Curious Newbies Questions About MiSTer

[NeurologyZero]

Hello! Newbie here curious about MiSTer so I have a few questions:

1. Which one of these 4 boxes should I get? https://ultimatemister.com/product-cate ... te-mister/
   I'm a guy fascinated by the accuracy and especially the low latency of the games. Don't have original controller so i'd be looking to use some modern USB ones. Just looking for a low latency emulation box to try out PS1, Saturn, Genesis, Nes, GBA, etc. I'd also like to have multiplayer be an option for playing with friends locally on a modern tv. Again, which one should I get?

2. What controller should I get for this? I have trouble finding controllers with both d-pad and buttons i'm satisfied with. Looking for USB ones. Any you guys tend to favor?

3. What accessories do I need to buy for this aside from controllers and a big micro sd?

4. Can I plug in headphones to the MiSTer? I listen to music almost exclusively through my headphones.

5. Any other beginner advice you have for me? Anything I should know before jumping in, in the event I jump in?

[aberu]

First off, are you in Europe? Just making sure you are ordering from a seller that ships cost-effective to your location. Here's a list of sellers with the location in parenthesis in case it will save you money --> https://mister-devel.github.io/MkDocs_M ... ere-to-buy

1. Ignore the blisster ones, there isn't much benefit to them at all anymore and it relies upon unofficial forks of the current cores in order to work, so who knows when it randomly could be unsupported as a result of a third party one day. MiSTer has 1000hz usb polling now and there are things like daemonbite adapters and SNAC adapters for ultra-low latency use of real original controllers. If you have a CRT or think you will use the analog video output, get the 4th one, the Ultimate MiSTer Pro. If you don't think you will ever use analog video output, then you could just get the Ultimate MiSTer digital edition (which I'm surprised it isn't slightly cheaper as it's minus a few components and usually the Digital IO board is cheaper as a result).

2. For modern controllers I can't recommend the Sony Dual Sense highly enough, it's an excellent high quality controller with very low lag both over wired and bluetooth. I also have used the 8BitDo SN30 Pro+ and SN30 Pro 2 extensively, and they are quite good, but I prefer the Dual Sense by far. Check the input latency chart tested on MiSTer here to help you decide if you want the lowest latency possible --> https://rpubs.com/misteraddons/inputlatency

3. I would suggest a WiFi adapter if you will be using it in a place where you can't get an ethernet cable to it. I would also get a bluetooth 5.0 adapter if you decide to get the Dual Sense, the latency is extremely low over bluetooth for that controller, faster than many wired controllers, well under 1 frame.

4. You can plug them into the Analog IO board (not the digital IO board) with the 3.5mm headphone jack, but the sound is not super great most of the time and there's no physical volume control, just in the menu in the cores. If you want to use headphones my advice is to get a digital to analog converter (DAC) that takes optical in and can spit out analog audio to a 3.5mm headphone jack. The 3.5mm jack on the IO board uses a mini-TOSLINK connection. Here's the addon boards compared --> https://mister-devel.github.io/MkDocs_M ... cs/addons/

5. Read the MkDocs site --> https://mister-devel.github.io/MkDocs_MiSTer/ and join the discord server --> https://discord.gg/misterfpga/

[Marcellus]

„ Ignore the blisster ones, there isn't much benefit to them at all anymore and it relies upon unofficial forks of the current cores in order to work” wait, what?

[rickdangerous]

It doesn’t need official cores to work, and even the LLAPI cores are all up to date. Difficulty I will drop the development of them. Actually it’s exactly the opposite.

BlisSTer it’s like having 2 deamonbites onboard (on hub board) that gives you access to more than 12 types of hdmi cables that virtually allows you to connect any kind of joystick or gamepad of classic consoles on MiSTer. Some cables can be used on SNAC adaptor too. Alternatively as Aberu suggest you can use deamonbite or SNAC adaptors on all types of MiSTer including BliSTer or standard hub. If you plan to use just new USB joysticks you don’t need any of this adaptors or BliSTer.

[Malor]

1. I don't really know anything about Blisster, but the other posters seem to. The Ultimate Pros are the regular Mister stack. One has an analog output board (for using CRTs), and one has a digital board (which mostly gives you buttons and leaves the secondary GPIO port free for a second RAM stick, if that ever ends up becoming meaningful for mainline cores.) You can build one yourself for less money, if you don't mind fiddling. The prebuilt boxes are convenient, but cost more.

2. I'm using the Dualsense 5, the PS5 joystick, in wired mode. It adds about 2ms of latency as a wired controller. It's not the absolute fastest USB controller you can buy, but it's close, and it's easy to source.

3. If it doesn't already come with one, you'll want a 5 volt, 4 amp power supply. The DE-10 comes with a 2A supply, which isn't enough. If you're going to power everything in a chain through the Mister, there's no point going past 4A, because that's all the system will carry downstream. If you're going to use a Y cable to power the USB hub, you can potentially buy a bigger supply, but only do this if you know you're going to be putting high-drain devices on the hub. The Mean Well GST25A05-P1J is a good default choice. Note that it needs a computer-style mains cable, whatever your locality uses. (the thick 3-prong plug).

4. There's an analog audio port on the analog video board. The Mister also sends sound through the HDMI cable, so if your display device has a headphone jack, you can plug in there. Both analog and digital boards have Toslink ports (only a mini on the analog), so you can also route to an external receiver or DAC. This is how I run mine.

5. Don't trust SD cards for long-term storage, especially when they're not connected to power. SSDs are better, but also have longevity problems when not plugged in. Back up at least your saves and savestates to a spinning hard drive if you can, and preferably everything.