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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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Also, I know that there are no plans to bring a computer core like the C64 to the Nt Mini, but for the C64 I would wonder if the chip would be capable of it. After all, there is the C64 GS. More specifically, if a low pass filter of the FDS is beyond the capabilities of the current FPGA, what about the SID's low, high and bandpass filters?

Wait, isn't the Cyclone V in the Nt Mini more powerful than the Cyclone III in the MiST FPGA, which has a fully functional C64 core?

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Wait, isn't the Cyclone V in the Nt Mini more powerful than the Cyclone III in the MiST FPGA, which has a fully functional C64 core?

The NT Mini has NES controller ports. Not exactly easy to plug a keyboard into those ports.

 

Besides, I personally think computer cores should be a domain reserved for the Zimba 3000, not only because of the planned USB ports, but also because it would serve to distance the Z3K from the NT Mini, along with 16-bit cores.

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The NT Mini has NES controller ports. Not exactly easy to plug a keyboard into those ports.

 

Besides, I personally think computer cores should be a domain reserved for the Zimba 3000, not only because of the planned USB ports, but also because it would serve to distance the Z3K from the NT Mini, along with 16-bit cores.

With the 8bitdo you can use any bluetooth controller with the nt mini so I would imagine it would be possible to use a wireless keyboard with it as well... as long as the console on the receiving end accepted the inputs.

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The NT Mini has NES controller ports. Not exactly easy to plug a keyboard into those ports.

 

Besides, I personally think computer cores should be a domain reserved for the Zimba 3000, not only because of the planned USB ports, but also because it would serve to distance the Z3K from the NT Mini, along with 16-bit cores.

I'm just curious hypothetically because these things fascinate me. I'm perfectly happy with whatever kevtris decides to do. :-)

 

True, C64 is a computer with a keyboard but I think most people would be using the (Atari 2600 like) joystick to play games. Modern SD loaders can load and play games without a single key press.

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??? 2600 / 7800 ???

yeah I forgot to remove those before release. lol. now I kind of tipped my hand on what I was working on next. Though I never actually did do any work on them yet- I was busy with gb/gbc up until friday. I thought I was going to have time to do the other cores but ended up not having any time left. I am not sure if 2600 or 7800 will be next or not. we'll see :-)

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If or when the cores for the Atari 2600, 5200, 7800, Odyssey2, Intellivision and Colecovision are released, how will their analog lo-fi color signals be processed? The NES generates composite color inside the chip, not RGB and the Nt Mini outputs the exact same composite signal that the real NES does. From what I can tell, the Atari consoles and the Intellivision also generate color in the composite domain. The Odyssey2 and Colecovision seem to generate color in the RGB or YPrPb domain.

 

[...]

Good question! I'm not sure I fully understand the concept of "digital RGB to composite/s-video converter" that kevtris is talking about here. BTW, I have really enjoyed your article The Case for Composite, Great Hierophant.

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Good question! I'm not sure I fully understand the concept of "digital RGB to composite/s-video converter" that kevtris is talking about here. BTW, I have really enjoyed your article The Case for Composite, Great Hierophant.

it does what it says on the tin. it converts RGB into s-video and composite digitally. It works similar to how it's done in analog, except I do it digitally. It runs RGB through a translation matrix to get YIQ (or YUV for PAL), and then multiplies it by two sinewaves generated via tables and combines them for the chroma, and adds in the luma. and then these are sent out the usually RGB DACs. This gives you composite and s-video.

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With the 8bitdo you can use any bluetooth controller with the nt mini so I would imagine it would be possible to use a wireless keyboard with it as well... as long as the console on the receiving end accepted the inputs.

This will not work. The 8-bitdo can only encode 8-bit serial data (16-bit for SNES controllers but only 12 bits are used) from a standard HID BT game controller, PS3/4 or Wiimote and/or Pro controllers. You could theoretically matrix a 101-key wireless BT keyboard into a serial NES style interface, but it would require custom firmware loaded onto the 8-bitdo controller.

 

I think it would be much simpler to program an HID driver into the FPGA and use the USB port on the back of the unit for standard USB keyboard/mouse and forget the 8bitdo BT dongle. That's assuming there's enough space left over on the FPGA cores to add HID drivers.

 

I think the Zimba-3000 would benefit from USB ports in addition to DB-9 and possibly Nintendo 5/7 pin contoller ports (NES can easily be adapted to SNES and visa versa using a patch cable) on the console itself or plug in cart modules.

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Wait, isn't the Cyclone V in the Nt Mini more powerful than the Cyclone III in the MiST FPGA, which has a fully functional C64 core?

It's comparable, I wouldn't say it's more powerful. AFAIK the two chips have the same capacity but the V has some better features around clock timings which makes things more convenient for the developer.

 

But yeah, I expect most 8-bit cores to be possible on such a chip as long as somebody is willing to work on them.

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This will not work. The 8-bitdo can only encode 8-bit serial data (16-bit for SNES controllers but only 12 bits are used) from a standard HID BT game controller, PS3/4 or Wiimote and/or Pro controllers. You could theoretically matrix a 101-key wireless BT keyboard into a serial NES style interface, but it would require custom firmware loaded onto the 8-bitdo controller.

 

I think it would be much simpler to program an HID driver into the FPGA and use the USB port on the back of the unit for standard USB keyboard/mouse and forget the 8bitdo BT dongle. That's assuming there's enough space left over on the FPGA cores to add HID drivers.

 

I think the Zimba-3000 would benefit from USB ports in addition to DB-9 and possibly Nintendo 5/7 pin contoller ports (NES can easily be adapted to SNES and visa versa using a patch cable) on the console itself or plug in cart modules.

 

My opinion here, on a 'final' board, you would want to either:

a) Use all USB ports on-board and do something like this with the pcie-connector expansion bus

11rdt9c.jpg

 

(eg, daisy-chain a controller bus from the expansion bus), so that you can have just the controller ports, just a cartridge port, or both, and could mix and match controllers.) And thus it's an additional thing to build. Or use the 8bitdo BT/USB connectors on the USB ports.

b) Use 4x DB-15 connector (that covers essentially all known pre-USB joysticks, including the NeoGeo and PC) and have a DB15 to DB9 pin converter for DB9-based joysticks, Making sure that +5V is never electronically connected (pin 8 on neogeo, 11,8,9,15 on PC) until the joystick is identified. DB9 +5V is pin 5 for Sega, Pin 7 for Atari and Amiga, Pin 2 for Apple II. NES, SNES and PSX use proprietary connectors, where the PSX uses +9V(rumble) on pin 3 and +5/+3.3V on pin 5. The SNES has +5V on pin 1, +5V on pin 7 for NES, and apparently the NES and SNES controller bus are identical. The drawback to using DB-15 is that it's dongle-mania. On the plus side, DB15 are also used for JAMMA units and thus such converters may already exist using the NeoGeo pinouts.

 

c) Use a different 15-pin connector (eg the VGA connector (which is what Red Octane did with the DDR metal pads http://www.ddrgame.com/metpadparts.html)) and use a pin-adapter box with DB15, DB9, NES, SNES, PSX or whatever else on it. Then you just buy as many pin-adapters as needed. This makes it impossible to accidentally plug something in that will fry the z3k or the controller (Pin 9 of a VGA has +5v, so to prevent someone plugging in a monitor, might want to plug pin 9.)

 

As for a keyboard, you would need to use USB, although some people would probably want a PS/2 connector, you could provide the PS/2 connector over one of the "game port" bus connectors.

 

The main consideration most of the time for keyboards is that with the exception of macro keyboards, the USB keyboards and mice haven't changed since the 1998. Macro keyboards would not be support since it would be unlikely to select a keyboard HID protocol other than boot (6KRO), so the z3k would need to support multiple HID's and that starts getting into complexities that might be better off ignored.

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Anyone else notice certain sound effects on the NES core sounding somewhat high-pitched? Like, high-pitched compared to actual NES hardware.

 

For example, on the knockout sound effects in Punch-Out sounds way more high pitched than on my nt (non-mini)

 

edit: never mind, I misread this...

Edited by cacophony
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it does what it says on the tin. it converts RGB into s-video and composite digitally. It works similar to how it's done in analog, except I do it digitally. It runs RGB through a translation matrix to get YIQ (or YUV for PAL), and then multiplies it by two sinewaves generated via tables and combines them for the chroma, and adds in the luma. and then these are sent out the usually RGB DACs. This gives you composite and s-video.

Are Wonderswan or Wonderswan Color cores possible/being considered?

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Just loaded the new update, and none of the gameboy games would load. Kevtris has been mentioning you need to supply your own bios in a very cryptic manner. I own a lot of game boys, so I legally own the bioses (correct me if I'm wrong) to the systems I want to run on my Mini. Could someone please help steer me in the right direction how to either extract a bios from a gameboy or find one digitally?

I tried to find one in a quick google search, and all I came across was a Gba bios. Also, if I did have a bios, would it go in the system/cores folder or in the GB folder?

I rescind my comment. Figured it out, it was easy. It's helpful to read all of the posts I suppose. Knowing that GB Bios = GB Bootstrap was quite helpful.

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Wait, isn't the Cyclone V in the Nt Mini more powerful than the Cyclone III in the MiST FPGA, which has a fully functional C64 core?

 

More resources are required to do HDMI. The MiST only does a resistor-ladder VGA which is the same thing that VGA on cheaper development boards do. (They're only capable of 4-bits per channel, so they can only do 4096 colors), MiST apparently can do 6-6-6.

 

But in order to do DVI/HDMI you need to either do it on the FPGA, or you offload it to a framebuffer/scaler HDMI ASIC, which defeats the purpose of trying to eliminate latency.

 

A C64 Games System (eg the console version of the C64) should be completely doable since it's the same CPU as the NES, however the SID emulation is likely more complicated than that found in the NES.

Edited by Kismet
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Anyone else notice certain sound effects on the NES core sounding somewhat high-pitched? Like, high-pitched compared to actual NES hardware.

 

For example, on the knockout sound effects in Punch-Out sounds way more high pitched than on my nt (non-mini)

Can confirm on v1.2 JB firmware! Somehow didn't notice this before, but comparing an NT Mini side by side with an NES over composite I can definitely hear a pitch difference.

Edited by rezb1t
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Now that I think about it, there is a "relatively" easy way to get a keyboard on the NT Mini. Emulate the Famicom Family Basic keyboard through that i/o connector on the back.

 

I say relatively, because I have no idea if that port is mapable to anything outside the famicom.

I'd argue the Famicom keyboard is a pretty rare accessory in the west. How many collectors even have one? Only a handful of games utilized it, such as Family Basic, and I'm not sure how playable those ROMs are without Japanese...

nintendo_family-computers_1.jpg

 

Cost a pretty penny to ship from Japan, too:

http://ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=p2050601.m570.l1313.TR12.TRC2.A0.H0.Xfamicom.TRS0&_nkw=famicom+keyboard

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Time to chip in. :)

 

I have to agree with 5200Fanatic, I picked this up because of Kevtris. I love what he's done, and the fact that I can preserve the games I love and still be able to play them. When I heard about the Analogue NT I had absolutely no interest based off of the price, let alone at $500, but with what Kevtris has done with the cores, immediately it went from over priced hardware to something i wanted. I look forward to the Zimba 3000, and would gladly play between 300 and 500 for one if all it did was what the NT Mini does but added support for 16 bit systems. In short,

 

Keep it up Kevtris, as a Twitch streamer and someone who loves games for the stories they tell and the experiences they provide, I can easily say your a modern day Hero. I tip my hat to you sir, and look forward to see what you will do next.

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