MiSTer FPGA Forum

I'd love to see more people aware of the Domesday Duplicator project:
https://github.com/simoninns/DomesdayDu ... i/Overview

Thinking about having laserdisc games in an arcade cabinet build, I looked into what options exist beyond emulation like Daphne, when original hardware is expensive, players fail, disc rot, (insert other problems here). I looked into a laserdisc player replacement I heard about and discovered projects like 'Arthur,' 'Merlin', 'Lasercon,' and 'Dexter'. If I have this correctly:

'Arthur' is a hardware replacement PCB for Dragon's Lair and Space Ace (and Cliff Hanger).
'Merlin' is a replacement ROM board for those three games.
'Lasercon' is a PCB that lets you use other laserdisc players.
[another board, 'The ALG MultiROM Board' is a modern replacement for American Laser Games (like Mad Dog McCree)]
...for more info:
https://wood1st.com/LaserCon/

There has been intention to merge some of these projects into one, and in the same link, you will see Merlin-DX, Merlin-1000, and Merlin-8000.

To understand those devices, first is the Dexter project (a solid-state laserdisc replacement):
http://www.laserdisc-replacement.com/

Would these modern replacements and a discussion with their creators possibly open a door to FPGA implementation? That and the Domesday Duplicator project's ability for raw files may be the key to laserdisc games preservation, no?

I get it that analogue video is a complicated beast and debates may arise (hopefully not). I'm just contemplating the best way to preserve such history, given the limitations of technology.

[An aside: beyond Arcade preservation, I can see where this could help preserve systems MOSTLY none of us have played: the Pioneer LaserActive laserdisc titles and RDI Halcyon. I also still have hope to help preserve the short lived W.O.W. Action Max].

EDIT: Fixed 'DOOMSDAY' to 'Domesday' (Thank you Lightwave for the correction!)

@seastalker - thanks for the memory jog. Do you know of any sites where you can browse the Doomsday project? The BBC one closed and the National Archives(?) one does not work. I want to read and see the pics my local school had on there.

I remember finding a machine in the school's library, me and some friends were 'browsing' the information, we went somewhere in the UK and the disc drawer opened up (I guess now you had to flip the disc), we had never seen a CD or Laserdisc before and we basically ran off thinking we had broken it !! Seeing video was amazing out of a 8 bit computer. No one had an Amiga etc then, so it was next level stuff.

I mentioned it to my dad and he got out a Laserdisc leaflet he had in the drawer and explained about it.

seastalker wrote: ↑Tue Jun 13, 2023 8:02 pm

Doomsday

Domesday

The Domesday86 project is really awesome, hope that it picks up steam in the future so that more and more Laserdiscs can be preserved.

I assume that someone has preserved at least some arcade games and Laseractive games by now. I don't think there's any software that can decode the Domesday rips in real time though. So they would need to be decoded and re-encoded as a digital video stream, and I'm guessing it isn't feasible for a MiSTer core to play back a 640x480 or higher video while running a game core. But maybe a MiSTer core would be possible when paired with an external device to play the video?

Would also be cool if MiSTer could be used to replace the modules in a Laseractive player, but I'm guessing it wouldn't be worth the time to develop.

jd213 wrote: ↑Wed Jun 14, 2023 2:42 pm

The Domesday86 project is really awesome, hope that it picks up steam in the future so that more and more Laserdiscs can be preserved.

I assume that someone has preserved at least some arcade games and Laseractive games by now. I don't think there's any software that can decode the Domesday rips in real time though. So they would need to be decoded and re-encoded as a digital video stream, and I'm guessing it isn't feasible for a MiSTer core to play back a 640x480 or higher video while running a game core. But maybe a MiSTer core would be possible when paired with an external device to play the video?

Would also be cool if MiSTer could be used to replace the modules in a Laseractive player, but I'm guessing it wouldn't be worth the time to develop.

It might be something where you would need to connect a raspberry pi to the mister and the Pi acts as the laserdisc player handling the audio video. This is especially what the Dexter boards do for original Hardware.

@higgy

There is the Domesday Reloaded project: https://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov ... y/domesday

...however the search function is not working. they have a link showing how to use it, but I could not get it to work. There is an ARCHIVE of the actual discs that are fairly easy to find, but I think one must install "ld-Decode" to use the raw data.

I would find it may be easier to rip the content to MPEG-2 and use a hardware decoder core, Dealing with analog video and proper storage you get huge files that are difficult to even playback. So if you want those games you can make hardware that replicates the experience but is not technically the same.

You can download each disk, both sides, from a certain archive,but they are massive. And I mean, massive hundreds of gigs per side.