MiSTer is 7 Years Old!! Happy Birthday !!!

[azesmbog]

Although the first official mention of our beloved MiSTer happened on the www.atari-forum.com forum on June 21, 2017, https://www.atari-forum.com/viewtopic.php?t=31825 but the birth of the project can be considered the end of May - the beginning of June

Sorgelig in private conversations at the end of May told about his new development, that the MiST known at that time can no longer be acquired, that the new MiSTer, which is about to be released, will be much more attractive in terms of its capabilities and more interesting in all aspects, and at that time much cheaper and more attractively priced!

On May 29, having sold my last kidney, I ordered a DE10 nano development board from Terasic, and with a student discount, and already at the beginning of the month, probably on June 4th, I became the proud owner of this board. Quickly assembled on the circuit board VGA-out and ps\2 keyboard connector (yes, I had one too), Alexei and I began to breathe life into her).

For a long time I suffered with formatting the SD-card, then there were no such simple tools, but in the end everything turned out as it should and I launched the MiSTer shell and several cores, which did not require external SDRAM.

It happened exactly on June 4, 2017, so I consider this day the birthday of MiSTer (well, at least my specimen), I hope it was the second copy after the author. If this is not the case - "angry" Sorg will hopefully clarify this point

A few days later I got an paper mail from Sorgelig (I'll put this mail up for sale on eBay someday, I hope I have enough for two kidneys?), with a few clean PCBs, then I soldered the board with SDRAM myself, to run other cores, and future ones too). Well, then later there was an official announcement and release, then you already know everything yourself and this is a completely different story.

Therefore, I want to once again congratulate on this holiday all the owners of MiSTer and the cores developers involved in this truly great project, as well as the sellers of expansion boards, and all those who are not indifferent to this project, and of course personally Alexei Sorgelig (not always angry !!!

I am also interested in when someone got MiSTer (how long have you owned it), from whom did you first hear about this project, what other FPGA dev boards did you own before and do you own now. (I probably only have 7 dev boards, including the legendary Terasic DE1

Now there are thousands of MiSTer related videos on YouTube....
But here is one of the very first videos from the author,
May 29, 2017
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1CwWLFQ77Y
Total! FIVE! cores

Happy Holidays!!!!!!!!!! Hooray!!!!

[Brettster]

Happy Birthday, I wonder how many Mister systems are in users hands these days?

[NegSol]

Happy birthday MiSTer,

I love the project since day one. As I was part of the MiST community I built my first MiSter straight away on 24. June 2017 and got it running in a this early state with a lot of troubleshooting by Sorgelig.

https://www.atari-forum.com/viewtopic.p ... 5&start=25

Many thanks to all involved with MiSTer and esp. a big Thank You to Sorgelig.

[Beeble]

WoW, happy Birthday. it´s actually also my wedding anniversary, what a coincidence =)

[pcfreak324]

Happy birthday, MiSTer! And thanks to sorgelig and the countless other devs. The DE10-Nano would be nothing without your work and commitment.

[AtomicShroom]

Happy birthday! What an amazing project overall. It’s crazy to see all the progress that’s been made in such a relatively short time! Cannot what to see what the future holds!

[Reed_Solomon]

I got my MiSTer after it started being mentioned in Smokemonster's youtube channel and discord server back in late 2018. I was familiar with MiST but it had limitations that I felt were insurmountable and kept delaying my decision to purchase one. But the MiSTer had a decent price, a good number of cores and features I was interested in playing with, so I ordered the DE10-Nano on October-04-2018 from Digikey. No regrets. It's amazing how far the project has progressed since then. Without MiSTer we probably wouldn't have all of these wonderful cores in one centralized place. Maybe something else could have replaced the MiST but I think the important part was getting the device into as many peoples hands as possible to spur on the creation of cores and scripts and art and other assets, and a MiST 2 probably wouldn't have achieved the same adoption as using a relatively cost effective dev board. The important thing is the open source code is now there for posterity. The lessons learned in the development of MiSTer will probably be incorporated in a MiST 2 or MiSTer 2 or whatever the future in FPGA brings. Thanks to Sorgelig, thanks to all core developers, script writers, testers, art designers, MiST and MAME and MESS programmers and archivists and decappers, documentation writers, tutorial makers, youtube and other social media commentators.. Happy Birthday MiSTer!

[aberu]

Thanks for all the hard work sorgelig and so many others!

The MiSTer helped me stay a bit more sane through this pandemic, it helped get me into programming more seriously for the first time, and it's given me some extra purpose in life (to give back to the emulation community in little ways).

[bazza_12]

happy birthday Mister.. many many thanks to sorg and all the devs who have helped create this incredible device.

I first heard about MiSTer in the summer of 2018, kept reading about it on the forums, eventually on the 30/12/18 I ordered the DE10 - at the time it cost £108!! (£122 with vat) before it arrived I bought 32meg memory, an I/O board and USB board from Lee Smith (https://www.youtube.com/c/leesmithsworkshop) who I have to say was very helpful providing me with advice when I received all the parts and was putting it together. The project has not only provided me with some nostalgia hits and options to use consoles/computers that were not available to me at the time, but it has also given me a gateway to meet many new people, like Lee, who have become friends.

[Flandango]

Happy Birthday Mister!.
I too would like to thank Sorg and all the developers who not only made this possible, but also encouraged the average person to get involved by creating as an open source project.
I got into Mister late. It was exactly 2 years ago when I first heard of Mister through Simply Austin's youtube channel that I frequented (June 2, 2020 to be exact) and when I found out it was fairly easy and affordable (at that time) to get the DE10-nano and that there was plenty of open source resources, I just had to have one to "play around" with.
I had other fpga platforms by then (Analogue and AVS) but they were closed sourced and while they were good at their jobs...I couldn't do any learning/development on them.
So after putting in a purchase request with my CFO (wife) and getting approval, I quickly purchased the DE10-nano and a few accessories/boards from MisterAddons. Since then I have spent WAY too much time enjoying existing cores, experimenting with existing and writing new ones.

[venice]

Happy Birthday MiSTer
and many thanks to all developers for this really Cool Tool!

I am using the MiSTer now about for 1,5 years and I am more than happy with it.
Nearly directly after the first usage i had the idea for the tty2oled display.
Now we are 3 MiSTer users around the tty2oled project and realizing our soft- and hardware ideas for the community.

There are so many ways to use the MiSTer Plattform which makes him really unique.

Many Thanks again

[Newsdee]

Happy Birthday MiSTer!

Like NegSol, I was part of the MiST community and was one of the very first MiSTer users. My first DE-10 arrived on June 28th:
https://www.atari-forum.com/viewtopic.p ... 02#p321002

Now I have seven....

The growth and progress of the project has been incredible and went beyond my wildest dreams. A big thank you goes to Sorgelig for driving and captaining this project, plus of course to all the other talented developers that contribute code to the project and FPGA cores!

[azesmbog]

Well, another year has passed!)
I hope for the past year was a lot of fixes in the existing cores, as well as new ones added and new people and developers came)
All in all just good news and happy Holidays! Hooray!

[Bas]

This project is such a space saver! I managed to donate a few hundred kilograms worth of increasingly finnicky vintage hardware to a local computer museum (they have much more use for it than I do). It also got my 5 year-old fearlessly into the old platforms his mom and myself used to love. Just waiting for the day he'll laugh all over my C64 BASIC coding mistakes.

MiSTer is the project that makes my kid the only one in the cinema below 35 to actually get many of the retro references in the new Super Mario movie.

Thanks Sorg and all the other devs!! The board wasn't cheap but the fun and family bonding are priceless.

[Newsdee]

Another great year, happy birthday MiSTer!

For me the MiSTer had the opposite effect... I ended up getting more into real hardware than before. Granted it's mostly items that are MiSTer compatible (controllers, PVMs, etc.) so it all nicely complements each other. Recently I treated myself to have selection of games running in parallel (like an Arcade) to showcase their evolution; which MiSTer makes a breeze to setup [e.g. : Space Panic, Lode Runner (Apple II), Lode Runner (NES), Bomberman MSX, Bomberman PC Engine]

[LamerDeluxe]

I was intrigued by MiSTer long before I got around to looking into how to actually assembly one, which turned out to be super easy. Received all the ingredients weeks before the lock-downs started back in 2020, which turned out to be perfect timing.

I was pleasantly surprised by the amazingly active community, never a dull moment when you have a MiSTer, even if you wouldn't play a single game. There's always lots to tinker with and a growing horde of interesting MiSTer peripherals. One of my favorite things is using MiSTer Super Attract Mode in combination with a TTY2OLED showing information about the currently playing game. This works really well at events as well.

I love that you can connect it to a CRT and original controllers and even experience arcade machines exactly like they looked and played originally. I also really like how it is like a tiny portable museum of games and computers, even very rare ones. It boots super quickly and I enjoy the easy to use UI.

Many thanks to Sorgelig, also for not letting it become a Christmas tree full of shiny useless functionality.

[Chris23235]

I just looked it up, I bought my MiSTer January 2nd 2020. I came from the MiST which I bought in March 2018.

At this time I chose the MiST over the MiSTer because SDRAM boards were sold only by some users on some forums who soldered the boards themself and sold them on a private basis. Everything was super improvised at this point while the MiST was completely assembled and even came in a case.

2 years later SDRAM boards were widely available and the prospect to have a FPGA device running NeoGeo hardware on my HDMI TV made me buy the MiSTer.

I still have MiST and MiSTer in use. Many thanks to everybody involved.

EDIT: Just looked it up, the DE10 was €144.80 back then, happy days!

[pac]

Got my MiSTer at the end of 2019. Already assembled by Manuel / manuferhi. Only regrets I ever had is that I did not got it earlier, what an amazing project that still delivers strong. Pricing was 259 for the full kit.

Happy birthday and a big thank you to all developers and supporters!

[azesmbog]

Well, our favourite MiSTer has turned 7 years old!
Over the past year we have released several new cores, improved existing cores and of course added new users
I sincerely hope that in another year we will still meet here and still enjoy this great project!

[PistolsAtDawn]

This is one of my very favorite things, open source or otherwise. I'm so thankful for this project and everyone that has contributed to it!

[Shogun]

I got my first DE-10 Nano in June of 2019 for $130 from Amazon. I can't believe how far its progressed this project has been a great ride and has made retro gaming with low latency so much more accessible. Thanks to everyone who contributes to this project!

[AtomicShroom]

Happy birthday!! The best thing to have ever happened to retro gaming! So incredibly thankful for all the insanely talented folks that contributed to it over the years!

[bazza_12]

9 years old now..