MiSTer FPGA Forum

I'm a brand new member of the forum and wanted to introduce myself quick. I found out about MiSTer and FPGA emulation after watching Simply Austin's latest video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZxKc3vIQVU

I've never heard about FPGA emulation or hardware emulation until about a week ago. I've done a lot of research on MiSTer and FPGA emulation and agree that it's the future. I've been using RetroArch and PC/software emulation and must admit that it doesn't replicate the same feeling as playing on a console. I'm one of those people that needs minimal input lag and thought the only way to get the true experience was to get an old console and procuring a CRT TV.

Anyways, I hope this Simply Austin video gets a lot of people interested in the MiSTer project. You guys have support for a lot of great systems, and I was very happy to see GBA is supported as it's one of my favorite handhelds. I'm excited to see what's coming down the pipeline. I'm aware that these cores are in development:

-Atari 7800
-Atari Jaguar
-PS1
-N64 (very early stages)
-DS (very early stages)
-Game & Watch
-Intellivision

...and a bunch of PC/arcade cores. As you can tell I'm more of a console/handheld gamer than a PC or arcade gamer, even though I love all games. I just wanting to bring up some ideas for cores that may not be in development currently or on the MiSTer project roadmap. You don't have to take my suggestions as anything more than just suggestions. After all, I barely can write a line of code! You guys are the programmng wizards and I know that creating a MiSTer core requires an insane amount of work so I respect that completely.

One way that the MiSTer project can gain a lot more recognition is if cores are created and optimized for consoles that have poor or no emulation. Here's a list of potential cores that you guys could develop down the line:

-Magnavox Odyssey
-Milton Bradley Microvision
-Fairchild Channel F
-Casio PV-1000
-RCA Studio II
-Epoch Cassette Vision
-Epoch Super Cassette Vision
-Interton VC 4000
-Action Max/Video Challenger
-Phillips CD-i
-Pioneer LaserActive
-Satellaview
-Super A'Can
-Sega 32X
-Virtual Boy
-Pokemon Mini
-Game Pocket Computer
-Atari Lynx
-Gamate
-Supervision
-Mega Duck
-Tiger R-Zone
-Tiger Game.com
-Neo Geo Pocket/Color
-Bandai WonderSwan/Color
etc.

I just want to get the community's thoughts on any on these as core options. Obviously I'm biased towards consoles/handhelds so I just wanted to have an open discussion about future cores and ganer interest and what cores you guys do and don't want. I didn't include anything 5th gen and above because of feasability issues.

Supervision is also in development. Had one as a kid

https://mobile.twitter.com/pcornier/sta ... 8147297282

I would rather see the console based hardware Arcade platforms like the Mega Play and CoJag than obscure portables. The Neo Geo Pocket and Wonderswan may be worth the trouble. As for the laser disk systems I don't even know how that will be handled, Dragon's Lair, and Space Ace arcade would have similar issues to the LaserActive. If you want to go crazy you could also add Furbies to the mix. The main thing you forgot that would be Tamagotchi, Digimon and Giga Pet you know those pocket lcd pets.

JBeau wrote: ↑Sat Aug 22, 2020 7:48 am Supervision is also in development. Had one as a kid

https://mobile.twitter.com/pcornier/sta ... 8147297282

That's great! Wasn't aware of that. I remember that it was one of the prizes on the Legends of the Hidden Temple Nickelodeon show lol, but I've never seen one in the wild.

I'd love to see an original Magnavox Odyssey emulator, a Virtual Boy emulator without the 3D elements, a CD-i emulator (no joke), and for arcade emulators I'd like to see the Midway T, Y, X, and Wolf units because I love Mortal Kombat, Rampage and NBA Jam.

Welcome to the MiSTer club, you taken the plunge and ordered a DE-10 Nano?

-Fairchild Channel F --this is being worked on, surprised we haven't heard anything about it yet

-Action Max/Video Challenger --I think we may be getting this down the line

-Satellaview --getting a fully working satellite service is the stuff of a madman's dreams, but first step would be for native BS rom support in the SNES core (as an aside native Sufami Turbo support would also be neat) which hopefully someone does, the Super NT supports them

-Super A'Can --I asked about this the other day, and high level response was it would be about as much effort as was put into the SNES core to get this working (i.e. a lot), so it probably isn't happening, certainly anytime soon

-Sega 32X --this seems to be a bridge too far for the DE-10 Nano

Another core on the way is the Sega Pico, which will be fun.

Potentially we could get some of the 4th and 5th Gen CD based consoles:
Commodore CDTV
Amstrad CD32
Neo Geo CD
Philips CDi
3DO
Atari Jaguar CD (a Jaguar core should be able to support this fairly easily)

There's a few other odd ones and early ones you missed off the list, but not any that anyone has mentioned wanting to work on. One potential one is the Adventure Vision that I made a thread for awhile back, that has a core on the NT Mini:
viewtopic.php?f=24&t=343

I really love the potential for MiSTer to have a lot of these more obscure consoles to preserve them, and negate the need for me to buy old dying expensive hardware to have a go on, which my wallet would really appreciate!

But nobody has expressed any interest in developing them.

I haven't purchased a DE-10 Nano yet. I plan on doing so within the next year or so. I plan on moving in the next 6 months to a year and then I'll buy a new low latency TV and then I'll buy a MiSTer setup then. It's just a logistics issue currently, but the way I look at it is that the MiSTer device will be a lot more polished and have a few more cores by then so it'll be worth the wait

That's good news about the Fairchild being in development. I love obscure consoles and handhelds. The online retro gaming community, especially on YouTube, is such an echo chamber of people on praising NES-Dreamcast era stuff on and crapping on consoles not created by Nintendo, Sega or Sony. I think the 3DO is the most underrated/misunderstood console of all time (would love a core!). Other good console are the Jaguar, 7800, Lynx, Intellivision, ColecoVision and so on. I was very happy to see that the MiSTer has an Astrocade core. That's another underrated console.

I beleive Neo Geo CD is being worked on as well. I didn't make my list super long because I didn't want my post to be a novel xD. Here's some Wikipedia articles listing some ideas for console cores.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_h ... e_consoles
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_h ... e_consoles
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_d ... e_consoles
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_f ... e_consoles

I think there could be some cool cores based on dedicated handhelds like Tiger handhelds and so on. I don't know if creating cores for any console outside of the Magnavox Odyssey for the first generation would even be worth it since they're all pretty much Pong clones with the exception of the Coleco TelStar Arcade and a couple of other exceptions.

Part of the reason a lot of these aren't available is that they use obscure (at least by retrogaming/retrocomputing standards) processor families, so it's a lot of effort for one or two platforms per family, most of which have few games at all and even fewer good games:

Microvision: Intel 8021 and Texas Instruments TMS1100 (the processor is actually in the cartridge, so which one you use depends on the game...)
Channel F: Fairchild F8
Cassette Vision: semi-custom NEC (?)
Super Cassette Vision: NEC 7810
RCA Studio II: RCA 1802 (someone did write a Verilog 1802 core)
Interton VC 4000: Signetics 2650 (unofficial MiSTer core, not sure about its status)
Action Max/Video Challenger: Hitachi HD401010
Pokemon Mini: Seiko S1C88
Virtual Boy: NEC v810 (also used in PC-FX)
Game Pocket Computer: NEC 78C06
Game.com: Sharp SM8521
Neo Geo Pocket/Color: Toshiba TLCS900H

Somebody should really continue working on the Magnavox Odyssey² (Philips Videopac) https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/Odyssey2_MiSTer
core, improving the following things:
- Improve emulating the soundchip
- Gamefixes for Gunfight (Showdown in 2100 A.D) and others
- The Voice module support
- G7400+ rom support

Moondandy wrote: ↑Sat Aug 22, 2020 1:46 pm Amstrad CD32

Maybe you mean Commodore CD32 and/or Amstrad GX4000?

Hah, yes my bad - I meant Amiga CD32

I actually have an Amstrad GX4000, I think there is something odd about it that means a core may not be possible despite it being a pretty basic machine.

Just as an addendum:

KremlingKuthroat19 wrote: ↑Sat Aug 22, 2020 3:45 am I'm aware that these cores are in development:

-Atari 7800
-Atari Jaguar
-PS1
-N64 (very early stages)
-DS (very early stages)
-Game & Watch
-Intellivision

-Atari 7800 - https://github.com/Kitrinx/Atari7800_MiSTer - She hasn't worked on it in quite some time, busy with a lot of the other MiSTer projects for quite some time I think.
-Atari Jaguar - https://github.com/ElectronAsh/Jaguar_MiSTer_master - Hasn't been worked on in some time, ElectronAsh busy with other projects in the MiSTer for quite awhile. I haven't kept up with what Torlus has been doing.
-N64 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3zNZ-vgNa0 - This isn't running on a DE10-Nano, and isn't running on even an Intel based FPGA (Altera Cyclone V is what DE10-Nano uses). It's running on a Xilinx-based chip instead. The N64 likely won't be compatible with something as cheap as the DE10-Nano currently because of raw performance on both the RDRAM and the GPU side of things being 3-10x as much as other 5th generation consoles.
-DS - Sadly the DS version will probably never be 1:1 in performance or accuracy due to limitations on the chip, according to the dev (if I remember correctly). 3d games in general will not probably ever run that well on this core.
-Game & Watch - https://twitter.com/pcornier/status/1270018674762625025 - Yeah this is really cool! I've been keeping an eye on this one.
-Intellivision - https://github.com/Grabulosaure/Intv_MiSTer - Still being updated apparently, that's good!

KremlingKuthroat19 wrote: ↑Sat Aug 22, 2020 3:45 am One way that the MiSTer project can gain a lot more recognition is if cores are created and optimized for consoles that have poor or no emulation. Here's a list of potential cores that you guys could develop down the line:

-Fairchild Channel F - https://github.com/furrtek/ChannelF - Work in Progress that furrtek (NeoGeo core dev) started a couple months ago, probably nothing there yet, maybe just a placeholder, I haven't looked at it in quartus yet.
-Satellaview - You can already play MiSTer-fixed Satellaview games from the Everdrive pack on the MiSTer.
-Virtual Boy - Furrtek developed mods for the virtualboy, I wonder if they have plans to do a core eventually since they know a decent amount about the hardware it seems.

Hope this info helps anyone.

EDIT:

ExCyber wrote: ↑Sat Aug 22, 2020 6:37 pm Part of the reason a lot of these aren't available is that they use obscure (at least by retrogaming/retrocomputing standards) processor families, so it's a lot of effort for one or two platforms per family, most of which have few games at all and even fewer good games:

Channel F: Fairchild F8

One good reason to replicate the Channel F would be it's history, it was the first cartridge-based console. Here's some info about the Channel F I found for anyone interested:

http://datasheets.chipdb.org/Fairchild/ ... d-3850.pdf
http://channelf.se/veswiki/index.php?title=Main_Page
http://seanriddle.com/chanf.html
https://patents.google.com/patent/US4095791
https://web.archive.org/web/20200120005 ... /docs.html

I'm a big fan of the Lynx and have three of them, including one with a McWill display and VGA out and an overclocked one. I also have almost all games for it and programmed some demos on it as well.

The Lynx is a very unique system and was far ahead of its time, with an unlimited amount of scaling/distorting sprites at almost unlimited size. It has some cool games that are not available on other systems and some very good arcade ports.

A Neo Geo Pocket core would be great as well. I've had a monochrome version for a long time and still no games for it, lol. The thumbstick is fantastic.

I enjoy trying all the obscure systems I've never had access to on MiSTer.

I'm a big Atari fan and would love to see the Lynx emulated as well as get the 7800 core and Jaguar cores. If those three cores are completed, then all console/PC Atari hardware will be preserved. If that happens someday, it'll be a great day

How many of the Lynx hardware already exists on FPGA?

I guess the Processor (based on the MOS 6502) should already exist, or at least be easier to port for someone experienced?

KremlingKuthroat19 wrote: ↑Sat Aug 29, 2020 9:27 am I'm a big Atari fan and would love to see the Lynx emulated as well as get the 7800 core and Jaguar cores. If those three cores are completed, then all console/PC Atari hardware will be preserved. If that happens someday, it'll be a great day

You forgot the Atari Portfolio

NightShadowPT wrote: ↑Sat Aug 29, 2020 3:28 pm How many of the Lynx hardware already exists on FPGA?

I guess the Processor (based on the MOS 6502) should already exist, or at least be easier to port for someone experienced?

It has a 65c02 CPU within the Mikey custom chip. Sound is an extended pokey-style shift feedback system, four channels with panning. The Suzy graphics chip is a custom chip as well. All graphics on the Lynx are one linked list of hardware scaled/distorted and run-length compressed sprites, even the backgrounds. Suzy has a multiply/divide accumulate function. Here's a nice overview: https://atarilynxdeveloper.wordpress.co ... tari-lynx/

If there was one system that I would DREAM of seeing, it would be: Apple 2 GS.

I loved that computer so much.

Oops, this is console/handhelds section.

kaz321123 wrote: ↑Sat Sep 05, 2020 5:07 am If there was one system that I would DREAM of seeing, it would be: Apple 2 GS.

I loved that computer so much.

Oops, this is console/handhelds section.

I created this thread, but didn't mean for it to be exclusively for console/handheld cores. That's just my field of expertise. I'm no avid PC gamer, but any and all suggestions are welcome here!