is the #1 killer of FPGA rigs right now. Maybe that will change in the future. Whereas software emulation is everywhere and getting better all the time! FPGA: - No dropped frames - No overhead of an operating system - No framebuffer needed, lowest latency possible - Not sure about this one, but Video and Audio clocks could be generated/divided by the same master-clock, so Audio and Video tight together compared to a PC. I do think modern consoles with architecture that looks like the architecture of a PC (3d stuff) are less critical to emulate. I just found something interesting (probably already mentioned here): http://www.tested.com/tech/gaming/2712-why-perfect-hardware-snes-emulation-requires-a-3ghz-cpu/ The little experiments I've done tell me that yes the audio/video clocking can be derived from a single source. Maybe a pro can answer that in more detail. I disagree with the no-overhead of an OS. It's all the conveniences and amenities provided by an OS that make software emulation so pervasive and attractive. When you go play with Altirra or Stella you'll see what I mean. These are premium products with enough features to satisfy everyone. Lots of customization, easy management of images and settings.. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Retro Nick Posted February 20, 2016 Share Posted February 20, 2016 Once upon a time it was said that on KS you can't have tiers that involve stuff that do not have a prototype yet (or are not your own) and can't use KS to fund the proto either. So where are these CV and INTV controllers via USB coming from? I haven't seen them showing any proto of them (at least the official CC controller has been showed somewhat). Maybe the AtGames Flashback CV and INTV ctrls were simple USB disguised in a 9 pin din connector, so it's easy to convert them, but be as it may the CC guys are promising stuff that it is supposed to be built as part of the KS with no proto ...... again!!! But hey, wait for the KS day, everything will be revealed. EDIT: their censorship took a bathroom break or something! CVFBFunQuotes3.png BWAHAHAHAHA!! ...annnnd, it's deleted 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
leods Posted February 20, 2016 Share Posted February 20, 2016 Well, Software Emulation Needs super fast processors to workl properly. Mindboggling 3 ghz to get good Emulation for 16 bit Systems. Oh, nowadays that's entry Level... And with Computers having 2, 4 or even 8 cores, the whole paralel processing isn't all that hard either. FPGA still has it's Advantages, but anyone who has a decent PC and has tried Emulation knows it's damned good. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chorne27983 Posted February 20, 2016 Share Posted February 20, 2016 Well, Software Emulation Needs super fast processors to workl properly. Mindboggling 3 ghz to get good Emulation for 16 bit Systems. Oh, nowadays that's entry Level... And with Computers having 2, 4 or even 8 cores, the whole paralel processing isn't all that hard either. FPGA still has it's Advantages, but anyone who has a decent PC and has tried Emulation knows it's damned good. Emulation of 16-bit and ps1 games was fine on Athlon 2400+. Hell most of it runs fine on a 20 buck raspberry Pi. 4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
goldenegg Posted February 20, 2016 Share Posted February 20, 2016 And with Computers having 2, 4 or even 8 cores, the whole paralel processing isn't all that hard either. Multiple cores actually makes emulation more difficult, especially if you're trying to get close to being cycle accurate. Keeping all the threads in sync is quite a hassle and can cause more issues than they're worth. That's why many emulators only make use of a single core. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Random Terrain Posted February 20, 2016 Share Posted February 20, 2016 I wouldn't be surprised if they're automatically deleting messages that contain incendiary words; you know, the kind of words that those haters always use ... words like "how?" and "when?", and especially "why?". People need to use words and phrases from the following list if they don't want their posts to be automatically deleted: love great happy schwing! amazing visionary can't wait genius take my money joygasm history in the making you're always right haters gonna hate These words or phrases must be avoided: who how what when why show me show us sycophants brown-nosers toadies bootlickers bubble-brained Borg mindless minions Colecollective scam mini SNES reputation grifter flim-flam hustle honesty delusional crash and burn sad Jagoff 10 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MotoRacer Posted February 20, 2016 Share Posted February 20, 2016 Emulation of 16-bit and ps1 games was fine on Athlon 2400+. Hell most of it runs fine on a 20 buck raspberry Pi. Yeah, I was about to say. Needing a 3GHz PC to run 16 bit games is... not even close to being true. Hell, the Raspberry Pi 2 can run most PS games perfectly fine, which are infinitely more complex than Genesis or SNES titles. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
phoenixdownita Posted February 20, 2016 Author Share Posted February 20, 2016 (edited) Yeah, I was about to say. Needing a 3GHz PC to run 16 bit games is... not even close to being true. Hell, the Raspberry Pi 2 can run most PS games perfectly fine, which are infinitely more complex than Genesis or SNES titles. And here lies the issue. Even byuu's Higan fixed the mid scan line effects bug after 9Y of working on his emulator (he missed it). The effect was just that one (yep only one) game rendered correctly the shadow under the player ship making though playing the game easier as the devs intended in the first place. The general feeling is that once the various "cores" (and I mean down to the CPU, GPU, SPU etc...) are worked out FPGAs promise a more accurate emulation while using less resources, granted it is the same as saying it for SW based emus on the right PC. But faster CPUs are no more, multi-core is the way, while FPGA has still room for improvements: hybrid systems being the proof so a generic MPU or MCU does the "management" tasks (USB, SD interface and the like) while the FPGA focuses on the simulation aspects. If PC was all that was needed projects like MiST/TC64/MCC216 and others would make no sense and yet they garner quite the followers, so let's not call stupid everyone that begs to disagree with "PC based emu is all we need", it's obviously not for whatever reason. If it is for you then very good, for sure it is not for me. And, to make it clear, the ColeCham is likely not the answer. Edited February 20, 2016 by phoenixdownita 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Like us on Facebook
Follow us on Twitter
AtariAge on Instagram
Watch us on YouTube
Chat on Discord
Recommended Posts