Nintendo 64

[digital remnant]

you need to set audio compression init to 3 in the example code

[weary palm]

yas

can it do interlaced 480i?

I'll try

[weary palm]

Yeah... The framerate dropa to 15-25 instead of 30. SAD

[zinc dew]

Removed the embed, just incase.

[wanton sun]

so we need the turbo core to watch high res videos?

[weary palm]

Oh, I didn't think of trying that 🙂

It's actually the audio codec that's too much for it

[wanton sun]

clean HDMI should make it 480p as well. Well, if the decoder does generate 480p instead of 480i

[magic girder]

Shrek on n64?!

[weary palm]

Yes

[lament escarp]

What a crazy idea. 😅

[weary palm]

it exists

[fiery hamlet]

@zinc dew now go fix the timing of the Beetle Adventure Racing intro 😈

[zinc dew]

Ok I’ll get right on it.

https://tenor.com/view/not-waynes-world-wrong-no-nope-gif-20274501

[fiery hamlet]

Oops I meant @hidden bolt

[odd walrus]

Hey, has anyone made a guide on how to use libdragon's video player to make your own N64 video roms?

[weary perch]

you may be able to render beetle adventure racing with close-to-correct timings if you play with the debug settings, in particular the delay/slowdown options

DDR3 and cache delays

[scenic vapor]

One could argue that it is a great feature to have them NOT.

[weary palm]

@severe quail https://krullo.se/n64/video

[spare meadow]

I think thats the main reason why I would love to see a 64DD core an play the games I couldnt at the time

[weary palm]

but there aren't any. 🙂

[spare meadow]

You are not a good guy 😔

[modest helm]

F-Zero X Expansion Kit and the Mario Artist games are worth it alone. I mean it's Mario

[slow silo]

Those aren't going to be happening in a very very very long time, especially not without costing as much as a car. Maybe at best we might get Dreamcast in a few years

[weary palm]

we already have those converted to regular roms.

[modest helm]

They don't run properly from what I've heard. It's kind of a hacky solution

[weary palm]

ok. i haven't played them much tbh, but i haven't had any issues

[modest helm]

Yeah I'm no expert on the subject, but the author of the N64DD to N64 hacks mentioned that he regretted making the rom hacks. You can ask @worn delta as I saw him discuss this before

[plush summit]

Damn, the DD had its Oppenheimer moment

[slow silo]

https://tenor.com/view/a-little-from-column-a-a-little-from-column-b-the-simpsons-yes-and-no-grandpa-simpson-gif-24788699

[weary palm]

"Zoinkity"?

[topaz otter]

nintendo was making their own tower of babel to spite god

also theres only like two games on the 64DD that are even in english

and only one worth playing

unless you want to play doshin the giant and stomp on people

[slow silo]

What about that 64DD sim city with the weird object people?

[topaz otter]

is it playable or a weird novelty?

[digital remnant]

Its easy, install libdragon with docker, switch to preview, replace movie file in makefile and compile

[digital remnant]

Cool, but the result on real hardware would be the most interesting 🙂

Maybe the libdragon guys can add mp3 support, which is lighter to decode 🙂

[topaz otter]

ok I just looked it up and its literally just sim city

[slow silo]

It was a retail release so I assume playable?

[slow silo]

I think it's like, SimCity 2000 with an added feature of being able to see pedestrians on the streets?

Not sure if it added anything else

[topaz otter]

yeah I saw that

maybe they were goign to release a mouse add on to play it with?

[slow silo]

Wait, there wasn't a mouse add-on for all those mario artist games?

[topaz otter]

yeah there was a mouse on the snes

[modest helm]

Yeah it's basically just an enhancd SimCity 2000. Also an exclusive Doshin the Giant sequel. It's library is pretty solid for like 9 total games

[topaz otter]

I used it at my cousins house

played mario artist with it

[slow silo]

That's Mario paint, I had it too. I'm talking about the ones on the 64 DD

There was like, three or four different games like that for it, and even a video capture cartridge

[topaz otter]

the wideboy 64?

I wanted the 64DD and I got mad when it got canceled

[slow silo]

https://64dd.fandom.com/wiki/Capture_Cassette

[topaz otter]

I also wanted dinosaur planet before miyamoto cancelled that

you know he cancels a lot of the shit that I want

[slow silo]

Not sure if it was directly Miyamoto that canceled all of that

I remember watching IGN videos of Dinosaur Planet and them commenting how it looks like Nintendo just gave the Ocarina of Time engine to rare

[topaz otter]

this is weird and I don't quite understand how this would have worked

[weary palm]

yeah. it doesn't save correctly. i made as new machine/hovercraft with the editor in F-Zero X and saved it to a file. But it's gone when reloading the game.

[slow silo]

As I recall there was four different 64 DD discs in the Mario artist series, each one was for something different like 3D animation or drawing or something. I think that cartridge was just to capture images to use in your stuff

Pretty sure the four cartridges could share data across each other and you could use all four together to make one huge project with everything combined

[spare meadow]

Trying to use the update database.txt to test BB2000 (Europe and USA) but I only got a black screen when trying to load the games.
The ones I manually pached are working flawless

Anyone with the same issue?

[weary palm]

as i said, I haven't tried it xD

nope, you're right. it doesn't work

un momento

[worn delta]

Yeah, Luigiblood has publicly said he wished they hadn't made these DD cart hacks as they are broken in various ways and has meant emulator Devs shied away from implementing native DD support when that was understood.

[slow silo]

Feels like the Paprium hack

[worn delta]

Thankfully the software emulators and Summercart now have native DD support

[slow silo]

Yeah, when people find a work-around for something interest in doing it correctly drops signifinnatly since it's "working" now, even if it has many caveats

[worn delta]

It would be great if we got native DD support on MiSTer one day, be it in the core or a sister core if room is an issue

[slow silo]

Agreed

[spare meadow]

agreed

[slow silo]

That mentality kept us on inaccurate SNES and N64 emulators for a long time, and it made romhacks a mess

[worn delta]

I saw that the N64 homebrew/libdragon guys seem to be working on the modem and getting some sort of online support for the N64 which is interesting. It would behoove MiSTer to one day get Randnet keyboard support as seems people are starting to do things with that, although not sure any games are actually using it yet.

Do we have proper mouse support or is it some sort of different "use mouse as joystick" sort of thing that isn't exactly how the N64 mouse worked?

[topaz otter]

to be honest the 64DD was a failed product and the amount of actual playable games on it is so low that I don't know why he did it in the first place

and animal crossing came out on the gamecube anyway

[modest helm]

I'd never played with the N64 mouse but I think it was supposed to be strictly for the N64DD. I know for a fact that the mouse works with all the Mario Artist games. In fact, one of them has the ability to be played in 4P with 4 mice lol

[topaz otter]

Nintendo, in 1998 forgot that computers exist

[worn delta]

Animal Forest was an actual N64 cart release, nothing to do with the DD

You are maybe thinking of Doshi the Giant

[worn delta]

Yeah it was for the DD, but this is something homebrew/libdragon guys are also playing about with now they are digging into the modem

[topaz otter]

Doubutsu no Mori originally began as an interactive multiplayer role-playing game that focused on cooperation among players to reach common goals. The game was to be developed for the Nintendo 64DD and would take advantage of the system's expanded memory and internal clock

[worn delta]

Not that I expect to ever be surfing the web with the N64 core, but I am curious if we have "proper" N64 mouse support

[chilly ember]

Wasn't majora's originally supposed to be on the double d?

[worn delta]

I know OOT Master Quest was

There were a lot of things that either wound up being regular carts, or on the GC, or just abandoned

[modest helm]

I'd really love to one day see people port N64 games to N64DD and see the full potential of the hardware realized

[chilly ember]

Is there any potential to it though?

[worn delta]

That is interesting, I wonder if we still start to see that in the future

[chilly ember]

Besides having a clock

[modest helm]

Yes. IIRC the hardware has the ability to store memory for the duration of a game. For instance, Master Quest was going to have it where the game memorized which individual blades of grass you cut for the duration of your playthrough

This feature would've been heavily utilized in the original version of Animal Forest most likely

[worn delta]

There are certainly things that could be interesting, like on Animal Forest when one day that is decomped and working properly localised, if having a keyboard in player two slot would allow you to type out messages instead of having to use the select-a-letter mechanism

I didn't realise that Animal Forest was originally planned for the DD, explains why they needed an RTC on the cart as it presumably was planned to use the one on the DD

[modest helm]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/64DD#Proposed

[chilly ember]

Diablo (canceled)

[worn delta]

It would be good to know if the actual mouse and Randnet keyboard work with the core over SNAC, but I suspect nobody here has them to check

Although the mouse isn't as rare

[slow silo]

Well, the JaguarCD was a pretty asbysmal failure too but people are working on getting that on mister

And we have dozens of weird random computer cores nobody has heard of

[amber fjord]

https://sites.google.com/site/consoleprotocols/home/nintendo-joy-bus-documentation/n64-specific/randnet-keyboard

[modest helm]

Indeed. The bigger the failure, the more important preservation is. There's only 20K Atari Jaguar CDs in the wild and they're so prone to failure that probably on a few thousand actually work, meaning preserving the console is of critical importance

The same can be said of the N64DD

[digital remnant]

connect one mister another mister for true accuracy

[worn delta]

The hard work is done for the 64DD, the Summercart FPGA implementation is open source so it is sitting there on GitHub to port over, but needs someone to want to try it and obviously space in the core (or even forking and making space) is no small task.

[modest helm]

Is the Summercart implementation of the N64DD as accurate as real hardware or is it an approximation?

[worn delta]

Yeah, this guy did the hard work there and documented the protocols. I put a ticket on the core GitHub with the relevant links and also a keyboard test rom that could be used to check implementation works. Again, needs someone with the skills to want to do it, but the info is all there.

[topaz otter]

it was ura zelda

[chilly ember]

Ur a zelda

[worn delta]

Good question, my assumption was that is is indeed accurate.

[topaz otter]

most of it went into majora and master quest

[amber fjord]

n64dd is essentially a just a writeable cartidge from console POV, and theres "nothingcrazy" in the n64dd as far as how it works, basically just a disk to cartspace "mapper" with a rtc.

problem is just room on mister

[slow silo]

Is the RTC the only additional hardware in the 64DD?

Nintendo seemed to take a "just a disk drive in place of the cart slot" approach to addons, the SNES CD was going to just be a CD drive too IIRC

[worn delta]

Zakk was saying space may not be as bad as you might think, it may be doable on the core, but who knows, I am not an expert

[topaz otter]

a modem

[slow silo]

Not sure if the FDS added sound channels

[amber fjord]

modem was a seperate cart

[slow silo]

I thought that was a cart you plugged into the n64?

[amber fjord]

not in n64dd

jrra has some good shots of pcb of his https://jrra.zone/n64/

[slow silo]

Meanwhile the SegaCD was practically almost it's own standalone system

[worn delta]

There is also a Shogi game that had a network port on it for network play I can't imagine is emulated anywhere

[slow silo]

I recall it was such a pain to talk to the genesis across the bus that some games ran entirely on the segacd itself

[modest helm]

Good to hear. I just don't want it to be a "good enough" solution thus truly accurate N64DD a bigger hurdle. Reading that it's essentially just a mapper is reassuring. I remember it was an uphill battle to get proper Satellaview support and the same argument of using rom hacks of Satellaview games converted to .sfc files came up and fortunately, we got the proper .bs extenstion support

[topaz otter]

we just need to cajole robert into making the 64DD core

[slow silo]

Shogi is the bane of the Mister's Nintendo cores 🤣

[worn delta]

It was made by the same people who made the SNES ones with the special chips we don't support

[slow silo]

IIRC, while the 64DD did not have additional hardware, it DID add some fonts i think in software, and of course had a BIOS

[slow silo]

Was it? I could have sworn I looked that up and was surprised that it was a differnt company

[topaz otter]

Because Sony was crazy for making games load from CD, it was complete madness

[worn delta]

Oh, I was sure it was the same, sorry I may be wrong here

[slow silo]

https://tenor.com/view/madness-this-is-sparta-leonidas-gerard-butler-300-gif-16528839

[topaz otter]

lmao

loading games on the PS1 feels like slowly falling down a well

[amber fjord]

https://www.printables.com/model/1145937-nintendo-64-dd-replacement-shell pretend you have a n64dd

[slow silo]

Ahem: LOAD "$",8

Granted, I never had a Commodore64, but...

[topaz otter]

ok well, loading games from BASIC is worse, you got me there

[slow silo]

That's not Basic

That's how to load a program from tape off a commodore64

[topaz otter]

doesnt the commodore 64 run basic

[slow silo]

Dosen't mean all games were in basic, and again, that's the command to run a program off tape. DOS had basic too, and it was much much faster off a floppy or hdd than tape

Tape has to actually, you know, play.... could take over a dozen minutes for some games to load

[topaz otter]

yeah, I got an IBM 5160 and, strangely enough, I think you can load IBM Basic from ROM

[slow silo]

I think some of those earlier computers had BASIC on a ROM

It was pracically as important as having an OS is today back then

[topaz otter]

and the TI99/4a, I played donkey kong from the cassette

[slow silo]

TI99, I keep forgetting that is a computer and think Graphing Calculator XD

[topaz otter]

this is after I had to modify the stupid thing to eliminate the noise because the line input wasn't grounded and thats the reason you had to try loading tapes like five times ina row 😮

[slow silo]

I can do it easier:

Oh, whoops, forgot the 64DD HDD dock

[topaz otter]

I forgot the reason that they didn't ground mike inputs back then, some kind of tip and ring shit

[green epoch]

did you end up resin printing that?

[topaz otter]

that...is sweet

I would pay real money for that

[green epoch]

Still waiting on @random girder's PSX case

[slow silo]

Not mine, I just have the standard Taki case

The person who made it IIRC released the STL files for it though

Though you will have to order that N64 "jewel" sticker

[topaz otter]

if you don't have just a naked stack of mister boards 12 inches high, can you really call yourself a mister master?

[slow silo]

https://makerworld.com/en/models/807506-stl-variant-retro-remake-mister-pi-n64-case

[slow silo]

This you?

🤣

[topaz otter]

stop shaming me

[green epoch]

Yeah, it's a @random girder case.

[slow silo]

Hey, i've seen worse...

[topaz otter]

I wonder how a sega executive can see that picture

and not be ashamed

the literal tower of power

[slow silo]

Well, if you look closely, the first thing plugged in is a cleaning cartridge, so turning that on would just give you a black screen

Also pretty sure the power base can't work with the 32x

... that being said my current setup is very similar to that, minus the power base, cleaning cart, and game genie

A model 2 genesis with a model 2 segacd and a 32x that has sonic 3 connected to a sonic and knuckles cart in it XD

[sullen harbor]

that's bait
That's Mister Baiting

https://tenor.com/xQPm.gif

[slow silo]

Good thing I wasn't talking about the Sega MASTER System then

[weary palm]

guy?

...or gal

[sullen harbor]

Yeah Sega Baiting is the worst

[slow silo]

I thought people liked it?

[sullen harbor]

I prefer the most segabaiting game ever

Seaman

[worn delta]

I think we are veering pretty off topic here chaps

[sullen harbor]

Alright Seaman for Children
Aka Hey You Pikachu

[slow silo]

Ohm, uhh, umm.... Nintendo64 decompile ports on dreamcast?

[spare meadow]

Sorry my english is terrible. Are you asking me if I am a guy or a gal? I am a guy😃

[weary palm]

we will summon the wrath of the one who shall not be named

[weary palm]

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/MiSTer-devel/N64_ROM_Database/refs/heads/main/N64-database.txt

[slow silo]

Actually, has anyone ported a decompiled game TO the N64?

[weary palm]

it doesn't crash at least. i hope it works 🙂

[spare meadow]

Thanks! I will try right now 🙏🏻

[weary palm]

there's a DOS game that has been ported to N64, so kind of? maybe?

[sullen harbor]

I want to say Doom 1 and 2

[slow silo]

Saying Doom has been ported to something is kinda like saying water is wet though XD

I mean, the N64 had Doom64

[weary palm]

https://n64squid.com/homebrew/roms/cosmos-cosmic-adventure/

[slow silo]

i would be surprised if Doom 1 wasn't ported to it forever ago

Neat, was going to ask if it's ok to post that but I see that it's only for the shareware version

I miss those old Apogee games

[weary palm]

the shareware version is ok to post.

there is vol2 and 3 too, but you need some files from the original floppy

[weary perch]

I tested the latest n64-database.txt and Ruleset's Blues Brothers 2000 (USA) patch. Confirmed I was able to complete the game. The giant redneck is a bit slower than on hardware, but after this painful game it was mostly a relief lol @hidden bolt @weary palm

[weary palm]

sorry for uploading a broken converted patch at first

[weary perch]

i'll try and check the Europe version if the saves are compatible

[weary palm]

quite surreal to see the Sonic CD intro playing on an N64 xD

[topaz otter]

i miss this little critter like you wouldn't believe

i wonder if him and his family ever made it to disneyworld

[weary palm]

No. Their plane crashed in the Pacific Ocean.

I wish I had that game at the time! Seems fun. I only got shareware versions of Commander Keen 1 and 2.

And The Adventures of Captain Comic. And Monuments of Mars. And Prince of Persia. And Grand Prix Circuit. And Hocus Pocus.

[chilly ember]

I had the shareware version of Cosmos Cosmic Adventure but that's the most I ever played of it

[weary palm]

It's... pretty bad. 😂

But most DOS platformers of that (pre 486) era are.

[random girder]

I never got the fitment perfected, and then Taki announced the superstation and I gave up on it. I can release the model as is though? I do think it turned out really nicely ito aesthetics.

[weary palm]

You gotta have that SCusSI.

[weary palm]

It looks like one of those American vacuum cleaners.

[topaz otter]

you take that back

[lime topaz]

this could be checked easily enough if someone has N64 SNAC and N64 Blueretro, since the latter emulates both the mouse and keyboard

[weary palm]

I'll take it back when I experience something good. 😂

[topaz otter]

Keen 1, 2, and 3 are pretty good

and thats 286 era

[weak hill]

i just got my first FPGA device ever, i got an Analogue3D, i have also bought a Superstation one, but it hasnt being send to Mexico, and im waiting for the M64 to be released to consider buy one, so if you want to test anything in the Analaogue 3d, ill try it out

[weary palm]

Compared to what?

I mean, they're good for what the platform allowed.

[chilly ember]

Is superman 64 completable?

[weary palm]

Why do you want an M64 instead?

[topaz otter]

compared to zork

[weak hill]

hahahaha, i will ALMOST try anything haha

[chilly ember]

I finished it on the MiSTer core, it doesn't take long

[weak hill]

cause robert loves n64, and i think he will develop the ultimate n64 core haha; besides, i know its not an announced feature, but cause its open fpga, maybe i can use the m64 to play other cores (snes, nes, psx, etcétera), and have 4k output

[zinc dew]

How is the menu text in Monster Truck Madness 64?

[weary perch]

it is fixed on A3D

[topaz otter]

the people that made it didn't even finish it

so you can play 25% of a 15% completed game

I'm positive that the flying through rings part is some beta level crap to test the flight mechanics that was shoehorned into the game

[latent dagger]

then Harry Potter did it and was just as shit on PS1 but perfectly playable on PC

(completely different games made by different devs of course)

[atomic stratus]

on Hard? That’s the only way to truly beat it

[chilly ember]

Yes lol

[atomic stratus]

I’ve beaten it on normal only

[chilly ember]

I finished on normal on the core first then realized I had to do it on hard so I did it again

[atomic stratus]

damn

that’s dedication

it’s not nearly as bad a game as people say…the funniest part to me is that everyone poops on the ring levels, but the non-ring levels are the worst ones

some of those levels are admittedly pretty bad

[chilly ember]

The ring levels are kinda fun if you get an idea of where you're supposed to go

[atomic stratus]

but the ring levels are kinda fun

haha yes exactly

[weak hill]

recorded on a phone, sorry, but here it is

[slow silo]

While I personally have no intentions of buying either an Analogue3D or M64, I'm personally more interested in the M64 because on top of having a bigger FPGA than the DE-10, unlike the Analogue the M64 is open source. So I'm more interested in it myself because it's an open source fpga device with a fpga chip that is more powerful than in the mister

[slow silo]

IIRC a beta of Superman64 surfaced that felt even more complete than the retail game, some people started to wonder if the developers intentionally gave them an early build out of some kind of revenge or spite for some reason. Personally I doubt that since that would be some insane legal issues

[tepid shuttle]

it would be funny though

[slow silo]

Agreed 🤣

I remember watching a YouTube channel Slowly cover playing through the game on hard went back then nobody else had footage of it before, and what I mean slowly I mean over the course of like 10 years. Sadly he never finished it as far as I know, but he went into great detail about all the bugs and glitches he found in every level and the history of the game development

[weary palm]

I'll probably get an M64 too.

[topaz otter]

nah, if I remember correctly, the alpha was deep in development before the publisher made them start over, but it still wasn't finished

the version thats on the cart was when they started over, I think they finished it in like six months?

warner bros wanted it to be a sim city type game and have superman be the mayor

[upper pivot]

https://youtu.be/W0peV5X6Ofg?si=U6j89P2EpVNUCetk

Does this rom hack work on Mister or A3D?

[topaz otter]

oddjob is banned in multiplayer

[mental citrus]

slaps only, i choose oddjob

[atomic stratus]

As far as I know, it does

[weak hill]

i have just discovered the snes emulator for the summercart, doesnt work with analogue 3d...bummmer

[iron dove]

@upper pivot it runs on MiSTer and is in the database already
You're gonna want the turbo core 🙂

outside in first level is really dark

after loading a level it sits on black screen for like 30 seconds with music playing before it starts, as listed in the release notes

[upper pivot]

Why does it take so long? Are the assets much larger size wise than the original 007?

[iron dove]

Not sure, I'd guess something isnt optimised quite right in the hack
http://n64vault.com/ge-campaigns:goldfinger-64
"NOTE: Some levels take a while to load (~30 seconds). As long as music is playing, the level will start up."

[slow silo]

It has a SNES emulator?

Also... why would you use a FPGA emulation of an N64 to run a..... software emulation of the SNES?

[weak hill]

cause the summercart has snes emulators that you can use them, in real n64 harware you can, so i issumed analogued could also run it...but no

[atomic stratus]

kind of a fun novelty, but yeah…a novelty

it kind of makes me want to load up some old emulators on my Gamecube

[covert bough]

Kinda like the gba everdrive playing nes it’s charming

[iron wren]

Tbf many folks do this to emulate GB/GBC (gameboy tower in pokemon stadium 1 and 2)

[slow silo]

Reminds me of how the PS2 Action Replay had a genesis emulator

[upper pivot]

It does work… maybe you tried a game that is not compatible?

[tepid shuttle]

this emulator (and others) isn't made specifically for the summercart64; it's an existing emulator called sodium64 that happens to be built-in to the open N64flashcartmenu

running a WIP software emulator on an FPGA console is just asking for issues. it's a curiosity at best and should be treated as such

[weak hill]

i tried super mario all stars, i remember i tried the same game in my real n64 and it worked, however ill try again

[weak hill]

i mean, i tried cause its supposed to be "like an accuracy n64" thats why i expected it to work, however, i will try again with another snes rom

[tepid shuttle]

even though the A3D is marketed as an accurate reproduction of the N64, that doesn't guarantee 100% parity with original hardware, especially not with homebrew applications like emulators

there's been lots of testing done in this channel and elsewhere that showcases the A3D exhibiting inaccurate behavior

[coral hill]

Don't fall for Analogue's marketing, there is no such thing as "100% accurate" N64 emulator yet, both in software or FPGA. Analogue team has done quite the damage in the community by spreading this myth that FPGAs are just inherently 1:1 to real hardware using magic or something. Ever since the Analogue NT, most people assume this is a fact because of this.

[broken creek]

Hot take: Robert’s N64 turbo core is more N64 than N64.

[topaz otter]

tru facts: once it runs all commercial games equal to or greater than the original hardware, it effectively makes the original hardware obsolete

https://tenor.com/view/obsolete-twilight-zone-obsolete-man-gif-22200735

[atomic stratus]

it’s really more like an N65

[iron wren]

Or maybe even further, an N67?

[weak hill]

ok, i have tried the summercart in real n64, and picked an snes game (super mario all star) and it worked, i tried on the analogue it didnt =(, i hope analogue gets better as the time goes by

[lament escarp]

Playing n64 and snes games on the same device. Can you imagine?

[blazing knot]

some say it cannot be done

[zinc dew]

I think someone here got Nesticle running on windows in the ao486 core lol

[simple current]

superior way to play the nes

[lament escarp]

If only kit knew all her hard work was in vain.

[zinc dew]

I think we could go three layers deep, maybe. Emulate an NES game on NO$GMB, running on Windows 95 on the ao486 core.

[lament escarp]

You'd probably get sued by inception.

[topaz otter]

is that the one where the cursor is a bloody hand

i used to rip music out of nes games with that

[slow silo]

Yes

The built-in graphics editor in that emulator was how I first realized that the bushes and cloud background tile were actually the same graphic in Super Mario Brothers when I tried to edit one and noticed the other was also being edited at the same time

[upper pivot]

I don’t think there is an NES emulator for the GB?

[pale granite]

there is one for GBA

[topaz otter]

Yeah it was the first one I ever used, played mega man games on it. Was the first time I ever encountered a save state, then I realized that I could `just practice the hard parts of games over and over until I could beat them blindfolded on the actual NES

I wanted to to do that for ninja gaiden but I'm not a sadomasochistic lunatic

[upper pivot]

Yeah but is there a GBA emulator that can work on the ao486 core? Does no$gba work on it?

[pale granite]

why would you want that when there is a GBA core?

you might as well use Nesticle on Windows 95

if you want crappy emulation

[upper pivot]

It’s in response to @zinc dew’s suggestion above. To run an emulator inside an emulator inside an emulator. Obviously not for any practical purpose.

[junior pine]

That's from Twilight Zone, right?

[topaz otter]

yeah the obsolete man

good episode

its also Robby's future once we have automated discord admin bots

[tribal spire]

HNY! Does the n64 core support Y/C? tried yesterday but suddenly my monitor went out of sync and needed a hard reset.

[digital remnant]

Any clue when M64 review embargo will end?

[blissful wolf]

the n64 experience of "where the fuck do I go"

[green epoch]

it may be a config issue. See if there is an n64.cfg file in /config and, if so, delete it and try again

but yes, it does work with Y/C

[tribal spire]

Sweet, will have a look. Thanks

[magic girder]

I suspect we could go more than 3 layers deep tbh

[rare halo]

I remember thins being a problem for people in the past... I'm suddenly having the issue where the NSO N64 controller wont auto connect anymore. I have to repair it every time It turns off. Any ideas?

[mint shadow]

It previously was auto connecting and now it doesn't anymore?

[rare halo]

Correct

[mint shadow]

Haven't heard that one, only that either your adapter did that all the time, or never did it. My wifi/BT combo adapter never auto connected, had to repair every time. Just replaced it with a new dedicated BT adapter and now it properly auto connects.

[rare halo]

Yeah I just switched to a 8bitdo bluetooth and it is still not auto connecting. So weird

Nevermind... just powercycled the Mister and seems to work with the 8bitdo now. Thanks

[hidden wind]

Can one of you tell me why Resident Evil 2 has drops in the framerate at the beginning of the game? I only noticed this at the very start, when a lot of zombies are visible on the screen at once. With the 80 Hz core, this problem doesn’t occur.

Is this due to the limitation of the FPGA chip?

On the Analogue 3D, the game runs flawlessly.

[weary perch]

timings are imperfect due to DE-10 nano limitations

it's a known issue

[hidden wind]

Which Cyclone FPGA chip is used in the M64? Is it more powerful than the one in the Analogue 3D?

Does anyone here happen to know quickly which Cyclone is used in the SuperStation One?

[remote hatch]

Based on de10 nano, i.e. cyclone V

[hidden wind]

Then unfortunately, the M64 will not be able to surpass the Analogue 3D in terms of performance.

[green epoch]

M64 is a bigger fpga from amd. Kuba was answering your question about the superstation

[remote hatch]

Yeah superstation = cyclone V

[green epoch]

Robert is working on perfecting the core for the m64 (and then back porting everything he can to the mister)

[tepid shuttle]

AMD/xilinx artix, but i don't think which exact model has been specified yet

[hidden wind]

Why isn’t a significantly more powerful chip used, like the one in the Analogue 3D? According to reports, it is supposed to be able to implement 220,000 logic elements.

[tepid shuttle]

a good chunk of that is dedicated to their 4K scaling though is it not?

besides, the core is already in a very good spot with just 110k LE, i doubt it would need twice that to be perfect/cycle-accurate

[hidden wind]

Sorry for the dumb questions, but why don’t games like Resident Evil 2 run perfectly on the standard core?

The Cyclone in the MiSTer can also implement 110,000 logic elements.

[tepid shuttle]

yes, as i said, it's in a "good spot", but not perfect. there are still some bugs, largely due to lack of space on the cyclone V. but again, the core is already close to perfection, and whatever fixes/additions are needed at this point are likely possible with just a few thousand more LEs

[hidden wind]

I don’t mean to diminish the effort and ambition that went into developing the core with my questions. I own all the Analogue devices and keep finding myself coming back to the MiSTer. What bothers me at the moment is that the Analogue 3D runs better than the MiSTer core – and that really frustrates me. I wish Robert’s core ran better.

I’m sure that with just a few more logic elements, the N64 MiSTer core would easily surpass the Analogue 3D.

[iron wren]

Part of the issues with the core involves limitations around RAM speed/latency consistency, which can’t be solved with the current de10 stack and would require a slightly different architecture to work around iirc

[tepid shuttle]

i doubt it will be that way for much longer. i'm confident that the M64 will be a better product than the A3D in nearly all ways

[hidden wind]

Will the M64 replace the MiSTer?

[tepid shuttle]

doubtful

unless someone/some group really wants to go through the effort of porting the entire mister framework and each and every core to the new hardware

when a job like that would probably be better suited for the DE25 nano or something

[worn delta]

The A3D runs better than MiSTer? News to me, in what ways does it run better?

[tepid shuttle]

i think it's mostly the edge cases that the mister core has aren't found on the A3D

[hidden wind]

Overclocked games run smoother on the Analogue 3D than on the MiSTer (e.g., Perfect Dark). As mentioned before, Resident Evil 2 also runs more smoothly.

[tepid shuttle]

i think wonder project J2 and a few other games still crash on the mister core as well

for all of the A3D's faults, it has a 32-bit color mode, and more versatile overclocking options, which the mister lacks

[blazing knot]

It can also only play N64 games and nothing else

[hidden wind]

I don’t want to provoke a shitstorm. In the FPGA emulation community, this is a matter of principle. Some people prefer the N64 core on the MiSTer, while others prefer the Analogue 3D.

[unreal sundial]

wonder project J2 hasn't crashed for me yet, I wonder if it'll work to completion (something changed) or is later in the game

[twin barn]

Why would you compare overclocked performance? That's an unstable feature somewhat that will vary greatly. That being said, the MiSTer's 110k LEs are not all available to the n64 core. We also have a scaler and other complex framework elements on the same fpga. It's a nearly decade old device with an FPGA that is over a decade old on it.

[magic girder]

Comparing overclocked performance is insane to me. Does that mean that the A3D is a better N64 than the N64?

[twin barn]

Overclocked is a bonus that we are just happy it was possible given the constraints.

[magic girder]

Exactly

[blazing knot]

A3D’s overclocking is a means to sell rose tinted glasses imo

[magic girder]

I’d actually be more interested in a comparison of stock speeds, since that’s more “accurate”

[blazing knot]

Else it wouldn’t be enabled by default

[hidden wind]

Overclocking is a game-changer for some games that are played without this feature.

[twin barn]

Has A3D fixed all the inaccuracies found in Kaze's testing? Wasn't sure yet. I also don't know how the MiSTer core squares up on Kaze's testing, I'd be interested to see his deep dive there too.

[twin barn]

I personally prefer to play the games accurately, not overclocked. To each their own though, that's why there are options.

[hidden wind]

Some games are completely unplayable for me without overclocking.

[magic girder]

Then they were unplayable back in the day, too

[hidden wind]

Back then, you weren’t used to anything else.

[green epoch]

The n64 continues to be the console that suffers the most from modern tech.

[magic girder]

I echo birdy’s comment completely. I never play on anything but “default” settings, but I’m glad there are options there for others

[lament escarp]

I have a nintendo switch and I'm still used to really bad performance.

[hidden wind]

I always think it’s great that features like overclocking and save state functions are implemented in the cores.

[lament escarp]

I think save states are for babies but being a baby isn't necessarily a bad thing.

[hidden wind]

And I also think that overclocking makes the N64 a better console. A console that we should have gotten in this quality back then. It’s just that Nintendo saw it differently and cut corners during the hardware development.

Alright, then I’m just a baby. Besides, using save states also lets you practice a playthrough much more effectively.

[slow silo]

Also a large amount of the problems are due to memory latency from the CPU and FPGA accessing the same memory at the same time

[magic girder]

I let my MiSTer output native resolution and then let the TV do the upscaling because the box said it has AI for the upscaling

[hidden wind]

So, is the bottleneck the RAM?

[slow silo]

Erdrick! No! That's not Artificial Intelligence, it's Added Interlacing! 😲

[magic girder]

The main one, yes

[simple current]

personally i play n64 games at 240i at all times

[slow silo]

Some are a FPGA bottleneck, whether it's space on the FPGA or it's speed, others are a memory latency bottleneck

[worn delta]

Are you comparing the A3D overclocked to the MiSTer Turbo core or the regular core?

[slow silo]

It's not that the RAM is slower, it's significantly after than what the N64 had, the issue is that it's shared with the CPU, so anytime the CPU (which handels EVERYTHING outside of the actual core running the game. The OS, saving/loading, the OSD, the USB or bluetooth controller, the wifi, any background services like FTP or the mister Remote, etc) does anything, it's competing with the FPGA using the same memory, and they all take turns

This also makes the latency pretty much random and impossible to predict

Two people are going to have different setups on their misters that use the CPU differently, and even with same setups what is happening at that exact moment on the CPU can differ

???

[magic girder]

MiSTer N64 core is amazing

[hidden wind]

I compared the Turbo-Core with the Analogue 3D. In a video by 'Video Game Esoterica,' they also discussed the differences between the Turbo-Core and the Analogue 3D. It turned out that overclocking on the Analogue 3D runs slightly smoother in Perfect Dark than on the Turbo-Core from MiSTer.

[slow silo]

Yeah, it was considered impossible just a few years ago

PSX was considered imposible too

... then the same person made both

[magic girder]

🧙‍♂️

[hidden wind]

Yes, it is. I never claimed otherwise.

[slow silo]

Also, I might be getting ahead of myself here, but the DE-25 almost seems custom designed to bypass these exact problems...

[magic girder]

Not again 😅

[slow silo]

???

[magic girder]

Yes, we hope so, but let’s wait and see what happens 😅

(Trying to manage expectations - not with you, but in general)

[slow silo]

Oh yeah, for all we know the de-25 ends up never being used in the mister project

Not at all saying it's a given

[magic girder]

Exactly 🙂

[worn delta]

The turbo/overclocked features are really nice, if they work and don't introduce issues, but when you start down this route you would probably have a better experience playing remakes or in a software emulator that can boost FPS etc.

[magic girder]

If you’re not playing the game exactly as I ran back in the day, your mileage may vary for how well/stable it runs

[rare relic]

Are there any indicators that m64 might have 2x internal scaling?

[slow silo]

I was just saying that it seems to almost be designed to bypass these problems. The FPGA is larger and faster, that's a given, but specifically, it has two sets of 1GB DDR4 RAM now instead of 1 like the DE-10 has, one set of which is dedicated to the FPGA only. Also despite having basically 2GB of DDR4 RAM on board it includes 128MB of SDRAM on-board too for some random reason.... and it still has the 40 GPIO pins despite having this 128MB of RAM meaning it can potentially use dual-RAM without needing to give up analog i/o board functionality. Just saying it seems suspeciously designed around the current limitations the DE-10 has in the mister project

But none of this means the DE-25 is guranteed to ever amount ot anything for mister

[hidden wind]

The trick is not to select 'Unleashed.' The first level of overclocking runs without any problems.

Here is the video I mentioned: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4rH7o-ldycg&t=762s

[magic girder]

(It’s known that Sorg provided feedback to Terasic. So it’s good to know that they seem to have taken some of this onboard)

[slow silo]

Yeah, that too, his name and picture was on Terasic's De-25 page even

😛

[worn delta]

@cerulean elk what was your unfiltered final take on A3D overclocked Vs MiSTer Turbo core?

[cerulean elk]

PD runs faster on A3D, Tooie ran faster on MiSTer. Its basically the same

[hidden wind]

My next question would have been how long it takes to develop a Dreamcast, PS2, and GameCube core.

[slow silo]

Just a shame that the DEs are not like a Raspberry Pi where you could load the software from your Pi3 on a Pi4 for example

So someone can't just gt a DE-25 and use the DE-10 software in hopes that it will make use of DE-25 someday, since they are like, a $20 price difference right now

[slow silo]

I woulden't hold my breath for anything past dreamcast anytime soon

[magic girder]

@hidden wind This is the guy who made the video. So it’s not a slam dunk for one board over the other when it comes to overclocking

[worn delta]

I wouldn't hold my breath for DC running close to as well as original hardware in a decades time

[slow silo]

What I want to know is, where is the cave-No, what I want to know is, does the A3D run Knife Gunner without patching it or otherwise somehow messing with the native rom?

[worn delta]

If you want DC, then just buy a DC. You will likely be an old man by the time there is an FPGA replacement

[cerulean elk]

its a wash. A3D has carts and 4K, MiSTer has 100s of other cores. Pick your poison

[slow silo]

Woohoo! DC core came out 2 years ago!

[magic girder]

I know which one works better for my needs, but I’m glad they both exist

[magic girder]

I know you’re right, but please don’t feed my need to buy a new/modded DC

[slow silo]

A3D can't play Michael Jackson's Moonwalker arcade game, checkmate Analogue

[magic girder]

A3D can’t even play Atari 2600 games. lol. Such LEs. Such power.

[hidden wind]

Does development really take that long?

[slow silo]

Problem is more a FPGA that can handle it at a reasonable price

[worn delta]

Unless prices have rocketed you can still get DC pretty cheap, right? The and the ODE mod was really cheap

[slow silo]

But yes, the higher up we go, the more expontentionally complex consoles get

There was a boom in CPU and especially GPU complexity staring around the mid/late 90s

[magic girder]

The pre-modded ones are bit expensive but it’s no drama. I can afford it, just… haven’t yet 😅

[slow silo]

So it would take a LOT more work to replicate a 6th gen console in fpga than it did to say, how much more work it took to implement a 5th gen vs 4th gen console

At least your DC controller won't drift 😛

[worn delta]

Think of the N64 and PSX and Saturn cores being like sending men to the moon. Asking for DC is like saying "well you got to the moon, why can't you just go to Mars?". It requires technology that doesn't exist at a widely affordable price point and is a magnitude more difficult than the previous most difficult cores, that only a handful of people in the world have been able to pull off, and each one took years of development.

[slow silo]

And asking for a Hyperscan core is like going "well you got to the moon, why can't you just go to the sun?"

I mean, the Replay2 claims to be able to handle DC and not cost a fortune.... if it ever releases

[magic girder]

And then you need the devs to build it 🙂

And even if the board exists, you also need the framework etc to make it easier for developers to build cores

[slow silo]

I know there was someone who was working on it like 1-2 years ago

Showed some preliminary footage of it booting into the bios

[tepid shuttle]

dreamcast is an order of magnitude more complex than saturn, and that core is already pushing the DE10 to it's absolute limits. i don't think we will see any 6th gen console cores for at least a decade or so

[slow silo]

Was VERY glitchy, but it booted

Any 6th gen core will not be happening on the de-10

[magic girder]

There’s still plenty of stuff that could fit on the DE10 that we haven’t got yet

Loads of arcade games, for example

[slow silo]

Maybe the hyperscan? Not sure how powerful the hardware in that thign we, but you would literally be better off wanting a game.com or virtual boy core instead of wanting that thing

There is a reason it's the only console that has never had any emulator written for it XD

[slow silo]

Oh yeah, I am not saying nothing new can happen on the DE-10, just saying gen6 is out of reach

[magic girder]

I think people want to, there’s just not that many devs

[slow silo]

I unironically want a virtual boy and gamcom core

mostly virtual boy

Would be cool if it can somehow do 3d

I mean, 3DTVs exist, I have one that my mister is plugged into...

[magic girder]

I didn’t say 3D, but maybe someone will one day

[tepid shuttle]

you underestimate the will of some devs

[slow silo]

Aren't there a lot of arcade cores that only run a single game?

[tepid shuttle]

more or less

[tepid shuttle]

keep your eyes on the PC-FX technical discussion thread. the NEC V810 is shared between both consoles

[magic girder]

Jotego has a never ending backlog of arcade cores to come 🙂

[slow silo]

This reminds me, anyone know what really old (probably 70s) arcade racing game there was where the car's sprite was drawn using a grid of resistors intead of data for the sprite stored in a chip?

[magic girder]

Well, I hope they never end. He’s been doing a great job

[slow silo]

I remember reading about it, but forgot it's name

[worn delta]

Amusingly 2026 for MiSTer is shaping up to be the year of 3DO and PC-FX

[slow silo]

Wonder if that's even possible to do on fpga, not sure if it even had any logic

[slow silo]

The year of 3DO! Yeah! Just like the Year of Linux!

[magic girder]

I have faith Zet will find a way to keep one of those from happening

[slow silo]

It's going to drive me crazy trying ot remembe what game that was >.<

[magic girder]

PC-FX will be fantastic

[magic girder]

Ask Gippity?

[slow silo]

?

[magic girder]

ChatGPT 🙂

[desert crow]

death race probably

[magic girder]

blueGPT

[worn delta]

2026 should also (hopefully) see Jaguar and Jaguar CD coming to Main, and CDi getting robust DVC support. The more obscure 4th/5th gen machines should have a strong year.

[twin barn]

A lot of 70s games didn't use sprite like graphics. I'd be interested in this one though, if you remember let us know I'm the thread for cores not yet on mister

In general what you described is kinda how bitmap can be generated on analog vlsi

But just discrete resistors instead i guess

[slow silo]

I am not 100% but I think it might have been Night Driver from Atari. Though I don't recognize pictures of the PCB. I could have sworn there was a grid where the parts populated with a diode (or was ita resistor) were the ones where it would draw a pixel for the car sprite

It was also only the left half of the sprite, and would be mirrored

No, nevermind, that used some plastic drawing of a car

[twin barn]

Awesome, still sick

[slow silo]

Wonder if there is a forum or subreddit or something I can ask

[worn delta]

Give AI a try, it is surprisingly good for finding things you half remembered if you give it enough info

[cerulean elk]

3DO M2 confirmed

[slow silo]

I tried, that's how I got the wrong answer of Night Driver XD

From multiple ones

[desert crow]

one of the early space games has the parts laid out like a saucer or something like that. computer space maybe

[zinc dew]

I prefer the MiSTer core because I didn’t need to pay $300 or wait years to enjoy N64 lol

Although ironically I am the perfect fit for the Analogue 3D since I own more than 200 N64 games.

[zinc dew]

I know you were already given an answer but I think this point needs to be made:

MiSTer is a community driven project with some of the best FPGA programmers who are not only happy to work on replicating video game systems in their spare time but also do it for free. It takes a long time because they are doing it at great cost to themselves.

The MiSTer is free and open source, with all of the code out in the open and the largest FPGA community behind it and supporting each other.

The Analog3D is a closed source commercial product with zero community involvement and is sold at a markup to make a profit. That’s not inherently worse or better but it’s a vastly different situation than what you get with the MiSTer.

The MiSTer is also always leading the charge, well ahead of any other commercial product out there. So while the Analog3D is a more refined physical product, we’ve been enjoying N64 on the MiSTer for free and for years now.

[mint shadow]

200 N64 games and doesn't even have an N64 to enjoy them, so it was either the mister or wait years for the analogue 3d. That's dedication.

[zinc dew]

One could also not give a shit about anything that I said, and just wants to enjoy the N64 with their own cart library. And that is absolutely valid.

I’m not asking anyone to feel like they must prefer the MiSTer because of how community focused it is. I just say all that to demonstrate how different it is than other commercial FPGA products.

If I were a dude who has a bunch of N64 games and just wants to revisit it as easily as possible, the Analogue3D would be what I would chose, to be frank.

[magic girder]

I’m not Frank, so I’d choose the MiSTer

[lament escarp]

Love how Robby is even assisting people who bought the anal3d to cope with their purchase.

[woeful grove]

mental health help from robby?

[topaz otter]

this is the right answer, a large physical collection is useless without a machine to play them on

theres a ton of different machines that you can slap an NES, SNES, or Genesis cartridge in and it just plays, your mileage varies with the quality but at least they work

there is nothing like this with the N64, such a machine before the analogue 64 did not exist

[magic girder]

tbf that’s because N64 emulation was a mess even as recently as 2025

Or so I’ve heard

[blissful plaza]

I'll do my best.

[magic girder]

I appreciate you ❤️

[topaz otter]

but if you don't care about collection cartridges or dont have any, you don't even have to play it on mister

you could buy a freakin raspberry pi and run an n64 emulator on that

or one of the hundreds of android n64 emulators

[magic girder]

Last time I tried (a couple of years back, mind), this was a sickening experience unless you wanted to play SM64 or MK64

[topaz otter]

the pi is probably powerful enough now that it can run that shit easily

[magic girder]

Pi fans have been saying that every generation, and I’ve bought every generation and been disappointed

I haven’t tried N64 on my Pi 5, but it was so bad on the 4, that I kinda doubt its great now

Given that everyone was also saying Dreamcast was playable on a 3 and perfect on a 4. Spoiler: it wasn’t perfect on a 4

[topaz otter]

fpga emulation of the N64 has been cracked now, you got three platforms that can run it. The chinese cloning one of these and mass producing clone consoles is next

might not be today but its definitely going to happen

[static tinsel]

Perhaps an ignorant question, but do I need an unstable mister main in order for the 80 MHz core, or the PSX 2X core to run?

OR, do I just have a slow MiSTer FPGA that can't clock up that fast?

[magic girder]

Nope

[magic girder]

What makes you think it’s not clocking that fast?

[mint shadow]

You need to enable Turbo mode High for the PSX 2x core. The N64 80MHz core is just turbo by default. Not all games will see an increase, and those that do will have varying degrees of improvement

[magic girder]

I’ve never used the PSX2X core so TIL. Thank you

[static tinsel]

Both cores stop transmitting on the hdmi, and go blank (my monitor goes to sleep)

No menu comes up when I hit F12, etc…

Also, I’ve tried multiple versions of the cores

Different build dates

[mint shadow]

Do you have the BIOS files for them? They'd be boot.rom inside your games/N64 and games/PSX folders

And more than those, but if you're missing those you're probably missing the others.

And just premtively if the base N64 and PSX cores work, you'd have them... if you're launching the turbo cores through MGL files, and you have setname without samedir="1" you'd need to place the BIOS files in their respective game directories.

[static tinsel]

Both the standard PSC and N64 cores work

PSX 🤪

Nope, laucnching the core directly

[mint shadow]

🤔

[static tinsel]

Yeah

[zinc dew]

Are you using a dual ram build and maybe you don’t have dual ram?

[mint shadow]

I don't think the psx 2x core has a dual ram build

and the n64 core sure doesn't

[static tinsel]

I have a dual ram build

[zinc dew]

Oh duh you’re right

[static tinsel]

Meaning my MiSTer has dual sticks

Nor does the n64 any longer I don’t think!

[mint shadow]

Does your regular PSX core still work? The OSD menus should still work without any BIOS files, so it's not that.
Did you FTP these files over, copy them directly, or get them through update_all?

[static tinsel]

Update all, as well as my own copying, but direct to the SD card through windows. Both not accelerated cores work fine.

I’ve copied other cores this way and they work fine also

[mint shadow]

aye, just wanted to make sure FileZilla wasn't the culprit mucking things up.

or downloading the HTML of github for a core page instead of the actual core

[static tinsel]

Nah, I suppose I should mention that I am a retired SW dev, ex FPGA dev, embedded systems dev.

[neat sierra]

So it’s better at not being an N64

[static tinsel]

lol

[mint shadow]

Hmmmm, I am incredibly stumped.
Outside of verifying your SDRAM with the memtest core if you haven't, or trying to look through the console debug output over the serial terminal to see if anything pops up when launching the cores, I'm not sure what the issues could be if the standard cores work and the turbo core files are not corrupted and being launched directly. You may have better luck asking in #help for this to get more eyes on it?

[topaz otter]

it makes the original Driver playable at a real framerate

[magic girder]

I played the original driver back in the day. It’s already at a playable framerate on the standard core 😉

[wanton sun]

The main issue for game speed is the FPGAs maximum clock rate. N64 CPU runs at 93.75MHz. Our Cyclone can run the CPU as I designed it at around 70 MHz.
We run it at 93.75MHz nontheless, meaning we run the chip already beyond it's limits. Thankfully these chips are very good that even the Turbo core running the CPU at 120 MHz seems to be stable for everyone.
To fully reach to original speed, I would have to implement some things different in the CPU, potentially dropping the clock speed so it would be pointless.
With a faster FPGA that is easily solved. A3D has a mildly faster FPGA(roughly 1.5X), M64 has a much faster FPGA(2-3x).

Second issue is Memory. The N64 is a unified memory system with only one RAM which is shared with all the components. Our RAM is shared also with the Scaler and the Linux. We also don't have full control over it's timings.
A3D has 5(?) different RAMs, so additional tasks don't have to be offloaded to the main RAM.
M64 will have multiple as well to ensure that.
So you see the difference between a fixed board design and a dedicated design for N64 (or emulation in general, other cores would also greatly profit)

Third reason is logic size as you say. We have 110k Logic Elements, however around 20k are already gone for scaler and framework. 90k is nothing.
I had to optimize a lot to fit the core at all into that size. More so, because i cannot use the full size, otherwise clock rate would drop to much. So only about 80% can be used.
A3D and M64 have to include a 4k scaler, so they need more size anyway, but still there is more room left to implement things in a clean and correct way.
With a dedicated board design and fast+large FPGA it's also easier to develop the core. Would have saved me multiple months.

Why do I still want to support Mister as best as I can? Because the community is just outstanding. The amount of testing that went into it is what made it possible to be where it is today.
That's why over time only open source can win.

[weak hill]

glad too see the M64 will be more powerful than the analogue3d =), good things for this 2026!

[slow silo]

figured it out, but apparently it already has a MiSTer core anyway. It was Space Race.

That half-christmas-tree looking set of diodes draws out the sprites, though, I could have sworn it was a car game, not a space game

[magic girder]

You’re the first person I’m aware of that’s had a problem with these two cores. Not saying it’s impossible, but definitely worth digging in to find out what the problem is. Could be silicon lottery but I don’t know if a black screen would be the expected behaviour off the bat

[zinc dew]

Just as a reminder that hardware is meaningless. It’s the core devs and the community that matter.

doesn’t matter which FPGA is more powerful or more capable. It’s the person who’s writing the core that matters. It’s because it’s their skill that makes a great core.

[topaz otter]

look at that clean board design

also its Atari's Gran Trak 10

game had no cpu and the car sprite was made with diodes

[topaz otter]

how much better is the DE25 Nano?

I see that its about the same price as when the de10 launched

[zenith orchid]

DE25 probably isnt enough for anything 6th gen, but I imagine it would allow for solidifying the cores that are currently struggling. Maybe Nintendo DS? Robert would know. More advanced computer cores will be possible, like pentium with 3d acceleration, and a more advanced MacPlus, maybe Quadra series even.

[tepid shuttle]

i think that would be the main benefit of a slightly larger board; more headroom for the existing cores that need it, and the possibility of DS and maybe some newer arcade hardwares

[zenith orchid]

Ah yes forgot about the possibilities for arcade

DS would be huge though.

That alone might send a lot of people buying up DE25 nanos

[tepid shuttle]

it certainly would be an easy choice for me. lack of a good DS consolizer/video out makes a potential core even more exciting

[zenith orchid]

And DS has a fantastic library

[tepid shuttle]

it does

[zinc dew]

I remain convinced Dreamcast is possible.

believe

[tepid shuttle]

can we ban this guy for spreading misinformation

[zenith orchid]

I remain convinced you can become an FPGA dev and get to work on it 😄

believe

[dry oak]

Yes we need VMU core
believe

[zenith orchid]

maybe we can even get a VMU2x

I'm kind of surprised this hasnt been done already

[quasi storm]

What, Just vmus?

I just got here, don't mind me

[zenith orchid]

yea

which we all know is a ripoff of the pocketstation 😄

[modest helm]

Feature complete N64, PS1 and Saturn cores with the addition of a fully working DS core would be enough for me to upgrade to the DE25 Nano

Dreamcast is most likely not possible on the DE25 Nano, but who knows. Maybe it's similar to the N64 where if someone as talented as Robert approached it, we'd get a similar outcome to the N64 on the DE10 Nano

[zenith orchid]

is saturn not feature complete? i think the only feature it was missing for a while was lightgun support

[spare meadow]

seems like a good deal

[blissful plaza]

MPEG card isn't implemented.

[zenith orchid]

Ohhh

[modest helm]

You need Dual Ram to fully support some games hitting their original framerates, there isn't enough logic for adding the multitap and other peripherals. Things of that nature. It's similar to the N64 where it's 99% there, but the lack of logic gates and other hardware limitations holds it back from being as feature complete as the other 4th gen consoles. Like there just simply isn't enough room on the DE10 Nano for N64DD support. Same can be said of the PSX which can't be 100% cycle accurate on the DE10 Nano even though it's got the most robust feature set out of the 5th gen consoles since it has savestates and the like.

Obviously it's incredible how much Robert and srg320 have pushed the DE10 Nano, but a platform without these bottlenecks would be a godsend

[zenith orchid]

Gotcha.. but in terms of the PSX, being slightly off from cycle accurate doesnt mean its not feauture complete does it?

[modest helm]

It's basically feature complete to me, so I do agree. It's certainly the most feature complete of the 5th gen consoles, but Robert did mention he wanted to add the anti-pixel wobble feature that's present in software emulators and likely the 2X turbo CPU core could be implemented into the standard PSX core similar to how the N64 had to have a separate turbo core due to running out of logic. Besides that, and not being cycle accurate, it's pretty feature complete

Robert did mention that most of the remaining PSX bugs on Github were probably due to timing issues

[zenith orchid]

Yeah if we're not counting features that are not in the original hardware, I'd say PSX is a slam dunk, and the cycle inaccuracy may be within margin of variance between console revisions.

[quick light]

I personally think both 2x cores for PSX and N64 are the hidden gems

[tepid shuttle]

there's still a handful of PS1 games that struggle on the core though

[quick light]

https://tenor.com/view/metal-jesus-uh-uhh-okay-awkward-gif-15128818

[zenith orchid]

solid point

[modest helm]

Yeah it's certainly better than playing on original hardware imo and my #1 recommendation on how to play PSX games along with the N64 core being the best way to play N64 and the Saturn core and so on

[quick light]

That's why I crank up the turbo mode too. Turbo + 2xcpu core.

However, it gets a bit wonky with games that do not have a framerate cap. Id love an option to cap framerate to 30fps. An example game is Duke Nukem Time to Kill. With 2x CPU and turbo mode, that game could run at a smooth locked 30. But because the framerate is uncapped, it fluctuates quite a lot

(I also need to play more N64 core)

[tepid shuttle]

i meant that there's still a few games that outright don't work. constructor is one of them

[quick light]

Oh, yeah I see.

[tepid shuttle]

other than some edge cases the core is amazing though. performance is 1:1 with real hardware in all cases iirc, even better with the turbo core

[zenith orchid]

I think we can consider PSX to be feature complete. As far as I know it supports all features of the original hardware. How well it works is a different matter(and its overwhelmingly solid in the vast majority of cases).

[quick light]

Yeah, PSX core is my favourite core on the system

[lament escarp]

Until the gamecom core is out.

Only until then.

[quick light]

Il be honest. Whilst id love to see a Gamecom core. Id probably play it for 5 mins. Id just like to see it on the mister from a preservation point of view.

[tepid shuttle]

it's hardly even a games console imo

[zenith orchid]

Since were in the N64 channel.. I think it would be cool if there were a MSU1 esque functionality so the Tony Hawk games can have full audio tracks.

[wanton sun]

DE25 solves the speed and probably logic size issue, but almost certainly not the memory part. So e.g. patches will probably still be required.
But faster turbo core and no slowdown below original n64 should be doable.

[zenith orchid]

So DS still likely wouldnt be feasible for that reason too right?

[lament escarp]

You are THE gamecom enthusiast here! if even you will only play it for 5 minutes...

[wanton sun]

DS needs a lot of internal memory and will not fit in the DE25 FPGA.
It could still be possible with tricks, just like n64 is possible even without exactly matching memory.
But I don't know how robust DS games are to such timing differences, so maybe this would be fine for 95%+ games or maybe not.

[lament escarp]

DS core only needs to run smt strange journey anyway, there, I said it!

[wanton sun]

I can confirm it can run the Kirby games and Ace Attorney games just fine even with completly wrong timing. But I haven't really tried much back in 2020.

[tepid shuttle]

that's awesome

[lament escarp]

I bet a bunch of 2d games could run but there would be all those people complaining about the games instead of being happy for the games that do, just like with those weird edge case games on psx and n64 nobody every heard about before they had an issue on the core.

[magic girder]

DQ4-6 also 😉

[quick light]

I'm all in with Pokémon Mystery Dungeon Blue Rescue Team

[magic girder]

#1 the most annoying thing about this place. It’s not NES levels of annoying though, where people only complain about obscure mappers for games they’ll never play

Thank god I’m not a dev 😂

Looking at the specs of the DS, it looks pretty powerful 🤯

[tepid shuttle]

mega man ZX games and sonic rush trilogy for me

[lament escarp]

Not as powerful as Robert!

[wanton sun]

In terms of calculation it's not that powerful, N64 CPU ist faster and more powerful.
Sound is comparable to a PS1 SPU.
But the 2D+3D GPU part with dedicated layer handling for both screens is really hard. It's like taking 2 GBAs, overclock them to double speed and attach a PS1 GPU in some weird way.

[quick light]

Thank you for explaining it

[lament escarp]

That sounds like 1 game playable by christmas.

[modest helm]

Since we're on the topic of the DS, is the DS-i something that's completely unfeasible? Afaik, it's a revision of the DS with a faster CPU and additional ram

[wanton sun]

most differences (technical perspective) are summarized here: https://problemkaputt.de/gbatek.htm#dsibasicdifferencestonds

Higher clock speed would probably be fine on DE25, but not on DE10

[magic girder]

Maybe powerful was the wrong word - but there’s a lot of different compute there 😅

[wanton sun]

Yes, logic size would probably be above ps1 or n64.

I worked on it in some FPGA that is about double size of DE10-Nano and lost interest when I had no space left for debug features. 3D wasn't in yet.
It was not really optimized for size at this point, but still this should show the requirements to some degree.

[lament escarp]

I still believe DS is possible on mister. you taught me to dream big, Robert!

[wanton sun]

I sometimes thought about stripping it down so it can only play Kirby SuperStar on Mister, but never found the motivation.

[magic girder]

Presumably the board you’d need to do it without tricks and making life easy for yourself (debug features) would be quite expensive then?

[tepid shuttle]

i respect the ambition

superstar ultra rocks

[quick light]

Would a thumbs up from me motivate you?

[tepid shuttle]

lol

[iron wren]

Ah the Kirby superstar ds core

Plays any ds game as long as it’s Kirby superstar

[weak hill]

real question, why would you upgrade to a DE25 Nano, when you can have the M64, that it´s more capable FPGA?

[zinc dew]

Because hardware doesn’t matter.

Cores need to be ported to different hardware. The capability of the hardware is least important. It’s the team who works on it,

Sorry that sounded flippant, I’ll edit it

[magic girder]

Not with that attitude they don’t

[wanton sun]

Currently M64 isn't yet available and DE25 has no framework. If people will use M64 for open source cores is still open.
Without community hobby projects are not much fun, at least for me.
I guess that's why most development still happens on mister.

[magic girder]

As far as a game playing machine is concerned, DE25 at this stage is a new car with a nice engine but no fuel

[zinc dew]

People also need to understand that more powerful new hardware isn’t just “better”. Literally the most important aspect of the de10-nano is that it was manufactured by a reliable company who was committed to keep manufacturing it for years and years.

[magic girder]

M64 might be a better car, but at the moment it’s not out yet and it’s only planned to drive to Edinburgh

[zinc dew]

Hardware availability, consistency, and affordability are the most important part of the MiSTer.

That is WAAAAY more important than hardware capability.

[modest helm]

Not to make light of FPGA development, but Kitrinx said that porting cores is pretty straightforward, it's just a lack of developer interest. I think the more laborious project is porting the MiSTer framework to the next device

[tepid shuttle]

this is a big part of the reason why i was never into analogue's stuff

[magic girder]

“Straightforward” if there’s a framework, I think

Well specifically I think she was talking about porting from MiSTer to Analogue Pocket

Not from any device to any other

But I don’t want to put words in her mouth

[zinc dew]

Sorry if I keep hammering the same point home @weak hill . Hardware power isn’t important when it comes to FPGA development.

You need to understand that.

It’s the devs and the team!

[magic girder]

And presumably it also depends on things like the memory configuration of the device too

[zinc dew]

also when I say it isn’t important, I mean like obviously it is but to a point

I am just exaggerating to add clarity to my point

[modest helm]

I also think the lack of developer interest is that the Pocket is a less powerful platform than the MiSTer so cores need to be scaled back and the Pocket has significantly less buttons. I think there's a half working PSX core on the Pocket but what's the point if you don't have analog stick or all the buttons? The only real benefit is portability

[magic girder]

I think the lack of lots of alternative platforms has been good for the community tbh. It’s meant that it hasn’t splintered too much

[zinc dew]

I’m also of the opinion that I think it’s quite silly to work for free when Analogue will just profit off your hard work.

[magic girder]

If we had new boards every 6 months, I don’t think we’d be in the good place we are at the moment

[weak hill]

yeah, no problem, but robert is behind the m64, so that´s why i was thinking that

[zinc dew]

But that’s my opinion and I am quite a cynic!

[zinc dew]

Sincerely, thank you for understanding. I know I’m annoying about it.

And I’m not a core dev or anyone important at all.

You have excellent questions btw

These are the same questions I had when I first got a MiSTer.

[magic girder]

You’re important to me 🥺

[zinc dew]

bro…. 🥹

[weak hill]

i get that the devs are all, but sincerely i was thinking...well M64 it´s a more capable fpga device, but not only that, cause i have learned that the devs are the real wizards here, not the device, but again, robert is behind the M64 so, i think.... more capable fpga + robert wizard is supporting it, thats why i questioned that

[slow silo]

? That's not Gran Trak 10, that's Space Race, it even has Space Race written on the PCB.

[zinc dew]

Yeah it’s a great point

And because Robert was designing the M64 core, he was able to identify what he needed from the hardware to make a complete N64 core

[weak hill]

yes, like a custom fpga for that goal

[zinc dew]

Anyways, I’m a loud mouth and I’m talking too much so I’ll stop. Again, thank you for understanding me.

[topaz otter]

i know, I'm saying that gran trak 10 was the one with the sprite car made out of diodes

[topaz otter]

this is the trick, knowing the limits of your platform and planning accordingly

[weak hill]

i love this discord server, no problem, if i ask something i would like an honest answer, like yours

[topaz otter]

even if robert had only made it run a select few top ten N64 titles it still would have been great

nobody was asking for it to run garbage like dual heroes and paperboy 64 but it does, letting you experience their badness in an authentic way

we have to preserve these bad games for future generations to laugh at

[woeful grove]

it depends. porting mister cores is generally easy, IF the target device has the same sort of resources

porting cores made for arbitrary boards and hardware setups can be challenging

like porting from mister to pocket is generally child's play, because it has roughly compatible resources and the same general interface

porting from some random dev board or custom thing like the zx spectrum next to mister can be difficult, because that's bespoke hardware with a different set of resources and no clear line between core and what we would consider "framework" functions

gyruco from MiST has done some things that are somewhat miraculous to port mister cores to the much more resource starved mist hardware

having ported a bunch of stuff TO mister, I can say part of it is getting the actual core up to the standards the mister crowd expects

so it's not really just porting

it's actually fixing stuff and making it good too

[modest helm]

Yeah I appreciate you bringing over the Adventure Vision. Just curious, if a future board is more powerful but has very different architecture, does that make porting difficult?

[slow silo]

There is no way the DE-25 is enough for Pentium 3 with 3d acceleration, that's literally an Xbox. I would be surprised if it can do 486 with 3d acceleration

[zenith orchid]

pentium 3??? 🤣

where did you get that from? that would be absurd lol

[magic girder]

“Isn’t enough”

[slow silo]

Wow, even with the 1GB of dedicated FPGA RAM it will still have memory latency issues?

[blazing knot]

N64 had pretty speedy RAM

[cunning fern]

Sorg could always add an SRAM module now that the board has built in sdram. Not sure if it is economically feasible in the ram apocalypse we are currently experiencing.

[slow silo]

The DE-25 uses DDR4 RAM...

[wanton sun]

Dedicated RAM will make it better, but DDR4 has very long refresh timing unless you can use some special mode. I haven't check if Intel supports it, but AMD does not

[quick light]

You are. We know your secretly working on a Gamecom core

[slow silo]

Ouch, I see

[blazing knot]

yeah my understanding is that the RDRAM is tricky to reproduce right

[slow silo]

I am curious about that, if all 40 GPIO pins still work with the 128MB of on-board RAM, if that's true that means you can go dual-RAM without losing any analog boarf features

[magic girder]

Triple RAM

[slow silo]

QUADRUOPLE RAM!

... actually, that's a thing, two of my systems use that

... and they're outdated as the latest models support octo-ram XD

[cunning fern]

On a de25 nano, technically you could make a core that uses the FPGA ddr4, the shared with arm ddr4, built in sdram, plus 2 extra sdram/sram modules. Adding the FPGA Bram, you have SEXTUPLE ram!

[magic girder]

Such ram such games

[wanton sun]

triple SDRAM(16 bit each @ 125MHz) would technically be able to replicate the RDRAM (72bit @ 62.5Mhz)

But i thought DE25 can only have integrated SDRAM + 1 more

[slow silo]

I mean, I guess technically you can go triple if you use up all the gpio pins?

[cunning fern]

Yep, you could still add 2 sdram modules, losing analog. Surely a dev will find a way to use that 😉

[slow silo]

Installing RAM on the mister is going to end up like forming Voltron at this rate 😂

[weak hill]

it´s quiet, too quiet

[languid ore]

Is there an official page for the Mario kart Amped Up mod? I am finding all sorts of different versions with web searching. Not even sure which is the latest! 3.04 I think is the biggest number ive seen

[zinc dew]

Here’s the official page - https://x.com/litronom

Litronom (@Litronom) on X

-Man behind an alpaca mask.
-Mario Kart 64 *Amped Up* developer.
-Small Horse Productions.

BSky: @Litronom
Support me: https://t.co/jllEAETuUn

X

But I think the gamebanana site is a good place to get latest too - https://gamebanana.com/mods/613207

[languid ore]

Robby, I don’t care what everyone says about you, you’re alright ;). Appreciate it!

[spare meadow]

Mario Kart Amped Up is of the best n64 hack ever. The other one in my list is Smash Remix

But the best hack of all time is a Sega Mega Drive game called Yoshi in Sonic 2. I konw its not a n64 but it has yoshi 😃

[zinc dew]

Wasn’t being a smart ass linking the Twitter page, that’s literally where I go for the latest Mario Kart amped lol

[languid ore]

I’m just hoping it works well on original hardware. I have yet to try it out

[zinc dew]

There’s an option on first boot that asks if you’re playing on real hardware so it’s probably well optimized for that

[magic girder]

I wouldn’t say that…

[slow silo]

At least it's not a little too Raph

[neat sierra]

https://tenor.com/view/happy-back-to-school-wave-ralph-wiggum-the-simpsons-gif-14782808

[quick arch]

https://bsky.app/profile/quest64official.bsky.social/post/3mbmgkb7w222o

Quest 64 Official (@quest64official.bsky.social)

Reposts

119

Likes

652

Bluesky · Jan 4, 2026, 5:18 PM

[green epoch]

https://readonlymemo.com/decompilation-projects-and-n64-recompiled-list/

[topaz otter]

to emulate a pentium 2 and a voodoo 2 with 4mb of ram on PCem, I have to run it on my ryzen 9. It's the only thing I've got that has enough horsepower

so emulation of even the most basic pentium requires a lot

and even then I can only play early win98 games, and early glide stuff

[slow silo]

4mb of ram? for a p2???

[cyan dome]

pentium core for win 95 enjoyment!!!!

[topaz otter]

4mb of ram on the voodoo card

[slow silo]

oh

[topaz otter]

voodoo2 was 4 or 8mb i think

its the fasted card that PCem can emulate right now

[slow silo]

Yeah, my 11700K can't properly handle a p2 with a voodoo3 in software emulation well

? pretty sure it can do vodoo3

[topaz otter]

but man, its great running need for speed high stakes close to real hardware performance

[cyan dome]

i imagine pc emulation isnt as efficient as it could be

[slow silo]

It's not, iirc it's all currently running on a single thread, cpu and gpu emulation

Meaning single core clock speeds are what matter, which processors haven't focused on for like 15-20 years now

[topaz otter]

the PCem project had great potential, I think its developer quit though and handed it off to someone else, the guys taken two or three years? to deliver an update

[slow silo]

The stable version of pcem hasen't been updated in ages, but there are nighties

Have you been using those?

[topaz otter]

no I was still using v17

it was stable enough for me

made some super small vms, each one with a certain game and tailored it to run only that game, then I run them on my steam deck

[slow silo]

Also tried 86box?

[topaz otter]

I tried it, didn't like it

your going to need an FPGA that's more than an incremental increase in horsepower

[slow silo]

Just necause it can't solve all does not mean it's not worth looking at, it can still solve some, also the price difference is small

[slow silo]

It's not a FPGA power issue

Well, not ALL a FPGA power issue

[topaz otter]

its the number of logic units

you need something with a magnitude more logic units than the DE25

right, if its an incremental leap in logic units and power then robert would be wasting his time

[slow silo]

Robby has said a large part of it is memory latency

[topaz otter]

its better to wait for a true next gen FPGA at the price point we paid for this one, otherwise your just in an arms race against yourself everytime something a little bit faster comes out

[slow silo]

The DE-25 will still help, robert has said this, and the price diffrence between teh de-10 and de-25 is small, you're saying why bother to walk if you can't run yet

No you can't, it's closer to $200

[topaz otter]

I see the mister pi available for 125

but its sold out

[slow silo]

Hmm, price has gone down considerably I see, was $190 when I got mine, though that's sort of another problem, you can't get a mister pi at all 99% of the time

[cyan dome]

200 with all the trimmings admittedly

[slow silo]

No, it's $125 for the full version now

[topaz otter]

you still need the tower of power on top of it right?

usb and whatnot

[slow silo]

that's the $125 version

but again, sold out, and has been for a very long time

That's sort of the problem, you can only get a Pi for like, 5 days out of the year

[cyan dome]

theyre sold in batches

[slow silo]

And they are not all sequential days

[cyan dome]

its how it is with these sort of projects

[magic girder]

I doubt Sorg/others are gonna make future MiSTer decisions on the basis of the availability of the MiSTER Pi

Even if it was $1

[cyan dome]

i think people on a budget wait for the opportunity

[topaz otter]

the problem is that the DE10 nano was intended for education, it was made for students to goof around with in the classroom doing development shit

its been pushed way beyond its original intent

[slow silo]

Also if terasic can make teh DE-25 only like $20 more than the DE-10

It should be realistic for it to be cloned for cheaper too

like the DE-10 was

[cyan dome]

of course if the de-25 becomes a mister wouldnt it have the same supply problems

[magic girder]

It took years and years before it was cloned cheaply

[cyan dome]

its a lot of effort for a slightly better mister

[topaz otter]

isn't intel making these?

or do they own altera

[slow silo]

It took years for MiSTer to become more and mor epopular, and for Terasic to jack up the price of the DE-10

Check internet archive, the DE-10 was much cheaper since it's launch for years... then in 2021 the price started to skyrocket, going up every few months

[magic girder]

The MMS1 was intended to be an all-in-one board, but it wasn’t until recently that the Cyclone 5 was cheap enough at the quantities they were going to buy before they could build that - which is the MMS2

[magic girder]

And?

The DE10 is still an absolute steal

[slow silo]

And that means there was not much incentive to clone the DE-10 until recently

[magic girder]

Terasic could lower the price if they wanted, but clearly they don’t want to

[magic girder]

Read my previous message - it probably wasn’t possible for a good while

[slow silo]

Based on the fact that it took a while for De-10 clones to appear? That's going on the assumption that people were working on the clones since the de-10 came out, I just covered that

[magic girder]

I just told you, the MMS1 was originally intended to be an all-in-one

But the prices they were getting quoted for the cyclone v was more than a DE10

Now it’s cheaper, which is why the MMS2 exists

But no, people weren’t working on clone the whole time - but people certainly looked into it in recent years

[slow silo]

And why do you think the FPGA in the De-25 is going to follow the same cycle? You think that it's FPGA hasen't gotten cheaper to produce too? They aren't exactly cutting edge monster fpgas

[magic girder]

Because the market is tiny

Absolutely minuscule

[slow silo]

If it was THAT tiny we would have never ahd clones

And Terasic would not even bother taking Sorg's input on the De-25

[magic girder]

Taki has produced like… a few thousand boards? That’s nothing

[slow silo]

The FPGA market is growing, FPGAs went from "what even is that?" to there now being three major FPGA systems, two of which are commercial ventures

It's not as tiny as it used to be

[magic girder]

It’s still tiny

[slow silo]

True

It's not that tiny anymore

[magic girder]

The money is to be made with the educational users

Get them hooked on your tools etc, and they’ll stick with them when they’re in the industry

[slow silo]

Again, they took Sorg's input on the DE-25, and the 25 clearly has some parts intended for mister use

It's not THAT tiny anymore

[magic girder]

Where a board for a few thousand isn’t a big deal

[slow silo]

There would be zero other reason to add 128MB of SDRAM on board when they not only have 1GB of DDR4 RAM, but added a SECOND 1GB DDR4 chip dedicated t the FPGA

[magic girder]

Yes, they’ll probably want to capture the MiSTer users, but I don’t think they have a huge incentive to drop the probe

Price*

[slow silo]

They don't make the fpga though

Intel does

[magic girder]

Those things help us, but are probably helpful for others too

[slow silo]

Terasic just makes boards based on the fpga

[zinc dew]

I love this guy’s Twitter lmao

[slow silo]

Super DE-10 Turbo Championship Edition EX+α

[modest helm]

Yeah I don’t think FPGA gaming is very niche anymore. As someone who entered the FPGA scene in 2020, the scene has grown exponentially. Analogue, MiSTer and Modretro have made a big splash in the scene. Then there’s projects like the Game Bub in the works as well as projects like the M64. Big gaming channels like Spawn Wave, RGT 85 and Modern Vintage Gamer regularly cover these FPGA machines now. They don’t necessarily cover the MiSTer as much, but they cover other FPGA devices for sure

FPGA gaming isn’t is big as the Raspberry Pie, but it’s definitely a very known and viable option in the retro gaming scene

[zinc dew]

Someone said Pie, I’m here

[modest helm]

I think the addition of the 5th gen consoles made FPGA gaming a lot more popular especially getting such great options for N64 and Saturn

[topaz otter]

holy magic century, batman

[topaz otter]

theres a lot of coverage which means a lot of interest

it doesn't always translate to sales

the mister is still a product you have to be kind of smart about and build

its still a hobby product, no company in their right mind is going to be buying de-10s wholesale from terasic and putting a product on a walmart shelf

its also still a product that swims in the gray area of emulation of copyrighted software

those goofy atari machines, the ones with all the games built in and it comes with a controller, i have three of those dumb things, the games are licensed from atari to include on the machine

the point is that fpga emulation is cool and there's a lot of interest in it and cool things are happening with it, but anything could happen

intel could go belly up and stop making fpgas, they're already propped up by the US gov and Nvidia

the educational market which is where the majority of these things go, could go belly up

or, interest in emulator development on fpga could just plateau with the fifth generation. PS1 and N64 development is already good enough, anything more powerful than that requires something a lot bigger than a $100 development board

and I'll be honest with you, I don't think anyone is screaming for dreamcast emulation on an fpga

[latent dagger]

I think the people who really cry for it do so because currently software emulation for the Dreamcast is kind of crap right now

And buying real hardware and modding it also sucks

[outer condor]

Yeah it’s funny you say that regarding Dreamcast because if anything that’s where much of the interest is. Similar to N64, all the emulation options are kinda not great if you want something that accurately looks and acts like a Dreamcast

[modest helm]

Oh I def want a Dreamcast FPGA core. It’d be pretty amazing to have all Sega consoles preserved in FPGA just like how neat it’s going to be to have all Atari consoles preserved once the Jaguar core hits update all

[slow silo]

Same, Dreamcast seems like the current FPGA holy grail

[zinc dew]

Software emulators for Dreamcast aren’t bad!

[turbid warren]

really like flycast imo

[zenith orchid]

Agreed, I havent noticed any issues with it. I even use settings to make it look as much like native hardware output as possible and I'm pretty happy with it, its very responsive.

[mossy vector]

Dreamcast interlaced video comb artifacts and flicker filter forever!

[cyan dome]

dreamcast is the greatest console of all time aand would be good as a core i think

[iron wren]

Penpen racing on misterer!

[tepid shuttle]

there's a lot of emulators for dreamcast, do they all really have that many issues? demul, flycast, nullDC, redream, etc.

[outer condor]

Only flycast is really maintained anymore. Folk above praise it, but it never looks quite right to me

[zinc dew]

Yeah Redream is dead unfortunately

[blissful plaza]

Some of them will be undead this year.

[zinc dew]

Awesome!

[outer condor]

I’m probably going to get a Dreamcast with GDEmu for now

[bright lotus]

Dreamcast with GDEmu is serving me great except for wonky controllers and overheating psu

[outer condor]

Dreamcast controller is basically a worse Saturn 3D controller, with 2 less buttons and replacing the best D-Pad ever with the worst. Baffling

[tepid shuttle]

the dreamcast controller is pretty awful imo. it was always bizarre to me that they got the saturn 3D pad right years earlier, only to mess it up with the dreamcast pad

[outer condor]

The D-Pad hurts after 5 seconds, yet someone decided ‘yeah that’s fine’

[blazing knot]

It does kinda feel like somebody at Sega went “well, we can’t just use the same controller AGAIN, right? We have to make it different!”

Meanwhile, Sony laughing in dualshock 2

[outer condor]

The two fewer buttons are a misguided attempt to make the controller more accessible. In practice, games were designed for 8 inputs like PlayStation so developers had to awkwardly map inputs to D-Pad directions.
Awful controller except for the VMU

[blazing knot]

I do have somewhat of a soft spot for it regardless but yeah after getting a Saturn 3D pad, the Saturn one is undeniably a much better controller in every way

[outer condor]

It’s sorta the best of both worlds. Retains the 6 face buttons and D-Pad, adds analogue stick and triggers

[zinc dew]

I want to do a Dreamcast with GDemu, is that the best ODE option?

also are there cheap HDMI solutions like the GameCube Carby?\

[quick light]

I went with the AliExpress clone gdemu many many years ago. Seemed to have been fine. I think there's an issue with a couple games? Not sure

For hdmi. I use one of them VGA boxes which is then connected to my OSSC.

But there's probably better ways to do both

[outer condor]

I think Dreamcast is relatively easy because although there are internal HDMI mods, the external adaptors normally convert the VGA so still look good

[chilly ember]

I think the clone gdemu's have their firmware updated now so that should fix the games with issues

I know resident evil code veronica was one but there's a patch for that for old gdemu's

[quick light]

I still need to fix one of my Dreamcast's. No longer dreaming.

Turns on, no video output.

[chilly ember]

Gotta ask, you made sure to shove the cable really good into the port right?

[quick light]

Yep.

[chilly ember]

Ok double checking because common thing

[quick light]

I believe I tested the OSSC + VGA box on my other Dreamcast which worked fine. But it's something for future me to look at

[blazing knot]

Terra Onion MODE is probably the “best” but it’s also the most expensive

[zinc dew]

what makes it the best?

[blazing knot]

Better hardware compatibility from what I understand, and it can use SATA storage instead of an SD card

Have had no issues using it with a stock PSU for extended play periods

[cyan dome]

im getting a gdemu clone just for costs sake

[blazing knot]

Plus is doubles as a Saturn ODE if you’re so inclined

Definitely a retrotink 4k pro vs morph 4k comparison. One is the Ferrari of the hardware but both are good options

[tepid shuttle]

the MODE hasn't received any (meaningful) updates in years, outside of the recent one for gameID support. there's still some longstanding issues that likely won't ever be fixed

https://github.com/RevQuixo/MODE-Bugtracker/issues

[blazing knot]

That’s disappointing

[outer condor]

Clone GDEmu is extremely cheap on AliExpress so it’s a pretty easy decision

[atomic stratus]

I’ve had no issues with my clone gdemu, but I did do the “remove the 12v rail” mod to my PSU

[chilly ember]

Gdemu is fine if you put in like in va1 model if i recall. Otherwise need to do a resistor mod

[atomic stratus]

…which is apparently no longer the best solution and now you’re supposed to add a resistor (I think)

[outer condor]

I didn’t know some models needed a mod

[tepid shuttle]

you can get by without it but the PSU runs much too hot. either do the resistor fix or just get an aftermarket power supply tbh

[chilly ember]

It'll work but risks damaging if you don't

[atomic stratus]

I think plenty of people run using an original PSU without the mod and report no issues…but yeah PSU will run hot

[outer condor]

Something to bare in mind when I buy

[tepid shuttle]

imo as far as optical drive emulators go, the best solutions for each are
PS1: xstation
saturn: fenrir/satiator
dreamcast: clone GDEMU

that said, i've been using a PSIO in my PS1 and a SAROO with my saturn for a while now, and enjoy them greatly, but the other products are definitely more stable

[outer condor]

PS1 and Saturn I’m hoping MiSTer will make real hardware unnecessary anyway

[tepid shuttle]

the PSX mister core is definitely the best way to experience the hardware now. outside of a few edge cases, it's a perfect playstation in about every way

[latent dagger]

So you could say it still dreams, just doesn't cast

[tepid shuttle]

saturn is a different story for me, but for 95% of players, it's perfect. i just like my real saturn so i don't have to worry about single VS dual SDRAM, plus with the SAROO i get faster load times and it doubles as a memory card + RAM expansion

[outer condor]

I primarily bought the MiSTer because I don’t physically have the space for real hardware other than current gen anymore, so in theory it covers all hardware up to N64 in one nice little box

This is the space I have to work with lol

I can just about stack a PS2 and Dreamcast on the floor lol. Xbox is out of the question simply because of size

[tepid shuttle]

you wouldn't be missing much anyway

[cyan dome]

ive ordered a replacement power supply (a usb c one) and a gdemu clone for my dreamcast whose cd drive died

the saturn is a beautiful object for your sega home so having one is good, i only have a broken one though so i rely on mister for saturn gaming

[atomic stratus]

It’s (only) thinking

[slow silo]

Still no Dreamcast ODE option that lets you keep the disk drive is there? I really don't like the ones that make you remove it. Also, I'm not too much of a fan of onion since IIRC they DRM their firmware updates like the PSIO

[tepid shuttle]

that's a bit of a niche thing, since most people looking to get an ODE probably don't care about keeping the original drive, but i do wonder why no one has made a device that plugs into the network port. maybe I/O speed is too slow?

[turbid warren]

i do like the Satiator letting you keep the disc drive in the Saturn

[slow silo]

It almost feels like some go out of their way to make one that won't let you keep the drive

Fenrir for example

There was a mod you could install that let you keep the drive.

The mod is no longer made anymore, but now it's actually integrated into Fenrir clones... when they released an official new version, they still didn't add this feature

[tepid shuttle]

again, it's a pretty niche thing, so i'm not surprised that it's not a priority for the creator

[slow silo]

Dreamcast I feel matters the most since it's disc drive was proprietary and you can't just read the discs in a PC like you can for most other systems that have a ODE

You would think people would not want to remove it

I mean, ODEs in general are niche, you would think SOME would have that option

[tepid shuttle]

most people investing in an ODE aren't concerned with original discs either lol

[slow silo]

Dreamcast is about the only system with no keep the disk drive option

I'm not sure sure about that, if people didn't care that mod for the Saturn ODE would not have sold out and the bootlegs would not start integrating it

[tepid shuttle]

fair enough. i'm sure that's at least a small part of the reason why the saroo is as popular as it is

[slow silo]

I assume Saroo is popular because it's the cheapest option as well as being plug-and-play

[tepid shuttle]

it's definitely the most convenient option, and the price can't be beat. no other saturn backup method functions as an ODE, RAM cart, and memory card all at the same time

[atomic stratus]

I should probably get a Saroo just because I have the hardware

in practice it’s just playing on the core 95% of the time I play Saturn, though

[tepid shuttle]

i love my saroo. the core is amazing but something about real saturn hardware is really special

[slow silo]

I would probably go with a Satiator or a Fenrir with disk drive mod. Saroo has to patch games to get them to work and has compatibility problems because of it

Also want to FRAM mod my Saturn someday

[tepid shuttle]

the list of incompatibilities is growing smaller. most games that don't work out of the box can be tweaked in the .cfg file to work too. the patching is a necessary evil to achieve faster loads

[slow silo]

Problem is most guides I saw last time I looked up the FRAM mod just did it the lazy way where they expected you to take out the battery, not bypass/block the battery power so you can keep the RTC running with the FRAM mod

[tepid shuttle]

is it possible to keep the clock running with just the FRAM? never seen that

[slow silo]

RTCs need power so you would need a battery to keep the clock running when the system is powered off

[tepid shuttle]

unfortunate

[slow silo]

The problem is on a normal saturn the battery powers both the SRAM chip to keep the memory alive and RTC, a proper FRAM mod would replace the SRAM with FRAM while cutting off the battery power so you can still power the RTC

[tepid shuttle]

kinda useless then if using your saturn with an ODE, since most of those back up your saves in some form

[slow silo]

Or even if you have a cart to put your saves on

IIRC official saturn cards used non-volatle memory, and many of the 3rd party 4-in-1 style carts did the same

The design was VERY stupid because the RTC seems power-hungry, it and the SRAM together drain the battery in like 2-3 years... while the batteries on all of my SNES and N64 carts lasted like 20-30 years

And for the saturn when the battery dies there go all your saves, not just one game's worth

If you didn't have them backed up

[outer condor]

Personally even if I bought the actual disc, surely I would still want it actually run it from the ODE. But I guess everyone is different

[quick light]

Depends on the console for me and if I'm still collecting games for said console.

I dont collect games for my GameCube anymore so I'm happy with my Gcloader PnP. But if I was still collecting GameCube games I'd probably get one of them flippy drives or whatever it's called

The Saturn seems interesting as you can get some clone Fenrir thingies that also allow you to keep your disc drive

[broken creek]

I agree with the above statement. The only CD console I collect for is Sega CD so I obviously want to keep the disc drive functionality of that console, not that I have an option since there's no proper ODE anyway. It's fun having games for 3 systems and brining out the tower of power's Voltron ass and it actually just 1 system!

[blazing knot]

Yeah for me if I’m spending the time and money to install an ODE it’s because I actively do not want to use disc drive anymore. But i understand the appeal of wanting both

Hopefully some day someone makes a solution for that on the Dreamcast for those who want it

[zinc dew]

wow look at the ODE aura farming over here

meanwhile us superior N64 users are like “insert flash cart”

[blazing knot]

We’re farming them GOOD VIBES

[lament escarp]

Did you know that flash carts on the ds were so prevalent some naughty developers used them to test their games during development?

[blissful plaza]

I remember some Doctor V64 used on studios like for ACCLAIM/Iguana on the development of some N64 Turok title (maybe, Turok 3).
Why ? Because it's cheaper.

https://tenor.com/view/legasov-chernobyl-it's-cheaper-cheaper-gif-15809344465343671900