Retroblox

[Keatah]

But how much lag is that going to introduce?

[godslabrat]

[Kismet]

It's trivial (not many LEs) to make the FPGA double the lines and output 480p. The problem is that technique isn't fully VGA compliant in many cases, as the sync frequency might be slightly out of VGA spec. HDMI is even less tolerant.

 

Kevtris' idea for the Z3K is to ship with an internal upscaler, but technically it's not much different to hooking an upscaler board to RGB out. Of course it's more convenient to have it all in one box, but the caveats regarding framebuffer and such still apply.

 

That said, if you buy yourself a 4K TV, getting an independent high quality upscaler is not much of a stretch if you really care about latency.

 

In most consoles cases, I think it's possible to detach the CPU and PPU (it's just PPU2 in the case of the SNES) and run it at a different clock speed. But the easiest fix is always to slightly under clock the NES and SNES to an even 60. Other consoles have issues too for example the Atari 2600 can output arbitrary resolutions, but doesn't even have composite or s-video connectors let alone RGB, so what does a FPGA 2600 output?

 

 

If I look at this http://archive.espec.ws/files/VESTELChassis2017MB26_SM.pdf(which is an European TV circa 2007) there's a block diagram showing essentially that the Analog inputs all go through a mixer and decoder stage, while HDMI inputs go through only a switch before going into the SVP-LX.

 

So the block diagram thus suggests that there are many more stages to an analog input than there is a digital one. Perhaps instead of trying to mod the console we should be trying to mod the TV.

[Andromeda Stardust]

It's trivial (not many LEs) to make the FPGA double the lines and output 480p. The problem is that technique isn't fully VGA compliant in many cases, as the sync frequency might be slightly out of VGA spec. HDMI is even less tolerant.

 

Kevtris' idea for the Z3K is to ship with an internal upscaler, but technically it's not much different to hooking an upscaler board to RGB out. Of course it's more convenient to have it all in one box, but the caveats regarding framebuffer and such still apply.

 

That said, if you buy yourself a 4K TV, getting an independent high quality upscaler is not much of a stretch if you really care about latency.

If you're gonna hook it to a modern display, why not use the HDMI port?

[Andromeda Stardust]

IMG_4905.PNG

 

I am detecting 120% bullshit here...

 

 

[Newsdee]

If you're gonna hook it to a modern display, why not use the HDMI port?

My point is that the circuitry to get to HDMI has caveats, and so to a certain extent it might be better to have your own upscaler, than relying on individual internal upscalers from each device that you own. The upscaler in the TV are usually crap so I'm not even considering it (though it might work OK for true 2160p if it just quadruples the image).

 

Anyway as Kismet wrote above, its possible to fudge the internal CPU clock and give a clean 60hz signal. Nobody has complained about the HDMI of the Analogue NT so far.

[phoenixdownita]

Wrt the SDRAM issue:

http://codehackcreate.com/archives/444

 

apparently the F18A author (the FPGA VGA replacement for the TI9918) has a VHDL SDRAM controller design than can support 70ns, or theoretical ~10/12Mhz.... I haven't looked at the details just reporting it here, it may not generalize well but if memory serves the 68K reads at the end of its 4 states state machine so even if it runs at 10Mhz (example) it cannot access a byte/word/dword per clock, that's why the Amiga chipset could do interleaving, but I am going from memory and be completely wrong.

 

ALSO: I am not sure why the need of so much SDRAM, many of the flashcarts use flash (check the newly released NeoSD) so the RAM part would be just needed in the quantity required by the original console (bear with me here), which was never that high to begin with, the MD had 64KB, the SNES 128KB and the CPU of the SNES topped at 3.58 Mhz, somehow I believe this kind of RAM can be held inside the FPGA or in actual fast SRAM, the rest can be flash (as it is on the NEOSD, or whatever RAM the MegaED and SD2SNES use already). The Cyclone V 49K LE reported has 385KB of block RAM, not saying it can be used 1 to 1 for the 128K RAM of the SNES, just stating there may be plenty of places to figure out how to optimize/make this thing work. Gosh the MiST has an Amiga core how did they fix the RAM issue, is their solution too expensive?

[i understand there's also VideoRAM and SoundRAM to deal with but somehow I fathom those were somewhat easier to deal with]

[Newsdee]

The FPGA in the MiST (EP3C25) has a bit more than 64 KB of RAM in the chip:

http://github.com/mist-devel/mist-board/wiki/PortingCores

 

It's probably better left for CPU caches though. For regular memory the SDRAM is good enough in many cases, e.g. the Amiga core uses up to 24MB (there is some memory reserved for the firmware).

[Newsdee]

started this for FPGA discussion:

http://atariage.com/forums/forum/17-classic-gaming-general/

[Flojomojo]

IMG_4905.PNG

 

"We will not be shipping Retroblox with any copyrighted BIOS files, nor will users need to provide their own. Everything will work directly out of the box, legally."

 

Those are bold claims and I can't help but think it's hard to have it both ways ... "Everything" is a big word, and in my language, means every thing.

[enoofu]

Would feel safer if they have copyright BIOS files, Sega for one is known to lease their IP to 3rd parties

[godslabrat]

 

"We will not be shipping Retroblox with any copyrighted BIOS files, nor will users need to provide their own. Everything will work directly out of the box, legally."

 

Those are bold claims and I can't help but think it's hard to have it both ways ... "Everything" is a big word, and in my language, means every thing.

"Out of the box" is a powerful choice of words, considering what they're doing is boxing themselves IN, as far as the end product goes. Saying it ships ready-to-use and contains no pirated BIOSes means this thing has to be written by them or obtained from public domain sources. If they're bullshitting even a little, this is going to come back to haunt them, and since there are no public domain sources for some of these files, it's likely that they're bullshitting A LOT.

 

Either Retroblox really has made this totally brilliant and revolutionary machine in total secret, as they claim, or they're pulling a Mike Kennedy. I no longer see a middle ground here.

[Tusecsy]

If vegas laid odds on this thing ever even seeing the light of day it'd probably be 500 to 1. And I'd still consider it a sucker bet.

 

When they say "everything", I'm sure they mean "everything that works with our box which isn't much". Also keyword on the BIOS comment is "any COPYRIGHTED bios", which means they're probably pretending the legal bios are no longer copyrighted? So much side speak from these douchebags, will anybody in the industry whose repping this thing be held accountable this time? ::cough gameshill82 cough:: doubt it, and I find that pretty sad for classic gaming as a whole.

 

At least our hero 'n chief Kevtris is around to scream bullshit. A great 3 hours with him btw if anyone hasn't seen it. He talks about the shitbox about 25 minutes in.

 

Edited March 1, 2017 by Tusecsy

[godslabrat]

 

When they say "everything", I'm sure they mean "everything that works with our box which isn't much". Also keyword on the BIOS comment is "any COPYRIGHTED bios", which means they're probably pretending the legal bios are no longer copyrighted?

 

Which, as far as side-speak goes, is amateur hour stuff. All Sega has to do is file some paperwork claiming infringement, and the jig is up. It's no secret that the SegaCD BIOS is still copyrighted... I bet it's actually in the source code. Sega's a big enough company that they can and will protect their IPs. We're not talking about them praising a ROMhack, this is interfering with their ability to make money at clone hardware, something they actually (indirectly) try to do.

 

Or maybe Retroblox is going to claim the BIOS was written by them from the ground up and they own the copyright. If so, we again have to ask how they have such amazing programming talent that works for so long in total secret.

[elmer]

Either Retroblox really has made this totally brilliant and revolutionary machine in total secret, as they claim, or they're pulling a Mike Kennedy.

<sarcasm>

They're probably "In Deep Discussions with Sony, Sega, and Konami to license the original BIOS files, and those companies are all on-board" ... you know, as in, they sent an email to some low-level employee there and the email address didn't bounce it back.

</sarcasm>

 

Don't know about the PSX and SegaCD, but they could potentially license a PCE-CD BIOS-rewrite from the Magic Engine author.

 

It apparently has a few bugs/incompatibilities, and its legality is unknown (it's hard to imagine that he didn't rip at-least the Kanji fonts from a real Hudson System Card, and the thought that he wrote a 100% clean-room version of the complex Sound Driver that's in it is pretty remote).

 

It seems much more likely that they require a real PCE System Card to be inserted into a Module for 100% compatibility.

 

Which still doesn't deal with the PSX and SegaCD.

 

All-in-all, it's a pretty amazing claim for them to make.

 

They've been very quiet over the last couple of weeks.

[Keatah]

Could they be active elsewhere? Making announcements to a less-critical audience?

[godslabrat]

Could they be active elsewhere? Making announcements to a less-critical audience?

 

Their own forums are pretty quiet, and they've said nothing on Facebook. If they're talking, they've narrowed their audience to the point of it being irrelevant.

[Andromeda Stardust]

If vegas laid odds on this thing ever even seeing the light of day it'd probably be 500 to 1. And I'd still consider it a sucker bet.

I wouldn't bet they won't release a product as they seem far more competent than MK, but that their claims will fall short. It will either run on stolen emulators and BIOS files, encrypted or obfuscated so that they disguise the origins of the files, or it will be like a RetroPie setup where the device stays legal by having the end user to download a bunch of shit and install it themselves, clearing the designer of the device of any copyright infringement by allowing the user to do it.

 

If released, Retroblox as well as Lythium are both YAEBs (yet another emulation box) with expensive DLC in the form of cartridge adapters, only Retroblox will be the first with a CDROM drive. Hybrid emulation without FPGA, or CD consoles without BIOS files, are essentially pie-in-the-sky claims.

 

Anyone notice how quiet the creator has been lately? I hope he has a good software engineer, and a good lawyer, and both tell him point blank, "I'm afraid I can't let you do that, Dave."

 

I think there's a reason why no CD-based Retron exists, due to copyrighted BIOS required to read discs.

[kevtris]

I wouldn't bet they won't release a product as they seem far more competent than MK, but that their claims will fall short. It will either run on stolen emulators and BIOS files, encrypted or obfuscated so that they disguise the origins of the files, or it will be like a RetroPie setup where the device stays legal by having the end user to download a bunch of shit and install it themselves, clearing the designer of the device of any copyright infringement by allowing the user to do it.

 

If released, Retroblox as well as Lythium are both YAEBs (yet another emulation box) with expensive DLC in the form of cartridge adapters, only Retroblox will be the first with a CDROM drive. Hybrid emulation without FPGA, or CD consoles without BIOS files, are essentially pie-in-the-sky claims.

 

Anyone notice how quiet the creator has been lately? I hope he has a good software engineer, and a good lawyer, and both tell him point blank, "I'm afraid I can't let you do that, Dave."

 

I think there's a reason why no CD-based Retron exists, due to copyrighted BIOS required to read discs.

A little ol' copyright didn't stop them ripping off all those emulators and that front end to make the retron 5. I guess it might be possible though. i.e. Sega / Sony has a lot more money to go after them with vs. some emulator writers.

[Andromeda Stardust]

I find it quite amusing when people complained about the sharp squared-off edges that strict software emulation generates by default. But all-of-a-sudden it's perfectly acceptable on fpga simulations.

analog video can be beautiful on vintage crts. But its butt ugly on modern sets. Id gladly take the square pixels and low latency of an all digital connection for modern sets. The signal should match the display tech.

[Tusecsy]

I don't really see the point of spending tons of dough on an FPGA or framemeister if you're not using scanlines, but maybe I'm alone in this. Everything just looks too jaggy on 240p without them. The latency and feel of the games definitely matters as well but this has always been the killer feature for me that emulators just can't offer.

 

 

Which, as far as side-speak goes, is amateur hour stuff. All Sega has to do is file some paperwork claiming infringement, and the jig is up. It's no secret that the SegaCD BIOS is still copyrighted... I bet it's actually in the source code. Sega's a big enough company that they can and will protect their IPs. We're not talking about them praising a ROMhack, this is interfering with their ability to make money at clone hardware, something they actually (indirectly) try to do.

 

Or maybe Retroblox is going to claim the BIOS was written by them from the ground up and they own the copyright. If so, we again have to ask how they have such amazing programming talent that works for so long in total secret.

 

Well one of the guys worked on borderline vaporware a couple of years ago (titanfall), and the other one was a project manager to some ps2 sequel, so obviously they're programming geniuses the likes of which this community has surely never seen before.

[Keatah]

It stayed vaporware because the guy wasn't good enough to make it happen. And being a project manager doesn't automatically mean "ace programmer". Project managers for software may know nothing of programming whatsoever.

[godslabrat]

It stayed vaporware because the guy wasn't good enough to make it happen. And being a project manager doesn't automatically mean "ace programmer". Project managers for software may know nothing of programming whatsoever.

There's actually very little reason for a project manager to have any real programming skill. The extent of their knowledge just needs to be the ability to tell if the programmer is doing his/her job and how to get them help if they need it.

[Tusecsy]

Well, I was being sarcastic....

[Keatah]

With the work that kevtris is doing, is there a need for ANY other console?