Is MiSTer FPGA Overkill For My Needs?

[EmK_IronFist]

May just use a cheap arcade stick for arcade cores and any computer cores that mainly used a joystick and get something like a 8bitdo M30 for everything that more commonly uses a pad.

Great choices! Make sure you opt for the 2.4g version of the M30 and not the bluetooth edition if you go that route; the Bluetooth edition is great in wired mode and not terrible when used wirelessly with a receiver, but the 2.4g is the one with the sub-millisecond latency in wired mode.

[Chris23235]

Just keep in mind that some people have had issues with MIDI over USB. Of course if you already got a MIDI-USB adapter lying around, it doesn't hurt to try it out.

Just don't use the cheapest adapter you can find. It doesn't have to be a Roland, but ever adapter in the 15 €/$ range will work fine with the MiSTer.

[throAU]

Large scale (petabyte and above) storage administration is a part of my job, and evaluating filesystems for everything from embedded devices to laptops, desktops and servers is too. There's enormous room for improvement in all of the systems mentioned in this thread, and it's a crying shame so many Linux based devices, including Rasberry Pi and MiSTer, default to such limited and particularly ancient file systems, when great effort has gone into free alternatives that greatly surpass them for reliability, consistency, and features.

I'm also a storage admin... for that sort of thing you're probably best off just storing your MiSTer library on a server and accessing via SMB over the network (either WIFI or lAN).

The mister doesn't have the resources to handle something decent like ZFS when its primary job is to emulate other hardware - and you probably have your content originally archived/downloaded on a NAS or at least a PC anyway.

For what it is used for imho exFAT is fine for the MiSTer SD card (simple to implement, well tested), going to anything more advanced will just divert resources away from other more relevant work (imho).

Sure, FAT sucks, but this isn't mission critical data we're talking about. If its corrupted - re-flash it. And if that's not good enough, store your stuff on a proper storage device

Maybe I've been lucky, but in 25 years of system admin, I've not seen a serious storage issue that wasn't caused by an underlying hardware problem yet, and even ZFS can't fix that without hardware redundancy - which the MiSTer SD card slot doesn't have, so....

[elvis]

The mister doesn't have the resources to handle something decent like ZFS

Which is why I didn't mention ZFS.

BtrFS takes around a tenth the resources of ZFS. F2FS takes around a tenth the resources of BtrFS. ZFS is not either the only file system on Earth, nor the best for all workloads. I run petabytes of ZFS at my large customer sites, but I don't go anywhere near it at my small business customer sites, precisely because ZFS requires enormous amounts of resources, and has glaring limitations when it comes to device and volume grow/shrink/change flexibility after the file system is created.

But in an all-flash world, particularly in the embedded space, we need to start looking at file systems that suit all-flash workloads better. Large and small. F2FS in particular was designed for mobile phones and embedded systems, so it's a perfect fit for MiSTer.

For what it is used for imho exFAT is fine for the MiSTer SD card (simple to implement, well tested)

I would argue that 1.5 billion mobile phones running F2FS is pretty well tested too. Likewise MiSTer does good things to minimise writes already and lengthen SD card life spans. F2FS specifically gives measurable lifespan increases of 25% or more to things like CF and SD media, which would be welcome in MiSTer.

will just divert resources away from other more relevant work (imho).

Adding en existing module in to the default build is a good start, and near zero effort. That at least gives power users the option to do as they please. Currently it's a matter of compiling your own, which is fine, but it gets blasted on every update thanks to the mass clobber of the SquashFS image.

In fact, this discussion is motivating me to do some of that work myself, and finally get a pull request together.

Maybe I've been lucky, but in 25 years of system admin, I've not seen a serious storage issue that wasn't caused by an underlying hardware problem

Very lucky. I've seen some logical file system abject disasters that cost unprepared businesses millions. But they are stories for other threads.

[throAU]

So are you going to write a BTRFS driver for Windows and macOS as well, and debug/support that? MacOS? FAT is universal and pretty much all operating systems support it.

You're still not going to get recovery from errors without redundancy with a single SD card slot... to do that you need either two copies on the same media and hope the media isn't the fault, or multiple media - and the DE10 doesn't have the slots. So if you DO detect corruption - you're back to re-flashing the thing (or at least re-copying the file over) anyway!

I mean you do you, but I feel you're creating a solution for a "problem" that simply doesn't exist... I'm sure FAT was chosen specifically because it is trivial to copy content to/from with an SD card slot and any machine the end user may have.

It's also potentially accessible from within a core, with a trivial to implement filesystem driver that may even already exist (in ao486 OS for example).

Unless you're planning to plug a RAID enclosure or mount an iSCSI target to the box? In which case... i'd again suggest mounting a filesystem over the network and let the remote box do the filesystem management.

[bazza_12]

I'm also considering getting a cheap arcade stick for it. I was going to get a Competition Pro USB for minimig but want to minimise the number of controller I have for it. May just use a cheap arcade stick for arcade cores and any computer cores that mainly used a joystick and get something like a 8bitdo M30 for everything that more commonly uses a pad.

this is how it starts.. 'I'm might get a Competition Pro USB' - I remember saying that.. before I bought a Mayflash Megadrive controller db9-usb converter. I won an original Comp Pro 5000 which came with a free PC Gravis Destroyer joystick from ebay. A few months later I thought that Competition Pro 5000 needed a friend so bought another one. Then I bought a Zipstick (I mean who can resist a Zipstick?). After a year of looking and dreaming about a Quickjoy Topstar joystick that a friend of mine used to own in the late 80's I saw one on ebay, It's great.. Ironically I mainly use a cheap knock off Nintendo gamepad most of the time..

[bazza_12]

The downside is you can't merely plug your MiSTer MicroSD card into a Windows machine and write to an existing F2FS partition. But that's where writing over a network wins, hands down (SFTP or SCP being a good choices, as they work natively over SSH. rsync-over-ssh is even better for many reasons).

That's one of the things I like most about MiSTer, my SDcard spends more time in the PC than in the MiSTer.

[elvis]

So are you going to write a BTRFS driver for Windows and macOS as well, and debug/support that?

There's already a stable BtrFS driver for Windows (supports WinXP through to Win10). It works perfectly for removable devices, SD cards, etc.
https://github.com/maharmstone/btrfs

I have no idea about Mac. There's a planned Windows F2FS driver, but it's not yet complete.

But I'd be interested to know how many people transfer content to MiSTer via their PC (outside of the initial install), and how many use a network. If there's an overwhelming volume of people who do it by plugging their SD card into their PC, then fair enough. I'm totally willing to admit I confuse my own experience with things for how the masses do things.

Perhaps that fine individual doing the unofficial MiSTer user survey could add that in as a question on the next round? I'd be quite interested to know the numbers.

You're still not going to get recovery from errors without redundancy with a single SD card

The argument is not about multi-device recovery, and I'm not at all interested in multi-device or RAID in what I'm proposing here, which is why I'm proposing either BtrFS or F2FS (the latter has no multi-device/RAID support at all). It's about SD card lifetime and overall performance. But again, if nobody cares and they're happy to buy new SD cards 25% more often, that's fine too. Again, MiSTer does very good things already to reduce frequent writes. All the same, frequent updates that are quite large in scale are sometimes necessary.

I feel you're creating a solution for a "problem" that simply doesn't exist...

SD lifespans are a problem, which is why F2FS was invented, and why over 1.5 billion Android devices migrated away from FAT and ext4.

Unless you're planning to plug a RAID enclosure or mount an iSCSI target to the box?

Definitely not my plan. As you correctly guessed, I have my content on a BtrFS based file server already. I see a lot of users struggling with pure SD card speed and lifetime limitations however, and benefits like dedup and inline compression are nice for drive life, speed (transparent lzo decompression is faster than raw SD card read time, even on low power ARM devices, so the result is faster data reads) and more usable space (zipping of ROMs is great, but doesn't help ISO and VHD users). But again, if that's all too difficult for a user base who prefers drag-and-drop on a removable device on their PC via a legacy file system, then so be it.

That's one of the things I like most about MiSTer, my SDcard spends more time in the PC than in the MiSTer.

Is this a common thing? Do people not use home networks? (Genuinely asking - I assumed the MiSTer user community was fairly technical, and home networks and SFTP/SCP copies were fairly common, as it's a standard thing for Linux devices, Raspberry Pis, etc).

[Fuzzball]

I finally got the DE10 yesterday that all the other parts have been waiting for. I put it together yesterday lunchtime. In hindsight I would buy a pre-built system next time. I had bought the digital io board from https://misterfpga.co.uk and, having read other reviews, was quite surprised how badly packaged it was (in fairness, subsequent orders have been much better packaged). There was nothing padding the board - it was just in a thin cardboard box and had been squashed in transit. I had remained optimistic that it would be fine but now trying to get it on the DE10 it was obvious that the pins were misaligned. It was impossible to connect both sides (by some margin) at the same time. I spent an age trying to reposition the pins so that they would all slot into the DE10. I probably should have got the board replaced because I am concerned about its longevity now.

After also connecting the usb board, I realised there were 3 power sockets on the back but the splitter only splits into two. To be frank, this could do with clearer instructions for each configuration as it took me a while to work out that the plug goes into the digital io board and a jumper lead between DE10 and usb board. This is different to the configuration with the analog board that a lot of YouTube videos are based on.

The part that really tested my patience though was trying to get the 3 buttons inside the acrylic case I spent far longer than I'm prepared to admit trying to get that done lol.

I downloaded the Mr Fusion image, burnt it to a 400Gb Sandisk card I already had spare and popped it in. (one very minor niggle is I couldn't get the 8GB card already in the DE10 out without tweezers due to the case). Note for others - swap the sd cards before putting into the case if you use one.

Turned it on and to my surprise it booted first time (I had been prepared for a bit of troubleshooting at this point so this was great).

This is the point where the above frustration building the device all became worth it. Really worth it. My main motivation for getting the Mister is for the minimig core but as that is a bit more involved to setup, I've left that for now and tried some "easier" cores. This thing is so easy to use. Such a simple interface but I mean that as a compliment. And the "emulation" just feels better than anything else I've tried (which is mainly just a few software emulators on my laptop). It's difficult to explain to someone else who hasn't experienced it. I can't put into words why it feels so much better but it just feels like I'm am sitting in front of the real hardware more than software emulation does.

I was supposed to be working away from home the rest of this week but that got cancelled late yesterday so I may have a bit of time to set up that Amiga core now..........

[Nat]

I am sorry to hear your IO board was damaged during shipping, if you just send me message including your order number via the contact page I can arrange a replacement for you.

A few quick tips for building the acrylic case, fit case bottom first, attach but do not tighten the fours screws, fit all the sides, now flip over the case top plate so you are looking at the inside face, then place all three buttons into the holes, then grab the rest of your MiSTer stack while holding the four sides together and turn it all upside down, now with your other hand you take the top plate and move into position while upside down now, and lock into place, then just turn the whole assembly over and fit the top screws, and tighten them all up. This is the case where a picture is worth a thousand words, anyway a build guide will soon be available on YouTube.

[Fuzzball]

Turn it upside down? It's so obvious now you mention it Why didn't I think of that lol.

To be honest, the Mister seems to be working fine so I don't think a replacement is necessary. Thanks for the offer though.

[LamerDeluxe]

I find it helps to put a rubber band around the acrylic case when you haven't attached the top part yet. Then it's easy to flip upside down to attach it to the top with the button rods placed inside the holes of the lid.

[grizzly]

Turned it on and to my surprise it booted first time (I had been prepared for a bit of troubleshooting at this point so this was great).

Dang it!
Sorry you had to miss the best part

It's difficult to explain to someone else who hasn't experienced it. I can't put into words why it feels so much better but it just feels like I'm am sitting in front of the real hardware more than software emulation does.

Exactly it´s sooooo damn hard to describe that "feeling" even to people who DO know a bit about inputlag/displaylag/etc, and it´s waaaaaayyyyyyyy harder to describe it to anyone who do NOT know.

[Fuzzball]

Turned it on and to my surprise it booted first time (I had been prepared for a bit of troubleshooting at this point so this was great).

Dang it!
Sorry you had to miss the best part

It's difficult to explain to someone else who hasn't experienced it. I can't put into words why it feels so much better but it just feels like I'm am sitting in front of the real hardware more than software emulation does.

Exactly it´s sooooo damn hard to describe that "feeling" even to people who DO know a bit about inputlag/displaylag/etc, and it´s waaaaaayyyyyyyy harder to describe it to anyone who do NOT know.

What I mean by "feel" though is the similar feeling of using the hardware. For example, my only other emulation experience is running a bit of Retroarch on my laptop. There you are just loading games from a list. It could be any system, it doesn't really make a lot of difference. But here, for example with the Amstrad CPC core, just like I used to when I was a kid, you start the core, boot to Amstrad basic, insert (virtual) disk and then "CAT" to view disk contents and then RUN"file. It's those silly things that for me make it feel more nostalgic. I'm sure I could find an emulator to do that on PC but the Mister just makes it so simple.

Lag wise I'm not that bothered. I have mine plugged into a LCD and am using a wlreless gamepad at the moment. Sure, if I buy a new joystick and I have a choice of a high latency one and a low latency one I will pick the latter but only because the option was there to do so. I highly doubt I would notice the difference in that sense.

The one thing I am starting to dislike with the Mister though, in all honesty, is some of the cores are so complicated to setup. I setup Neo Geo in Retroarch on my laptop in seconds. Trying to get that core working on the Mister is just so much hassle in comparison.

[throAU]

That's one of the things I like most about MiSTer, my SDcard spends more time in the PC than in the MiSTer.

Is this a common thing? Do people not use home networks? (Genuinely asking - I assumed the MiSTer user community was fairly technical, and home networks and SFTP/SCP copies were fairly common, as it's a standard thing for Linux devices, Raspberry Pis, etc).

Not sure where that quote came from, don't remember saying it?

And for what its worth I do transfers over the network mostly.

Whilst a lot of the mister community may be technical, I'd suggest there's probably a lot who also aren't and that will grow as the project gains reputation for how well it performs.

The barrier to entry is only somewhat higher than retropie imho and there's a huge amount of non-technical people messing with MAME etc.

[Mellified]

The one thing I am starting to dislike with the Mister though, in all honesty, is some of the cores are so complicated to setup. I setup Neo Geo in Retroarch on my laptop in seconds. Trying to get that core working on the Mister is just so much hassle in comparison.

It definitely depends what you start with. There's a package out there that makes it really simple to setup every core I've tried.

[MisterGlock]

I’m new to the whole scene but compared to RPI I’m loving every aspect of it. Perhaps overkill but an absolute blast to build and mess around with if you like tinkering.

[pgimeno]

There are some baremetal emulators for the Pi. They are in various stages of completion. I haven't tried them myself, but ZX Baremetal and BMC64 seem to be in a quite satisfying state:

https://accentual.com/bmc64/
http://zxmini.speccy.org/en/index.html

I've tried ZXBaremulator today in a Pi 3B+, and I was very unpleasantly surprised. The latency was comparable to that of MAME, of which I've already complained here.

José Luis happens to be a friend of mine; I'll ask him for an explanation. Meanwhile, I'll stick to MiSTer.

[darksakul]

Are there any bare metal images for pi emulation? When I used retropie it used to do my head in how long it took linux and the front end to load, even on a fast SD card.

Only one I know of turns the Pi into a Roland MT-32.
And yes, I will consider that emulation despite you needing a custom hat for the Pi.

Nothing as such for video games.

[pokevania]

Pi4 has composite built in. This is a huge benefit over the mister. It's also full of crap retro distros that will riddle your mind with configuring. Less money.

Pi4 is awesome for all the other stuff it can do, but the input lag is insane compared to Mister. It has runahead and some other aids for lag though. Also, you won't be connecting your Pies to a CRT TV without additional equipment, and that's where Mister shines. Pi4 will require Pi2SCRT, RetroTink, SyncMaster, or some other such high-quality analog output gear + specific configurations. Composite and S-Video can't even reproduce the image clearly.

https://www.reddit.com/r/RetroPie/comme ... scanlines/. I tried using the three-ring composite out, but all you get is a blurry, noisy, buzzing picture that does not "snap" to the tube the way original hardware did.

I'm pretty happy with pi4, but the scanline filters don't look as good as Mister's on an HDTV. Of course, Mister on a component CRT is visually perfect. Pi4 will play a much larger selection of games, however. I'd start with a Pi and then decide if you need a Mister.

The pi composite is functionally worthless in my experience.

[keilmillerjr]

Pi4 has composite built in. This is a huge benefit over the mister. It's also full of crap retro distros that will riddle your mind with configuring. Less money.

Pi4 is awesome for all the other stuff it can do, but the input lag is insane compared to Mister. It has runahead and some other aids for lag though. Also, you won't be connecting your Pies to a CRT TV without additional equipment, and that's where Mister shines. Pi4 will require Pi2SCRT, RetroTink, SyncMaster, or some other such high-quality analog output gear + specific configurations. Composite and S-Video can't even reproduce the image clearly. https://www.reddit.com/r/RetroPie/comme ... scanlines/. I tried using the three-ring composite out, but all you get is a blurry, noisy, buzzing picture that does not "snap" to the tube the way original hardware did.

I'm pretty happy with pi4, but the scanline filters don't look as good as Mister's on an HDTV. Of course, Mister on a component CRT is visually perfect. Pi4 will play a much larger selection of games, however. I'd start with a Pi and then decide if you need a Mister.

The pi composite is functionally worthless in my experience.

False. The Pi4 requires a cheap 3.5mm to rca av cable that many people already have at home or can get at walmart. It works fine. Try a different cable.

[cathrynmataga]

I find myself going to Mister for anything with a keyboard. Maybe there's an easy way to setup this, but for me, I find it finicky turning off the special keys for the retro PCs in RetroArch. Also I find the collection of arcade games in Mister more manageable than a full out PC mame install, though I go back to proper mame now and then. For consoles, often enough I just play those in Retroarch on my Windows PC, I think SNES/Genesis emulation is pretty good everywhere these days. For TG16 CD games, I have them uncompressed on a server now that I can access from Mister, but this was some fuss to get working, and I think Retroarch was easier to setup with this. If you're into this stuff, and if the money doesn't matter to you, get Mister. If you're poor, just emulate on a PC you already own, pay the rent instead, be happy.

[FoxbatStargazer]

Supposedly scroll_lock is supposed to toggle the keyboard going directly to Retroarch cores... "game focus" mode or something. Poorly documented but there does seem to be a way.