Resources to start programming for the MiSTer?

[hb-robo]

Hi everyone, I'm a recent computer science/math graduate and I have no real background in VHDL or Verilog, as pretty much all of my programming experience comes from high-level languages for data science and software stuff. I have always wanted to contribute to some sort of open-source gaming preservation project, and truthfully MiSTer seems like a much more worthy investment of time than any software-based emulation project.

I just got my DE-10 Nano in the mail and I was wondering if anyone has a good place to start for learning VHDL/Verilog, how to set up the DE-10 development environment, or (if possible) also how to translate hardware schematics into those languages as well? From what I understand there are a ton of MAME arcade cabinet blueprints that could be translated but nobody's gotten around to it, so I'd love to help if I can.

Last thing - is there any sort of developer comms platform like a discord or slack channel to discuss specifics, or are these sort of things discussed here on this forum?

Thanks to everyone for all the hard work so far

[dshadoff]

I suggest that starting small, but with hands-on is one place to start.

1) Compare the Template-MiSTer and ADCTest-MiSTer cores, to see a relatively trivial implementation. When you are comfortable that you understand this, move on to a core for an old and simple computer (like the TRS-80 for example)

2) Rather than roll up your sleeves to write a core, you should take a look at making minor changes to an existing core - these could be bugfixes, or new features (or just altering a behaviour in a private version for your own benefit).