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Desert Island Retro

The MiSTer FPGA


Reg
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Today I have been working on getting my MiSTer FPGA running.

I've created a guide for what I have done so far and attached to this document.

If you don't know that a MiSTer FPGA is, it's bacially 100% accurate gameplay on legacy devices and does not use emulation.  The hardware is programmed on a device by device basis in to a  Field-programmable gate array.  The hardware is known as core's and you load what you want very easily.  It's trumps emulation as it's not software based in terms of how emulators are traditionally written.

Do a quick google and look on YouTube if this sounds even slightly interesting to you.

I was not aware of this product until @Gary brought it to my attention and damn am I glad he did.

The document on this thread is complete, but a live document and will be updated with more content as I continue to use this over the near future.

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This looks really cool. I saw on FB earlier someone had built some new PCB's for a Monaco gp arcade cab using an FPGA... 

I'm always interested in FPGA's and ASIC's as they're the one thing that's impossible to repair or reproduce on original Fruit machine boards.

Hopefully one day we'll be able to drive our classic fruity techs with new FPGA's... it's beyond me at the moment but Imagine a fresh impact or m1 mpu driven by an FPGA. That would be awesome.

Keep us posted

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For anyone that is following this, I have it pretty well setup now.

I wanted to show what it was like running in real-time for anyone that has a slight interest across multiple systems - this includes changing cores etc.

When I bring the menu up to do this, I use the LEFT + RIGHT shoulder buttons to bring the menu up to change core.  All of this happens in real time.

Unfortuantly, the showing of games ended up a bit longer then I planned.  The first game, New Rally X, I have always been reasonably ok at and I used to love it as a kid.

Playing it here, it runs faster then MAME but beause it is a 1:1 recreation of the original hardware in the FPGA and therefore more accurate, the horrible jagedness and updating of the scrolling maze is GONE !

For some strange reason - the game being a perfect 1:1 recreation - my skills from all those years ago are actually better now and I amanaged to get to a level I had never hit before and a score much higher then I've ever done on MAME. 

If you're bored of watching me play Rally X, skip to 11:10 on the minutes and you'll see loads of other systems loaded briefly with one game quickly played then on to the next one.

As a final the whole system is customisable in what you see the opening background of a CBM64 is one of the sytem I have a decent setup of and everytime you reboot the MiSTer this changes.

Here's what it looked like on the TV - everything going through HDMI.

The LCD settings are nice for some of the handhelds - but all this can be changed.

The strange thing us - this making the GB / GBA / GC / Atari Lynx and GG into full screen consoles is something else and the experience is very different playing it on the large screen and a much more positive one as well.

I am not an expert on this - but have my system setup pretty well - feel free to ask questions.

The Amiga part of it is also something else - that is a pre-configured hard drive image it boots into just before I play Xmas Lemmings with pretty much every game and demo you could want for.

Looks like I screwed up on the editing and the Amiga section is not there, when I merged the two clips guess what system I cut !

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1942 - Gameboy Color

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Bomber Man - TurboGFX

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Sonic - Megadrive

 

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Haha My head was saying dismiss this as another Pi clone, but I had never heard of this and im on quite a few emulation groups, I am now looking into ordering one of these after I attempt at building a pinball cab. I have a Pi conected to my main TV and it just doesn't feel right so cheers :)

 

Pete

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7 minutes ago, pbb said:

Haha My head was saying dismiss this as another Pi clone, but I had never heard of this and im on quite a few emulation groups, I am now looking into ordering one of these after I attempt at building a pinball cab. I have a Pi conected to my main TV and it just doesn't feel right so cheers :)

 

Pete

Excellent !

I'll try to get another video done over the weekend doing different games and such ( plus the missing Amiga ). :)

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Feel like getting the Gamecube out, Streetfighter, Ghost and Goblins, Gauntlet, Smash Tv and a whole heap of other stuff like Narc and Rampage and all Streets of rage with Final Fight or that could of been the PS1 or 2.

Edited by Big J

 

 

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15 minutes ago, Reg said:

Excellent !

I'll try to get another video done over the weekend doing different games and such ( plus the missing Amiga ). :)

I always have trouble with Amiga, end up binning everytime, had launchbox, coin ops but cos of different disks it goes pear shaped! and i grew up with an Amiga (50 now) so pinball dreams, cannon fodder, giana sisters, rainbow islands were my go to games.

Pete

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I got one of these last year and the speed of updates on it recently has been incredible - for arcade stuff we are already at CPS2 (if you subscribe to the dev's patreon) and although its fiddly to setup the fact that its a straight emulation of the chips which then runs the real code makes it feel so much better than any other 'emulators' out there

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