Open Source release of MiSTer Multisystem Console hardware all-in-one I/O design

[emiliom]

Where did you upload the BOM to? I had to go back and find your old post on like page 2 or 3 to see the attachment...

Same post. I added an edit at the end and changed the attachment to v3.

[LeeW]

I just now re-checked the specs on my LEDs on digikey and it looks like my red is 39.75mcd, yellow is 42.75mcd, but the green is only 20mcd.

What's the viewing angle on your green LED?

Could it be that there's some 3D print stringing or something that is partially blocking the hole?

No, I even cleaned it out with a pin to make sure.

100 degree viewing angle on the green, 120 on the red and yellow.

The other potential issue here is that you have a red case which could be absorbing most of the green bounce light. Similarly @rezendes black case could be absorbing most of the bounce light.

[emiliom]

Re: the green LED. Check the current through the LED by measuring the voltage drop across the associated current-limiting resistor (e.g. pins 3 & 6 on N2) and calculate the current through the LED from VoltageDrop/56Ohms. Then see how that current compares to the spec value from the datasheet. And note that green may take more current than red to achieve the same brightness.

15.1mA (max) is what I'm getting (voltage drop was 0.849V). The datasheet spec is 30mA so that's not great - I'm losing half my light. I thought I'd picked 20mA for all my LEDs.

100 degree viewing angle on the green, 120 on the red and yellow.

Mine are 140 degrees. I'm thinking I'm probably losing a lot here.

The other potential issue here is that you have a red case which could be absorbing most of the green bounce light. Similarly @rezendes black case could be absorbing most of the bounce light.

That's a good point.

Basically I've got half the required current, a huge viewing angle spilling light everywhere, and very probably a large amount of light being absorbed by the red casing. I'm thinking Richard was bang on with reducing the viewing angle which should help a lot with the last 2 issues, and also go for a lower forward current. I'm leaning towards this: https://www.mouser.co.uk/ProductDetail/ ... 0UNw%3D%3D

Thoughts?

[DeKay]

Basically I've got half the required current, a huge viewing angle spilling light everywhere, and very probably a large amount of light being absorbed by the red casing. I'm thinking Richard was bang on with reducing the viewing angle which should help a lot with the last 2 issues, and also go for a lower forward current. I'm leaning towards this: https://www.mouser.co.uk/ProductDetail/ ... 0UNw%3D%3D

Thoughts?

It's forward voltage is 1.9V typical, so you should get (3.3V - 1.9V) / 56ohms = 25 mA current through the LED, not far off its rated 30mA value. Given the very narrow viewing angle leading to quite a high luminous intensity, it should be plenty bright.

[rickdangerous]

Hello guys. Just to let you know that I'm preparing a big batch of MiSTer MultiSystem.

PS. Regardless of the fact that it is now an open source project, and as we usually do, I would like to share some profit with the board's creators.

[rezendes]

I wanted to update my situation, after replacing U1 on the RAM circuit with the correct part, everything is working, memtest shows #3 indicating 128 MB and my issues with the PS1 core are now resolved.

PXL_20230909_211323493.MP_Original.jpeg

[emiliom]

Just FYI, the Pi Zero 2 W is just now back in stock at The Pi Hut. So if you're after the Pi-MMS Expansion Cartridge get one quick before the scalpers get them all.

[emiliom]

Just FYI, the Pi Zero 2 W is just now back in stock at The Pi Hut. So if you're after the Pi-MMS Expansion Cartridge get one quick before the scalpers get them all.

....and they're gone.

2 days. Wow, they lasted longer than I expected.

[DeKay]

@emilion and @leew

Had to ask... would you guys do it again knowing what you know now? Are you happy with the end result? Would you take another route (like Retro Castle IO or standard MiSTer Tower of Power? Any lessons learned other than "don't use too much solder on the through hole connectors" and "double check that you've ordered the right parts?

[Missus]

@emilion and @leew

Had to ask... would you guys do it again knowing what you know now? Are you happy with the end result? Would you take another route (like Retro Castle IO or standard MiSTer Tower of Power? Any lessons learned other than "don't use too much solder on the through hole connectors" and "double check that you've ordered the right parts?

I didnt build mine, I got one from RMCRetro but not once have I looked at the other solutions in envy, or felt like I made the wrong choice. The MMS is amazing, the team has made some brilliant design choices and managed to integrate all of the features quite well.

The only feature it will not support given the current design is Dual Ram, if that is something you desire you'll need to look elsewhere.

[emiliom]

@emilion and @leew

Had to ask... would you guys do it again knowing what you know now? Are you happy with the end result? Would you take another route (like Retro Castle IO or standard MiSTer Tower of Power? Any lessons learned other than "don't use too much solder on the through hole connectors" and "double check that you've ordered the right parts?

Yeah, it had crossed my mind. But thinking about it, no I wouldn't build a different system. Even with the aggro of faults and de-soldering and the very long winded process of working out the correct components I would still build mine again. I did learn a bunch of things I didn't know, and I did have fun building it. The only thing I've not liked is de-soldering multi leg components as it can be quite difficult (depending on the component) and I worry about damaging the PCB.

I think my biggest lesson learned does have to be don't overdo it with the solder, but other than than I think that considering the component specs thoroughly is the main thing. There were some components (some of the FETs) we wouldn't have been sure about without your input, but certainly with hindsight my green LED selection was not well thought out and I should have realised that at the time.
Also, don't solder too many components at the same time. I was soldering my capacitors and resistors in small groups instead of one at time, ie. I would do one side for all of the group, tack them, solder the other side, then re-solder the first side. And I managed to miss one side on one capacitor, C16 I think. It wasn't immediately obvious because I'd tested the sound with a small mobile speaker and it seemed ok, but when I tried to play Gods (Amiga) using headphones I realised I wasn't getting the right channel. A quick look at the diagram and there's very few things it could have been. C16 was my first port of call and sure enough I had just not soldered one side of it so it was a quick fix. But yeah, maybe 2 or 3 components at a time that are close together is ok but don't do 8-10 unless you're ticking them off a check sheet. Whatever you do, have a solid method or you'll miss something.
If you're new to it, definitely get some soldering practice in first with some of those cheap practice kits you can get. Definitely helped me a lot with soldering the resistors, capacitors and the ICs. I think I would have made a right mess of some of those if I hadn't practiced first. And watch YouTube videos on how other people do it as you might pick up some tips and different ways of doing things, some of which might suit you better than others.

I'm nearly happy with my end result as I still haven't quite finished yet. Because I have to go back in to change U1 and 2 of my LEDs I decided to add the RTC as well, so I bought the components for that at the same time as my new U1 / LEDs and I'm just waiting for the PCBs to arrive from JLCPCB. I could have bought the bare board here for about £3 but this way I was able to get it in blue to match the other boards and it only cost £3.75 for 5 including shipping so seemed a good deal. But yes, overall I'm happy with how it turned out.

I like some of the MiSTer stacking cases so I got nothing against a MiSTer tower, but I think the MMS looks nice and comes complete with all the connections I'd need so I'd still rather go for that. Plus now I think a MiSTer tower would be too easy to put together by comparison.

[rickdangerous]

Start testing and preparing several cases with optional protections with decals.

eaf5c8d4-09d6-4c20-8d9c-52940a0791bd.jpg

abd48564-44fa-4e4a-8923-e4924e797e75.jpg

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[emiliom]

I think that's done!

Multisystem - Finished!.JPG

I swapped out U1 for the correct (inverting) version, and my yellow and green LEDs for 2 that had 35 degree viewing angles and luminosities of 560mcd and 220mcd respectively. You'd think the 560mcd would be insanely bright by comparison but it's not. In fact at first I thought I still couldn't see them, but it turned out that I hadn't quite put the top front on properly. I was just about ready to throw the system across the room! The green could probably do with being a touch brighter, but I'm not going to change it again as I can see it clearly now. The yellow (subjectively) looks to be on a par with the red in terms of luminosity so it's interesting how much more luminous and how much narrower the viewing angle has to be to achieve roughly the same result. And I swapped out the DIP switch and ethernet cable to get a bit of colour co-ordination going.

Memory is also good now:

MemTest.JPG

As I said in my last post I'd been waiting for my matching blue v1.4 RTC boards to arrive so I put the RTC together and added that too. I included the temperature sensor in mine. I don't believe anything uses it at the moment but I figured I might as well add it in case some temperature related functionality is added at some point.

DE-10 with RTCv1.4.JPG

The crystal was a bit tricky to solder. It's very nearly the same size as the pads it sits on so there's not much space. I did what I usually do which is to put a bit of solder on one pad first and solder one side so that was easy enough, but for a while I wasn't sure the other side was being soldered. The solder was just balling up on the iron. But in the end it did look like I got some on the pad and when I cleaned the flux off and checked it under the microscope it looked good, continuity seemed correct and when I put it in the MiSTer all was ok.

I hadn't previously been able to check the SCART connection (other than continuity checks on the pins) as I didn't have access to a SCART TV but I'm going to be able to at the weekend, so if that's all ok I should be done!

[FPGA64]

Hate to tell you you are not running the memory testd in that screenshot. All that tells you is that 128 mb is there. the yellow 0000 at the top left show its run for 0 time.

[emiliom]

Hate to tell you you are not running the memory testd in that screenshot. All that tells you is that 128 mb is there. the yellow 0000 at the top left show its run for 0 time.

No, that tells you that the test has been running for less than 1 minute. The yellow time counter is minutes. The passed cycle counter you can see is up to F, so it's on the 16th passed cycle. If I'd let it run for a few more seconds the time counter would have rolled over to 1.

[FPGA64]

oops didnt see the F

[LeeW]

@emilion and @leew

Had to ask... would you guys do it again knowing what you know now? Are you happy with the end result? Would you take another route (like Retro Castle IO or standard MiSTer Tower of Power? Any lessons learned other than "don't use too much solder on the through hole connectors" and "double check that you've ordered the right parts?

I'm happy with the end result, I've played some playstation games on it and have enjoyed the experience. I think of all of the MiSTer enclosures this has the best design, which is the only reason I went through all this hassle. I just think the standard stack based design looks really ugly and isn't the kind of design you'd see on successful commercial products. Although, I appreciate that a couple of sheets of plastic with stands in-between is purely a functional design that's cheap to make and isn't intended to be an amazing looking design. But, for me, when I saw the multisystem I just could not possibly settle for any of the other cases and would regret not getting this. That said it was a lot of hassle, I enjoyed the experience for the most part but don't fancy doing it again haha. Although, I don't think this is the perfect design, just the best that's out there so far.

I put my boards on eBay, UK only (sorry just don't want the headache of dealing with international shipping): EDIT: sold out, that went quickly.

[multisystem]

Hi All,

If anyone (individuals or companies) are planning any Multisystem builds, we have added some useful components onto the web-shop including the main PCB (super high quality RoHS - lead free), vertical HDMI connectors for the bridge and the tall 13.5mm 40 way female connectors for the DE10-nano. These all seem to be slightly harder to source, so if you need any help getting these, they are up for sale now.

https://shop.heber.co.uk/mister-multisystem/

If you are planning to build more than a few hundred units, do let us know as we can plan wholesale PCB's into the next production cycle and give further discounts for bulk orders. (3D printed enclosures also available in various colours and cartridge expansion boards etc.)

Multisystem_Single_PCB_front_angle.jpg

Multisystem_Cartridge_PCB_DEV.jpg

Multisystem_40_pack_PCB_sealed_front.jpg

Heber_vert_HDMI_connectors.jpg

Heber_13_5MM_TALL_40WAY_connectors_with_dimensions.jpg

Custard_PCB_with_enclosure.jpg

[emiliom]

we have added some useful components onto the web-shop including the main PCB (super high quality RoHS - lead free), vertical HDMI connectors for the bridge and the tall 13.5mm 40 way female connectors for the DE10-nano.

Thanks. Now if you could just go back in time a couple of months to when I was scouring the Earth looking for those vertical HDMI connectors that would be great!

[rezendes]

I’ve discovered something interesting after struggling with getting HDMI-CEC to work in my entertainment center setup. I finally figured out what was causing the problem, my Mister Multisystem. As soon as I unplugged the HDMI cable from it everything started working perfectly. I tried a different cable to see if it was a cable problem and no change. The weirdest thing is that it would stop all CEC from working even if the power supply was unplugged from the MMS. Cable unplugged = works, cable plugged in but power adapter unplugged = broken CEC. Does this mean that this is not a fixable problem due to it happening while power is off? Or maybe a different component could be used for the HDMI circuitry?

[multisystem]

I’ve discovered something interesting after struggling with getting HDMI-CEC to work in my entertainment center setup. I finally figured out what was causing the problem, my Mister Multisystem. As soon as I unplugged the HDMI cable from it everything started working perfectly. I tried a different cable to see if it was a cable problem and no change. The weirdest thing is that it would stop all CEC from working even if the power supply was unplugged from the MMS. Cable unplugged = works, cable plugged in but power adapter unplugged = broken CEC. Does this mean that this is not a fixable problem due to it happening while power is off? Or maybe a different component could be used for the HDMI circuitry?

The CEC issue is because of the DE10-Nano used in MiSTer / Multisystem. It does not do CEC correctly, therefore a number of dongles that plug into the standard MiSTer stack were made to disable CEC. When we designed Multisystem we added a 8 way DIL switch (SW1) so you can also isolate CEC and stop any weird problems from happening if you have other devices such as the PS5 or things that may be upset with non-functional CEC operation.

So we advise if you are having problems with your setup regarding CEC, then switch off SW1 (Switch position 1 and switch position 5 to OFF) all others should be on unless you wish to disable anything else ( see Multisystem silk screen).

Hope that helps.

Richard.

[rezendes]

The CEC issue is because of the DE10-Nano used in MiSTer / Multisystem. It does not do CEC correctly, therefore a number of dongles that plug into the standard MiSTer stack were made to disable CEC. When we designed Multisystem we added a 8 way DIL switch (SW1) so you can also isolate CEC and stop any weird problems from happening if you have other devices such as the PS5 or things that may be upset with non-functional CEC operation.

So we advise if you are having problems with your setup regarding CEC, then switch off SW1 (Switch position 1 and switch position 5 to OFF) all others should be on unless you wish to disable anything else ( see Multisystem silk screen).

Hope that helps.

Richard.

Thank you so much! That was fast.

[xadox]

Can anyone tell me a german or europe seller of the Multisystem?

[FPGA64]

Can anyone tell me a german or europe seller of the Multisystem?

https://ultimatemister.com/product/mister-multisystem/

[Snaggletooth]

Hi, quick nooby question re fans for MS,
Does it matter if the connector is 2 or 3 pin, The one being sold on Hebers website has a 3 pin adapter but only 2 wires running from it,

I assume it wouldnt make much difference if I picked up one with a 2 pin adapter from amazon.

eg -
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B086DJ4HF5/

Edit, yes it does.

[multisystem]

Just a quick note to say we are clearing out the last of our original Multisystem PCB's to make way for new products (Multisystem, and many others - stay tuned).

If you want to grab a bargain for blank MMS PCB's to build your own - or a batch run to sell, they are at a very low price until all sold out - https://shop.heber.co.uk/mister-multisystem/?page=2

[mong00se]

I have just built my case based on the multisystem.

IMG_1567.jpg

[multisystem]

I have just built my case based on the multisystem.

Very nice work !

[TankBoy]

Hi
When trying to get a quota from a populated board from PCBway they ask med the following:

"Pls confirm the panel layout again: Add 10 mm waste strips on the top and bottom sides.

And make four 3.5 mm tooling holes in four corners of the strips.
As for ' 5*5 mm away from the edges', do you mean we need to keep these four tooling holes 5 mm away from the board edges?

Waiting for your early reply."

I have no idea what any of this means. What should I answer?

Cheers
Jan Terje

[multisystem]

Hi
When trying to get a quota from a populated board from PCBway they ask med the following:

"Pls confirm the panel layout again: Add 10 mm waste strips on the top and bottom sides.

And make four 3.5 mm tooling holes in four corners of the strips.
As for ' 5*5 mm away from the edges', do you mean we need to keep these four tooling holes 5 mm away from the board edges?

Waiting for your early reply."

I have no idea what any of this means. What should I answer?

Cheers
Jan Terje

The waste strips and tooling holes are for the bare PCB, usually when making a large volume of units on an automated production line. The waste strips and tooling holes are used to hold the PCB in place during manufacture. At the end they waste strips are usually snapped off giving you a finished (assembled) board.

If all you want it a completed (Populated / Assembled) MMS, then these questions are not important for you, I have no idea why they would be asking you.

But if you were asking for a batch of bare PCB's, then it would make sense.

As an example we manufactured the MMS is a 2-up panel with waste strips and location tooling holes, so all our bare PCB's were in multiples of 2.

I hope that helps, but I would just state to PCBWay that you are wanting to buy a completed / assembled board, so these questions are irrelevant.

If you don't get any joy with PCBWay, then also check out the UltimateMiSTer website as they also sell completed MMS units.

Good luck, I hope you manage to get what you want.