MiSTer FPGA Forum

What are the dimensions of the case?

Milspex wrote: ↑Thu Mar 04, 2021 8:54 am What are the dimensions of the case?

It is not final yet, we need to see first if everything is working as it should or if we need to change anything, BUT the idea is to have it as flat as possible. I could write a number that is around what we are going for but I will wait a little longer to avoid any confusion.

cool.. If you are able to open it up easily, it would be best to at least have some room in there tbh.

Coming alive...
https://akicus.co/LEDs.mp4

Milspex wrote: ↑Thu Mar 04, 2021 11:36 am it would be best to at least have some ROM in there tbh.

Lol i read it that way and was a bit for a second or two
But it would be an awesome addition but a tap would probably be a bit too big
And where would the coca cola for the grogg be

Will there be a way to get composite video out of this board for older CRTs?

Tandy wrote: ↑Sun Mar 07, 2021 5:07 pm Will there be a way to get composite video out of this board for older CRTs?

If I remember correctly we have thought of doing a adapter cable (VGA to Composite) with a electronic circuit built in. So yes, it is possible.

@akicus,

I've read the thread, and seen your Instagram. All super impressive stuff and I'm really looking forward to this case, and judging by the work and level of attention and care you've shown thus far, I think it would be a disservice to your project to just throw it on the market and for there to be any shortage of supply due to a limited production run. Of course it's a balancing act based on financial considerations vs demand, but with your case, or something similar, (and I don't pretend to know what your launch plans are), I see it as possibly an inflection point for the MiSTer project to reach a vastly wider audience than has been achieved thus far. MiSTer [as a retro-gaming experience] is ready for prime time. There are potentially massive things to come in terms of cores (PSX?? Saturn??), but what is here now is already utterly amazing. However, what we are seeing in the past 6-12 months or-so is that of incremental refinement of existing cores rather than many new headlining new features. This suggests to me that the project is reaching a certain level of maturity and we are quickly approaching the limits of the capability of the DE10-Nano. Once the point is reached that the DE10-Nano is fully tapped-out, it's possible the development community will want to move to another board with enhanced performance, but I think we are maybe 3 years out from that happening.

What is the MiSTer really competing against? Raspberry Pi/RetroPi on one side and Analogue systems like the Mega SG on other. Plus the myriad of other devices where people can play retro games, like Android devices and PCs. I don't want to get into the discussion of emulation vs FPGA here, we could discuss the pros & cons of that 'til the cows come home, but I think outside of a relatively few, most people don't understand the benefits of FPGA recreations of classic consoles/computers/arcade games just yet, but nor do they really need to understand the intricacies of what makes it better. Sure, FPGA isn't a silver bullet that suddenly makes everything 100% cycle-accurate, but an attempt can and should be made to educate. However, the real selling of MiSTer will be in the direct experience... and that is where a case such as yours comes in, as I believe the single biggest barrier for entry for beginners is the hardware set-up, both in terms of simple acquisition and the gap in knowledge.

The cut a long-winded comment down, what I'm suggestion is a crowd-funding campaign for your case on a platform such as Indiegogo. I think this would allow you to secure fund to complete development and production of your case and offer a turn-key solution for many people to get into this space. Perhaps production of the case in a limited capacity is all your strive for, and I wouldn't disagree with you that this might be the best approach, but I just thought I would jot my thoughts down here to maybe get you considering such a thing and to analyse the possibility a little.

To me, MiSTer is a miracle and an amazing demonstration of the open-source ethos and what can happen with open-collaboration. The whole software stack (from what I understand) is open-source, and all the add-on boards are also open source. Thus, I feel that if you were to go down this path of launching a crowd-funding campaign based on the work of Sorgelig and the vast army of developers, it would be prudent to make your case and its designs open-source too in order to gain the full acceptance and support of the MiSTer development community. This may not be something you are willing or prepared to do which is understandable, but without it, a crowdfunding campaign wouldn't get off the ground I think. I'm not entirely sure how money is made on open source hardware, and I don't know what your goals are with the case you're producing. Is it a passion-project? A profit-driven endeavour? Giving back to the community? Only you can answer these things, and you're completely within your right to go in whatever direction you see fit here. I do feel though, that if you open-sourced this and worked with the main MiSTer developers on making this an "official" high-end product of-sorts for the MiSTer, it would open a lot of doors, in terms of acceptance of the product within the community to secure the software support of the case for the duration of "MiSTer on DE10-Nano"'s life-cycle. All this is probably asking for way too much. Alterations would perhaps need to be made based on feedback and suggestion, but I think the foundation of what you have done is already solid, and MickGuyver's Daemonbite is already highly-regarded, so it doesn't seem like a giant leap to me, but I'm speaking strictly as an outsider here. Perhaps nobody knows what the vision and future of the MiSTer project entails for the next 3-5 years, but if anyone knows, it's the likes of Sorgelig. My estimate on the cost of the MSTR case (I forgot it has a name) is around $150-180 based on what is already on the market and the amount of other boards/components it's a substitute for and the additional features on top. I think whatever you charge, I'm on board for getting one because it's exactly what I'm looking for, but my primary concern is that perhaps a new expansion board gets pushed out, like the possibility of an add-on board for Saturn support (I don't think we'll see an add-on board for Saturn) or some other type of expansion board. Point is, it would be heartbreaking for me as a consumer if I got the MSTR, but could not accommodate newer expansions that come along, having to make a choice between continuing with the case or chasing the expansion. Perhaps the official MiSTer as-is is all that it will ever be and we don't need to worry about the future, or perhaps nobody knows because the development of MiSTer is community-driven and thus largely organic in terms of where it goes. Regardless, it seems prudent to somehow ensure the future viability of the MSTR while at the same time somehow not impeding upon the project itself to be able go where it needs to. I'm sure as a designer you only see compromise of your vision in taking this kind of approach, but again, I'm just spitballing here, just some food-for-thought.

If you were to launch a crowd-funding campaign for the MSTR, there would be a number of tiers. Off the top of my head, you would have two main targets, people who already own a MiSTer and those who don't. For those who already own a MiSTer, you could offer just the case in a single colour. You could introduce other colours or limited edition colours for higher tiers or stretch goals too. Bulk sales could be offered for retailers. You could have all the different adapters as add-on purchases. You could start with the two/three most popular ports, i.e. SNES, Genesis, DB9 perhaps, and then have other adapters as stretch-goals. Anyway, you get my point... for the maker crowd and the early adopter, you of course would offer the stand-alone case. This part is a no-brainer.

Where it gets kind of interesting as well though is the ability to offer complete systems to end-users. I think the biggest hurdle in offering complete systems is the procurement of the DE10-Nano board in sufficient quantities, and a partner such as Digikey would perhaps need to come into play here, or perhaps the board could be directly procured from Terasic. There is also the RAM expansion, and the power supply, but I think all three of these components could be offered at-cost.

One final thought I have on this is the issue of legitimacy. Acquiring ROMs and BIOSes for the system is a legal grey-area and the single biggest hurdle for a potential product such as this. Products like the Analogue devices and the Polymega have the benefit of accepting real physical cartridges and discs, something which the MiSTer doesn't have. This ability gives those devices an air of legitimacy and degree of authenticity that the MiSTer doesn't have and this may be a hurdle too far to circumvent. Could one really secure supply of the DE10-Nano board when it's heavily subsidised by the likes of Intel for a use-case such as this one? For this reason, it's probable that MiSTer remains in the realm of the hobbyist and enthusiast and it is my feeling that that is where the maintainers of the project are most comfortable in staying. The attention that something like a crowdfunding campaign might bring might not be something that would be appreciated and might even put the whole MiSTer project at risk somehow.

One way to navigate this issue might be to make available an SDK or IDE and sell it concurrently as a development and education platform for HDL and Verilog, but this is likely going way out of the remit of a product like this.

Anyway, thanks for reading if you made it this far, I'd be interested to hear some of your thoughts on this, and I know I may be speaking out-of-turn on your project so maybe you don't some of the things I've said so feel free to ignore it too. Either way, I look forward to seeing what comes of the MSTR and really excited to get one on my desk.

That is a long text sir .
I'm off to bed, will make a reply tomorrow.

Thanks again for the long post, a very interesting and informative read.

Since the start of this thread we have gotten comments, PM’s and e-mails asking us about this case. ”Can you do this”, ”implement that” and so on. It has been super helpful in terms of guiding us down a path that is more true to what the MiSTer audience wants but at the same time opening up for the potential masses to also enjoy MiSTer by making the design more ”consolesque”.
At the very least I hope it can expand the amount of hobbyists in the community, I think I can write that without sounding like I have too much hubris.
That’s the idea at least.


MSTR
The idea with MSTR is to make a high quality case that is similar to what Analogue offers with their higher end products but at the same time offer a more modular solution.

The back of the case will have a ”I/O Shield” so the MSTR will be as future proof as possible. We plan on adding several threaded holes inside the bottom of the case as well (holes in the aluminium and have custom stainless steel threads glued with Loctite), so when the time comes for a new ”DE10 Nano” there is a a high probability that it is able to be installed.


Developing
We refuse to use crowd-funding for the development process, this is completely paid by ourselves. We will develop some working pcb-prototypes, send them out to people who are respected in the community for testing and be validated this way, it is the only way we think and we don’t want any money involved in this process.
Once the pcb-prototypes are proven to work as described we will manufacture a couple of cases and have it sent around as well and see what people think and move on from there.


Funding
The MSTR case is one of the things we need funding for, we plan to also sell cables (SCART et.c), Player Cassettes and other smaller things to give proper support for those who invest in the case. So with this in mind we think there are a couple of ways to get funding for the project and we would rank it as follows.

1. If we get enough support just by posting here and on Instagram then that is fine with us. We could first make a list of customers who are interested in pre-ordering and evaluate the situation after the list is finished. If it is enough then we could setup a simple Shopify page so people could pre-order directly through there.

2. If we don’t get enough funding then we are thinking of going to Kickstarter. Indiegogo let’s you keep the money regardless of what happens to the project (if I remember correctly) so we rather go the extra mile and use Kickstarter, it hopefully gives the project some extra validity this way.

We are of course interested in selling to both individuals and shops, both with and without DE10-Nano installed. We will post more about this at a later date though.


Manufacturing and Open-Source
The MSTR case will be pretty advanced in terms of how you manufacture it. It will have a lot of after-manufacturing processes and specifications that needs to be followed correctly for it to even be a MSTR case and function/feel like one.
As much as I would like to have everyone make their own case it could give it a bad rep if people make their own and it does not look or feel like it should and people maybe sell it to others. This case will be regarded as a high quality product and we need to have some control over it.

This does not mean that we won’t present anything open-source though, I have a alternative version of MSTR planned as well (a little bit smaller) that can be 3D printed and I will gladly give this out for free to the community, no problem at all. This will come after the MSTR though.


Legitimacy
I have been thinking about this as well. If we just want to adhere to the hobbyists I guess that is fine but if we want to explore some sort of wider audience this could indeed become a problem. Something to think about…

Tested

1. 2nd USB-Hub (on the back) is working great it seems. Tested with a keyboard but will test with more stuff later.

2. Player Cassette (with headers for testing) is being tested, more info soon.

3. Sound from the back is working as well.

More to follow...

Testing

Front Audio - Works great, fantastic audio. We use a wheel instead of a slider in the picture if you are wondering, it is testing after all...

Testing

VGA - We tested VGA on a computer monitor and a CRT TV, works great. Will do more testing just to make sure nothing is wrong.

Testing

Audio in - We tested loading games through a phone (PlayZX app) and it works great. Only problem is the game Knight Lore, not sure why but will look into it some more (the game loads fine but crashes once you try to start playing it).

akicus wrote: ↑Thu Mar 11, 2021 4:25 pm We tested loading games through a phone (PlayZX app) and it works great.

Wait a minute!
What exactly do you mean by loading games?
Cores only or Roms too?

In the Retroarch tread and some others there have been a discussion on using a different GUI for the mister and deemed almost useless.
Since you can only load Cores over the network and not Roms.

grizzly wrote: ↑Thu Mar 11, 2021 4:57 pm

akicus wrote: ↑Thu Mar 11, 2021 4:25 pm We tested loading games through a phone (PlayZX app) and it works great.

Wait a minute!
What exactly do you mean by loading games?
Cores only or Roms too?

In the Retroarch tread and some others there have been a discussion on using a different GUI for the mister and deemed almost useless.
Since you can only load Cores over the network and not Roms.

Well you load the core on MiSTer first, then you get the games (roms) from the app on the phone.
It gets to the MiSTer through the audio port.

this is for tape-based games. You basically play the tape as an mp3 on your phone into the audio port, and the Mister thinks it's a tape being played. It loads a game old skool stylee

Testing

Player Cassette System (PCS) is being tested now.
SNAC works great it seems, tested with a couple of different controllers.
Next is testing SNAC/USB switching...

Bits n Stuff wrote: ↑Sat Mar 13, 2021 11:29 am How my controllers can you connect to a single cassette? Does it vary from system to system depending on the number of active pins? Will there be any user definable buttons on the actual cassettes? I was just thinking that for arcade systems it could have been good to have something like a P1, P2 or a Insert Coin button on there.
Ah, forget it, I'm over complicating things again. None of that is important and it's probably best to ignore more unusual ideas like that, at the very least until it's the case is out and things have settled down. I'll be suggesting that you should add an real life coin slot next to turn the cassette into a money box using arcade games.

The cassette will be able to fit up to 4 x DB15, so that means it will fit 4 x SNES as well if someone would want that.
Buttons could be possible for sure but then you would not fit so many controller ports.
We could even add a screen on the cassette to show the core being used similar to the project here:
https://misterfpga.org/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=1887
This would mean that we could for example have a cassette with one screen and two or more controller ports (depending how big they are) because we can divide the connector pins into two sets = two USB ports, if we wanted to.
I fully understand the arcade thing though, would be nice to have, I'll keep it in mind.

Testing - Player Cartridge System (PCS)

We have four SNES ports working now.
It always starts in USB-mode so all menus can be controlled. Reboot also starts in USB-mode.
Pressing Start + Select + Down makes it go into SNAC mode.
Pressing Start + Select + Up makes it go into SNAC+ mode.
If SNAC/SNAC+ is not used by the Player Cartridge System then it can be used by something else from the alternative SNAC port on the side of the case.

I'll try and post a picture or two tomorrow...

akicus wrote: ↑Thu Mar 11, 2021 8:44 pm

grizzly wrote: ↑Thu Mar 11, 2021 4:57 pm

akicus wrote: ↑Thu Mar 11, 2021 4:25 pm We tested loading games through a phone (PlayZX app) and it works great.

Wait a minute!
What exactly do you mean by loading games?
Cores only or Roms too?

In the Retroarch tread and some others there have been a discussion on using a different GUI for the mister and deemed almost useless.
Since you can only load Cores over the network and not Roms.

Well you load the core on MiSTer first, then you get the games (roms) from the app on the phone.
It gets to the MiSTer through the audio port.

I did a video about this if you're interested. https://youtu.be/udohQvcaRlw

Hello, I came across this post about your case and registered specifically to ask about it

so just to be absolutely clear when in SNAC mode, I will be able to use more than 1 SNAC port? So 2 (and potentially more) players SNAC?

If this is the case I'm putting off all further mister purchases till your board comes out!

new to Mister and I am pretty excited to see how this case and build is going.

Good work! I love what I'm seeing.
The I/O shield is indeed the way to go.
I imagine the the Cartridge will have it's own I/O shield making it more upgradable and modular?
Could the USB ports on the back and the one for the internal HD be USB3?
What do you think of the option of two M.2 slots? One for a wireless/bluetooth card and one for storage?
I noticed someone mention a LED RGB option, while irrelevant for a aluminum case option that could be interesting for a semi-transparent case.

As a side note I noticed RetroArch has a open hardware project which may be of interest for future upgrade options.
https://www.libretro.com/index.php/cate ... -hardware/

Keep up the great work!

Shades2585 wrote: ↑Sat Apr 03, 2021 8:16 pm Good work! I love what I'm seeing.
The I/O shield is indeed the way to go.
I imagine the the Cartridge will have it's own I/O shield making it more upgradable and modular?
Could the USB ports on the back and the one for the internal HD be USB3?
What do you think of the option of two M.2 slots? One for a wireless/bluetooth card and one for storage?
I noticed someone mention a LED RGB option, while irrelevant for a aluminum case option that could be interesting for a semi-transparent case.

As a side note I noticed RetroArch has a open hardware project which may be of interest for future upgrade options.
https://www.libretro.com/index.php/cate ... -hardware/

Keep up the great work!

Thanks for your questions. Player Cartridges are upgradable as in you can exchange cartridges in order to have new controller ports. We still get some questions about this so we will make some sort of graphic or video about this to fully explain.
USB3 would be hard because DE10 Nano does not have that.
Regarding M.2 we have discussed this privately and it could be interesting to have the option for the end user to add something like this. We will see.
Regarding RGB LED, the option would be great to have I agree. We will see what we can do...

AnthonyQ wrote: ↑Wed Mar 31, 2021 9:04 am new to Mister and I am pretty excited to see how this case and build is going.

There will be updates posted here soon so please check the thread from time to time.

Yodasghost wrote: ↑Tue Mar 30, 2021 7:14 pm Hello, I came across this post about your case and registered specifically to ask about it

so just to be absolutely clear when in SNAC mode, I will be able to use more than 1 SNAC port? So 2 (and potentially more) players SNAC?

If this is the case I'm putting off all further mister purchases till your board comes out!

SNAC uses the USER PORT (not normal USB port) and SNAC Cores supports one controller only.
MSTR will also support Extra mode though (SNAC+).

Here is a nice 3D printed Mister case to compare too.
I really like the larger MT-32 display on top.
The built in keyboard option is a nice touch. Not everyone may be interested in it though. Might be a good idea for a future alternate case option.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKMlr-ZOZ6M

Thanks for the feedback lol, yes I don't have industrial design experience.

Bits n Stuff wrote: ↑Fri Apr 09, 2021 10:20 am That case looks pretty awful to be honest.
I suppose it's OK for a "I did it myself" type of case but you can often tell a mile off when people don't have industrial design experience.
Maybe akicus and DaemonBite will produce a more computer like case down the line, not that it's needed with MSTR case being produced, but if they do I'm sure they'll be able to do it without having to rely on the many 3D printed cases that are already available.

Lol why do say something like that thats just realy rude man.

Bits n Stuff wrote: ↑Fri Apr 09, 2021 10:20 am That case looks pretty awful to be honest.
I suppose it's OK for a "I did it myself" type of case but you can often tell a mile off when people don't have industrial design experience.
Maybe akicus and DaemonBite will produce a more computer like case down the line, not that it's needed with MSTR case being produced, but if they do I'm sure they'll be able to do it without having to rely on the many 3D printed cases that are already available.

Your comment is pretty awfully rude to be honest.

It is a DIY case. The MiSTer is primarily a DIY hobbyist project.

Hands up how many of us have industrial design experience? Jeez.