Coleco Chameleon .... hardware speculations?

[PikoInteractive]

Video link is here:

https://www.facebook.com/RETROVGS/videos/947471695322101/

go to 0:16

 

EDIT: keep in mind that at the time of the video neither the AV cable nor the power cable are connected yet. Can't tell about the ctrls but if they're plugged via extension it's irrelevant.

 

EDIT2: from an older galax post [as you can see the taped part is not that wide]

 

post is:

http://atariage.com/forums/topic/247145-coleco-chameleon-hardware-speculations/page-44?do=findComment&comment=3441110

Thanks I was looking for a back pic of the fair "proto".

 

You Made my task easier.

[PikoInteractive]

Well technically....

 

Full of what? Lol.

[Osgeld]

[Andromeda Stardust]

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

 

 

 

Because it IS possible to create a cycle accurate exact replica representation of a system by utilizing an FPGA core, at least in theory. The vast majority of emulation IS NOT cycle accurate, therefore it is not 100% possible to provide a flawless representation of an older system using microprocessor technology.

 

It could still be possible to obtain the exact blueprint of an unknown chip through a method known as "decapping" although this requires an extremely high level of expertise, a clean room environment, and for all practical purposes, destruction of the original hardware. The fact remains that there are even minute differences between chip revisions of many old consoles, so even an "exact" replica may not run all games. The 7800 is notorious for random incompatibilities between various consoles for instance.

 

Let it suffice to say that the stuff Kevin is dong requires an incredibly high level of expertise, and he is one of the very best people capable of performing this sort of work, who also cares enough about preservation of video games to spend his own personal time and money devoted to the cause. The Chameleon stance of "throw money at the problem until we get a solution" often leads to outsourcing the work, leading to "good enough" solutions that half-ass work like the dozens of revisions to the NOAC design, all which have various audio/video artifacts and compatibility issues with certain games.

[enoofu]

One of my favorite lines from Deep Space Nine that represent this project

 

Personally no one has high hopes on any emulation for this machine, since 80% of the videos they released are about the Casing

[Osgeld]

and to follow up on Kosmic's post FPGA can be re implemented into hard wired asic chip designs like NOAC, and proves that FPGA can be utter shit just as easily as software implementation, the idea that just cause it uses a magic acronym means its perfect does is foolish

 

it does take less hardware and resources to implement a X core in FPGA than emulating it on a GP-PC like X86, ARM PPC etc, but in that case your asking a chevy v8 to run a tractor, instead of custom building a tractor engine

 

again it all boils down to software, if you want dead nuts 100% perfect emulation, you better be prepared to hose some PC horsepower, or hose some serious cash to a proven dedicated single reason of existing ASIC / FPGA blah blah blah dedicated thing, which in the end is driven by software in the form of translation / lookup tables ... just like a PC

 

frankly the clecofail would be better off sporting some quad core damn near 3ghz celphone chipset rather than trying to implement perfect emulation of most machines we already had damn near good enough emulation 1.5 decades ago

 

but then its just a oyua with better than a 50$ contract celphone form three years ago

 

if they were not pants on head retarded they would have chosen a arm platform that supports windows 10, and made the carts flash roms

 

but they are pants on head retarded, people are amazed they dont shit on their socks when tying their shoes stupid so sucks for them, enjoy that wellfare check in retirement mike, you suck

 

if mike finds that insulting, then good I find their prototype wrapped in tape at a fucking trade show insulting, they should be shamed into oblivion for that

Edited February 21, 2016 by Osgeld

[AE35]

If you cant really see our stance, and our (at least attempt?) at professionalism, I can't really help you. I've tried to be as clear as water without being negative about the project.

 

I'm a "glass half full (or at least a bit full)" kind of guy.

 

Piko, I am not trying to stir up something against you. I just think you get an automatic pass from the forum because you're a developer that

takes time to post here.

 

Regarding the "....I can't really help you" - I don't need help. Well, maybe I do, in understanding how you cannot be negative about the Coleco

Chameleon project?

 

I tried finding the video where you are at the toy fair, standing right in front of the CC talking with Mike Kennedy. You have no idea that it is a

SNES in a Jaguar case? How am I the only one that think that it is a slight bit suspect?

 

/Nicholas

[RupanIII]

Ah, Eli (I assume it's Eli) or whichever rep of Piko this is...

He has said back in the threads and in an open letter posted on his website that, he is not a stupid person, and he will let the KS start, and have more to say after that (I think an NDA lifts or something).

So, he's good. If a real working SNES perfect playing prototype materializes... then he doesn't have to do the damage. If not, then, well, he can tell you he had an NDA on and burn it.

 

Or something in between.

 

No sense in speculating further. We have an exact clone of the prototype, baring the fact that our one member can't possibly know in which direction the strips of tape were laid upon the rear, lol. So, point made (I still laugh at how far it went after I posted that frame from kevtris' one repair vid, lol).

 

We only know what we've seen, and we know what we've seen.

It's time for MK to show us what he claims exists, despite that.

 

As you've seen, FPGA Arcade/Replay Board exists (a bit pricier, and I can't find a retailer right now) Kevtris is busy on his thing, the MiST and MiniMig amiga and atari stuff is out there.

Honestly, the best core would be a Sharp X68000 core as it's cleaner, simpler, and more powerful than the SNES and handles sprites better, and was Capcom's CPS dev system.

That should be a target main dev core to make/use. Not sure if a perfect one is out there yet. Maybe someone can tell me (Kevtris?).

Then an MSX/MSX 2 core. Between them, there's loads of classics that you can dump on the market after english patches are applied.

The Coleco dev Opcode Games and their stuff turns the ColecoVision into an MSX basically, so, they are casually moving a few hundred units of a few games a year on that add on (no soldering, just plugs into the expansion port).

But, a USA Sharp X68000 would be a 'Holy Grail' core if there ever was one.

 

I will ask though. How many sprites does the Jaguar do? I remember Panther had as many sprites as the SNES and X68000 had colors, lol.

Did Jaguar change that spec at all? I know Super Burnout is a monster, a wonderful racer you should play if you get a chance.

 

 

 

Piko, I am not trying to stir up something against you. I just think you get an automatic pass from the forum because you're a developer that

takes time to post here.

 

Regarding the "....I can't really help you" - I don't need help. Well, maybe I do, in understanding how you cannot be negative about the Coleco

Chameleon project?

 

I tried finding the video where you are at the toy fair, standing right in front of the CC talking with Mike Kennedy. You have no idea that it is a

SNES in a Jaguar case? How am I the only one that think that it is a slight bit suspect?

 

/Nicholas

[Andromeda Stardust]

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.

Here's a novel approach, though I doubt it would work. What level of PC hardware would it take to "emulate" a Cyclone V FPGA? Feed the emulator a BIOS file (aka FPGA core) and tell it how the FPGA interfaces with input/output. Slam, bam, thank you M'am! You have a cycle perfect emulator for any system. By emulating the FPGA, you can emulate anything the FPGA emulates, including Kevtris cores, should he release them. Prolly work really well in retroland, hehehe...

 

I have a funny feeling if FPGAs become standard hardware and get integrated into Intel and ARM SOACs, this future approach may not be far off from reality. Economies of scale and in ten years we'll have Cyclone V level performance on cheap Raspberry Pi type project boards. It's a new architecture, just like software guys offload massively parallel FPU calculations to a graphics card, emulators could just offload the nuts and bolts to the embedded FPGA and handle I/O with the ARM or x86 CPU. Bonus if the FPGA can utilize the CPU cache for circuit logic. Imagine if a 3Ghz multicore CPU can reconfigure all or part it's massive cache to operate as FPGA logic. N64, GC, or even PS2 become child's play.

[RupanIII]

Okay, FIRST... Does anyone know if this might be Mike Kennedy's account? ROFL. I'm joking, but this listing make me chuckle!

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Atari-Jaguar-and-Super-Nintendo-SNES-mini-jr-consoles-with-TV-hook-ups-and-game-/201527357921?hash=item2eebf771e1:g:OeAAAOSwPc9WyVf2

 

Second... FPGA is no bastard child. It's been going mainstream for a while now. Facebook is developing a custom chip for it's servers, Google reportedly did that already, and Intel BOUGHT Altera and have Xeon chips shipping with FPGA components in the server chip.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/3006601/components-processors/intels-first-server-chip-with-performance-boosting-fpga-to-ship-early-next-year.html

 

So, most likely... your next Playstation will have an AMD Video chip and CPU and quite possibly an FPGA which can emulate the PS3, PS2 and PS1 much like the Chameleon wants to do for Retro machines(mind you, this is an FPGA in 5 years). ... ofcourse a PS5 should be a more powerful PS4 architecture and be 100% compatible already. THEN the PS5 can download all of the PSN game rentals temporarily on the machine and just sequence network data. Just a thought.
The PS4's upcoming emulation already looks amazing though. (Those of you with the star wars packs, i'm jealous!).

 

Here's a novel approach, though I doubt it would work. What level of PC hardware would it take to "emulate" a Cyclone V FPGA? Feed the emulator a BIOS file (aka FPGA core) and tell it how the FPGA interfaces with input/output. Slam, bam, thank you M'am! You have a cycle perfect emulator for any system. By emulating the FPGA, you can emulate anything the FPGA emulates, including Kevtris cores, should he release them. Prolly work really well in retroland, hehehe...

 

I have a funny feeling if FPGAs become standard hardware and get integrated into Intel and ARM SOACs, this future approach may not be far off from reality. Economies of scale and in ten years we'll have Cyclone V level performance on cheap Raspberry Pi type project boards. It's a new architecture, just like software guys offload massively parallel FPU calculations to a graphics card, emulators could just offload the nuts and bolts to the embedded FPGA and handle I/O with the ARM or x86 CPU. Bonus if the FPGA can utilize the CPU cache for circuit logic.

[Keatah]

[..]

The accuracy of the FPGA means a few other things.

 

• Compatibility with original hardware, i.e. carts/discs.
• Compatibility with original hardware accessories. A "compatible enough" FPGA chip should maintain compatibility with hardware like lightguns, game genies, etc. Hypothetically if you had a 100% compatible genesis core you could connect it to a SEGACD or a 32X.
• FPGAs could not only reach hypothetical 100% compatibility, but add new features to old machines that you'd have to mod into, or buy expensive aftermarket items for.

IMHO FPGAs are relatively new to the retrogaming scene, and it may take a long time(like decades) for them to be worked on, checked, made 100% compatible, but once they are, they are absolutely the best way to play games, possibly even eclipsing original hardware. It's important to remember that FPGAs aren't emulation, it's a technology that allows you to programmably modify physical hardware, you are literally re-creating the original chips(or a variation there-of), with the prime benefit being that you can switch what the chip is, by changing its programming(swapping "cores").

[..]

 

Respectfully, FPGA + retrogaming is still emulation. It's that helicopters and airplanes thing again. Both follow the same rules of aerodynamics and logic. Software and FPGA are recreating the behaviors of the original target system. It's just implemented differently.

 

My best guess estimation is FPGA based emulation is where software based emulation was in the very late 1990's and early 2000's, when it comes to user friendliness and being "consumer ready". Some of the core logic is spot on and at par with software emulation of today.

 

 

Random thought, why does anyone care about how much an item that entertains you for hours on end costs? I mean this forum is full of people who will pay several thousand dollars for a single boxed game, just to shove it onto a shelve, why cry over a $100 FPGA?

 

Never figured that one out either. But they are definitely two different classes of people doing those activities.

 

 

So, let me get this straight .... FPGA for retro gaming is in the early stages, and isn't really ready for commercial applications, even though it's going to be ubiquitous in the future. Being first is probably a handicap, not desirable. Reminds me of a mid-1990's "64-bit" system. Ironic that they have the same casing.

 

In the case of software emulation and fpga emulation, software emulation for retrogaming came first because the hardware to run it was readily available. FPGA running single arcade games like space invader, pac-man, or scramble didn't appear on the scene till something like 2002. There was no rush or competition to get one technology out before the other.

 

It is good to see people wanting FPGA emulation. It's the 2nd wave! And I get to relive the 90's all over again!

 

 

I don't think anyone has an issue with paying what it would cost to get a solid FPGA based system. That's why so many of use are watching KevTris' project like hawks and will be shoving money in his face the moment it's available.

 

Where the issue comes in is that doing an FPGA based system shouldn't have half-assed and needs to be done right. Otherwise, there's just no benefit.

 

If and when the Zimba 3000 comes out, and supports all the systems listed in the other thread, it would easily be worth $500.

 

So many of the current fpga rigs are "just good enough" they lack amenities and don't run enough variety of systems. Not good enough to replace an STB full of software emulators. Z3K is the only one that has potential to upset that.

 

 

[..]

I have a funny feeling if FPGAs become standard hardware and get integrated into Intel and ARM SOACs, this future approach may not be far off from reality. Economies of scale and in ten years we'll have Cyclone V level performance on cheap Raspberry Pi type project boards. It's a new architecture, just like software guys offload massively parallel FPU calculations to a graphics card, emulators could just offload the nuts and bolts to the embedded FPGA and handle I/O with the ARM or x86 CPU. Bonus if the FPGA can utilize the CPU cache for circuit logic.

 

It's not a matter of *IF* they become standard and integrated, just when. Currently 2018 is when intel expects them to hit the desktop in meaningful numbers where programmers will take notice.

 

Another route that's likely going to happen is more x86 cores, ala Aubry Isle. And built-in ram. 200-300MB per core to start off with. Late 2018. Sounds like a long way away, but it's only 2, 2na'half years out.

 

Early arcade board recreations in HDL were just that, board recreations. No additional concierge processor, no butler, no manager. That is totally 100% required before fpga rigs can take off.

[AE35]

saw this a bit ago on youtube and thought is was pretty funny. not sure who made it

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYmDpIvxWeo

This is funny as hell...the subs really fit well.

[Andromeda Stardust]

Yeah, FPGAs will perform very comparability to ASICs, FPGAs are what are typically used to make ASICs. You get a working design on an FPGA, and then you get the final version made into dedicated chips(ASIC) because it's much cheaper than the FPGA chip(the FPGA chip might be $100 each but the ASIC might be $1/each). Though this isn't always true, for example it's common to see FPGA chips in really expensive devices like oscilloscopes these days, where paying extra for the FPGA chip is cheaper than taping out an ASIC because they won't sell enough volume(you need to make a lot of chips to get costs down).

 

But they perform the same, the big difference is cost and gate count/transistor count. FPGAs are much more expensive per gate, and this is the trade-off of their flexibility to reprogram them. That's what currently is the struggle with projects like RVGS and I imagine kevtris's board, in that getting an FPGA chip on the board that does everything we'd want can be prohibitively expensive, so you gotta cut features or limit platforms one way or another.

 

10yrs from now when the technology has advanced, $100 will probably buy you an FPGA that had the gate count to emulate 32/64era platforms well, where as right now $100~ is on the fence of being able to accommodate 16bit era platforms. Bigger ones are available, they just might run into the thousands of dollars and are really meant for companies doing ASIC design.

Ubiquity may influence future emulator development.

 

ASIC is like ROM.

FPGA is like flash.

 

It is far cheaper to manufacture 10000+ identical ROM chips than Flash. Or used to be. Now we have gigabytes of Flash memory per dollar. As a result, flash is far cheaper right now than any custom ROM ever will be.

 

Right now reprogrammable logic is far more expensive than custom chips in mass quantities, but perhaps in another ten, twenty years when FPGAs are embedded with everything, the FPGA may become cheaper than custom logic chips in any quantity.

 

As it stands, FPGA emulation is comparable state to software emulation 20 years ago: infancy. Stuff like pre nesticle, where just gettng Super Mario to boot and display a title screen was an accomplishment.

 

But can't much of the reverse engineering done in software emulation apply to hardware FPGA? After all, we already know what every pin does without stiking a probe on it. It seems that knowledge gained can apply on both fronts.

[Keatah]

Don't you all think this talk of emulation and fpga and how it fits into the future is more exciting and productive than RetroVGS nonsense?

[Andromeda Stardust]

A fully-compatible NES clone would allow building new NES or Famicom (compatible with carts and identical in all ways to the original) without cannibalizing older machines.

 

There is no project right now promising that.

The AVS (FPGA NES running 720p over HDMI) does exact that, or will upon release.

[Andromeda Stardust]

Don't you all think this talk of emulation and fpga and how it fits into the future is more exciting and productive than RetroVGS nonsense?

Yes. Cameleon is a dead horse. And you talk of emulation more than anyone here...

[AE35]

Yes. Cameleon is a dead horse. And you talk of emulation more than anyone here...

 

I wonder if the kickstarter will be postponed. It should start within a week, right?

 

/Nicholas

[UKMike]

I know Mike has tried several times to get in touch with you but has been ignored. I would think if you truly wanted to get to the bottom of everything the RGVS team should be on the show themselves since they are handling the project.

Mike has tried to get in touch but not to appear on the show as a guest but to try and smooth over the wrongs he has done with a coke and a smile. That is not going to happen.

 

Having the "team" on the show has been shown to be no way of getting to the truth. Can you really see Mike coming on RGR and admitting it was a SNES mini?

You would just the standard marketing flannel again.

 

Mike would be welcome on the show as a guest if what we really got was the truth, and if he wants to come on and set the record straight about the whole project from inception through various teams and funding routes to not one but two fake prototypes then we would be more than happy to do that.

 

I don't see it happening.

[Schizophretard]

I'm a hardware/FPGA programmer myself(it's what got me interested in the concept of the RVGS and led me eventually here).

 

The biggest benefit of FPGA is accuracy, resources, and access to original hardware.

 

Another post is correct that most FPGA reverse engineering is from a black box perspective, this method often can lead to 100% compatibility with enough time and effort, something software emulation can never realistically achieve.

 

That said, given access to the information(like if we XRAY'd old chips and generated chip schemas from them), it's a possibility to actually re-create the original chip, gate for gate(with some caveats depending on the FPGA chip itself). This method is not easy, but is possible, the more complex the chip becomes the more tedious and impractical it is. This method would work fairly well on 4/8bit era chips but the 16bit era chips kinda straddle the line of having too many transistors to be feasible to do 1 for 1 copies, so blackbox reverse engineering is more practical here.

 

The accuracy of the FPGA means a few other things.

• Compatibility with original hardware, i.e. carts/discs.
• Compatibility with original hardware accessories. A "compatible enough" FPGA chip should maintain compatibility with hardware like lightguns, game genies, etc. Hypothetically if you had a 100% compatible genesis core you could connect it to a SEGACD or a 32X.
• FPGAs could not only reach hypothetical 100% compatibility, but add new features to old machines that you'd have to mod into, or buy expensive aftermarket items for.

IMHO FPGAs are relatively new to the retrogaming scene, and it may take a long time(like decades) for them to be worked on, checked, made 100% compatible, but once they are, they are absolutely the best way to play games, possibly even eclipsing original hardware. It's important to remember that FPGAs aren't emulation,

it's a technology that allows you to programmably modify physical hardware, you are literally re-creating the original chips(or a variation there-of), with the prime benefit being that you can switch what the chip is, by changing its programming(swapping "cores").

 

All that said, software emulation is in most cases "good enough" for most games and most people. But in a long-term preservationist/purist sense, we should definitely be embracing FPGAs.

 

Would this be an accurate comparison? An emulator is a program that runs on a machine and an FPGA core is a program that runs a machine. In other words, with emulation a ROM would run within the emulator but with an FPGA the core would run the hardware by telling it what to do and then the ROM would run directly on the hardware kind of separate from the core instead of within it?

Edited February 21, 2016 by Schizophretard

[alex_79]

There's another video showing the "prototype" at the show that I think has not been posted yet (go at 1:27):

 

 

In this one, you can see the tape on the front is starting to fall off...

[Newsdee]

The AVS (FPGA NES running 720p over HDMI) does exact that, or will upon release.

 

It will be interesting to see if they include the extra audio hardware from the Famicom. Even if not... it could be patched to have it.

 

 

It is good to see people wanting FPGA emulation. It's the 2nd wave! And I get to relive the 90's all over again!

 

My sentiments exactly! It's no magic technology by any means, but there are good projects out there and it's more advanced than people think.

(e.g. check foft's thread on AA about his Atari 800 cores, it plays all games as far as I know: http://atariage.com/forums/topic/213827-potential-new-hardware/).

 

Are there any good games to test that have identical attract modes? I could record some footage comparing NES and PC Engine between the real machine, a MiST, and the Retro Freak.

Edited February 21, 2016 by Newsdee

[Newsdee]

As it stands, FPGA emulation is comparable state to software emulation 20 years ago: infancy. Stuff like pre nesticle, where just gettng Super Mario to boot and display a title screen was an accomplishment.

 

But can't much of the reverse engineering done in software emulation apply to hardware FPGA? After all, we already know what every pin does without stiking a probe on it. It seems that knowledge gained can apply on both fronts.

 

It's a little better than that... what's missing is compatibility but many game already work fine in many cores.

It does benefit from emulators documenting a lot of weird quirks from different games; what's mostly missing is interested developers to work on open source.

 

Here's the beta Gameboy core of the MiST for example, it has some sound issues but many early games work already:

[Schizophretard]

Random thought, why does anyone care about how much an item that entertains you for hours on end costs? I mean this forum is full of people who will pay several thousand dollars for a single boxed game, just to shove it onto a shelve, why cry over a $100 FPGA?

I was thinking something like that. If an FPGA ran 10 consoles flawlessly through RGB on a PVM with only one SD card for the ROMs then as long as the price is cheaper than all 10 of those consoles with all the mods, cables, etc. to run them on a PVM and 10 flash carts then I think the price would be worth it. The savings for me would be the space saving by crushing all those into one console. Especially if it was built with such good quality and without moving parts that it could potentially outlive all 10 of those consoles. I want a console like that. FPGA or whatever technology. Just some kind of all in one retro console that is buy once and then it is a done deal because it was made to last.

 

I don't really have much against emulation. I mean, I fully intend on eventually getting to filling up my Nvidia Shield with emulators. It just that I'm more against the hardware the emulators run on. It seems that every 4 years or so, sometimes sooner and sometimes later, my computers break down even when I take good care of them. The fans from the heat, spinning disks, etc. aren't built to last and buying new computers seems like buying new cell phones as if they were designed to be replaced and upgraded relatively soon.

 

If I'm paying $500+ for something then it should last at least until I no longer want it anymore which can be quite awhile since I'm into retro consoles. Something just seems really off to me when I see people on here talking about their 8-bit computers from 30+ years ago when I struggle to keep a modern computer alive for 10 years. I'm getting to the point of just wanting to buy cheap Chromebooks with maybe a dual boot of GNU/Linux on them instead of an all purpose machine. Especially since I mostly use them as a portal to the internet. I feel the same about modern consoles. Fans, spinning disks, moving parts, etc. I hate that shit. I want to go back to the Retro Land days back when Solid State was a selling point. Anyway, I find it kind of ironic that one of the arguments for emulation is an answer to the question,"What about when the original hardware dies?" when if I fully jumped into emulation after first hearing that argument then my original emulation hardware would already be dead while my original hardware wouldn't. I rather stick to what lasts or find something new that lasts for gaming and then go cheap on my internet portal. And I'm willing to pay a premium on what lasts.

[Bryan]

Here's a novel approach, though I doubt it would work. What level of PC hardware would it take to "emulate" a Cyclone V FPGA?

It's not possible in real time. An FPGA can become a CPU much more easily than a CPU can become an FPGA. FPGA development tools come with simulators that let you step through the various states at a reduced speed, but CPUs do things in a linear way and FPGAs are massive parallel arrays of interconnected circuits. It's kinda like trying to write a racing game by coding things like physics-accurate simulations of individual fuel molecules. The only way to get a playable game is to simulate the car at the performance specification level.

[PlaysWithWolves]

Apparently people are willing to pay US$588 for a high-quality machine like the Analogue NT (incl. HDMI adapter). I don't think that even includes controllers, and the special colors are even more.

 

The guys on the Giant Bomb podcast mentioned earlier praised it heavily during the Chameleon segment.