MiSTer FPGA Forum

Having been here from [nearly?] the start and also on AtariAge, I often find myself wanting to post something, but second guessing...

Do I post here in 'general' or on AtariAge where they have separate subforums for different systems? For example, in their forums, there's a place for 'TG-16/PC Engine High Score Club' which has nothing to do with Atari other than if you like Atari, NEC is also a thing. Should we post about TG16 hardware in a thread about a TG16 CORE or is that off topic and better suited here in 'general'?

Many of us may be tinkerers out of necessity to preserve our consoles. Should a thread about TG16 games include discussions on recapping consoles for instance? If so, maybe a sub forum for the 'Macho Nacho/RetroRGB/Mr. Mario' types of modders can offer soldering advice?

Basically, is anyone with me here that would like some 'cross contamination' expansion of the forums? [Until then, I have an oddball topic I'm starting on the OG Xbox.]

Doesn't AtariAge have a completely different goal than these MiSTer forums?

I don't think this is a problem or confusing.

• If it's about real classic hardware and the games/software for those systems, I post on AtariAge or another hardware specific forum.

• If I want to talk/learn about MiSTer, the cores, software or features specific to MiSTer, I post on the MiSTer forums.

There's a good rule that has been around for a long time: "Don't try to be everything for everyone."

akator, fair enough. It's been a long time since I've studied either site's intentions. I like the 'good rule' you post as well. Maybe a good crossover would be a thread on 'notable or interesting posts on AtariAge'? Then again, maybe just a poll of how many here are also on AtariAge for the purpose of such information? I've been too long on AtariAge that I don't even remember how or when they included so much NON-atari discussion.

seastalker wrote: ↑Mon Jan 15, 2024 12:57 am

It's been a long time since I've studied either site's intentions. I like the 'good rule' you post as well. Maybe a good crossover would be a thread on 'notable or interesting posts on AtariAge'? Then again, maybe just a poll of how many here are also on AtariAge for the purpose of such information? I've been too long on AtariAge that I don't even remember how or when they included so much NON-atari discussion.

I think AtariAge was starting to become more inclusive of other systems by the early 2000s. I can't remember the exact dates, but the IIRC the changes started with some of the non-Atari 8-bit consoles, then included non-Atari 8-bit computers. There was a bit of squabble about whether the NES should get its own forum, but once that happened it seemed like the other systems got in there more quickly.

There's also the recent acquisition of AtariAge by (the latest version of) Atari last year. The biggest changes so far have been to the store with any homebrew resembling or derived from licensed properties being removed.

As it is, AtariAge has become more of a minefield to navigate, both because it has grown so large and because it had become so generalized. There's less focus so the signal to noise ratio has changed significantly — less signal and lot more noise. I'm reminded again of that "all things to all people" problem again, or "Jack of all trades but master of none."

Over the last several years I've been finding a lot more valuable and interesting information and content on sites for specific systems. That kind of information isn't appearing on AtariAge as much as it used to.

For all of the above reasons, I appreciate the MiSTer FPGA forum because it's mostly about MiSTer. It is, after all, the best place to get info about MiSTer and with the least misinformation.

Something that could work is a sub-forum "As Seen on Other Forums." Perhaps that would be a good way to include the content you are looking for but without "contaminating" the MiSTer-specific sub-forums and threads.

On the other hand, it could be argued that's unnecessary. I use RSS to follow many different sites and forums, so the tools are already there.

akator, you have MANY valid reasons and history here. Much appreciated! Perhaps this way is for the best. There is at least some cross-talk with things like Analogue and MiST which may be more than enough.

If it is of any comfort, the mods here may be aligned with your thinking: Shortly after this thread, I created a thread [that now got removed] about an idea I had for creating a slim OG Xbox without needing an optical/hdd nor IDE. That thread was likely too off-topic for a MiSTer forum (totally fair) and one I will move to AtariAge.

I tend to lump many retro 'youtubers' into the same camp in my mind but need to better separate it topic-wise. Ie. Mister is not recapping CRTs or consoles nor Retrotink 4k either, etc. I do like the consolidated "As Seen on Other Forums" idea but will leave that to the mods here.

It's not a cult, or a religion. You don't need to sanitise the forum so it's only Mister posts.
We could quite happily have an emulation forum, because a lot of people still use emulation.
The problem with Atariage is that, if you don't toe the line over there, the mods are on a total power trip, and target you. I personally think Atariage is full of a-holes, especially gate-keeping a-holes in specific groups - Atari, Vectrex - the worst, Coleco, Intellivision, etc...
I would like to see a general emulation forum on here, it would be kind of refreshing.

Bristles, that is interesting. I've never personally had that problem at AtariAge, but I have been there a long time and perhaps don't post at all as much as others there to have been targeted. Though a big Atari fan, I dabbled with Commodore, but was totally turned off by some people at Lemon64 for similar reasons after merely a day to a week tops. I mean no disrespect to the Lemon 64 forum as a whole, Commodore fans, nor the likely many good people there. It was just such a culture shock to what I got used to on AtariAge and the good MiSTer people here. My FPGA start was a MiST and I immediately jumped on the MiSTer bandwagon and this forum thanks to AtariAge. Had good buy/sell/trades at AtariAge too. That is unfortunate that your experience with AtariAge was like mine at Lemon64.

Bristles wrote: ↑Mon Jan 15, 2024 1:15 pm

It's not a cult, or a religion. You don't need to sanitise the forum so it's only Mister posts.

I think what I was describing was more about curated content, not sanitized.

Bristles wrote: ↑Mon Jan 15, 2024 1:15 pm

We could quite happily have an emulation forum, because a lot of people still use emulation.
...

I would like to see a general emulation forum on here, it would be kind of refreshing.

A software emulation sub-forum would be interesting. However, how would that be an improvement to these forums?

Bristles wrote: ↑Mon Jan 15, 2024 1:15 pm

The problem with Atariage is that, if you don't toe the line over there, the mods are on a total power trip, and target you. I personally think Atariage is full of a-holes, especially gate-keeping a-holes in specific groups - Atari, Vectrex - the worst, Coleco, Intellivision, etc...

I don't think that's about AtariAge as much as it is about human behavior in general, and specifically on the internet.

Example: FaceBook.

seastalker wrote: ↑Mon Jan 15, 2024 2:05 pm

I've never personally had that problem at AtariAge, but I have been there a long time and perhaps don't post at all as much as others there to have been targeted. Though a big Atari fan, I dabbled with Commodore, but was totally turned off by some people at Lemon64 for similar reasons after merely a day to a week tops. I mean no disrespect to the Lemon 64 forum as a whole, Commodore fans, nor the likely many good people there. It was just such a culture shock to what I got used to on AtariAge and the good MiSTer people here. My FPGA start was a MiST and I immediately jumped on the MiSTer bandwagon and this forum thanks to AtariAge. Had good buy/sell/trades at AtariAge too. That is unfortunate that your experience with AtariAge was like mine at Lemon64.

I think we have all had good and bad experiences with different websites and forums. That isn't necessarily a bad thing — we are all different and the variety and diversity on the internet means there's something to offer for everyone.

EDITED because I screwed up the quotes before

seastalker wrote: ↑Mon Jan 15, 2024 2:05 pm

Bristles, that is interesting. I've never personally had that problem at AtariAge, but I have been there a long time and perhaps don't post at all as much as others there to have been targeted. Though a big Atari fan, I dabbled with Commodore, but was totally turned off by some people at Lemon64 for similar reasons after merely a day to a week tops. I mean no disrespect to the Lemon 64 forum as a whole, Commodore fans, nor the likely many good people there. It was just such a culture shock to what I got used to on AtariAge and the good MiSTer people here. My FPGA start was a MiST and I immediately jumped on the MiSTer bandwagon and this forum thanks to AtariAge. Had good buy/sell/trades at AtariAge too. That is unfortunate that your experience with AtariAge was like mine at Lemon64.

Yeah, I guess we've all had different experiences. Fair point.
My beef with them is the gatekeeping. For example, if homebrew gets a cartridge release, and some of us want a rom release, and we're more than happy to pay for it, we get told no, and then it all kicks off. And the cartridge releases are limited, so only those with large forum counts, or Youtube "Celeb", gets preferential treatment. I blew a fuse, as I usually do, only to be put on a limited posting that required a moderator to approve of ALL my posts. Will stop there, as it would be unfair to bring it all up here, but that is a small example.
Among the noise, there are some decent people over there.
Still, I support your forum idea.

akator wrote: ↑Mon Jan 15, 2024 5:01 pm

A software emulation sub-forum would be interesting. However, how would that be an improvement to these forums?

Because it would separate the emulation from the Mister Core topics, and I know I'm not alone in my love, and appreciation of modern emulation.
It means if we need to bring up PC emulation, or Pi emulation, or whatever, then we can do without going off-topic.
Thanks for the response, I do agree with most of it.

Bristles wrote: ↑Mon Jan 15, 2024 5:51 pm

Because it would separate the emulation from the Mister Core topics, and I know I'm not alone in my love, and appreciation of modern emulation.
It means if we need to bring up PC emulation, or Pi emulation, or whatever, then we can do without going off-topic.

Those are good reasons.

Personally, I've had some difficulty finding good forums for emulation.

For convenience alone, I'd love talk of Mame on the Linux side, even if there are a few of us at the lonely table. While I now exclusively play arcade on Mister and Pocket, it would be nice to play some Golden Axe 2 or S.T.U.N. Runner while waiting for cores. Also ScummVM has been dreamy at said table.

My last pi was a 3. Was going to get a 4 but couldn't during the shortage. Now there's a 5 so we will see. Don't know if I should turn my 3 into a plex/kodi player or look for a MAME build.

Bristles wrote: ↑Mon Jan 15, 2024 5:47 pm

My beef with them is the gatekeeping. For example, if homebrew gets a cartridge release, and some of us want a rom release, and we're more than happy to pay for it, we get told no, and then it all kicks off. And the cartridge releases are limited, so only those with large forum counts, or Youtube "Celeb", gets preferential treatment.

Yeah, I'm disappointed with the homebrew trend over the last decade of not releasing ROMs for purchase. I want to support homebrew devs but I've been using flash storage / flash carts / drive emulators for all of my systems for a long time. I don't want more physical media because I don't have space for it. On systems like the Dreamcast, my GDI drive was replace with a GDEMU so playing optical media isn't even an option.

seastalker wrote: ↑Mon Jan 15, 2024 6:13 pm

For convenience alone, I'd love talk of Mame on the Linux side, even if there are a few of us at the lonely table. While I now exclusively play arcade on Mister and Pocket, it would be nice to play some Golden Axe 2 or S.T.U.N. Runner while waiting for cores. Also ScummVM has been dreamy at said table.

My last pi was a 3. Was going to get a 4 but couldn't during the shortage. Now there's a 5 so we will see. Don't know if I should turn my 3 into a plex/kodi player or look for a MAME build.

The RPi3 works well with MAME 2003 and 2003 Plus, the later being the Libretro / RetroArch version with improved performance. Even those options are significantly improved using a RPi4 or 5 because that extra memory and CPU performance. MAME 2010 also runs well on the 4 and 5.

The good thing now is that RPi4s are available again and at much lower prices than they were before the chip shortage.

seastalker wrote: ↑Mon Jan 15, 2024 6:13 pm

it would be nice to play some Golden Axe 2 or S.T.U.N. Runner while waiting for cores.

S.T.U.N. Runner! What a great game. Spent many quarters/tokens on back in the day. Uses the OG Star Wars arcade yoke. Hopefully available on MiSTer someday, for now MAME will have to do.

A forum on here for MAME games not available at present on MiSTer would be nice, IMO. Especially now that we have the amazing Groovy_MiSTer project in the house.

Would anyone kindly PM me with advice/links for a good arcade-only RPI 3 build (don't need consoles with MiSTer)? Thank you!

@bankshot - you are my instant new best friend. LOVE that Atari game!!! Also, I heard about Groovy_MiSTer but need to more for a proper setup.

seastalker wrote: ↑Mon Jan 15, 2024 7:35 pm

@bankshot - you are my instant new best friend. LOVE that Atari game!!! Also, I heard about Groovy_MiSTer but need to more for a proper setup.

Glad to find a new friend also carrying a S.T.U.N. Runner Fan Club membership card lol.

Yeah Groovy_MiSTer is for the CRT gamers, unfortunately I'm still stuck in LED land at the moment. But I've got a couple of tube TVs sitting in my garage waiting to be plopped into an arcade cabinet once I get a chance to build one. Hopefully someday soon when I have the time.

This forum is very low traffic, I doubt that any new non-MiSTer topics will get much attention (sadly).

I would be in support of another section for discussion. Just because there is only a moderate amount of traffic here doesn't mean there can't be some sense of community. With the addition of the Groovy MiSTer core, we have more reason than ever to start talking about software emulation end games not yet given the FPGA treatment.

Many forums with focus on a singular platform (like this one) have some sort of "Other [...]" subforum, where you can discuss things not related to the main topic (as long as it's not the dreaded politics/religion/etc of course). It certainly wouldn't hurt to have one here.

It's true that this is a low traffic forum but I think it also has a bigger than usual subset of knowledgeable members, since MiSTer's users are quite often hardcore, experienced geeks.

I think this forum could use an Analogue Pocket topic, as often echoed here there's certainly a large enough overlap in MiSTer owners and Pocket owners to justify it.

I guess the real question is how underserved those communities are.

TI-99/4A, for example, has LONG had a very active home at AtariAge, of all places. I don't know where Analogue customers tend to congregate currently.

antibolo wrote: ↑Tue Jan 16, 2024 8:33 pm

This forum is very low traffic, I doubt that any new non-MiSTer topics will get much attention (sadly).

My feeling is, that with the start of discord the traffic became lower. I personally don't like discord as a "support" platform. Nothing is sorted, you don't find things, it's a chat. But many ppl seem to see this different. (Or I don't understand discord correctly)

HerrBerzerk wrote: ↑Thu Jan 18, 2024 6:54 pm

My feeling is, that with the start of discord the traffic became lower. I personally don't like discord as a "support" platform. Nothing is sorted, you don't find things, it's a chat. But many ppl seem to see this different. (Or I don't understand discord correctly)

Then I don't understand either. I'm well aware of the Discord obsession, but I find it so disorganized I'd far rather have no support at all. My brain just doesn't work that way.

HerrBerzerk wrote: ↑Thu Jan 18, 2024 6:54 pm

antibolo wrote: ↑Tue Jan 16, 2024 8:33 pm

This forum is very low traffic, I doubt that any new non-MiSTer topics will get much attention (sadly).

My feeling is, that with the start of discord the traffic became lower. I personally don't like discord as a "support" platform. Nothing is sorted, you don't find things, it's a chat. But many ppl seem to see this different. (Or I don't understand discord correctly)

I personally dislike using Discord (or any sort of IRC-like chat system, outside of 1-on-1 conversations), so if a given community is only on Discord, I will simply not engage with that community at all...