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VecFever


TomSon

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1 minute ago, fdr4prez said:

If he isn't open to making it open source, then maybe someone can purchase it outright and pay him a royalty for each unit sold

Indeed. I see it from the perspective of the vector community; this card gives a new life to those amazing consoles. I hope this will happen ;-)

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2 hours ago, fdr4prez said:

If he isn't open to making it open source, then maybe someone can purchase it outright and pay him a royalty for each unit sold

 None of that is ever going to happen, which is why we came up with the PiTrex.  OK, the few of us who created the PiTrex software haven't worked on it full time for years like Thomas has, but we did at least ensure a plentiful supply of boards at a fair price. All the software we're created is open source, so eventually - especially if more programmers get involved - it should catch up with the work Thomas has done. A lot of people find it quite playable already. The only down sides are 1) less developed software, as mentioned; and 2) the cost of Pi Zeroes has gone  through the roof compared to when we created the project. And maybe 3), the Pi Zero may be end-of-life before the PiTrex is 😞

Here are our project's primary URLs:

http://www.ombertech.com/cnk/pitrex/wiki/index.php?wiki=Software_Ports&PHPSESSID=a1mnbcaghfdkqi2b95todlgk81

https://github.com/malbanGit/pitrex-baremetal/ http://vide.malban.de/pitrex/pitrex-baremetal-download http://vide.malban.de/pitrex

https://github.com/gtoal/pitrex/

http://www.ombertech.com/pitrex.php https://www.tindie.com/products/ombertech/pitrex-vectrex-to-raspberry-pi-interface/

 

It would be (relatively) easy to design new cards that avoided the need for a Pi; they would be more expensive but within reason (and the Vextreme for example is pretty similar to the Vecfever hardware already and could be used for a Vecfever-like system right now if anyone were to write the code for it) but the problem affecting all these projects is manpower - to make something acceptably cheap, it pretty much has to be done as an unpaid hobby, but the amount of work needed is equivalent to at least a year of full-time employment, which none of us have the time for. So we do as much as we can when we can, but have other things to do as well and will never be in a position to dedicate serious months of full-time work to this the way Thomas did.  So if you want emulation of *all* the CPUs and you want full sound with every game, it's Thomas' way or add it to PiTrex yourself.

 

Graham

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Thank you Graham for the answer and your effort in creating PiTrex. I believe an open source is a way forward for the Vectrex community for a long run. As much as VecFever is amazing (based on the videos and reviews I have seen) its not freely available and its a proprietary device.

I will wait with PiTrex as cannot get any Pi for a reasonable price at the moment. 

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The PiTrex looks great and has been on my list to get on the mythical day I have some free time in my life. It's just such a shame there is no way these can make a living for the creators so things can progress properly.

 

Probably a stupid question, but couldn't the PiTrex be adapted to take any Pi? Other than size/overkill is there any significant issue? I actually have several original Pis lying around 9appreciate they are probably useless) but also at least one of two free Pi3 and 4.

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8 minutes ago, uczmeg said:

Probably a stupid question, but couldn't the PiTrex be adapted to take any Pi? Other than size/overkill is there any significant issue? I actually have several original Pis lying around 9appreciate they are probably useless) but also at least one of two free Pi3 and 4.

I asked this question on the PiTrex forum some time back, after some investigation I did regarding the various Pi versions out there. The PiZero is based on the same CPU as the original Pi, so there's a good chance that could be made to work, but you might still have to know what you're doing, software-wise, as well as having to sort out the physical differences. 

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I have a PiTrex and it's amazing.  The software based alignment options have my Vectrex looking better than ever.  I mostly use the PiTrex as a fancy multicart, but I also love the vector arcade game emulation even if the emulation isn't completely finished.

Edited by akator
spelling, clarity
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On 9/28/2022 at 4:16 AM, D-Type said:

I asked this question on the PiTrex forum some time back, after some investigation I did regarding the various Pi versions out there. The PiZero is based on the same CPU as the original Pi, so there's a good chance that could be made to work, but you might still have to know what you're doing, software-wise, as well as having to sort out the physical differences. 

One of the early pies (I think a model A?) was the same exact processor but at a lower clock speed.  I did get another Pi B to work, mainly by changing the peripheral base address and recompiling:

#ifdef RPI2
    #define PERIPHERAL_BASE     0x3F000000UL
#else
    #define PERIPHERAL_BASE     0x20000000UL
#endif

- and now that Malban has shown the Pi Zero 2 can work I expect the same changes he made can be backported to the Linux distro (in fact some of the changes appear to have been made already) and probably that opens up a few more boards too.  There's never been an intrinsic reason not to support full sized boards, it's just that we never did so as there was no real need to at the time and we made a decision early on to only support the Pi Zero in order to simplify development and maintenance.  Now if Pi Zeroes had dried up but not the larger Pies, then I could see a reason to add them now, but the larger boards are just as hard to find as the zeroes so you might as well hold out for a zero. Connecting up mechanically isn't that hard, it's just a ribbon cable - I think this would work: https://www.amazon.com/erounder-Raspberry-Female-Computer-Accessories/dp/B08H26LY71/ - so if you're up for getting your hands dirty and messing around with the source code, you might be able to put something together that works.

 

Graham

PS This Unix command: fgrep def `find pitrex piTrexBoot -name '*.[hc]'`|grep PI[0-4]|grep -v SPI

can be quite helpful when looking for files that may need tweaking.

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6 hours ago, Mayhem said:

When I bought mine direct from Thomas, it cost me 99 Euros.

Yeah, Thomas didn't charge much for the VecFever, but the VecFever Mark II cart was double the cost of the original.  Had I known he was going to stop making them altogether, I would have picked up one of the Mark II SD card based models as well. 

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On 9/28/2022 at 11:14 AM, akator said:

I have a PiTrex and it's amazing.  The software based alignment options have my Vectrex looking better than ever.

Second this. I have the Sean Kelly and Jason multicarts, but lacked any SD solution for transferring new ROMs or experimenting with development and homebrew. The PiTrex certainly fills that niche in every way I imagine, and seems very comparable to the functionality offered by VecFever but a lot more at least in the scope of open source and expansibility.

 

I was surprised to see a PiTrex sold on eBay for over $200 recently. I paid $44 USD for the PiTrex + Case from OmberTech and about the same for a Pi Zero WH. So for around $90 I have the full PiTrexf and it is working so well. It also was my first experience with Vectorblade, which is the most amazing game imaginable. There is alternatively the VecMulti, which I just missed out on before the stock ran out, but that also would've cost more than the PiTrex solution.

 

Love the PiTrex interface, too! 

Edited by MattPilz
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21 hours ago, MattPilz said:

Second this. I have the Sean Kelly and Jason multicarts, but lacked any SD solution for transferring new ROMs or experimenting with development and homebrew. The PiTrex certainly fills that niche in every way I imagine, and seems very comparable to the functionality offered by VecFever but a lot more at least in the scope of open source and expansibility.

 

I was surprised to see a PiTrex sold on eBay for over $200 recently. I paid $44 USD for the PiTrex + Case from OmberTech and about the same for a Pi Zero WH. So for around $90 I have the full PiTrexf and it is working so well. It also was my first experience with Vectorblade, which is the most amazing game imaginable. There is alternatively the VecMulti, which I just missed out on before the stock ran out, but that also would've cost more than the PiTrex solution.

 

Love the PiTrex interface, too! 

I did opposite:) bought recently VecMulti and waiting now for PiTrex :) I hope it will be available soon and then will manage to get Pi for some reasonable price. I am curious if potential of multicore Pi Zero 2 processing will be ever used in PiTrex.

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10 hours ago, mikesk8 said:

I did opposite:) bought recently VecMulti and waiting now for PiTrex :) I hope it will be available soon and then will manage to get Pi for some reasonable price. I am curious if potential of multicore Pi Zero 2 processing will be ever used in PiTrex.

Quite unlikely in bare-metal, as the code would also have to implement multitasking as well, but it could plausibly be used in the Linux distro.  I think Kevin's code improvements in the area of avoiding glitches caused by processor/memory contention have a chance of allowing the multicore processor to draw vectors without random glitches.  I haven't tried working under linux with a Zero 2 yet but will at some point. We need to backport Malban's Zero2 mods to Linux first.

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4 hours ago, gtoal said:

Quite unlikely in bare-metal, as the code would also have to implement multitasking as well, but it could plausibly be used in the Linux distro.  I think Kevin's code improvements in the area of avoiding glitches caused by processor/memory contention have a chance of allowing the multicore processor to draw vectors without random glitches.  I haven't tried working under linux with a Zero 2 yet but will at some point. We need to backport Malban's Zero2 mods to Linux first.

btw. do you know, by any chance, when the next batch of PiTrex will be available? thank you!

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I recently received my Pitrex and can honestly it's bloody awesome, thanks to everyone involved in bringing this together. Apologies if this has been answered elsewhere but I'm struggling to know where to put the various roms. Should these all go directly into the ROMS folder apart from the AAE ones. Could anyone also advise what game roms should go into this AAE folder?

 

Thanks in advance folks.

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  • 1 month later...
4 hours ago, uczmeg said:

Here we go again, someone obviously needs so Christmas cash. Starting at £250...

 

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/394344708716

That's actually a nice package, haven't seen a box for either the vecfever or robot arena (assuming 3rd party) plus he's got the 3d printed horizontal stand + an overlay.  Also unless I'm mistaken that's a vecfever II (going by the vecfever 128 mb label).

Edited by 128Kgames
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2 minutes ago, 128Kgames said:

That's actually a nice package, haven't seen a box for either the vecfever or robot arena (assuming 3rd party) plus he's got the 3d printed horizontal stand + an overlay.  Also unless I'm mistaken that's a vecfever II (going by the vecfever 128 mb label).

 

It is and I'm sure the final price will fully reflect it!

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