FPGA Based Videogame System

[Atariboy]

NT is whatever you want it to be, since Analogue has never said one way or another what it means.

[Fafner]

NT is whatever you want it to be, since Analogue has never said one way or another what it means.

The Analogue Nocturnal Thesaurus mini

[NE146]

MAGA NT?

[Reaperman]

Have the Super Powerpak carts been fixed? I thought I heard that here. Mine keeps going on about invalid header and dumps a log, or just blackscreens the whole system. Is there a setting to flip, or am I on the wrong combination of cart/snt firmware?

 

More info about setup:

 

 

Super NT firmware version: JB 6.5

Super Powerpak version: boot rom 1.02, cart rom 1.05, w/ dsp-1 installed

 

Error text for a rom from log.txt

(this is from a hacked star ocean, but they all do similar)

 

No Internal Header Found

Trying again with fixed header

MAP4A TYP4A ROM4A SRM4A RST384A No $FFC0 Header

MAP00 TYP9E ROM10 SRM00 RST68A0 No $7FC0 header

No Internal Header Found

Check the compatibility list

 

(Not too informational, and it works on real hardware.)

 

 

[Atariboy]

Something about an extended startup or the like has to be selected for the Super Powerpak to work correctly. I forget the exact wording of the option on my unit.

[cacophony]

Have the Super Powerpak carts been fixed? I thought I heard that here. Mine keeps going on about invalid header and dumps a log, or just blackscreens the whole system. Is there a setting to flip, or am I on the wrong combination of cart/snt firmware?

 

More info about setup:

 

 

Super NT firmware version: JB 6.5

Super Powerpak version: boot rom 1.02, cart rom 1.05, w/ dsp-1 installed

 

Error text for a rom from log.txt

(this is from a hacked star ocean, but they all do similar)

 

No Internal Header Found

Trying again with fixed header

MAP4A TYP4A ROM4A SRM4A RST384A No $FFC0 Header

MAP00 TYP9E ROM10 SRM00 RST68A0 No $7FC0 header

No Internal Header Found

Check the compatibility list

 

(Not too informational, and it works on real hardware.)

 

 

Yep, you need to check the "use launch system timing" box under the hardware menu

Edited March 13, 2018 by cacophony

[Reaperman]

Thanks, that fixed me

Does there happen to be any kind of down side to leaving that on all the time?

[Andromeda Stardust]

Thanks, that fixed me

Does there happen to be any kind of down side to leaving that on all the time?

Not that I'm aware. I leave it on for the everdrive and game genie.

[phoenixdownita]

Got my black Super Nt today ... the thing is tiny but freakishly heavy .. I wonder how much of that is due to a good old heat sink mounted on the bottom.

Other than that I have to both praise and scoff at the high quality packaging/cabling.

I could have done with a simple cardboard box (like the consoles of old you know) and non-branded textured cables/charger but assuming all of that doesn't really add much to the final price I can appreciate the faux deluxe feeling to it (my opinion, you don't have to agree), I'm happy the console itself does not have the soft/rubbery feeling of the box/charger and it looks nice.

 

Interestingly my Super Nt does not detect my TV as capable of 1080p50 which works just fine on the XRGB mini and other el-cheapo converters ... kind of a bummer for PAL 50Hz games as that would have been an exact match even if to be fair I've never bothered to figure out if my panel can actually support the frequency natively or it ends up buffering/interpolating as it sees fit ... problem for another day. I normally use it via XRGB mini to play a PAL CD32 and a PAL GX4000.

 

All in all I am satisfied with the purchase and I think I would recommend it to any retro gamer wanting to play SNES on HDMI displays to the best possible quality. I think it is better than an XRGB mini + RGB SNES Jr in terms of sharpness and general color vibrancy (even if it may not be a prefect chromatic match yet) and the setup is obviously a breeze and as hassle free as possible.

 

Good job kevtris, chapeau !!!

[Andromeda Stardust]

Mine's na purple. Shame it seems they're only stocking the black model for the forseeable future.

 

Yeah I was surprised too to see the analogue logo molded into the cables and charging plug. You can also force the console into 50hz mode in settings. My TCL 4k tv syncs to it well, but I've little use for playing PAL games aside from testing out the jailbreak.

 

I'm kind of glad they shaved off $200 by not milling it out of solid aircraft grade aluminum.

[phoenixdownita]

....

 

I'm kind of glad they shaved off $200 by not milling it out of solid aircraft grade aluminum.

Preaching to the choir here, if they can save something more in the packaging/cabling and make it even more affordable all the better.

 

QQ what do you guys do with the Super Turrican card box that comes with the Super Nt in that black envelope? (maybe it was only black for me, not sure)

I really don't care for that kind of things and personally consider it an attaboy reward that just adds to the total cost for no real good reason. At the same time I do understand if people dig it. Just curious what to do with it .... Dust-collector on a shelf? Let it in the envelope? Trash it?

For now mine is back in the black envelope it came in and likely it won't see the light of day again until I pass my unit onto someone else .... what a waste of trees .... sorry again only my opinion, I do not intend to offend people that appreciate that sort of thing. I would have appreciated the option to NOT getting it and save say 2 bucks (no, I am not that cheap but I don't have a use for it).

[Andromeda Stardust]

Maybe I would appreciate the box more if it came with an actual game. I dig the idea of the digital pack in but I suck at run-n-gunners. I was always more of a SHMUP fan. Anyway the box is sitting on my shelf. I discarded the empty envelope like a dumbass, which would make the naked preassembled box a hard sell to collectors. And yeah all the envelopes are black regardless of console color. If anyone ever figures a way to dump the pack in game, the dx box would be a nice value addon for repro colldctors.

[phoenixdownita]

Maybe I would appreciate the box more if it came with an actual game. I dig the idea of a pack in but I suck at run-n-gunners. I was always more of a SHMUP fan.

It did, just in digital only form so why couldn't the box also be digital only (you know as in box art in a submenu about the Turrican games).

 

I wonder if the 8MB+ of firmware also includes the 2 Turrican games ROMS or if those are somewhere else? The Nt Mini fw clocked in at 4MB+ with no games I know of so maybe the Super Nt fw does not include the games (Super Turrican Director's cut at 6Mbits + Super Turrican 2 at 16 Mbits do add ~ 3MBytes total so maybe they are in the firmware)

[Forsaken]

These are retro games. What if we don't want "modern sensibilities?" 35 years from now when I'm 70+ years old, I'll have a seziure playing super mario rpg boss fight with crulex, on a still working tube tv, and die a happy man...

 

On a more serious note, maybe kevtris could add composite "dot crawl" to his scanline filters like Nintendo did with the classic minis!

Avoiding blinky graphics because a tiny portion of the population is sensitive to that is like getting rid of peanuts because some people are allergic to them.

[Kismet]

Preaching to the choir here, if they can save something more in the packaging/cabling and make it even more affordable all the better.

 

QQ what do you guys do with the Super Turrican card box that comes with the Super Nt in that black envelope? o offend people that appreciate that sort of thing. I would have appreciated the option to NOT getting it and save say 2 bucks (no, I am not that cheap but I don't have a use for it).

 

I just put the box together and then stuck it on a shelf behind some other stuff. I mean in all seriousness, the point of the box is for people who collect the games, including the boxes. I'm not one of those (In fact I used to keep the boxes, and then one day someone put them all in the recycling bin.) I still have my Mario Paint box because it has the game, mouse and mousepad in it.

 

As for how Analogue saved money, nah. The problem was what they used was incredibly unnecessary. Sure, plastic isn't as nice to feel, but name one consume electronics device you buy today that uses milled aluminum.

 

If anything, SECC (Steel) or Aluminum like in how computer chassis are put together would have made more sense and added probably only $20. Just that's more design work. Plastic costs pennies, and can be any shape you want it, even done on a 3D printer, which you can't do with metal, yet. Like given the shape, if someone really wanted to, they could fit it inside their original SNES. Not that the SNES plastic or design was good to begin with. But if someone seriously didn't like the Analogue design they can probably do that, or 3D print something to fit. I'm waiting for the day we can just 3d-print things out of diamond (pure carbon) or carbon-nanotubes, and that stuff will be basically indestructible to environmental concerns.

[Keatah]

If anything, SECC (Steel) or Aluminum like in how computer chassis are put together would have made more sense and added probably only $20. Just that's more design work. Plastic costs pennies, and can be any shape you want it, even done on a 3D printer, which you can't do with metal, yet.

 

3D printing with metals has been around for years. Even SpaceX uses it for engine parts. And recently a complete nozzle and combustion chamber was done. GE has been using in their 90 series aircraft engines for like forever. And there's plenty of mainstream consumer uses like in medical and dental and jewelry. New uses are discovered daily.

[kwnage]

 

Give it a rest, the NT means New Tech.

 

Mega NT, Giga NT, BigAssNT, don't care.

 

We keep calling it Mega, because the original marketing for the Mega Drive/Sega Genesis used "Mega".

 

Here, I'll even make it more pedantic.

 

http://www.nanotech-now.com/metric-prefix-table.htm

 

Mega means "one million", or 10^6

Giga means "one billion", or 10^9

 

Super isn't on that scale.

You're missing the point. It's not about the prefix. That could be anything.

 

Oh and it's not even NT, the t is lower case. It's certainly a hint at Nintendo. You're confusing it with a Microsoft OS.

[spoonman]

Do we have evidence that Nintendo changed the emulator itself to prevent seizures? I was under the impression that they changed the ROMs to display more muted colors when the screen flashes. Like the fire attacks in Super Mario RPG just flash red/black instead of the whole color gamut of black/red/orange/yellow/white. Also the lightning attacks are different as well. I believe you can find minor edits in some of the ROMs dumped from Virtual Console. Definitely the attacks in Super Mario RPG really pop more playing on original hardware.

 

In fact we have no actual way of knowing that the final release of Star Fox 2 wasn't tampered with the same treatment?

Yes.

Using Hakchi with the command line switch "-fp 0" will completely remove these anti-epilepsy measures.

 

In addition, if you want scanlines without the ugly blurry "CRT" effect you can add "-filter 2 -magfilter 3 -fp 0"

[CodyWayne]

With regards to the proposed Mega NT, here's my thoughts:

 

• If it just has an MD cart slot, and costs roughly the same as a Super NT, then I'm fine with it. It'll undoubtedly get jailbroken sooner or later, which means we could probably play Master System games via the SD slot, and if not we could still play them via a Mega Everdrive, so a separate Master System cart slot just seems like an unnecessary complexity and cost, but that's just me. I don't have a big MS collection, so not being able to use MS carts wouldn't be a deal breaker for me.
• 32x support would be cool, but not a make or break feature for me
• Sega-CD support would be cool, but here's how I think it should work: Reverse engineer the Sega-CD and have a Sega-CD FPGA core built-in, but don't add an optical drive. Just add the ability to put Sega-CD images on an SD card and play them that way. I say this because adding moving parts just adds a failure point and added cost to the system. Keep everything solid state. With these old optical based consoles, people are pulling out their optical drives in droves and swapping them out with solid state alternatives. The Rhea, Phoebe, GD-Emu, USB-GD-Rom, and PSIO all have a much higher demand than supply right now. Running disc images off an SD card is a fair compromise, a big cost saving measure, more convenient, and more stable. If support for Sega-CD games is going to be added, then that's the most practical way to do it. That's just my take. I'm sure there are others that vehemently disagree and absolutely must play their Sega-CD games with the original media. Fine. We'll agree to disagree.

[F34R]

Got my black Super Nt today ... the thing is tiny but freakishly heavy .. I wonder how much of that is due to a good old heat sink mounted on the bottom.

Other than that I have to both praise and scoff at the high quality packaging/cabling.

I could have done with a simple cardboard box (like the consoles of old you know) and non-branded textured cables/charger but assuming all of that doesn't really add much to the final price I can appreciate the faux deluxe feeling to it (my opinion, you don't have to agree), I'm happy the console itself does not have the soft/rubbery feeling of the box/charger and it looks nice.

 

Interestingly my Super Nt does not detect my TV as capable of 1080p50 which works just fine on the XRGB mini and other el-cheapo converters ... kind of a bummer for PAL 50Hz games as that would have been an exact match even if to be fair I've never bothered to figure out if my panel can actually support the frequency natively or it ends up buffering/interpolating as it sees fit ... problem for another day. I normally use it via XRGB mini to play a PAL CD32 and a PAL GX4000.

 

All in all I am satisfied with the purchase and I think I would recommend it to any retro gamer wanting to play SNES on HDMI displays to the best possible quality. I think it is better than an XRGB mini + RGB SNES Jr in terms of sharpness and general color vibrancy (even if it may not be a prefect chromatic match yet) and the setup is obviously a breeze and as hassle free as possible.

 

Good job kevtris, chapeau !!!

I left the envelope unopened. I might sell it to a collector one day, maybe not; not sure yet.

[Kismet]

You're missing the point. It's not about the prefix. That could be anything.

 

Oh and it's not even NT, the t is lower case. It's certainly a hint at Nintendo. You're confusing it with a Microsoft OS.

 

Nah. My poke as at the one or two people in this thread that keep going "NT means Nintendo", when it's never been stated as such, and never will. Where as everyone in the thread when they talk about the NT, use NT, uppercase. NT means "New Technology", and the Zeppelin company also uses "NT" to mean New Tech" https://zeppelin-nt.de/en/homepage.html

 

There's others as well. If you want to be ridiculous,

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NT

 

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/NT

 

None of these say Nintendo, and someone who sees "NT" all caps, is going to make the association to either Windows NT or Zeppelin NT, both which mean "New Technology"

 

Anyways, just give it a rest, we don't need someone every three pages jumping in and trying to hijack the discussion on what "NT" is. For all intents, the people in this thread have decided that "Mega NT" is the theoretical Sega Genesis aka Mega Drive that Analogue would put out. Analogue MD or Analogue MS or Analogue SG doesn't sound nearly as cool. It's also not cool to step on a trademark, so MD, MS, and SG would likely not happen anyway. If anything the best name is probably the Analogue MegaMega if it has slots for more than just the MD cards.

[kwnage]

Ugh. We'll see.

Edited March 13, 2018 by kwnage

[RetrogamerX]

Shame it seems they're only stocking the black model for the forseeable future.

 

 

Really? I was hoping to see more Super Famicom Super NT models available? Or even a Nt mini plastic model with the new logo that's cheaper? Guess Analogue doesn't like money

Edited March 13, 2018 by RetrogamerX

[Mattelot]

I don't mean to say it's all bad or anything. It only gets bad when it's in excess, or creates gotta-have buying frenzies and crazy eBay prices.

 

Collectors editions I think are alright and worth money is when you pay more and get more. Like "includes a strategy guide" or extra levels or extra discs in a DVD package. Stuff not found elsewhere. Just different colors on their own isn't enough.

 

---

 

Like, I'm NOT spending an extra $199.00 for a glowing pinstripe on a new PC. Fuck that, I'll paint a red stripe on it myself for $3.

 

In all honesty, I don't really mind many Collector's Editions. I sometimes hang my head in shame for buying the FFXV Ultimate Collector's Edition for $270 (especially when it did NOT include the season pass). I do not like ones that include digital content that you cannot obtain by any other means. For example, many contain digital content that (if normal edition players wanted to...) could be bought individually later.

 

Would you buy this collector's edition?... http://www.gamespot.com/articles/386-000-dying-light-special-edition-announced/1100-6425493/

Edited March 13, 2018 by Mattelot

[mr_me]

 

Give it a rest, the NT means New Tech.

 

...

What does Analogue Nt mean. Analogue could refer to analog outputs but a big feature is digital hdmi. From the word analogy analogue means comparable. Comparable to the old nintendo. Analogue Nt meaning comparable to nintendo makes more sense than comparable to new technology. Of course you'd have to ask the people at Analogue.

 

---------

And it could be possible, with some skill and effort, to take an Nt mini core and reverse it to VHDL and then retarget it to a new FPGA. I think it would take lots of skill and effort. It would be easier to take an opensource vhdl nes core and target it to the supernt. There would still be some reverse engineering work to make it happen.

Edited March 13, 2018 by mr_me