FPGA Based Videogame System

[phoenixdownita]

Sometimes RTFM just seems appropriate

ntm_firmware_verJB1.9.zip\ODYSSEY2\Odyssey^2 Release Notes.txt

Odyssey^2 Core Release Notes
----------------------------


The Odyssey^2 core appears to be complete.  It supports keyboards via PS2 and an adapter
that plugs into the fami expansion port (if you wish to make an adapter, you can find the
schematic in the /SYSTEM/ directory.)

The Voice is also complete and fully functional if you wish to hear speech/sound effects
in the games that support it.

Note: some games (such as Frogger) play poorly with the voice being enabled all the time,
but most games will work fine with it enabled.  On Frogger it will constantly repeat an
allophone over and over.  This isn't a bug, but just a byproduct of how it works.  

This core needs a BIOS.  It should be named:

o2bios.bin    - Main 8048 BIOS (1K byte)

If you wish to use the voice, you need three files:

019.bin       - Speech ROM in the SP0256-019 speech chip (2K bytes)
sp128_03.bin  - Speech ROM resident in the speech module (16K bytes)
sp128_04.bin  - Speech ROM in Sid the Spellbinder (16K bytes)

Place them in the usual /BIOS/ directory.

There are no mappers, so all games should work out of the box, so to speak.

....

[simbin]

Kevtris - several people are reporting garbled voice with the only voice module files they can find. Mostly very old ones. Were you working with newer dumps? (Newer than 2009 and earlier)

 

 

Yow!

Not having luck with the voice module on Odyssey....

Got the bios files named right and turned it on in the core menu and all I hear is

"BRAAAAAAAA EEEEEEEEEEEERRRRRRRRRREE AAAAAAAAAAA"

 

Did anyone figure out what's going on with this?

[rezb1t]

Awesome to hear they're on the to-do list

 

If we're including rom hacks, then legend of link doesn't retain saves on the NT Mini, not sure if that's an issue with the ROM hack or the NT mini, though.

 

 

Now that I knew it should work I retried with Duck Hunt and alike. It really works.

 

It was just bad luck as I tried

- 3 in 1 Supergun

- Crime Busters

- Master Shooter

- Strike Wolf

 

all those didn't work! Strike Wolf glitches out completely...

"3 in 1 Supergun" and "Master Shooter" work on my Famicom AV. So I think they should also work on the Analogue NT mini... "Crime Busters" and "Strike Wolf" has mapper problems with the Everdrive, so I didn't came very far trying those on original hardware..

 

I think "Crime Busters" and "Strike Wolf" would be really worthwhile being fixed, as those are great games.

Odd that some light gun games don't work! Is it possible that the controller mode in the NT Mini main menu has something to do with it? Maybe try it in Fami Four Player mode!

[genfuyung]

Awesome to hear they're on the to-do list

 

If we're including rom hacks, then legend of link doesn't retain saves on the NT Mini, not sure if that's an issue with the ROM hack or the NT mini, though.

 

 

Odd that some light gun games don't work! Is it possible that the controller mode in the NT Mini main menu has something to do with it? Maybe try it in Fami Four Player mode!

Been wanting to pay legend of link forever and was super excited to get this system to play it. Pretty big bummer it wont save. I'm determined not to buy an insanely priced repro cart though.

[kevtris]

 

Now that I knew it should work I retried with Duck Hunt and alike. It really works.

 

It was just bad luck as I tried

- 3 in 1 Supergun

- Crime Busters

- Master Shooter

- Strike Wolf

 

all those didn't work! Strike Wolf glitches out completely...

"3 in 1 Supergun" and "Master Shooter" work on my Famicom AV. So I think they should also work on the Analogue NT mini... "Crime Busters" and "Strike Wolf" has mapper problems with the Everdrive, so I didn't came very far trying those on original hardware..

 

I think "Crime Busters" and "Strike Wolf" would be really worthwhile being fixed, as those are great games.

I will check them out. is it possible an issue with the light gun being on player 1 vs. player 2?

[scott64]

Sorry if this is a stupid question but would this FPGA be capable of an x86 PC core? Could it potentially run the DOS version of Doom?

Edit: I mean the Z3K not the NT mini.

Edited March 26, 2017 by scott64

[Sneakyturtleegg]

 

Sometimes RTFM just seems appropriate

 

ntm_firmware_verJB1.9.zip\ODYSSEY2\Odyssey^2 Release Notes.txt

 

Odyssey^2 Core Release Notes
----------------------------


The Odyssey^2 core appears to be complete.  It supports keyboards via PS2 and an adapter
that plugs into the fami expansion port (if you wish to make an adapter, you can find the
schematic in the /SYSTEM/ directory.)

The Voice is also complete and fully functional if you wish to hear speech/sound effects
in the games that support it.

Note: some games (such as Frogger) play poorly with the voice being enabled all the time,
but most games will work fine with it enabled.  On Frogger it will constantly repeat an
allophone over and over.  This isn't a bug, but just a byproduct of how it works.  

This core needs a BIOS.  It should be named:

o2bios.bin    - Main 8048 BIOS (1K byte)

If you wish to use the voice, you need three files:

019.bin       - Speech ROM in the SP0256-019 speech chip (2K bytes)
sp128_03.bin  - Speech ROM resident in the speech module (16K bytes)
sp128_04.bin  - Speech ROM in Sid the Spellbinder (16K bytes)

Place them in the usual /BIOS/ directory.

There are no mappers, so all games should work out of the box, so to speak.

....

 

I read and understand the readme file. I have the bios files. It doesn't answer my question. Maybe I wasn't clear. With emulation there are other sound files that are required, like .WAV. It wasn't addressed in the readme. That is why I posted my question. No need to be pretentious.

Edited March 26, 2017 by Sneakyturtleegg

[cacophony]

Been wanting to pay legend of link forever and was super excited to get this system to play it. Pretty big bummer it wont save. I'm determined not to buy an insanely priced repro cart though.

 

I'm excited about The Legend of Link too.

 

@kevtris, any idea why saved games don't persist?

[kevtris]

 

I read and understand the readme file. I have the bios files. It doesn't answer my question. Maybe I wasn't clear. With emulation there are other sound files that are required, like .WAV. It wasn't addressed in the readme. That is why I posted my question. No need to be pretentious.

no, it has a built in speech synthesizer, so you do not need the wav files. You just need the three ROM files. It will synthesize the stuff from those. The Intellivision core is the same way, when that is released.

[kevtris]

 

I'm excited about The Legend of Link too.

 

@kevtris, any idea why saved games don't persist?

I don't know why, but I will give it a look when I get on the NES core again. I put it in my todo so I will remember.

[Boojakascha]

I will check them out. is it possible an issue with the light gun being on player 1 vs. player 2?

 

That's really nice, thanks a lot. No, I had it in port 2. On all games I tried ports 1 and 2 with zappers, plus the back connector with "the gun" (black revolver sold in Japan). On several (but not all) I tried all 5 connectors (4+1). On my Famicom AV I have to plug the zapper into port 2 for all those games.

[Boojakascha]

Odd that some light gun games don't work! Is it possible that the controller mode in the NT Mini main menu has something to do with it? Maybe try it in Fami Four Player mode!

 

I was in "two controller ports mode" all the time. The suggestion is good, I will try it right away =).

[Kismet]

Sorry if this is a stupid question but would this FPGA be capable of an x86 PC core? Could it potentially run the DOS version of Doom?

 

Edit: I mean the Z3K not the NT mini.

 

Not likely. The DOS version of DOOM you were lucky if you could play it on a 386. A Pentium implementation requires around 1 million logic elements (for a chip that has 3.1 million transistors) while a 386 has 275,000 transistors thus puts that around maybe 100K LE. The 8088 is 3X larger than the Z80/6502 that the NT Mini pulls off. That is for the CPU alone.

 

Like a 49K FPGA, at most is going to do 16-bit systems (eg 68K, 8086) easily. Anything more difficult requires a larger FPGA, and quickly goes out of the $300 price range for the FPGA alone. But then again emulating 386+ hardware in a FPGA is a bit ridiculous since you have to emulate multiple VGA/SVGA cards and sound cards to support "everything"

 

The Z3K I think should aim for 8/16-bit consoles(NES, SNES, Megadrive, etc) and computers (eg MSX, C64, Apple II, Tandy 1000, Amiga 500, Atari ST) but save trying to hit 32-bit systems until there are FPGA's large/fast/cheap enough. Like when people say "support N64, PS1, 3DO" etc those are systems that one person alone could probably spend years trying to reverse engineer. Like IMO FPGA's will likely be built into high-end desktop/servers sometime soon, and that will bring the cost of entry down. But that's not right now. It might be soon though: https://www.nextplatform.com/2016/03/14/intel-marrying-fpga-beefy-broadwell-open-compute-future/

[Pixelboy]

The Z3K I think should aim for 8/16-bit consoles(NES, SNES, Megadrive, etc) and computers (eg MSX, C64, Apple II, Tandy 1000, Amiga 500, Atari ST) but save trying to hit 32-bit systems until there are FPGA's large/fast/cheap enough.

I'd be more than happy with just those 8-bit and 16-bit consoles and computers, but I would also like to play Game Boy Advance games on my HDMI television. It's the only 32-bit system I care about (not really into Wonderswan or NPGC). The rest (N64, PS1, etc.) I could live without, or I could just track down the original machines and games if I really wanted to play with them for any length of time.

[Wolf_]

The Z3K I think should aim for 8/16-bit consoles(NES, SNES, Megadrive, etc) and computers (eg MSX, C64, Apple II, Tandy 1000, Amiga 500, Atari ST) but save trying to hit 32-bit systems until there are FPGA's large/fast/cheap enough. Like when people say "support N64, PS1, 3DO" etc those are systems that one person alone could probably spend years trying to reverse engineer. Like IMO FPGA's will likely be built into high-end desktop/servers sometime soon, and that will bring the cost of entry down. But that's not right now. It might be soon though: https://www.nextplatform.com/2016/03/14/intel-marrying-fpga-beefy-broadwell-open-compute-future/

 

 

I'd be more than happy with just those 8-bit and 16-bit consoles and computers, but I would also like to play Game Boy Advance games on my HDMI television. It's the only 32-bit system I care about (not really into Wonderswan or NPGC). The rest (N64, PS1, etc.) I could live without, or I could just track down the original machines and games if I really wanted to play with them for any length of time.

If it doesn't cover at least the 32x and sega cd then it really wouldn't serve a point to me because I would still need a sega genesis in my setup to cover those systems. And if it is powerful enough to cover the mega cdx that means it should also be able to cover the saturn, n64, turboduo, cdi, snes, and neogeo.

 

Removing 7 consoles from my setup, of which the NeoGeo alone costs like $600 and the ever drive is slated at around $500 for would more than justify a thousand dollar price tag for me. My main concern is the inferior storage capacity. 64gb maximum is simply not going to cut it for cd based systems. Hopefully I could get a 1tb sd card formatted in fat-32 somehow but if not it is going to require internal or external hard drive support or even flash drive support.

[Kismet]

 

 

If it doesn't cover at least the 32x and sega cd then it really wouldn't serve a point to me because I would still need a sega genesis in my setup to cover those systems. And if it is powerful enough to cover the mega cdx that means it should also be able to cover the saturn, n64, turboduo, cdi, snes, and neogeo.

 

Removing 7 consoles from my setup, of which the NeoGeo alone costs like $600 and the ever drive is slated at around $500 for would more than justify a thousand dollar price tag for me. My main concern is the inferior storage capacity. 64gb maximum is simply not going to cut it for cd based systems. Hopefully I could get a 1tb sd card formatted in fat-32 somehow but if not it is going to require internal or external hard drive support or even flash drive support.

 

We've been over the storage capacity issue before. It simply is not going to happen until the patents expire for exFAT. The alternatives are also all terrible other than maybe UDF. The other option is using the Z3K as a middle man for another storage device. eg you plug the Z3K into the PC via USB, and the storage device into the Z3K, the Z3K presents a file system to Windows/MacOS like it would if it was Fat32, but you actually tell the Z3K to flip through the storage partitions to present to the computer, and basically it just shows up as 1 drive letter at a time, along with whatever is plugged into the cartridge slot.

 

This is why most SD cards top out at 32GB, because that's the largest supported size for fat32 without doing anything hacky, and most cameras and toys will be confused with larger SD cards.

Speaking of hackyness:

http://www.ridgecrop.demon.co.uk/index.htm?fat32format.htmshows it's possible to just keep using FAT32 up to 2TB on 512byte sector drives

"FAT32 is limited to 2^32 sectors. With 512 byte sectors that means a 2TB drive"

 

So logically with a 4096 byte sectors, that increases by 8, so 16TB is the maximum that FAT32 could ever be set to.

 

The reason you rarely see 32GB+ SDHC cards is because FAT32 is only allowed for sizes up to 32GB on SDHC cards. SDXC cards are exFAT, always, because that's the specification. USB storage devices might be a better option, but there is no way to ensure that you actually have a fast enough USB drive, unlike a SD card.

[Wolf_]

 

We've been over the storage capacity issue before. It simply is not going to happen until the patents expire for exFAT. The alternatives are also all terrible other than maybe UDF. The other option is using the Z3K as a middle man for another storage device. eg you plug the Z3K into the PC via USB, and the storage device into the Z3K, the Z3K presents a file system to Windows/MacOS like it would if it was Fat32, but you actually tell the Z3K to flip through the storage partitions to present to the computer, and basically it just shows up as 1 drive letter at a time, along with whatever is plugged into the cartridge slot.

 

This is why most SD cards top out at 32GB, because that's the largest supported size for fat32 without doing anything hacky, and most cameras and toys will be confused with larger SD cards.

Speaking of hackyness:

http://www.ridgecrop.demon.co.uk/index.htm?fat32format.htmshows it's possible to just keep using FAT32 up to 2TB on 512byte sector drives

"FAT32 is limited to 2^32 sectors. With 512 byte sectors that means a 2TB drive"

 

So logically with a 4096 byte sectors, that increases by 8, so 16TB is the maximum that FAT32 could ever be set to.

 

The reason you rarely see 32GB+ SDHC cards is because FAT32 is only allowed for sizes up to 32GB on SDHC cards. SDXC cards are exFAT, always, because that's the specification. USB storage devices might be a better option, but there is no way to ensure that you actually have a fast enough USB drive, unlike a SD card.

We have been over this, but that doesn't change the fact that it still needs to be fixed. I'll invest in a 1 or 2tb sd card and see if I can get it formatted in fat32 then. Hopefully there is a program out there that is designed to address this flaw. If this works it would mean support for complete libraries up to the wii, ps2, and xbox era.

[+grips03]

Does Odyssey 2 support include G7400 ?

 

G7400 is Europe model that has some additional graphic capability.

[Boojakascha]

Is it possible that the controller mode in the NT Mini main menu has something to do with it? Maybe try it in Fami Four Player mode!

 

I am done testing. It has nothing to do with it. But thanks a lot for the suggestion =)

Edited March 26, 2017 by Boojakascha

[Keatah]

 

Not likely. The DOS version of DOOM you were lucky if you could play it on a 386. A Pentium implementation requires around 1 million logic elements (for a chip that has 3.1 million transistors) while a 386 has 275,000 transistors thus puts that around maybe 100K LE. The 8088 is 3X larger than the Z80/6502 that the NT Mini pulls off. That is for the CPU alone.

 

Like a 49K FPGA, at most is going to do 16-bit systems (eg 68K, 8086) easily. Anything more difficult requires a larger FPGA, and quickly goes out of the $300 price range for the FPGA alone. But then again emulating 386+ hardware in a FPGA is a bit ridiculous since you have to emulate multiple VGA/SVGA cards and sound cards to support "everything"

 

The Z3K I think should aim for 8/16-bit consoles(NES, SNES, Megadrive, etc) and computers (eg MSX, C64, Apple II, Tandy 1000, Amiga 500, Atari ST) but save trying to hit 32-bit systems until there are FPGA's large/fast/cheap enough. Like when people say "support N64, PS1, 3DO" etc those are systems that one person alone could probably spend years trying to reverse engineer. Like IMO FPGA's will likely be built into high-end desktop/servers sometime soon, and that will bring the cost of entry down. But that's not right now. It might be soon though: https://www.nextplatform.com/2016/03/14/intel-marrying-fpga-beefy-broadwell-open-compute-future/

 

I never played doom (myself personally) on anything less than a 486 DX2/50. But I heard over and over again a 386-40 would handle it good enough.

 

Intel has been including FPGA on their high-end server chips for a year or two now. It would be nice to see this trickle down. Since FPGA technology is so esoteric to the general public, whom doesn't care about such things anyways, it will take a big push from intel to get this going. And then many more years before developers figure out what to do with it.

 

To see FPGA really take off in the classic gaming field, I think new projects are going to need a development team instead of one person. MAME has been going with a team of hundreds, and Stella now has a small group redoing the TIA.

[Kismet]

 

I never played doom (myself personally) on anything less than a 486 DX2/50. But I heard over and over again a 386-40 would handle it good enough.

 

Intel has been including FPGA on their high-end server chips for a year or two now. It would be nice to see this trickle down. Since FPGA technology is so esoteric to the general public, whom doesn't care about such things anyways, it will take a big push from intel to get this going. And then many more years before developers figure out what to do with it.

 

To see FPGA really take off in the classic gaming field, I think new projects are going to need a development team instead of one person. MAME has been going with a team of hundreds, and Stella now has a small group redoing the TIA.

 

I'd rather have the onboard FPGA than the useless intel iGPU that most people turn off anyway in the high end parts.

[Keatah]

I'd rather have the onboard FPGA than the useless intel iGPU that most people turn off anyway in the high end parts.

 

Really? And FPGA is rather useless in the consumer space unless software has been written. And I don't see that happening for another 5 years easy. That's a given we all know. At least the IGPU is doing something useful, especially in power conscious configurations.

[Kismet]

 

Really? And FPGA is rather useless in the consumer space unless software has been written. And I don't see that happening for another 5 years easy. That's a given we all know. At least the IGPU is doing something useful, especially in power conscious configurations.

 

No, a FPGA is completely useful if it's programmed to act as a h.265 decoder/encoder instead of baking Quicksync and a useless GPU into the CPU. In an i3 part desktop part or a laptop, the iGPU serves a purpose for a cheap system, but if you've looked at the iGPU's over time, you'd notice that they barely have the performance of a $50 GPU let alone a $100 one, and only the laptops ever get the Iris Pro parts that actually have decent performance.

 

The server parts do not have the iGPU part to begin with, that's why they've been coming with 8 cores.

[Flangle]

Did anyone figure out what's going on with this?

We have all RTFM, *CERTAIN PERSON.

 

It doesn't change the fact that the most available O2 bioses (biosis? Bios's?) for the voice module aren't working on at least 4 NT's i'm aware of. I suspect that there are far more recent or better dumps that aren't easily found and downloaded. All the ones I've found are very old. It's not a huge deal since the voice games aren't that great, but still...i'm pretty happy to have the non-voice games.

 

Thanks, Kevtris!

Edited March 26, 2017 by Flangle

[Smoke Monster]

Here are the three Odyssey2 speech bios for anyone searching. They're the best ones to use with the NT Mini. They'll also be available in the upcoming O2 NT Pack that I'll be releasing.