FPGA Based Videogame System

[StrangerInUsAll]

6 hours ago, Austin said:

You're not wrong. Here's to hoping more cores will be added to the DUO. I for one would love, say, a Neo-Geo CD core, considering it has a disc drive and supports the 8bitdo Neo-Geo controllers.

The Nt Mini and Mega SG only got cores added which Kevtris already made, I think getting a brand new core would be probably pushing it.

[Tanooki]

That is what they meant eh I get it now.  I picked up the GG adapter off a third party on ebay since they decided to bundle it with 2 useless pieces to run Japanese stuff.  I've used it a couple times so far and the performance is pretty nice though unless I missed something it doesn't seem to have much in the way of tweaking the display or anything like the primary boot(genesis/md) does.

[NE146]

13 hours ago, Tanooki said:

Huh the Mega got cores eh?  I never bothered to look into it

There's zero reason really to not put the Mega SG jailbreak on as it's 100% additional functionality with zero negatives. Especially loading ROMs from the SD Card slot for Genesis, SMS, GG,  SG-1000, and Colecovision etc. 
 

[Tanooki]

I just don't have much time as it is, so I just use the carts I have.  I have an everdrive that largely for every system stays in the box unless it's convenient otherwise.  If they decide to add some core to it that'll fire off 32X games from the mega everdrive cart or from an SD card in the slot sign me up.

[NE146]

It's zero difference from the standard firmware update where it's literally copying a tiny file onto the SD card then turning the Mega SG on.. and boom.  But you do you

[Austin]

1 hour ago, Tanooki said:

I just don't have much time as it is, so I just use the carts I have.  I have an everdrive that largely for every system stays in the box unless it's convenient otherwise.  If they decide to add some core to it that'll fire off 32X games from the mega everdrive cart or from an SD card in the slot sign me up.

Given how much you post on these forums.. That’s a bullshit excuse. It takes 60 seconds to update the firmware.

 

🤣

 

 

[Tanooki]

6 hours ago, Austin said:

Given how much you post on these forums.. That’s a bullshit excuse. It takes 60 seconds to update the firmware.

 

🤣

 

 

It had nothing to do with lack of time to update firmware, it's the lack of time to really dig into the games anymore since last August as I'm working 60hrs now.  The little time I would put into it, having less variety is a plus as I can focus on what I've got or add largely for Famicom for some time now.  So yeah, if the everdrive added the ability to add such a thing and I could copy that onto the card I'd make time for it, but beyond that I really dont have the time to care when I can just use this computer and a gamepad (xbox360 one likely) and an emulator at that rate.  I browse here after a nightly shower and if this late after the second job, or I take a mental vacation at job 1 and check in on the clock.

 

I don't have a use for coleco and don't care about sg-1000.  My everdrive already has the SMS and GG set on it for the Genesis, and another ED I have for my GG has the GG set on that too, and I have the mega SG GG adapter so that's covered there as well.  So no, it's not some bullshit excuse, as it sits, it has no value so it's not worth my time.

[NE146]

I don't know man.. but my Mega SG has an Everdrive packed to the gills, and it also has an SD card packed to the gills so it's 100% redundancy.. But that said, if I ever come around to playing Genesis, I play it on the Pocket (or Switch).  

Edited January 17 by NE146

[Tanooki]

10 hours ago, NE146 said:

I don't know man.. but my Mega SG has an Everdrive packed to the gills, and it also has an SD card packed to the gills so it's 100% redundancy.. But that said, if I ever come around to playing Genesis, I play it on the Pocket (or Switch).  

To be fair sometimes I question getting the kit, it mostly is for pet projects people do that get distributed at this rate.  I have around 50 Genesis/MD carts and a modern multi as well(which also now is little used compared to when I was around 10 or less games) so I really just use what I own as it's plenty.

[Austin]

Fired up the DUO a couple times over the last few weeks. I for the life of me cannot get the library trick to work (to force the Everdrive into functioning on the unit). It worked a month ago, but no dice now. 😔

[RobDangerous]

Duo jailbreak is out: https://github.com/analoguejb/Analogue-Duo-JB

[Reaperman]

6 hours ago, RobDangerous said:

Duo jailbreak is out: https://github.com/analoguejb/Analogue-Duo-JB

And here I had stuff to do this weekend.

Well, now that's all out the window 😆

Supah Grafx time.

[Razzie.P]

24 minutes ago, Reaperman said:

And here I had stuff to do this weekend.

Well, now that's all out the window 😆

Supah Grafx time.

Yeah, same here I think

 

[mutterminder]

On 2/23/2024 at 11:25 AM, RobDangerous said:

Duo jailbreak is out: https://github.com/analoguejb/Analogue-Duo-JB

I'm not seeing it there, all I can get is the readme.md file. In fact that is the only thing in any of the Jailbreak files.

 

Edited March 22 by mutterminder

[Tanooki]

So you're saying that right there on the site that duo_firmware_verJB0.9.zip doesn't exist?

 

 

 

[phoenixdownita]

1 hour ago, mutterminder said:

I'm not seeing it there, all I can get is the readme.md file. In fact that is the only thing in any of the Jailbreak files.

 

Right hand side, click on Releases” and then download.

Edited March 22 by phoenixdownita

[mutterminder]

1 hour ago, phoenixdownita said:

Right hand side, click on Releases” and then download.

Thanks.  I always click on the "Code" box and download the zip file.  I didn't even notice that "Releases" was a hot link.

[+-^CrossBow^-]

On 2/23/2024 at 1:25 PM, RobDangerous said:

Duo jailbreak is out: https://github.com/analoguejb/Analogue-Duo-JB

I messed with this a bit but ran into some issues mainly with my CD games being played from the SDcard. They load up and work, but after about 20min in or so, the audio will suddenly start to play with a bad stutter and the entire game comes to a crawl while it does this. It will sometime recover from this and start to play normally again. But in all cases, once this happens, then the game will soft lock and the only option at that point is to end the game through the A-DUO menu. 

 

So I really hope a jailbreak with the save states is able to get released as that would at least provide a work around for this since folks could save state as they play and not have to restart from the beginning after getting a lot of progress through a game.

 

[cacophony]

On 3/27/2024 at 7:48 AM, -^CrossBow^- said:

I messed with this a bit but ran into some issues mainly with my CD games being played from the SDcard. They load up and work, but after about 20min in or so, the audio will suddenly start to play with a bad stutter and the entire game comes to a crawl while it does this. It will sometime recover from this and start to play normally again. But in all cases, once this happens, then the game will soft lock and the only option at that point is to end the game through the A-DUO menu. 

 

So I really hope a jailbreak with the save states is able to get released as that would at least provide a work around for this since folks could save state as they play and not have to restart from the beginning after getting a lot of progress through a game.

 

 

You should file a bug on that CD issue: https://github.com/analoguejb/Analogue-Duo-JB/issues

[adamchevy]

I’ve enjoyed the Cyclone V FPGA products like Mister and Analogue consoles over the past 4-5 years. I am wondering if the next evolution of FPGA is coming or on the Horizon? Does anyone have any info on what’s next for FPGA as far as gaming is concerned? 

Edited October 10 by adamchevy

[Osgeld]

FPGA has to evolve, IMO it was snake oil to begin with, and FPGA development hasn't grown that much as everyone has pretty much evolved to "throw a processor at it" mostly ARM, at least in the general industry that is electronics. Again I never got into this overpromising witchcraft, when I can take a 10 year old phone with 8 2ghz cores and flick a N64 game to my tv over wifi its kind of moot 

[roots.genoa]

I think the main problem right now is that the FPGA technology still caters mostly to professionals, so the costs are quite high for 'powerful' chips. The DE10 Nano was clearly an anomaly (it used to be cheap because it was designed for students) and the MISTer community basically exploited a loophole. Analogue and especially Taki Udon made it a little more affordable, but it's still not enough for regular consumers... What would really change things is if a 'big' hardware manufacturer started to offer FPGA-based systems, but it's a typical catch-22 situation.

 

MARS was supposed to be the next big evolution but they're clearly struggling, and a lot of other projects like the Super SEGA are not serious at all unfortunately. And until big companies are involved, they will probably have to resort to crowdfunding to make things happen, and I don't think it would be a good thing...

[adamchevy]

16 hours ago, Osgeld said:

FPGA has to evolve, IMO it was snake oil to begin with, and FPGA development hasn't grown that much as everyone has pretty much evolved to "throw a processor at it" mostly ARM, at least in the general industry that is electronics. Again I never got into this overpromising witchcraft, when I can take a 10 year old phone with 8 2ghz cores and flick a N64 game to my tv over wifi its kind of moot 

I would be interested in your explanation on the snake oil/Witchcraft take on FPGA.  I recently have been wondering the same thing now that I have been using run ahead emulation.  

Edited October 10 by adamchevy

[Hwlngmad]

I know that Video Game Esoterica dropped a video regarding a potential MiSTer 2.  Though, I haven't watched it yet, so I don't know what all it covers.  However, I know that Taki Udon has a MiSTer clone that looks to be a winner and seemingly addresses the cost with MiSTers.  That being said, I don't know what the next step in FPGAs will be.  One can only hope that any newer FPGAs will bring even greater and better access to various systems whether it be arcades, consoles, handhelds, and computers.

[Osgeld]

On 10/10/2024 at 1:55 PM, adamchevy said:

I would be interested in your explanation on the snake oil/Witchcraft take on FPGA.  I recently have been wondering the same thing now that I have been using run ahead emulation.  

I mean it does what it says on the tin and people like kevtris has never oversold it, but its quite the expense and becomes a rabbit hole rather quickly and while it CAN have some advantages at the end of the day its down to whom is writing the software 

 

yes you are able though software to configure a array of gates in hardware to mimic the original hardware, its still not original hardware, just at worst an emulation of it or at best a simulation of it... which can also be done quite easily in the virtual realm on fairly basic computer hardware. I have had people argue with me about how its a perfect recreation down to the analog circuits, which is impossible considering its just a bunch of transistors in a matrix.

 

in 2015, when this post was created, I could kind of sort of understand the fascination as an average Joe wouldnt have a spare PC laying around that had enough horsepower to hit the more cycle accurate simulation side of things (without spending gobs of money on a 1337 gamer PC). Though at that point emulating game systems on commodity hardware was more than good enough for most people to enjoy. 

 

FPGA was the THING for about 25 maybe 30 years, but at this point in time its becoming quite the dinosaur, In this scenario its a very flexible part that was intended for gluing crap together (like its older siblings, CLPD, PAL and GAL) that's kind of hit the point of "why bother" in industry as you can pay a few extra pennies for a micro processor with everything you need embedded... its up there with PLC's in my pet peeve avenue, it was a cool tech that got exploited beyond its capabilities, but now its mostly dead and wont really expand.