Lythium "All In One" Retro Console - Development Post

[BassGuitari]

He wasn't here at the time, though I am sure he would have jumped on the bandwagon. Tanooki, clear your schedule for the next 24 hours (or longer), and prepare lots of coffee. It is one of the most entertaining debacles in the history of AtariAge:

 

Part 1: http://atariage.com/forums/topic/235430-how-has-this-not-been-posted-yet-retro-vgs/

Part 2: http://atariage.com/forums/topic/247145-coleco-chameleon-hardware-speculations/

I want to see these printed into a giant leatherbound volume.

[Flojomojo]

I want to see these printed into a giant leatherbound volume.

 

I wonder who has the original molds for these fine pleather cartridge binders.

 

[BassGuitari]

 

I wonder who has the original molds for these fine pleather cartridge binders.

Probably Mike Kennedy.

[godslabrat]

 

"The media" was blindly copying his stupid press releases about "Coleco is Back!" without asking hard questions. A few amateurs like YouTuber Gamester81 fell over themselves to be in on the ground floor and ended up looking pretty foolish. The AtariAger "galax" was one of the big winners in identifying the PC video capture card stuck into the clear case of the "second prototype," and that person also ran some statistics on the most frequent posters in the thread. We started a private shitposting chat for the top 30 or so people, thinking we could continue the discussion when the thread died out or locked up again (the "RetroVGS" thread got a little heated). The thread did NOT die out, it's still going. AtariAger "toiletunes" printed up some awesome little badges like you see in a few people's avatars.

 

photo-12607.jpg

 

There was also that one blogger (can't remember his name and don't feel like dignifying him enough to look it up) who still remained a True Believer even after the JagSnez and DVR card. "This is a great idea, why are you all such haters?" I think he gave up when he realized he couldn't convert shilling for Mike into clicks on his site.

[Flojomojo]

There was also that one blogger (can't remember his name and don't feel like dignifying him enough to look it up) who still remained a True Believer even after the JagSnez and DVR card. "This is a great idea, why are you all such haters?" I think he gave up when he realized he couldn't convert shilling for Mike into clicks on his site.

I think you're talking about this genius.

 

I see he's on the Retrobox train already.

 

I honestly can't tell if he's a troll, or just not very bright. I suppose both are possible.

[Keatah]

Maybe more like a beta male trying too hard to emphasize stuff..

 

EDIT:

He says this is the closest thing to a RVGS Chameleon you can get. If so I wanna stay far away from it.

Edited February 15, 2017 by Keatah

[Andromeda Stardust]

I think you're talking about this genius.

 

I see he's on the Retrobox train already.

 

I honestly can't tell if he's a troll, or just not very bright. I suppose both are possible.

Dude seems so smug in his Toronto Blue Jays jacket. It's a sure thing, until local industry experts Kevtris and Elmer both described it as hogwash... BTW, shouldn't this be filed under "RetroBlox" instead of "Lythium"?

[Flojomojo]

Dude seems so smug in his Toronto Blue Jays jacket. It's a sure thing, until local industry experts Kevtris and Elmer both described it as hogwash... BTW, shouldn't this be filed under "RetroBlox" instead of "Lythium"?

Until more is shown and proven, they're both vapor as far as I'm concerned. They're more alike than different.

[Keatah]

Has Mr. Buff my Balls done a report on Lythium yet?

[Keatah]

Until more is shown and proven, they're both vapor as far as I'm concerned. They're more alike than different.

 

So alike I don't even remember which features belong to which console.

[Keatah]

I got to thinking that it is possible for a new upstart console to get a bad rap based solely on which youtuber is doing the reviews. Could be important for new console makers to carefully pick who they give reviews to.

[Andromeda Stardust]

Well Gamester81 sold himself out. I see a repeating pattern here. That said, the Retroblox prototype team seems to have much better engineering skills compared to the mysterious Mr Lee.

[Flojomojo]

I got to thinking that it is possible for a new upstart console to get a bad rap based solely on which youtuber is doing the reviews. Could be important for new console makers to carefully pick who they give reviews to.

So many tubers are just spouting off with their opinions; it doesn't seem like any of them have laid hands on anything or have inside information, they seem like the video equivalent of posting "first!" on a 1990's web forum.

[cybercylon]

Well Gamester81 sold himself out. I see a repeating pattern here. That said, the Retroblox prototype team seems to have much better engineering skills compared to the mysterious Mr Lee.

 

I am not entirely convinced about this. That is an awful lot of promises by one software engineer and a project manager. It is possible that they are biting off more than they can chew.

[godslabrat]

Well Gamester81 sold himself out. I see a repeating pattern here. That said, the Retroblox prototype team seems to have much better engineering skills compared to the mysterious Mr Lee.

I gave Gamester81 a pass last time because it was a weird situation and I figured he got caught up in the chaos. Can't really say the same now... he of all people should know better. Edited February 16, 2017 by godslabrat

[Newsdee]

Until more is shown and proven, they're both vapor as far as I'm concerned. They're more alike than different.

Well, the Lythium prototype is basically these dumping boards from the hardware guy: http://www.famulator.com

 

Does the other project even have a hardware guy? I mean somebody must have made those boxes...

[Lyth]

Well, the Lythium prototype is basically these dumping boards from the hardware guy: http://www.famulator.com

 

Does the other project even have a hardware guy? I mean somebody must have made those boxes...

 

Hi,

 

That's Byemu's site. Byemu (Peter) is our hardware guy, who has been working on the project since it's conception. He's quite skilled and has experience in creating dumpers/flashers, and flashcarts.

 

While the design of the Lythium prototype is similar to some of his current products (some of which, are were developed concurrently with Lythium and based off of it), our prototype's firmware, functionality and end purpose is vastly different. Additionally, our next prototype will have the Lythium Modular Connector attached, as well as a better quality slot and USB connector, and we'll showcase the cart slot adapters soon (which are developed solely by Byemu, solely for Lythium).

 

Additionally, most of Byemu's products use an ft232 + atmel Atmega MCU, while our Prototype (and final product) is based off of the STM ARM CPU.

 

A few current products of Byemu's use the STM ARM CPU, as they were developed concurrently, and acted as a stepping stone to Lythium.

[Newsdee]

While the design of the Lythium prototype is similar to some of his current products (some of which, are were developed concurrently with Lythium and based off of it), our prototype's firmware, functionality and end purpose is vastly different. Additionally, our next prototype will have the Lythium Modular Connector attached, as well as a better quality slot and USB connector, and we'll showcase the cart slot adapters soon (which are developed solely by Byemu, solely for Lythium).

 

Yes, I do realize the new system will be some kind of iteration over these of course. But this is already more hardware than many other projects have ever shown

[Andromeda Stardust]

Well, the Lythium prototype is basically these dumping boards from the hardware guy: http://www.famulator.com

 

Does the other project even have a hardware guy? I mean somebody must have made those boxes...

I am beginning to see a pattern with these "modular" systems. First Kevtris' Zimba-3000 will use "modules" likely constructed out of laser cut acrylic to avoid injection molding hell...

 

Now we have not one but two upstarts proporting to build "better" HD Retron style emulation system by nickle-and-diming us on modules. Retroblox and Lythium almost being concurrently announced, with Retroblox sounding like the ressurection of the RVGS / Chameleon with pie-in-the-sky claims, and Lythium at least not pretending to to be something it's not, which is an emulator / dumper console.

 

And Zimba-3000 doesn't even belong in the same post as Retroblox and Lythium, much less the same sentence, but I digress.

 

I wish you guys luck, but I think I've had my fill of emulator/dumper clones. Give me something besides original hardware with expensive (and laggy) scalars, that outputs HD natively and works with ALL homebrew, flashcart, special chip games, and oddities such as Super Gameboy / Game Boy Camera / etc...

 

Currently two FPGA NES clones exist which satisfy this requirement, the AVS (Toyota) and the NT Mini (Rolls Royce), but none represented for other consoles. There is the Atari Walkman thingy but it's not ready for primetime yet.

[Shawn]

Probably Mike Kennedy.

 

Nah, He would have fucked that up too and sold them to Albert just like he did with the Jaguar molds.

[Kismet]

I am beginning to see a pattern with these "modular" systems. First Kevtris' Zimba-3000 will use "modules" likely constructed out of laser cut acrylic to avoid injection molding hell...

 

Now we have not one but two upstarts proporting to build "better" HD Retron style emulation system by nickle-and-diming us on modules. Retroblox and Lythium almost being concurrently announced, with Retroblox sounding like the ressurection of the RVGS / Chameleon with pie-in-the-sky claims, and Lythium at least not pretending to to be something it's not, which is an emulator / dumper console.

 

And Zimba-3000 doesn't even belong in the same post as Retroblox and Lythium, much less the same sentence, but I digress.

 

I wish you guys luck, but I think I've had my fill of emulator/dumper clones. Give me something besides original hardware with expensive (and laggy) scalars, that outputs HD natively and works with ALL homebrew, flashcart, special chip games, and oddities such as Super Gameboy / Game Boy Camera / etc...

 

Currently two FPGA NES clones exist which satisfy this requirement, the AVS (Toyota) and the NT Mini (Rolls Royce), but none represented for other consoles. There is the Atari Walkman thingy but it's not ready for primetime yet.

 

IMO, the entire modules thing is something that independently could have been thought of, since that is pretty much a throwback to how 8-bit systems were designed (console+keyboard, or keyboard+optional console carts) like the Atari/Coleco, Commodore 64 and a few others.

 

That said, I'd rather see the "emulator device" separate the cartridge bus and controller bus in any hardware emulator. Like with the Z3K, The video bus and the expansion (cartridge/controller bus) are the modules. The RetroFreak moves the expansion bus into a separate pieces but they're connected by two USB ports (and a PC can see the cartridge bus segment as "PCB".)

 

But the end result is that none of these things are compatible with each other, even when they use USB ports. The reason the Retrofreak gets a fair amount of hate (less than Retron5) goes back to what it is, it's a fork of libretro. The Retron and Retrofreak only differ in their packaging, but the emulation part is no different than any ultra-cheap Raspberry Pi. So you're paying for packaging but not getting any reliability guarantee out of it, no warranty.

 

If someone wanted to do something sane, the thing to do would be to make a multiplexed cartridge bus adapter (or multiple adapters) that has a single cartridge slot and you daisy-chain them together with controller-bus devices. Then you put a the emulation box on one end via USB or your PC if you are going to use a software emulator, or you plug a hardware emulator into the other end of the bus. Saves space, makes replacements easy, and if the bus is simple enough, other people can make their own adapters using off-the-shelf parts.

 

But I digress, I don't think there needs to be any more libretro-type of devices. They've been done, they're not very good and are reflecting very poorly on the "emulation scene", and thus we get companies like Nintendo releasing their own essentially identical single-purpose device and going "nobody is going to care about a few bugs as long as it works", 5 years from now most of those software emulators on an ARM box will be in closets collecting dust or landfilled because they don't work or something else will be a better experience.

[Keatah]

Software emulators shouldn't even be used for these kinds of devices, especially not with cartridges. It doesn't feel like a homogeneous solution. And it only gets worse when you use software emulators on "just enough" processors. Processors that have to run 90% all the time. You want lots of headroom for spikes in demand and future updates when the emulators become more complex.

[Andromeda Stardust]

Software emulators shouldn't even be used for these kinds of devices, especially not with cartridges. It doesn't feel like a homogeneous solution. And it only gets worse when you use software emulators on "just enough" processors. Processors that have to run 90% all the time. You want lots of headroom for spikes in demand and future updates when the emulators become more complex.

QFT.

[habbasi]

I see a few things that need addressing, particularly the situation with LibRetro and how powerful our CPU needs to be for emulation.

 

For all our supported consoles (besides the N64), we were good with a ~1 GHz ARM CPU for full 60 FPS. We're still going for x86 because that is much more powerful, and with that we can achieve a solid 60 FPS even with N64, which is the most complex console on our list.

 

Second, while LibRetro IS a collection of some old and some new emulators, it is a collection that is almost complete with respect to emulation accuracy. The interface will be modern as compared to the "old" emulators, and emulation accuracy will be as good as you can get with open-source, as as mentioned before, the performance will be top notch as well.

[Flojomojo]

I see a few things that need addressing, particularly the situation with LibRetro and how powerful our CPU needs to be for emulation.

 

For all our supported consoles (besides the N64), we were good with a ~1 GHz ARM CPU for full 60 FPS. We're still going for x86 because that is much more powerful, and with that we can achieve a solid 60 FPS even with N64, which is the most complex console on our list.

 

Second, while LibRetro IS a collection of some old and some new emulators, it is a collection that is almost complete with respect to emulation accuracy. The interface will be modern as compared to the "old" emulators, and emulation accuracy will be as good as you can get with open-source, as as mentioned before, the performance will be top notch as well.

I'm not very bright, but I'm still not understanding what this can do that a Raspberry Pi with EmulationStation (that already exists, works fine, has lots of support, and is cheap) cannot.

 

Seems that the "original equipment or die" people won't be happy with anything like this, and the emulation crowd is pretty well served by existing technology.

 

Am I missing something?