FPGA Based Videogame System

[Andromeda Stardust]

Analogue tweeted about the DAC they are working on.

 

https://twitter.com/analogue_co/status/954367165821476864

 

https://twitter.com/analogue_co/status/954367399549026304

 

 

Dude, seriously. Is this the dumpster therad of this forum now? Kevin, would you make a new thread for actual announcements and actual information about your products? I'm seriously tired of comming here after seeing there are new posts on the thread just to see people talking about the most random crap ever. What the hell is actually going on here. Maybe I'm on the wrong, I don't know, But I am tired of comming here and having to plow through crap I have ZERO interest in.

Hardly random crap, just saying. The fact that it is a Kevtris developed product being groomed to take over the Zimba3000 concept (assuming it gets jb cores which I know in my heart of hearts is coming, if not immediately after release) makes the topic relavent.

 

As for the HDMI adapter, it appears to be proprietary to the Super NT, which is good. It's not a throwaway downconverter like the Radioshack (is that still a thing in 2018?) laggy crap adapters they used to sell for $40.

[Andromeda Stardust]

 

How about I could just come to this thread to read from Kevtris, about progress on his work, and not have to read 10 pages of random crap about televisions and programming languages? Is that really too much to ask for? Where did I say I only want official announcements from Analogue? And why are you saying what Kevtris is going to post aboput in this thread or not? Do you actually know that? Please don't answer to this questions. I don't want to discuss any of this. I just want to stop needing to read dozens of posts unrelated to this thread to find the information I am interested in.

Dude. Your timing on the first post was impeccable. In all seriousness, you have close to 100 people subbing this thread and checking in daily when no announcements may be made for weeks at a time. It's quite obvious with multiple people posting about nothing, that the topic may wander a bit. You want a newsfeed, subscribe to the twitter thread. Don't have a login? bookmark the link and press refresh daily. This thread has everything in the kictchen sink in it. Been a pleasure to read every single post and participate in group discussion. Helps calm my ADHD, until the super arrives to blow our freaking minds.

[Andromeda Stardust]

 

Converting 480p to 240p doesn't make a heck of a lot of sense, frankly. Not in comparison to just updating the Super NT firmware to output 240p for the dongle when detected.

240p over HDMI is in existing specs. Just like 32khz sampling rate for HDMI audio, etc.

 

I'm loving these developments. Also hoping for de-jitter options for both consoles, and so on.

Sure it's in spec. To an obscure standard that maybe .1% of devices even use, and maybe 5% of displays/receivers actually support. And I'm being generous with the 5%. In all likelyhood it's closer to 1-2%.

[Andromeda Stardust]

mapper 30 isn't a retail nes game mapper. It is also quite new (a year old maybe) which is why it isn't supported yet. I most likely will add support for it when I have ROMs to test with and get some time to do bug fixes/updates to the NES core.

It's modern flash mapper, specifically retrousb boards. It is relatively easy to convert a number of classic discrete nes mappers over, and support new functions like saving to flash rom instead of sram. No battery and the same flash chip that stores the rom has a bank for game saves, simplifying the design and cutting costs.

 

Memblers gt-rom goes a step further with 4-way mirroring in addition to flash saves, which allows for full 4kb of video ram, breaking compatibility with noac clone hardware, on which retrousb (mapper 30) incidentally still works (mostly). I'm not aware of a mapper being assigned to memblers gt-rom yet.

 

Both bankswitch schemes are fully documented on nesdev forum, and it should be possible to implement basic mappers for powerpak and everdrive, minus flash saving functionality (due to the way flashcarts handle sav files). The way the nightly fceu builds handle it is to duplicate the entire prg rom within the sav file, since it is stored to the actual flash rom on cart. This fact sadly makes emu dumper box support (retron5/rfreak) impossible since the checksum hash changes everytime data is recorded to the flash chip.

 

Any flashcart that supports fds writes to sd card should in theory be able to support flash mappers however, since save data is written directly to the game rom.

[Shin_K]

 

 

I think they didn't call the signal "proprietary" if it just convert 480p to 240p. I'm hoping for a RAW 240p signal using the HDMI just as a connector, without any compromisses to 60Hz and others HDMI specs. I don't know if Snes have speed differences as NES (in Hz) but if they plan to make it universal to newer products the RAW signal seem the way to go.

 

Does that mean we'll get the OG snes frequency instead of the Super NT HDMI one ?

[cfillak]

Does that mean we'll get the OG snes frequency instead of the Super NT HDMI one ?

Looks like it:

 

https://twitter.com/analogue_co/status/954524927650021377

[cfillak]

Looks like the DAC will be ready in 1-2 months:

 

https://twitter.com/analogue_co/status/954567887833858052

[leods]

My timing was impeccable because F34R is in my ignore list. All I could see when I posted was trash. Now obviously I'm fine with the DAC discussion. That's not what I was talking about. Maybe because of my timing people misunderstood what I meant. It doesn't matter how many people are following this thread, or how hyped people are, there is no reason to talk about unrelated topics here. Also some people insist in stating things as fact when they don't actually know that to be the case. That's all that bothers me. Now again, I don't really want to discuss this. There's not much discussion to be had, and even Kevtris has asked for people to stop talking about unrelated stuff here. That's all.

 

I'm happy about the DAC. I won't get it, but a friend of mine said he's pre-ordering the system now. He games on a CRT, but he, like me, lives in Germany, and having the flexibility of the Super NT is great for him. He doesn't have to deal with a dual mod, or have 2 systems plugged in to play Pal and NTSC properly. And he'll obviously get all the options available. And on top of that maybe we'll get the jailbreak, that would make this thing immediately a no-brainer to most oldschool gamers. I mean, seriously. The value in this is insane. The value of the NT Mini was already insane. This would do more for less. It's mindblowing.

 

So yeah. Please Kevtris, open the core store for this thing, and you'll have thousands of people very greatful for that. Either way Thank you for this. Even the base Super NT is a big deal to me.

[Shin_K]

Looks like it:

 

https://twitter.com/analogue_co/status/954524927650021377

amazing!

I just wish they had a store front in europe... shipping was ridiculous for the Super NT to France. (not to mention custom fees when it gets there..)

[Sneakyturtleegg]

With Analogue tweeting about the DAC, that was enough to get me to pre-order a Super NT. It looks like they have the right guy working on it. I also like that the DAC will be compatible with Analogue's future systems. Now, I'm in "Hurry Up and Wait" mode!

[cfillak]

My timing was impeccable because F34R is in my ignore list. All I could see when I posted was trash. Now obviously I'm fine with the DAC discussion. That's not what I was talking about. Maybe because of my timing people misunderstood what I meant. It doesn't matter how many people are following this thread, or how hyped people are, there is no reason to talk about unrelated topics here. Also some people insist in stating things as fact when they don't actually know that to be the case. That's all that bothers me. Now again, I don't really want to discuss this. There's not much discussion to be had, and even Kevtris has asked for people to stop talking about unrelated stuff here. That's all.

 

I'm happy about the DAC. I won't get it, but a friend of mine said he's pre-ordering the system now. He games on a CRT, but he, like me, lives in Germany, and having the flexibility of the Super NT is great for him. He doesn't have to deal with a dual mod, or have 2 systems plugged in to play Pal and NTSC properly. And he'll obviously get all the options available. And on top of that maybe we'll get the jailbreak, that would make this thing immediately a no-brainer to most oldschool gamers. I mean, seriously. The value in this is insane. The value of the NT Mini was already insane. This would do more for less. It's mindblowing.

 

So yeah. Please Kevtris, open the core store for this thing, and you'll have thousands of people very greatful for that. Either way Thank you for this. Even the base Super NT is a big deal to me.

I'm hoping, at the very least, we get all of the obscure system cores on every Analogue product. I totally would understand why, from a business perspective, the NES core might be held off of the Super NT, if they want to produce more runs of the NT Mini, or a cheaper plastic redesigned NES/Famicom system. I don't have Analogue's sales data so maybe that's not how they see it at all, and a NES core on the Super NT is what looks best to them right now. But systems like Gamate, Supervision, RCA Studio 2, Fairchild Channel F, Arcadia 2001, Game King, Videobrain etc. seem like a no-brainer to just port to everything. I think it all depends on which systems are seen as able to carry their own bespoke products. And all the cores might just get ported to everything anyway because the big selling point for many people might be compatibility with original cartridges and controllers.

 

I'm not really aware of how popular or fondly remembered Intellivision or Colecovision are, so I don't really know if they could carry their own systems. SMS seems like it would make sense to just fold that into a Genesis system. I'm not sure about Atari systems either. From the 2600 games I've played on my NT Mini, most of the experiences were rough. Maybe an Atari 2600-5200-7800 combo console would be viable? Either way I think some kind of Super NT jailbreak is inevitable with some cores having no business reason for holding back, others, who knows. I'm very excited for the Super NT and I hope the jailbreak features let me not have to purchase an SD2SNES!

[Sbeehive]

I'm thrilled Analog is making a DAC. Makes me super happy I already have two on the way (one for me and one for my Bro's bday -> dude had a tough year).

 

This is way too early to call, but I wonder if this will open the door to these types of DACs for newer systems. I already have some old-school DACs that do similar things but some gaming oriented options would be excellent. Not to mention the price of those things is absurd for the performance.

[leods]

Not sure wether that was ever asked, but Kevtris, is the FPGA in the Super NT big enough to fit a super FX chip in addition to the SNES sytem itself?

 

I would also like to ask something that might be considered too personal, but Kevtris, have you been hired by analogue, are your doing WFH for them, or are you working as a contractor? Many people talk about this whole thing as if you were now an eployee of Analogue. Even this whole discussion of wether a jailbreak will come or not, as in "does analogue have interest in this jailbreak or not?" I find that very strange, because as far as I know, Kevtris wrote the jailbreak for free. It's basically a favor he did for the community. And, unless he is hired by Analogue, which I have never heard from Analogue or Kevtris, wether he releases a Jailbreak has nothing to do with Analogue's plans for future or past consoles. It's 100% exclusively dependant on wether Kevtris wants to port his cores or not.

 

I might be wrong, but this is my understanding. It is also my understanding that if Kevtris was hired, or doing work under WFH, the Zimba3000 would be dead by now, or would never ever receive his SNES core. So I assumed, since Kevtris still wants to do the Zimba, that he was just a contractor licensing his design.

 

Sorry if I'm intruding too much, or wether any of this is something you don't want to talk about. I hope no one believes Kevin or Analogue owe this information, cause they don't.

 

I also find a bit disconcerning how cynical many people are about Analogue. I'm pretty cynical myself, but Analogue has a very good track record. People talk about Analogue as if they were talking about Hyperkin or similar companies making a quick buck on hype. These guys have been around for a while making very good products.

[cfillak]

Not sure wether that was ever asked, but Kevtris, is the FPGA in the Super NT big enough to fit a super FX chip in addition to the SNES sytem itself?

 

I would also like to ask something that might be considered too personal, but Kevtris, have you been hired by analogue, are your doing WFH for them, or are you working as a contractor? Many people talk about this whole thing as if you were now an eployee of Analogue. Even this whole discussion of wether a jailbreak will come or not, as in "does analogue have interest in this jailbreak or not?" I find that very strange, because as far as I know, Kevtris wrote the jailbreak for free. It's basically a favor he did for the community. And, unless he is hired by Analogue, which I have never heard from Analogue or Kevtris, wether he releases a Jailbreak has nothing to do with Analogue's plans for future or past consoles. It's 100% exclusively dependant on wether Kevtris wants to port his cores or not.

 

I might be wrong, but this is my understanding. It is also my understanding that if Kevtris was hired, or doing work under WFH, the Zimba3000 would be dead by now, or would never ever receive his SNES core. So I assumed, since Kevtris still wants to do the Zimba, that he was just a contractor licensing his design.

 

Sorry if I'm intruding too much, or wether any of this is something you don't want to talk about. I hope no one believes Kevin or Analogue owe this information, cause they don't.

 

I also find a bit disconcerning how cynical many people are about Analogue. I'm pretty cynical myself, but Analogue has a very good track record. People talk about Analogue as if they were talking about Hyperkin or similar companies making a quick buck on hype. These guys have been around for a while making very good products.

The questions about the expansion chips have been asked about and speculated about basically since the Super NT was announced. We've heard nothing on that front either from Kevtris or Analogue's PR. Ideally the jailbreak ROM loading would support as many expansion chips as possible. According to the SD2SNES devblog, it seems like the SA-1 chip will be the toughest nut to crack with the expansion chips, for them at least.

 

News of Kevtris being hired on full time was a quote from an article about the Super NT announcement. I can't seem to find it, and who knows if it's accurate or not. All I can find is this tweet from Frank Cifaldi : https://twitter.com/frankcifaldi/status/919968680468914176

He's a pretty reputable guy in the industry, but he may be misquoting something too.

 

I'm not overly cynical about Analogue. If it were an option I'd sign up for a subscription service to automatically pre-order everything they put out for the next 5 years. It's just some people forget that a business is a business is a business. Analogue is leagues above any of the other retro clone console manufacturers, but they still need to be profitable to survive. Some on this thread thought Analogue was too "cool" and "good to us" to ever consider releasing a Genesis console with largely the same internals as the Super NT. Certain unnamed people thought Kevtris would pull Genesis and TG-16 cores out of his ass a few weeks after the Super NT launch. It took him a year to complete the SNES core, and a console as iconic as the Genesis will likely get its own bespoke Analogue treatment, for many reasons.

 

As far as Kevin's relationship with Analogue, my personal speculation is whatever it is, his skill set in this domain is so rare and singular that he retains some ownership over his code, so maybe all of his work will in fact make it to the Zimba 3000 one day.

Edited January 20, 2018 by cfillak

[cacophony]

...Many people talk about this whole thing as if you were now an eployee of Analogue. Even this whole discussion of wether a jailbreak will come or not, as in "does analogue have interest in this jailbreak or not?" I find that very strange, because as far as I know, Kevtris wrote the jailbreak for free. It's basically a favor he did for the community. And, unless he is hired by Analogue, which I have never heard from Analogue or Kevtris, wether he releases a Jailbreak has nothing to do with Analogue's plans for future or past consoles. It's 100% exclusively dependant on wether Kevtris wants to port his cores or not.

 

...

 

I also find a bit disconcerning how cynical many people are about Analogue. I'm pretty cynical myself, but Analogue has a very good track record. People talk about Analogue as if they were talking about Hyperkin or similar companies making a quick buck on hype. These guys have been around for a while making very good products.

I believe this is the original source of Kevin being a full time employee of Analogue:

https://retronauts.com/article/622/the-ultimate-nes-gets-a-super-follow-up-mdash-and-this-ones-priced-to-sell

 

""Kevin joined Analogue full time late last year. He's been working on the SNES FPGA core for the last 14 months — a mind-blowing amount of work and effort into just that single aspect of the product."

(this is a quote from Christoper Taber, Analogue's owner/CEO)

 

But "joined ... full time" is a somewhat ambiguous phrase. He might just be referring to an increase in his contracting hours from part to full time.

 

I think Analogue's track record is very impressive, especially given the small size of the company (3 employees?), and I'll probably buy every 8 or 16 bit console they release.

And Kevin Horton has reached stratospheric levels of awesomeness and I'm eager to support whatever projects he's a part of.

Edited January 20, 2018 by cacophony

[RabidWookie]

I'm a huge fan of both Analogue and Kevtris. If Kevtris doesn't retain any ownership or rights to use his own brilliant core work he needs a better lawyer (I assume he does retain ownership).

[Andromeda Stardust]

My timing was impeccable because F34R is in my ignore list. All I could see when I posted was trash.

This is why I don't think it's wise to put dozens of people on your ignore list. Eventually you'll miss something important.

 

I mean, seriously. The value in this is insane. The value of the NT Mini was already insane. This would do more for less. It's mindblowing.

 

So yeah. Please Kevtris, open the core store for this thing, and you'll have thousands of people very greatful for that. Either way Thank you for this. Even the base Super NT is a big deal to me.

Yep. I picked the AVS over the NT Mini based on price alone. Super NT is worth it to me without the converter or core store. I will probably get the converter but I'm not thrilled with the prospect of building a custom adapter to get composite and Svideo out of it (though I am capable of fabricating one). Or just use my stock SNES if I wanna play Yoshi's Safari.

 

RGB is damn near useless to me as 99% of consumer telivisions ever sold in North America don't support it. My CRT's are all composite /RF and my monitor is HDMI. And I still wish there was a way to get HDMI + analog audio output without using an external switch/splitter.

[Kismet]

 

 

Hardly random crap, just saying. The fact that it is a Kevtris developed product being groomed to take over the Zimba3000 concept (assuming it gets jb cores which I know in my heart of hearts is coming, if not immediately after release) makes the topic relavent.

 

As for the HDMI adapter, it appears to be proprietary to the Super NT, which is good. It's not a throwaway downconverter like the Radioshack (is that still a thing in 2018?) laggy crap adapters they used to sell for $40.

 

Assuming it's some kind of proprietary thing, they could make it work on all future Retro NT devices.

 

The pedantic thing that keeps happening in this thread is that "nothing" happens, and someone asks a question that kevtris hasn't answered and it goes off into cloud cuckoo land speculation. People so desperately want to believe the Super NT will be everything and the kitchen sink, and if it's not that Analogue will just produce another console next year that will. People have to be reasonable and understand that we're a very tiny market, and there are plenty of competing cheaper retro non-FPGA systems out there that do more, but have high latency and low accuracy as the tradeoff. If the Super NT is not what you want, don't buy it and then sit around waiting for a MD core.

[gulps]

Looks like the DAC will be ready in 1-2 months:

 

https://twitter.com/analogue_co/status/954567887833858052

 

 

Outputs:

 

- RGB

- Component

- S-video

- Composite

- Analog audio

- ...and probably more

 

 

 

I hope they will add:

 

- Digital audio output - SPDIF/Coaxial: 32kHz (SNES native), 44.1kHz (redbook CD) or 48kHz, 96kHz (HQ standard)...

 

[F34R]

 

Assuming it's some kind of proprietary thing, they could make it work on all future Retro NT devices.

 

The pedantic thing that keeps happening in this thread is that "nothing" happens, and someone asks a question that kevtris hasn't answered and it goes off into cloud cuckoo land speculation. People so desperately want to believe the Super NT will be everything and the kitchen sink, and if it's not that Analogue will just produce another console next year that will. People have to be reasonable and understand that we're a very tiny market, and there are plenty of competing cheaper retro non-FPGA systems out there that do more, but have high latency and low accuracy as the tradeoff. If the Super NT is not what you want, don't buy it and then sit around waiting for a MD core.

from Analouge twitter:

 

Designed for Super Nt and future Analogue systems. A digital to analog converter that plugs into the HDMI port.

[cfillak]

I will probably get the converter but I'm not thrilled with the prospect of building a custom adapter to get composite and Svideo out of it (though I am capable of fabricating one). Or just use my stock SNES if I wanna play Yoshi's Safari.

 

RGB is damn near useless to me as 99% of consumer telivisions ever sold in North America don't support it. My CRT's are all composite /RF and my monitor is HDMI. And I still wish there was a way to get HDMI + analog audio output without using an external switch/splitter.

Well you're in luck because Analogue announced that the DAC will output RGB, Component, S-Video and Composite, so you won't need to make your own adapter.

[TheRedEye]

I believe this is the original source of Kevin being a full time employee of Analogue:

https://retronauts.com/article/622/the-ultimate-nes-gets-a-super-follow-up-mdash-and-this-ones-priced-to-sell

 

""Kevin joined Analogue full time late last year. He's been working on the SNES FPGA core for the last 14 months — a mind-blowing amount of work and effort into just that single aspect of the product."

(this is a quote from Christoper Taber, Analogue's owner/CEO)

 

But "joined ... full time" is a somewhat ambiguous phrase. He might just be referring to an increase in his contracting hours from part to full time.

 

Yeah I was just quoting this article, I don't have any insight into Kevin's career other than what I read in the papers

[Andromeda Stardust]

Well you're in luck because Analogue announced that the DAC will output RGB, Component, S-Video and Composite, so you won't need to make your own adapter.

 

15 pin dsub connector. the achilles heel of the nt mini. so i still need to build my own cable. rs is out of business so i gotta order online.

[cacophony]

15 pin dsub connector. the achilles heel of the nt mini. so i still need to build my own cable. rs is out of business so i gotta order online.

Monoprice has the cables for cheap:

 

https://www.monoprice.com/product?p_id=2409

https://www.monoprice.com/product?p_id=2509

https://www.monoprice.com/product?p_id=566

[genfuyung]

Anyone elses nt mini stop reading controller inputs correctly? Whenever I press anything on my nes controller it acts like im pressing all the buttons at once. The games pause and unpause and turn directions and all kinds of stuff whenever I press anything, Controllers work fine on my normal NES.

 

Also, most of the time when I start it, as soon as I choose a menu option it just displays the Analogue logo and wont do anything...pretty concerned its broken.

Edited January 21, 2018 by genfuyung