Pre-built Recommendations UK

[superbitsandbob]

Hi there,

New here and I was wondering if there are any recommended sellers to buy a pre-built/pre-configured MiSTer from in the UK or any recommended sellers that ship to the UK?

Thanks.

[FPGA64]

The best UK based shop is https://misterfpga.co.uk

He will sell you all the parts bar the DE10. Its very easy to put together a System. I have purchased all but my DE10 from him and he is a superb seller

[Nioreh]

There's also the multisystem from RMC. It's a well built "consolised" version with a printed shell. I like it a lot.

[Welsh1971]

Hi.

I'm just building my third MiSTer. I know you said pre-built and i'm sorry I can't help with recommendations on that one, but if it helps over the Christmas period I ordered a DE-10 Nano directly from Terasic and it was delivered via FedEx in less than a week. The remaining parts I ordered from Nat at misterfpga.co.uk (USB hub, RAM, Case, Analogue IO board) and I was informed by Nat that these have been posted out today (Nat's first day back from Christmas Break). Can thoroughly recommend misterfpga.co.uk for everything except the DE-10 Nano itself.

If you were wanting pre-built because of the DE-10 Nano shortage - I would recommend buying directly from Terasic. I have had a DE-10 Nano on order from Mouser UK for probably about 5 months and they are still waiting for their boards.

Welsh.

[Malor]

The Multisystem is a pretty good option if you don't want to assemble a regular Mister stack. They basically put all the components on a single board. You screw that board into the case, plug the DE-10 (purchased separately) into the board, put the top on, add power and peripherals, and off you go.

Their main board is a little more expensive than all the boards it's replacing, but their case is very expensive. I don't blame them, they have to 3D print every one, but it's pricey. If the budget is tight, you can get a cheaper 'plates case' from them, just top and bottom plates, but I'm not super impressed with it. Their expensive case is quite nice.

They're at rmcretro.com, and are on Youtube as "RMC -- The Cave". They have some fairly long videos from the end of 2021 about the Multisystem, if you want more info.

[Bunker]

Hi there,

New here and I was wondering if there are any recommended sellers to buy a pre-built/pre-configured MiSTer from in the UK or any recommended sellers that ship to the UK?

Thanks.

https://ultimatemister.com/

[GreyAreaUK]

The Multisystem is a pretty good option if you don't want to assemble a regular Mister stack. They basically put all the components on a single board. You screw that board into the case, plug the DE-10 (purchased separately) into the board, put the top on, add power and peripherals, and off you go.

Their main board is a little more expensive than all the boards it's replacing, but their case is very expensive. I don't blame them, they have to 3D print every one, but it's pricey. If the budget is tight, you can get a cheaper 'plates case' from them, just top and bottom plates, but I'm not super impressed with it. Their expensive case is quite nice.

They're at rmcretro.com, and are on Youtube as "RMC -- The Cave". They have some fairly long videos from the end of 2021 about the Multisystem, if you want more info.

The case is £54 (inc VAT) for all colours except the limited Red case, which is £66 (inc VAT), just for context

I think if I were just starting out with MiSTer now, I'd be quite tempted to go the RMC Multisystem route. It's a nice almost-all-in-one solution (and bonus points for having a built-in SCART socket), but be aware that for all it has onboard it doesn't include WiFi or Bluetooth, which is understandable but something to keep in mind.

[superbitsandbob]

Thanks for all the help.

I've had a look at the Ultimate and seems nice. RMC seems very interesting though and I like the console style case. I just add a DE-10 to that and off I go?

Couple of questions. Is there a reason to upgrade the on board 128mb ram? And can I use any GB SD card for the cores and games or does it need to be a specific GB size?

[Malor]

On any DE-10, you will likely never be able to upgrade past 128MB on either GPIO port, because there aren't enough address pins. I think they had to do something hacky to even get 128MB supported. You will also never be able to add a second RAM stick on the Multisystem, because it's doing analog out. Just like the regular analog board, it ties up some of the pins on the second GPIO port, so they're not available to drive RAM.

Upshot: you will never be able to expand the Multisystem's RAM. It comes on a breakaway plate so you can replace it if it fails, but 128MB is the hard limit. This is just like a regular Mister stack with the analog I/O board. Only the digital board allows two RAM sticks.

At the moment, the only core that needs two sticks is the in-dev Saturn emulator. It's not presently known if it will still need two at release. If the Saturn is important to you, then I'd avoid buying either the Multisystem or an analog board until that gets nailed down.

[superbitsandbob]

On any DE-10, you will likely never be able to upgrade past 128MB on either GPIO port, because there aren't enough address pins. I think they had to do something hacky to even get 128MB supported. You will also never be able to add a second RAM stick on the Multisystem, because it's doing analog out. Just like the regular analog board, it ties up some of the pins on the second GPIO port, so they're not available to drive RAM.

Upshot: you will never be able to expand the Multisystem's RAM. It comes on a breakaway plate so you can replace it if it fails, but 128MB is the hard limit. This is just like a regular Mister stack with the analog I/O board. Only the digital board allows two RAM sticks.

At the moment, the only core that needs two sticks is the in-dev Saturn emulator. It's not presently known if it will still need two at release. If the Saturn is important to you, then I'd avoid buying either the Multisystem or an analog board until that gets nailed down.

Thanks again. Does the Multi still work fine on a modern HDMI TV? It seems to suggest it has HDMI.

I notice the Ultimate offers a 128mb upgrade option for the digital.

[GreyAreaUK]

Just as an FYI for comparison, but I've been running with just 32MB since I bought mine, and I've never (knowingly) run into an issue with the cores I tend to use (BBC Micro/Acorn Archimedes/Amiga/Atari ST/TRS-80 Model 1/Sega Megadrive/Sony Playstation 1), so 128MB will almost certainly be absolutely fine, apart from potentially the Saturn core as Malor states.

SD card: brand is probably more important than size. I've been using Sandisks without issue. However, if you're looking to store a lot of stuff then I'd probably look to using a small SD card to boot and store the cores, and an external SSD for the content. SD cards wear out far faster than modern SSDs.

[Malor]

Yes, the Multisystem drives HDMI. All Misters do that, as the DE-10 has an HDMI port. If you really want analog output while having two RAM sticks, if you buy an HDMI->VGA converter with a specific chipset, the Mister can convert its output to analog only, through the HDMI port. If you want both analog and digital simultaneously, you have to have an analog board, which means only one RAM stick.

As far as memory size goes, I believe it's only the Neo Geo core that needs 128MB, which is necessary for its largest cartridges. I think all the other cores work fine on 32MB. Pay attention to contradictions here, though, as I have not learned the details of all the cores, and probably never will.

AFAIK, the reason the Saturn needs a second RAM stick is because of bandwidth, not memory total. Running DRAM off the GPIO pins on the Mister is a major hack, and it can only go so fast. Having two sticks doubles the available bandwidth.

The PS1 core needed two sticks during development, but Azum was able to tighten things down enough before final release that it's almost perfect on one stick. There are apparently a couple of corner cases where audio can be delayed by under a millisecond; I presume the sound might crackle slightly when that happens. There's a two-RAM version of the PS1 core you can manually download, which fixes that problem, but AFAIK very few people bother.

The Saturn core could end up working on one stick in the same way. We don't know yet. My personal guess is that it will need a second stick, but that is far from an expert opinion.