MiSTer FPGA Forum

Although the first official mention of our beloved MiSTer happened on the www.atari-forum.com forum on June 21, 2017, https://www.atari-forum.com/viewtopic.php?t=31825 but the birth of the project can be considered the end of May - the beginning of June

Sorgelig in private conversations at the end of May told about his new development, that the MiST known at that time can no longer be acquired, that the new MiSTer, which is about to be released, will be much more attractive in terms of its capabilities and more interesting in all aspects, and at that time much cheaper and more attractively priced!

On May 29, having sold my last kidney, I ordered a DE10 nano development board from Terasic, and with a student discount, and already at the beginning of the month, probably on June 4th, I became the proud owner of this board. Quickly assembled on the circuit board VGA-out and ps\2 keyboard connector (yes, I had one too), Alexei and I began to breathe life into her).

For a long time I suffered with formatting the SD-card, then there were no such simple tools, but in the end everything turned out as it should and I launched the MiSTer shell and several cores, which did not require external SDRAM.

It happened exactly on June 4, 2017, so I consider this day the birthday of MiSTer (well, at least my specimen), I hope it was the second copy after the author. If this is not the case - "angry" Sorg will hopefully clarify this point

A few days later I got an paper mail from Sorgelig (I'll put this mail up for sale on eBay someday, I hope I have enough for two kidneys?), with a few clean PCBs, then I soldered the board with SDRAM myself, to run other cores, and future ones too). Well, then later there was an official announcement and release, then you already know everything yourself and this is a completely different story.

Therefore, I want to once again congratulate on this holiday all the owners of MiSTer and the cores developers involved in this truly great project, as well as the sellers of expansion boards, and all those who are not indifferent to this project, and of course personally Alexei Sorgelig (not always angry !!!

I am also interested in when someone got MiSTer (how long have you owned it), from whom did you first hear about this project, what other FPGA dev boards did you own before and do you own now. (I probably only have 7 dev boards, including the legendary Terasic DE1

Now there are thousands of MiSTer related videos on YouTube....
But here is one of the very first videos from the author,
May 29, 2017
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1CwWLFQ77Y
Total! FIVE! cores

Happy Holidays!!!!!!!!!! Hooray!!!!

Well, another year has passed!)
I hope for the past year was a lot of fixes in the existing cores, as well as new ones added and new people and developers came)
All in all just good news and happy Holidays! Hooray!

This project is such a space saver! I managed to donate a few hundred kilograms worth of increasingly finnicky vintage hardware to a local computer museum (they have much more use for it than I do). It also got my 5 year-old fearlessly into the old platforms his mom and myself used to love. Just waiting for the day he'll laugh all over my C64 BASIC coding mistakes.

MiSTer is the project that makes my kid the only one in the cinema below 35 to actually get many of the retro references in the new Super Mario movie.

Thanks Sorg and all the other devs!! The board wasn't cheap but the fun and family bonding are priceless.

Another great year, happy birthday MiSTer!

For me the MiSTer had the opposite effect... I ended up getting more into real hardware than before. Granted it's mostly items that are MiSTer compatible (controllers, PVMs, etc.) so it all nicely complements each other. Recently I treated myself to have selection of games running in parallel (like an Arcade) to showcase their evolution; which MiSTer makes a breeze to setup [e.g. : Space Panic, Lode Runner (Apple II), Lode Runner (NES), Bomberman MSX, Bomberman PC Engine]

I was intrigued by MiSTer long before I got around to looking into how to actually assembly one, which turned out to be super easy. Received all the ingredients weeks before the lock-downs started back in 2020, which turned out to be perfect timing.

I was pleasantly surprised by the amazingly active community, never a dull moment when you have a MiSTer, even if you wouldn't play a single game. There's always lots to tinker with and a growing horde of interesting MiSTer peripherals. One of my favorite things is using MiSTer Super Attract Mode in combination with a TTY2OLED showing information about the currently playing game. This works really well at events as well.

I love that you can connect it to a CRT and original controllers and even experience arcade machines exactly like they looked and played originally. I also really like how it is like a tiny portable museum of games and computers, even very rare ones. It boots super quickly and I enjoy the easy to use UI.

Many thanks to Sorgelig, also for not letting it become a Christmas tree full of shiny useless functionality.

I just looked it up, I bought my MiSTer January 2nd 2020. I came from the MiST which I bought in March 2018.

At this time I chose the MiST over the MiSTer because SDRAM boards were sold only by some users on some forums who soldered the boards themself and sold them on a private basis. Everything was super improvised at this point while the MiST was completely assembled and even came in a case.

2 years later SDRAM boards were widely available and the prospect to have a FPGA device running NeoGeo hardware on my HDMI TV made me buy the MiSTer.

I still have MiST and MiSTer in use. Many thanks to everybody involved.

EDIT: Just looked it up, the DE10 was €144.80 back then, happy days!

Got my MiSTer at the end of 2019. Already assembled by Manuel / manuferhi. Only regrets I ever had is that I did not got it earlier, what an amazing project that still delivers strong. Pricing was 259 for the full kit.

Happy birthday and a big thank you to all developers and supporters!

Well, our favourite MiSTer has turned 7 years old!
Over the past year we have released several new cores, improved existing cores and of course added new users
I sincerely hope that in another year we will still meet here and still enjoy this great project!

This is one of my very favorite things, open source or otherwise. I'm so thankful for this project and everyone that has contributed to it!

I got my first DE-10 Nano in June of 2019 for $130 from Amazon. I can't believe how far its progressed this project has been a great ride and has made retro gaming with low latency so much more accessible. Thanks to everyone who contributes to this project!

Happy birthday!! The best thing to have ever happened to retro gaming! So incredibly thankful for all the insanely talented folks that contributed to it over the years!

9 years old now..