MiSTer FPGA Forum

More games are now playable on the MiSTer FPGA PlayStation core:

The project is making greater strides now it looks like, can't wait to play titles like CastleVania SoTN, Resident Evil series, Silent Hill and many other timeless classics!

Amazing work really!

i'm gonna need a bigger sd card.

I'm thinking a portable SSD to keep power draw down

Got a big 4tb mechanical drive with everything on it but thinking of replacing it with a 4tb ssd. Less moving parts basically, no speed gain I guess.

I think the USB connection will be the limitation, not the disk.

jca wrote: ↑Wed Nov 24, 2021 4:22 pm I think the USB connection will be the limitation, not the disk.

Yes. No moving parts, less power consumption is fine by me.

The issue with harddrives is not the maximum or even average speed, but rather the delay related to random access. This is usually noticeable in CD-based games where you enter a new area and the game suddenly wants to read a bunch of small files on the disk. Harddrives often can't keep up and you end up with stuttering.

Good to know. Thanks.

machinejump wrote: ↑Tue Nov 23, 2021 7:19 pm i'm gonna need a bigger sd card.

Yeah, a bigger wallet too

softtest9 wrote: ↑Wed Nov 24, 2021 10:22 pm The issue with harddrives is not the maximum or even average speed, but rather the delay related to random access. This is usually noticeable in CD-based games where you enter a new area and the game suddenly wants to read a bunch of small files on the disk. Harddrives often can't keep up and you end up with stuttering.

That's weird... should't be the case as the cd consoles only had 1-2x drives in them which are 300KB/sec tops.

A hard drive even from 10 years ago will do 100 MB/sec (with way faster seek time than optical drives). There's every possibility the stutters were in the original game when running from original CD as well perhaps.

Unless perhaps your hard drive is going to sleep and needing to power up?

how do you compile the current state of project to play with it. I know some folks have. I've never used github or quartus. I installed quartus lite and downloaded the zip from the github page. What else is needed (and how do I do it, lol)

Once Quartus 17.x is installed, unzip the file from github into a folder, open the PlayStation.qpf file either by double clicking it if qpf files are associated with Quartus or launch quartus and open it from there.
After it loads, go to Processing->Start Compilation.
The rbf file will be in the output_files folder.

And if you installed a later version, uninstall it and install 17.x, otherwise you'll probably get errors when trying to compile.

Do you really have to uninstall a version later than 17.x if you want to install 17.x?
On my system I have both 13.0 sp1 and 17.2, no problem at all.

jca wrote: ↑Fri Nov 26, 2021 9:23 pm Do you really have to uninstall a version later than 17.x if you want to install 17.x?
On my system I have both 13.0 sp1 and 17.2, no problem at all.

Yeah I think he meant to just use the latest version used to build the core to compile it. Otherwise you'll have to change stuff.
Usually you get a warning if you are not using the right version. I had a lot of issues compiling the ao486 core myself...

I understand the reason why he said that: the person who asked how to compile the core just wants to compile the core and to compile any MISTer core you have to use 17.x as later versions of Quartus will necessitate changes in the source code of the core. It could be confusing for this person if he had several versions of Quartus.
My question was just theoretical as I have no intention of installing anything above 17.x:
17.2 is just to compile MISTer cores (developed by others).
13 is to learn FPGA on a DE1 (non SOC) board.

What jca said. For someone who has "never used github or quartus" (literal quote), getting errors on compile would be disconcerting and discouraging. I got errors (not just warnings) when I tried the... I think it was the 19.x version; I was told to downgrade to 17.x and that worked.

Every FPGA noob get bitten by this. Although I played before with Quartus 13 and the little FPGA board for the multicomp core from Grant Searles site the first time I tried to compile an existing MISTer core I downloaded the latest version of Quartus. The latest the better? Not when compiling MISTer cores, you have to use 17.x. 17.2 is the latest but you first have to download and install 17.0 and after that download an install the update to 17.2. I think 17.0 is good for MISTer cores but someone would have to confirm that.

Another update, the BIOS is now fully booting into games:

Someone was nice enough to make a thread here posting a video about how to compile the core:
viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3706

I compiled the AO486 core back before it got released, so I already have everything installed but it is a while between I compile cores so I often forget the process before I try again. I have not tried compiling the PSX core myself yet, but now there is a video showing how I think I will give it a try.