FPGA Based Videogame System

[Forsaken]

It's probably because the lack of gamma.

 

When gamma is "on" but no scanlines, it was set to 1.25.

When gamma is "off" but scanlines are on, it was set to 1.25.

When gamma and scanlines are both on, it was set to 1.40.

 

I am going to totally retool the scanlines in the future once I fix the rest of the major core bugs.

I'm digging the 1.4 gamma with hybrid lines. I'm playing Super Metroid now, and this game always looked especially bad on LCDs. But with your hybrid scan lines and the boosted gamma, it looks very much like I remember it looking on CRT, better actually. The dark tones in this game just don't look right without the scanlines and odd CRT gamma..

 

Actually, I'm liking setting the green gamma a little higher, R=1.40, G=1.50, B=1.40. This looks really "authentic" to me along with the hybrid lines. I guess all my CRTs had a little higher green gamma. I wonder if that was typical of consumer CRTs as a result of the longer persistence of the green phosphor or something?

Edited February 28, 2018 by Forsaken

[Keatah]

Post release the Super NT got 2 (two) firmware updates. 4.1, that broke more than it fixed, and 4.3 that fixed a lot and added/corrected it's extra features. 2, not 5. not sure where you got your number from.

 

Also, "He's fixing bugs you guys report in under a week" No he isn't. There are bugs reported for longer than a week that haven't been fixed. So these things you said are just wrong. And I'm not even being nitpicky about it, it's just completely wrong.

 

Why are we having this discussion? What are you trying to defend?

 

"Everything they said about it was true.": "total accuracy" and "We spent thousands of hours engineering the system via FPGA for absolute accuracy."

 

So these two are true? Damn I wish they sold these fanboy glasses. I'd gladly wear them so I could live in fairy land, with the magic of the FPGA.

 

Listen. This discussion is useless. I will not mention the false advertisement from Analogue in this thread anymore. Promise. But you guys come in here saying things that are completely wrong. People come in the thread, read "SNES ASIC are all terrible", and they'll believe this bullshit. So please, before writing things that are just wrong, please either do research, or just don't write it. This doesn't help anyone.

 

Neither does complaining about "total accuracy". Whatever "total accuracy" means anyways. It's a videogame console. It's a machine made by people. It is NOT going to be absolutely 100% precise and exact. It can be good, however.

 

People please stop quoting this guy so I don't have to read same drivel over and over.

[leods]

On Seiken Densetsu 2 (Secret of Mana) I found a strage glitch when talking to Watts, when he changes place into moogle village. When I enter and exit his dialogue the screen flashes a bit. I don't know wether that's supposed to happen though. This game does present some graphical glitches here and there, and I know many of those used to happen back in the day as I played the game on original cart and original hardware. But this one glitch I'm not sure. I took a video of it:

 

As I first got in there it was happening with all dialogues in this screen, but then it kinda fixed itself and got less pronnounced, but still happens with watts.

 

video:

[Schizophretard]

Maybe, maybe not. Limited availability/opportunity to purchase is a big driver for sales. If the functionality of the NT Mini gets completely duplicated by a future cheaper plastic variant + DAC then many customers may hesitate to purchase a future product thinking it may be better to wait for the next version that can do the same thing. One could argue that already happened with the NT Mini and the original NT, but maybe a true purist would prefer the original NT for its complete and total accuracy. I've got no idea what the right long term decision for Analogue would be or what they'll actually decide, but I do know the "if I don't buy this now I may not have the opportunity to in the future without paying tons of money on ebay" mentality has made many companies a ton of money. See Bob's (retroRGB) interview with the limited run games guys. Either situation wouldn't surprise me TBH.

 

My thinking was something like,"The Nt Mini looks so awesome and is so much of a hit that it is going to be for sale for a long time. I'll buy one after I close on my house and rebuild my game room there." I had this assumption because I thought one of the reasons they moved away from cannibalizing original hardware to using FPGA's was to get away from making a console that has to be a limited edition and because they seem to be about preserving video game history so that it can be enjoyed in the future. It isn't really preserving video game history if a limited number of people have one and now that I'm ready to buy one because I'm at my rebuilding my game room stage I can't buy one from them. I think they definitely should bring it back in plastic and make it compatible with the DAC they are working on. There has to be others like me that wanted one but either the funds or timing wasn't right.

 

Edit: My assumption was kind of like how many automatically assumed the NES Classic Edition wasn't going to be treated like a hard to get limited edition item because it wasn't marketed as such and millions would buy one.

[kwnage]

 

There has to be others like me that wanted one but either the funds or timing wasn't right.

 

Yep... here!

Edited February 28, 2018 by kwnage

[Mattelot]

 

My thinking was something like,"The Nt Mini looks so awesome and is so much of a hit that it is going to be for sale for a long time. I'll buy one after I close on my house and rebuild my game room there." I had this assumption because I thought one of the reasons they moved away from cannibalizing original hardware to using FPGA's was to get away from making a console that has to be a limited edition and because they seem to be about preserving video game history so that it can be enjoyed in the future. It isn't really preserving video game history if a limited number of people have one and now that I'm ready to buy one because I'm at my rebuilding my game room stage I can't buy one from them. I think they definitely should bring it back in plastic and make it compatible with the DAC they are working on. There has to be others like me that wanted one but either the funds or timing wasn't right.

 

Edit: My assumption was kind of like how many automatically assumed the NES Classic Edition wasn't going to be treated like a hard to get limited edition item because it wasn't marketed as such and millions would buy one.

 

I'm glad/lucky I got my NT mini when I did. I was THIS close to buying the original NT but hesitated. I'm in the same boat as you with the Super NT. I want/wanted one but all within a short period of time, the heat in my car went out ($500), my sump pump died ($610) and my brakes started grinding ($500) so I had no extra money after bills. If another round of preorders become available, I'll dive on the opportunity. Sure, I can grab a black one today but I want the classic.

 

I definitely agree with your view that it's not really preserving history if only limited people have it. The only thing that would convince me otherwise is if something better was coming. Back then, we had our composite cables, today we have HDMI as mainstream. What if something completely new/different came out? Or once 1080p TVs become almost non-existent in the market and all you'll find are 4K or 8K TVs, there may be an advanced FPGA that outputs original NES/SNES at native 4K/8K.

[Atariboy]

I think it's safe to say that we haven't seen the last FPGA NES clone, even if the Retro USB AVS was discontinued tomorrow and Analogue never attempts a Super NT style NT Mini successor. As for the Super NT, when they're selling preorders out this quickly, I don't think there's any major risk of this being the last production run.

 

The NT Mini only finally disappeared from sale just a relatively short time time ago. I wouldn't risk holding out until 2019 though, but if one hasn't made their purchase by the end of this spring, I imagine several more opportunities will still present themselves throughout the remainder of this year.

 

There's no money to be had in turning away thousands of buyers. The limited label is used to drive sales of something that otherwise wouldn't of sold half as much if it hadn't carried that moniker (Like the shovelware that Limited Run Games usually sells to sealed game collectors), or to encourage people to be early adapters for something you don't intend to offer for the medium to long-term future.

 

But it's not used as an excuse to prematurely cut production of an item that's selling briskly with a lot of unfulfilled sales potential remaining. The Super NT will disappear when the sales start to slow in the months ahead. A 3rd run at a minimum is all but a certainty given how quickly the second round of orders have been snapped up.

Edited February 28, 2018 by Atariboy

[Mattelot]

I sure hope so. I know Nintendo and Analogue are not the same company but we all know companies make random, questionable sales decisions.

[Toth]

I wonder why they aren't selling another round of Nt Mini? I mean they have all the manufacturing and everything taken care of. At this point aren't they just leaving money on the table?

[Atariboy]

Sales appeared to have slowed a lot. Only so many takers for ~$450 NES systems.

 

I do wonder why it wasn't kept around a bit longer to overlap with the Super NT though, since in the excitement for this product, hundreds more could've been sold I'm sure. But then one has to consider the possibility that the NT Mini isn't their last attempt at a NES fpga system.

 

A cost reduced NES system with two controller ports, a plastic shell instead of an aluminum shell, analogue output moved externally to a separate adapter, and with internal improvements thanks to a more powerful fpga, could be a logical follow-up to the Super NT.

 

They could even get away with eliminating the Famicom port thanks to Famicom to NES pin adapters, although I imagine this is one luxury that they'd want to retain.

Edited February 28, 2018 by Atariboy

[romevi]

I was toying with scalers last night and liked HQ 2X a lot with Normal scanlines at 200.

But after an hour I switched back. The HQ 2X helped give it that same warm look for 1080p with scanlines that 720p by default did, but it made text look weird so I switched back to no scalers.

All the other scalers smoothed the pixels too much.

 

With scanlines on, what do people adjust the gamma to? I just have them all at default 1.00.

[Riptide]

 

My thinking was something like,"The Nt Mini looks so awesome and is so much of a hit that it is going to be for sale for a long time. I'll buy one after I close on my house and rebuild my game room there." I had this assumption because I thought one of the reasons they moved away from cannibalizing original hardware to using FPGA's was to get away from making a console that has to be a limited edition and because they seem to be about preserving video game history so that it can be enjoyed in the future. It isn't really preserving video game history if a limited number of people have one and now that I'm ready to buy one because I'm at my rebuilding my game room stage I can't buy one from them. I think they definitely should bring it back in plastic and make it compatible with the DAC they are working on. There has to be others like me that wanted one but either the funds or timing wasn't right.

 

Edit: My assumption was kind of like how many automatically assumed the NES Classic Edition wasn't going to be treated like a hard to get limited edition item because it wasn't marketed as such and millions would buy one.

 

 

 

I'm glad/lucky I got my NT mini when I did. I was THIS close to buying the original NT but hesitated. I'm in the same boat as you with the Super NT. I want/wanted one but all within a short period of time, the heat in my car went out ($500), my sump pump died ($610) and my brakes started grinding ($500) so I had no extra money after bills. If another round of preorders become available, I'll dive on the opportunity. Sure, I can grab a black one today but I want the classic.

 

I definitely agree with your view that it's not really preserving history if only limited people have it. The only thing that would convince me otherwise is if something better was coming. Back then, we had our composite cables, today we have HDMI as mainstream. What if something completely new/different came out? Or once 1080p TVs become almost non-existent in the market and all you'll find are 4K or 8K TVs, there may be an advanced FPGA that outputs original NES/SNES at native 4K/8K.

 

 

Analogue is a company and at the end of the day their goal is to make money, not preserve video game history; please correct me if they've said that was their mission statement or something. There are likely still a number of people who would buy an NT Mini, but maybe that # is less than the minimum number required for Analogue to place an order for another batch. Preorders were up for the second batch for a looong time. I'm not business savvy in the slightest, but I don't think they'll do another run of the original; a revised plastic edition wouldn't surprise me though. In the event that: (1) Analogue has made it clear they aren't going to sell the NT Mini or a revised edition again, and (2) it has also become clear that for whatever reason the 8bit cores aren't coming to the Super NT, then my suggestion to aid in the preservation of video game history would be to see if Kevtris would be open to us crowdfunding his time to port the cores he wants/can to another FPGA board like the MISTer (or whatever the best option available at the time is). The reality of it actually stays the same since any piece of hardware that can run those cores will eventually not be sold anymore, just like the NT Mini. The cores would need to be open sourced for them to truly live on forever, but I completely understand why Kevtris keeps them closed source.

[CZroe]

I’m not so sure it has been discontinued. Hi-Def NES fell to the wayside during Super Nt production and it’s safe to assume that something similar happened to the Nt Mini, in addition to the complication with 8bitdo discontinuing the NES30.

 

Kevtris reassured us regarding the Hi-Def NES but we didn’t get any similar reassurances regarding the Nt Mini. This can be because they are still making a decision on how or whether to move forward with it. If they had already decided then I would expect them to take it off their product page where is still sits alongside the Super Nt (last I checked).

[Kismet]

The reality of it actually stays the same since any piece of hardware that can run those cores will eventually not be sold anymore, just like the NT Mini. The cores would need to be open sourced for them to truly live on forever, but I completely understand why Kevtris keeps them closed source.

 

Nope, not at all. We're talking about FPGA's, not a C program that you hit recompile. The worst possible thing you could do is open-source a FPGA chip for a closed platform, because what this does is drive demand up for the platform, and then people just sell their own branded version of the core, without being able to fix anything further. See Retron 5, See RetroFreak. We already know what will happen, because it's still happening.

 

What you instead want is a standardized platform that is FPGA-core agnostic. Pretty much every open source hardware platform has shown, there is not enough interest in doing things in an open way. It is a money losing proposition to make any kind of purposely open system. Such is why every Linux is not on every desktop, and why open alternatives to iOS devices are generally unprofitable for everyone involved. You can't heard enough cats together to produce something without having 42 forks of it when people complain about their pet feature getting snubbed.

 

Hence, the best direction to go from here is to hope that we eventually get a "open platform FPGA+SOC" design from Analogue, and anyone interested in cloning the platform design has to support the stock firmware. From -that- point, produce documentation for a barebones FPGA that works, and then put a bounty on releasing the source to the closed cores. That way people can either support the core developer (kevtris) to release that core, or they can port other cores themselves.

 

For now, just hope that Analogue sees value in documenting how to produce your own FPGA core for the Analogue NT Mini and Super NT. At least that leaves open a window for using the Cyclone V in it for other FPGA consoles. The Cyclone V won't be around forever, and at that point open sourcing the cores would be inconsequential.

[NE146]

K.. broke down and ordered the 8bitdo SNES controller on amazon. I thought i'd be fine with all my old wired controllers but.. half the appeal with the super nt is shoving it on the big ass screen sometimes, and for that I need to be like several feet away. Stringing an hdmi cable out and then the controller cable as well just wasn't cutting it.

[Riptide]

 

Nope, not at all. We're talking about FPGA's, not a C program that you hit recompile. The worst possible thing you could do is open-source a FPGA chip for a closed platform, because what this does is drive demand up for the platform, and then people just sell their own branded version of the core, without being able to fix anything further. See Retron 5, See RetroFreak. We already know what will happen, because it's still happening.

 

Sorry I'm a bit confused here, are you saying that the source code for an FPGA core is useless when attempting to port that core from one FPGA/board to another? I'm not well versed in FPGAs but I highly doubt thats the case..

Also don't follow the Retron 5/RetroFreak part as I thought those were software emulator based situations, maybe I'm just missing he point.

 

 

Pretty much every open source hardware platform has shown, there is not enough interest in doing things in an open way. It is a money losing proposition to make any kind of purposely open system. Such is why every Linux is not on every desktop, and why open alternatives to iOS devices are generally unprofitable for everyone involved. You can't heard enough cats together to produce something without having 42 forks of it when people complain about their pet feature getting snubbed.

Uhhh Linux is running on all of the top 500 supercomputers in the world, and plenty of people make $ from open source projects (ex Redhat). Pretty sure multiple companies besides Google are profiting from Android; you may have heard of Samsung as they have a higher smartphone market share than Apple in the USA, furthermore Amazon has made plenty off their Kindle devices which run a hard fork of Android.

 

Regardless, whether open source projects are profitable or not wasn't actually my point. I was just saying that if your ultimate goal was to preserve video game history (which I don't think is Analogue's goal) then the cores would need to be open sourced so that when Kevtris is no longer around and/or whatever FPGA board they were coded to run on in the first place is no longer available, someone else could take that code and port it to another board. I make no claims regarding whether or not thats a smart business decision.

 

I assume that porting an FPGA core from one system to another is easier when you have the code for the core.... someone more knowledgeable can correct me on this assumption if its wrong.

Edited February 28, 2018 by Riptide

[Mattelot]

 

 

 

 

Analogue is a company and at the end of the day their goal is to make money, not preserve video game history; please correct me if they've said that was their mission statement or something. There are likely still a number of people who would buy an NT Mini, but maybe that # is less than the minimum number required for Analogue to place an order for another batch. Preorders were up for the second batch for a looong time. I'm not business savvy in the slightest, but I don't think they'll do another run of the original; a revised plastic edition wouldn't surprise me though. In the event that: (1) Analogue has made it clear they aren't going to sell the NT Mini or a revised edition again, and (2) it has also become clear that for whatever reason the 8bit cores aren't coming to the Super NT, then my suggestion to aid in the preservation of video game history would be to see if Kevtris would be open to us crowdfunding his time to port the cores he wants/can to another FPGA board like the MISTer (or whatever the best option available at the time is). The reality of it actually stays the same since any piece of hardware that can run those cores will eventually not be sold anymore, just like the NT Mini. The cores would need to be open sourced for them to truly live on forever, but I completely understand why Kevtris keeps them closed source.

 

That was the mission statement. I understand that they're in the business to make money. I wonder if an announcement of a more cost-effective "plastic" NT mini would make interest. I love my aluminum one and I would love to have an aluminum Super NT but I know the majority would pick a cheaper model that does the exact same thing, if not, I'm sure more gold NTs would have been produced.

[Kismet]

 

Sorry I'm a bit confused here, are you saying that the source code for an FPGA core is useless when attempting to port that core from one FPGA/board to another? I'm not well versed in FPGAs but I highly doubt thats the case..

Also don't follow the Retron 5/RetroFreak part as I thought those were software emulator based situations, maybe I'm just missing he point.

 

Uhhh Linux is running on all of the top 500 supercomputers in the world, and plenty of people make $ from open source projects (ex Redhat). Pretty sure multiple companies besides Google are profiting from Android; you may have heard of Samsung as they have a higher smartphone market share than Apple in the USA, furthermore Amazon has made plenty off their Kindle devices which run a hard fork of Android.

 

Regardless, whether open source projects are profitable or not wasn't actually my point. I was just saying that if your ultimate goal was to preserve video game history (which I don't think is Analogue's goal) then the cores would need to be open sourced so that when Kevtris is no longer around and/or whatever FPGA board they were coded to run on in the first place is no longer available, someone else could take that code and port it to another board. I make no claims regarding whether or not thats a smart business decision.

 

I assume that porting an FPGA core from one system to another is easier when you have the code for the core.... someone more knowledgeable can correct me on this assumption if its wrong.

 

Point 1: Hyperkin and Cybergadget both stole non-commercial software emulators. who is to say they won't steal FPGA cores and pass it off as their own too where it can't be probed.

 

Point 2: Woosh, you've missed the point. Desktop Linux is simply not a thing. Linux Smartphones are not a thing (Android is not Linux, it's a fork, and exactly what I'm talking about when it comes to 42 flavors of not-invented-here), in Samsung has been trying to abandon Android so they could use their own smartphone OS and cut Google out. They already do that with the TV's.

 

If you want to preserve video games, you want to get the source code to the games themselves. Simply maintaining hardware FPGA cores will not get you there as the people who did the original reverse engineering (eg kevtris) will not be around forever, and the original hardware will not work forever, never mind the CRT's. These FGPA's are also hardware, they will not be around forever. You can't recompile a CycloneV core designed for the Analogue hardware, and run it on the DE10-nano for example. There's different hardware specifications.

 

Hence you need a standard hardware platform before you start advocating for opensourcing of cores, because that accomplishes two things:

1) It gives a standard hardware configuration that the current and future cores can be run on

2) It prevents a company like hyperkin from hijacking the the work done on the standard platform to pass it off as their own.

 

Like right now, some chinese knockoff is no doubt making counterfeit's that they will hack out the Analogue branding and pass off as their own using whatever firmware they can hide the branding on. Nothing puts $'s in the eyes of pirates faster than seeing 200%+ markups on eBay.

 

You might be able to recompile a Cyclone V core for a Cyclone 10, but you have to re-design everything else since those different boards are going to have different things connected to different pins, and different SoC or MC's and RAM configurations. So it's not as simple as recompiling something written in straight C and having it work on Windows, Linux and MacOS regardless of the CPU type. It's more like trying to recompile hardware drivers written for Windows to use on Linux. You can preserve the central core, but everything else it has to interface with in the OS to get to the hardware will be different.

Edited February 28, 2018 by Kismet

[Atariboy]

 

 

If you want to preserve video games, you want to get the source code to the games themselves.

 

You do not need the source code of the games themselves. If that was in any way an issue of importance, 99% of what was developed before the year 2000 is already lost.

 

What is needed are new ways to accurately run old game code, such as these Analogue systems or the freely distributed bSNES emulator. The community has done just fine preserving the contents of old cartridges and cd's.

Edited February 28, 2018 by Atariboy

[kevtris]

 

Nope, not at all. We're talking about FPGA's, not a C program that you hit recompile. The worst possible thing you could do is open-source a FPGA chip for a closed platform, because what this does is drive demand up for the platform, and then people just sell their own branded version of the core, without being able to fix anything further. See Retron 5, See RetroFreak. We already know what will happen, because it's still happening.

 

What you instead want is a standardized platform that is FPGA-core agnostic. Pretty much every open source hardware platform has shown, there is not enough interest in doing things in an open way. It is a money losing proposition to make any kind of purposely open system. Such is why every Linux is not on every desktop, and why open alternatives to iOS devices are generally unprofitable for everyone involved. You can't heard enough cats together to produce something without having 42 forks of it when people complain about their pet feature getting snubbed.

 

Hence, the best direction to go from here is to hope that we eventually get a "open platform FPGA+SOC" design from Analogue, and anyone interested in cloning the platform design has to support the stock firmware. From -that- point, produce documentation for a barebones FPGA that works, and then put a bounty on releasing the source to the closed cores. That way people can either support the core developer (kevtris) to release that core, or they can port other cores themselves.

 

For now, just hope that Analogue sees value in documenting how to produce your own FPGA core for the Analogue NT Mini and Super NT. At least that leaves open a window for using the Cyclone V in it for other FPGA consoles. The Cyclone V won't be around forever, and at that point open sourcing the cores would be inconsequential.

I see a big problem between open software and open hardware. With software, reproducing the software has almost zero costs. With hardware, you have to make a large monetary investment in getting hardware made, tested, programmed and distributed. The Mist project is a great example of what happens when you open source your hardware- other people come along and undercut your manufacturing and you're left holding the bag with inventory you can't sell.

 

So now you're out $10K, 20K, 50K or more because someone's undercutting your hardware prices by a large margin using cheaper manufacturing, not having to obey certain local laws, etc. Sure some people will still buy one from you because they want to support the project or whatever, but the majority of people will buy based on price. I can't really blame people for going with the cheapest option possible, but then they come to you for all their support needs too.

 

This forum post about "The last MIST" lays this problem out fairly well.

 

http://atari-forum.com/viewtopic.php?t=32998

 

 

Then came the time where only the genuine MIST existed. Somewhat later people started to copy it. The first imho were some people from spain. They actually asked whether they could produce a few of them for their friends. No problem. Then those friends became more friends. And these friends needed help, asked for support, wanted new cores. Guess where they got their support? But that was ok. And sure these devices were cheaper. Why? The cloners didn't have to build prototypes. They didn't have to find and supply people supporting the core development. They didn't have to build a metal case to pass CE regulations. They didn't have to pay for WEEE or care for electronic waste laws. So yes, the result was much cheaper. And all these clones work that way. I haven't ever seen a clone myself nor have ever been offered one. We were just asked to support them, anyway. But that's ok. We knew from the beginning that this would happen someday. But we handled it differently ourselves when we started the MIST. That was part of the idea behind MIST. We wanted to be fair to those who's work we re-used and we wanted to make sure we obeyed the laws. But we simply cannot compete with the clones anymore.

 

I am not against open software or hardware, but the reality of the situation is you cannot manufacture open hardware and expect to make the money back or heaven forbid, make a profit off your work. When I was 20 years old I might've been able to afford to work for free (or a loss) for months or years on end, but these days I have a lot more responsibilities and have to pay for food, shelter, etc. I have to make money in order to survive and I don't think this would be possible by open sourcing works that can actually make a profit.

 

Some of that profit generally is generally plowed back into my projects, too- I can afford to pay thousands of dollars for an HDMI analyzer, or an oscilloscope, or buy dozens of $50-100+ games off ebay to make sure my compatibility is high. If I was not making anything off my projects, then there's no real impetus to fix it once I wrote it, or feel like I am obligated to provide a good product. "eh, I released it free, fix it yourself" doesn't ring very true if someone paid for the hardware and got some bum firmware/core and no updates other than "you have the source, fix it yourself!"

 

In regards to your comment about "producing documentation" for an open implementation of say, an nt mini, producing (and supporting!) such things has a very real and large cost. That effort could be spent on documenting everything for no money at all (and in fact negative money as the Mist guy found out needing to support it) or the effort could be used to make more new stuff. I am as altruistic as the next person, but I have to eat too, and being able to live by writing FPGA cores and making FPGA hardware has a real attraction to me. I respect those that wish to open source their hardware/software and all the more power to them.

 

Being able to produce a really nice "experience" if you will around the FPGA cores has a real value I think too- the nt mini and super nt both have a very nice enclosure, you can plug it in out of the box and it "just works" and looks good while doing it. That all takes money to make happen, and without it you'd be stuck with PCB-only with maybe some kind of home made enclosure. Not that there is a problem with this (I have made many home made enclosures) but there is just something special to me having a fully custom injection molded enclosure and all the trimmings.

 

As for the cyclone V not being around forever, this is true but I will most likely be making FPGA videogame systems for a long time to come. I have already brought my NES core through the cyclone 1, 3, and now 5 on the nt mini. I am not going to abandon it so long as people wish to use it and buy hardware. Every time someone buys a system containing my code, it gives me another little shot in the arm to keep developing new stuff and fixing the existing stuff. I don't think that driving force would be so strong if I was not getting paid and using my time away from things I want to do for unpaid support on a free project.

 

Even if I do not open source my core work, I *have* released multiple documents on how various videogame systems work that I have personally reverse engineered. These documents are valuable in their own right if you wish to know something about how those previously undocumented or underdocumented systems work. Pretty sure there will never be a homebrew scene for such fringe systems, but not at least it'd be theoretically possible. I am planning on releasing my SNES technical notes when I get a chance to clean it up, too. I found several previously unknown and underdocumented things during my research for the project.

[Guspaz]

I’m not so sure it has been discontinued. Hi-Def NES fell to the wayside during Super Nt production and it’s safe to assume that something similar happened to the Nt Mini, in addition to the complication with 8bitdo discontinuing the NES30.

 

Kevtris reassured us regarding the Hi-Def NES but we didn’t get any similar reassurances regarding the Nt Mini. This can be because they are still making a decision on how or whether to move forward with it. If they had already decided then I would expect them to take it off their product page where is still sits alongside the Super Nt (last I checked).

I can understand why they discontinued the NES30. I put a bunch of 8bitdo products on my store. They sold poorly. I dropped them to at-cost. I managed to move a bunch of them (including all the SNES30), but didn't sell a single NES30.

[Riptide]

 

Point 1: Hyperkin and Cybergadget both stole non-commercial software emulators. who is to say they won't steal FPGA cores and pass it off as their own too where it can't be probed.

 

I'm not talking about the business/financial aspects of this at all. My point is solely about preservation.

 

 

Point 2: Woosh, you've missed the point. Desktop Linux is simply not a thing. Linux Smartphones are not a thing (Android is not Linux, it's a fork, and exactly what I'm talking about when it comes to 42 flavors of not-invented-here), in Samsung has been trying to abandon Android so they could use their own smartphone OS and cut Google out. They already do that with the TV's.

 

I disagree with you regarding the potential profitability of open source software, but I didn't come to this thread to talk about that so I'll just end it there.

 

 

You might be able to recompile a Cyclone V core for a Cyclone 10, but you have to re-design everything else since those different boards are going to have different things connected to different pins, and different SoC or MC's and RAM configurations. So it's not as simple as recompiling something written in straight C and having it work on Windows, Linux and MacOS regardless of the CPU type. It's more like trying to recompile hardware drivers written for Windows to use on Linux. You can preserve the central core, but everything else it has to interface with in the OS to get to the hardware will be different.

Exactly.. thats why I used the word "port" and not "recompile." Glad we're in agreement.

 

 

As for the cyclone V not being around forever, this is true but I will most likely be making FPGA videogame systems for a long time to come. I have already brought my NES core through the cyclone 1, 3, and now 5 on the nt mini. I am not going to abandon it so long as people wish to use it and buy hardware. Every time someone buys a system containing my code, it gives me another little shot in the arm to keep developing new stuff and fixing the existing stuff. I don't think that driving force would be so strong if I was not getting paid and using my time away from things I want to do for unpaid support on a free project.

 

w00t! glad to hear that.

[kevtris]

 

Hence you need a standard hardware platform before you start advocating for opensourcing of cores, because that accomplishes two things:

1) It gives a standard hardware configuration that the current and future cores can be run on

2) It prevents a company like hyperkin from hijacking the the work done on the standard platform to pass it off as their own.

 

Like right now, some chinese knockoff is no doubt making counterfeit's that they will hack out the Analogue branding and pass off as their own using whatever firmware they can hide the branding on. Nothing puts $'s in the eyes of pirates faster than seeing 200%+ markups on eBay.

 

You might be able to recompile a Cyclone V core for a Cyclone 10, but you have to re-design everything else since those different boards are going to have different things connected to different pins, and different SoC or MC's and RAM configurations. So it's not as simple as recompiling something written in straight C and having it work on Windows, Linux and MacOS regardless of the CPU type. It's more like trying to recompile hardware drivers written for Windows to use on Linux. You can preserve the central core, but everything else it has to interface with in the OS to get to the hardware will be different.

 

It might be a little bit of "not invented here" talking, but I generally don't see the set of peripherals or design that I like in the existing FPGA videogame boards that exist. I know of about 5 or 6 of them at this point. Usually the peripheral set is lacking in some way. And since I like hardware there is something to designing my own that is very satisfying. The "Standard platform" that satisfies one set of devs might not satisfy others. All of the FPGA videogame boards up until the mister add-on has been composite, s-video, or RGB. The amount of RAM has been lacking, too. I know of the following projects. have I missed any?

 

* MCC-216

* FPGA Arcade "Replay" board.

* MIST

* Papilio FPGA board (not really marketed as an FPGA videogame board)

* A2601 (seems to be a one off project)

* MiSTER (dev board + add-ons)

 

The problem I have with the Mister project I have is it's a dev board, which means it is heavily subsidized. This is good for users, but the hardware side isn't very sustainable and you're at the whim of Altera (now Intel) when it comes to availability since it is most likely being sold at a loss. The entire board costs less than the FPGA on it. If it ever got some real traction and started selling thousands and thousands of units very quickly I suspect they would pull the plug or raise prices or put restrictions on who can buy them (i.e. potential industrial customers only).

 

As for knockoffs of the Analogue products, I don't think they would be a very juicy target at this time. The costs of production are way too high to justify a direct clone so there isn't enough profit there I don't think to go through the hassle. If it was simpler and cheaper to make then I would say there might be a worry but as it stands now, the worst you'd see would be an SoC or NES on a chip slapped into a copy of the nt mini enclosure or something.

[Riptide]

 

It might be a little bit of "not invented here" talking, but I generally don't see the set of peripherals or design that I like in the existing FPGA videogame boards that exist. I know of about 5 or 6 of them at this point. Usually the peripheral set is lacking in some way. And since I like hardware there is something to designing my own that is very satisfying. The "Standard platform" that satisfies one set of devs might not satisfy others. All of the FPGA videogame boards up until the mister add-on has been composite, s-video, or RGB. The amount of RAM has been lacking, too. I know of the following projects. have I missed any?

 

* MCC-216

* FPGA Arcade "Replay" board.

* MIST

* Papilio FPGA board (not really marketed as an FPGA videogame board)

* A2601 (seems to be a one off project)

* MiSTER (dev board + add-ons)

 

The problem I have with the Mister project I have is it's a dev board, which means it is heavily subsidized. This is good for users, but the hardware side isn't very sustainable and you're at the whim of Altera (now Intel) when it comes to availability since it is most likely being sold at a loss. The entire board costs less than the FPGA on it. If it ever got some real traction and started selling thousands and thousands of units very quickly I suspect they would pull the plug or raise prices or put restrictions on who can buy them (i.e. potential industrial customers only).

I think the Arcade Replay 2 has been announced, but other than that I can't think of one you missed. I do really wish the DE-10 Nano wasn't a subsidized dev board, as what it offers is awesome for the price (hence the subsidy). But you're right, they'd probably do a 180 if it started selling in numbers like the NT Mini or Super NT.

[Bmack36]

 

It might be a little bit of "not invented here" talking, but I generally don't see the set of peripherals or design that I like in the existing FPGA videogame boards that exist. I know of about 5 or 6 of them at this point. Usually the peripheral set is lacking in some way. And since I like hardware there is something to designing my own that is very satisfying. The "Standard platform" that satisfies one set of devs might not satisfy others. All of the FPGA videogame boards up until the mister add-on has been composite, s-video, or RGB. The amount of RAM has been lacking, too. I know of the following projects. have I missed any?

 

* MCC-216

* FPGA Arcade "Replay" board.

* MIST

* Papilio FPGA board (not really marketed as an FPGA videogame board)

* A2601 (seems to be a one off project)

* MiSTER (dev board + add-ons)

 

 

There is also:

ZX-UNO zxuno.speccy.org

ZX-Spectrum Next https://www.specnext.com/

Collectorvision game system is also in development http://atariage.com/forums/topic/265958-collectorvision-game-system/page-4?do=findComment&comment=3922459