Super Nintendo/Famicom

[pseudo tangle]

In fact, my friend Rick Bruns is in the Gaming Alexandria group and shared the games there. What I did was get them working on the Ares and Higan emulators. That’s when I met the creator of Retroarch, and he made it work on both PC and Android.

[woeful mortar]

thats very cool. hopefully srg and you can get them working on mister 🙂

[pseudo tangle]

I don’t have a MiSTer FPGA, but I would be really happy if you could play it and hold tournaments like the ones in 1992 and 1994.

I also need people who have an FXPAK PRO or SD2SNES to run tests and ensure these games work perfectly.

[vast oak]

Guaranteed there’s a few people in this Discord with them

[woeful mortar]

I have one in my super nt box

[pseudo tangle]

Can you tag those people? I want to start right now, since I’m on vacation—I’m a university and primary school teacher.

[pseudo tangle]

Can you share screenshots of your Super NT box?

[woeful mortar]

Does the version matter? I think my sd2snes is the non pro

[pseudo tangle]

I sent you a private message.

[pseudo tangle]

Please tell the people who have an FXPAK PRO or SD2SNES to send me a message.

[slow pumice]

Isn't that just any emulation device on Aliexpress or Temu?

[pseudo tangle]

Who here has these flash cartridges to get Nintendo Campus Challenge and PowerFest ’94 working?

[crystal plover]

https://krikzz.com/forum/index.php?board=18.0 this is the support forum for those

making an account there and requesting support would probably be the best path

but i'm not sure if they work or not

there are quite a few people with those carts here

[woeful mortar]

I take it back, my sd2snes is not near the super nt. which begs the question "where is my sd2snes". But yeah, as birdy mentioned, probably best to go to the source

[crystal plover]

i have one but my SNES is dead X_X

i necro'd the forum post there - https://krikzz.com/forum/index.php?topic=8764

see if we can get the convo going

[slow pumice]

I both don't have a SNES flashcart and the sound stopped working on mine 🙁

[fair widget]

I have a standard SD2SNES

[delicate fjord]

people with no life

https://tenor.com/view/monkey-gif-22833852

[slow pumice]

It's a dolphin!

Ok, honestly, I tried and normally am good at these but the awkward shape kills it for me

[woeful mortar]

it don't think it's anything. looks like a 7 that someone got tired of drawing half way through

[foggy storm]

I have a sd2snes pro/fxpak pro and a USA snes and a super nt , happy to help test stuff

[trim thicket]

• unstable changes from srg320 on 2025-11-18 (PPU: fix sprite evaluation during Force Blank)
• PPU: Fixes for 16x32 & 32x64 sprites and tile count/flip commit from paulb-nl
• ACLK_FREQ to 410496 (fixes the title screen on Unholy Night) - DSP_PKG.vhd
• latest sys module changes from Taki

[lost maple]

damn, so hacks using SA-1 in this configuration won't run on mister? as someone who loves SMW hacks, that's a shame

wasn't there an alternate SNES core that mimics this non-standard behavior? i don't recall

[slow pumice]

So many cores across systems being updated because of a framework change, what was changed in the framework?

[woeful mortar]

Nothing super important. Taki must need it for something

[coral plover]

I can see who that is but the helmet also kinda looks a little bit like Serpentor's helmet a teensie bit too

[elder pewter]

yes there is

https://github.com/littlegamer87/SNESa1_MiSTer

[lost maple]

thank you! this is really cool, i'm glad it exists

i wonder if we'll see this get merged into the main core eventually?

[elder pewter]

well paul doesn't oppose it anymore, on the condition that it is implemented as an option and disabled by default

srg wanted to update the sa1 for accuracy because now it runs too fast and wanted to keep some logic headroom

if there is enough headroom left after his updates I can do a PR for this

pretty sure the CX4 code also has a patch for rom hacks that make the same mistake, I can lock that behind an option as well

[lost maple]

neat, that would be awesome. would be good for it to be disabled by default, but more options are always welcome when they open up access to more games/hacks

interested to see what srg has in store for the core as far as fixes go. i was under the impression that the SA-1 implementation here was already better than what the FXpak pro has

[elder pewter]

could be, hard to compare

fxpak does allow rom hacks to do the same stuff as this fork, so mister is the only platform where these hacks wont run

[short palm]

I don't get it. Will every SA-1 romhack stop to work? Or just some poorly implemented ones?

[elder pewter]

there are a very few that will run. most don't

the ones that run have been fixed in revision 1.04 in the hack or something

kinda chicken and the egg story because most development platforms wont warn the rom hacker that there is something wrong, unless you use a real cart with a maskrom replacement, or have access to mister

[short palm]

1.04 of which hack? (Sorry, I should probably just read up)

[elder pewter]

take megaman x sa1 as an example

[short palm]

So 1.04 will work on real hardware and MiSTer, 1.03 will not

[elder pewter]

1.02 in this case, the older ones also didnt work. it depends how much maintenance and testing the hacker did or had access to

[slow pumice]

I am honestly all for those being added as options disabled by default, I have seen similar options to enable inaccurate behavior in newer emulators for the sake of playing older romhacks that relies on said behavior. As long as they are not on by default and do not compromise actual accuracy just by being included, I think it's a good idea.

[vast oak]

Yes, all default options in MiSTer cores must be as close to the original as possible.

That in of itself is a form of preservation; stock experience is how the console was.

[last umbra]

This is one of the best things about MiSTer imo

[delicate fjord]

https://tenor.com/view/monkey-hit-human-gif-23637931

gonna dip you in resin and preserve you

[shadow turtle]

PPU 2 🙂

[queen nest]

Just tried that test version but the change in audio clock frequency made Bad Apple demo worse for me. The sound cuts earlier than it did previously and i also got a few sync audio glitches at the beginning of the demo. It would be nice if the ACLK_FREQ could be toggled in the core menu 🤔

[trim thicket]

We will see later if that's possible.

[elder pewter]

the point of debate here is patching the sa1 to get these rom hacks to run won't change the behavior of the published sa1 games at all

in latent's terms, let me make a comparison by calling it tolerance

the original sa1 had a tolerance of 5mm (sorry americans), so the published games were designed to work with 5mm tolerance in mind

emulators back then knew what the sa1 was doing but didnt have a clue on the tolerance, that knowledge came way later once the dev manuals were leaked. on an emulator, you could easily do 1mm tolerance

the published games required 5mm and would run with no issue if it was tighter, still within range

these rom hackers also didnt have a clue about it either so they did not take the 5mm tolerance into account, they just thought it was 1mm

and then suddenly the mister core comes along that actually knew what the tolerance was, and so these rom hacks are broken

so if you would make the core's tolerance also 1mm, does that conflict with preservation? that's debateable I guess

[slow pumice]

I get that, I just feel that if something is broken or has bugs/glitches on what would basically be real hardware (like replacing the rom in a SA1 cart like you said) that it would be more accurate to have the mister core act that way too, at least by default

People might use the mister core to develop homebrew meant to run on real hardware, you would want the core to be as accurate as possible for that

[elder pewter]

yes, but on real hw, replacing maskrom on a real sa1 cart is not plausible, that's almost vandalism 😄

the only plausible way is flash carts, and the ones that can do sa1 are very limited. think krikkz is the only one that supplies them

I guess krikkz realized the same thing - setting it tighter does not break anything, so then everybody thinks, runs fine on real hw

[slow pumice]

For now at least, I mean, back when our only real choices were ZSNES and SNES9X, of which most chose ZSNES, there were romhacks made on that which break on more accurate emulators.

There might be other romcarts in the future that are more accurate, or an easier way to implement an SA1 in a homebrew cart

And you never know if some homebrew performs something that somehow breaks if the tolerance is tighter for whatever reason

Some homebrew in the future I mean

[winged delta]

I need the help of this community. I have a 1 TB Samsung microSD card in my MiSTer. At some point after an all-update, I noticed that the SNES core started taking significantly longer to load games. All other cores run without any issues. What could be the cause of this?

[vast oak]

Yes, the core needs to work exactly like original hardware, if those rom hacks don’t work with original hardware then they need to be fixed.

Software emulators should never have been adjusted to support broken rom hacks or rom dumps imo.

The problem is that people don’t want their flash carts or emulators to appear like they don’t work so it creates this cycle of continually supporting broken roms and rom hacks.

People need to be educated that if a rom hack doesn’t work then it’s the fault of the rom hack and not the emulator or flash cart. Like full stop, that has to be the assumption moving forward.

[upbeat canopy]

I don't think this is a good analogy. It's not an issue of "tolerance" at all, it's an actual difference in behavior between the original hardware and a bad emulation of it. "Preservation" also means preserving the original hardware, not just the games.

[vast oak]

Also, like I don’t want recreation of original hardware to be compromised just so I can play the “Mario takes a dump at the Zoo” rom hack.

[upbeat canopy]

In many cases (I don't know about this one) differences in behavior that usually don't matter for normal gameplay often become very important during speedruns or other contexts involving heavy glitches

and probably the most important point: the reason why we have crappy romhacks that don't work on original hardware is because we had bad emulators that didn't emulate the original hardware properly

if we continue to make bad emulators on purpose, then the result of that is more romhack authors making hacks that don't work on original hardware

[woeful hazel]

Do you have a link to that Rom hack sir?

[upbeat canopy]

The more accurate MiSTer is, edge cases and all, the more useful it is to anyone making things (as opposed to just playing games)

[slow pumice]

To be fair that is an exquisite romhack, though not as good as Yoshi vomits in a Ballpit

[elder pewter]

that's a fair point, I did not consider that

[elder pewter]

lol, this sounds like you are referring to mario's mystery meat 😄 that is an sa1 hack impacted by what I mentioned, but it's actually considered a classic in the mario community

[elder pewter]

slow loading times are very likely to be an sd card issue. try another one, or benchmark it to see if it can do the speeds it promises (most effective way to identify a fake)

[winged delta]

If it were caused by the SD card, the long loading time would affect all cores. However, it only affects the SNES core.

The screen stays black for a few seconds until the ROM’s loading screen eventually appears.

[elder pewter]

no, it is not as black and white. existing data may be fine but newer data written to it can cause degradations

i recommend to only rule it out once tested

[winged delta]

Thanks for the hint! I’ll try it out right away.

[vast oak]

lmao that’s a funnier one than mine

[lost maple]

i do largely agree with this, but i think having a toggle for SA-1 behavior would be a win-win for everybody. leave it set to "accurate" by default, and for those of us who want to play the affected ROM hacks, have an "inaccurate" option. you wouldn't have to compromise anything

obviously the mission statement of the mister is to be as close to a 1:1 replication of the original hardware as possible, but i don't think there's anything wrong with having extra bells and whistles on top of that

[slow pumice]

I have no idea what you are talking about, I would know absoultely nothing about a romhack based on Vinny Vinesauce memes or how it's a reference to his band Red Vox's song Vomit in the Ballpit. You must be imagining things. 😛

Also the romhack was updated shortly after release so it works properly on just about anything IIRC. Before it would only work on a specific slightly older version of SNES9X

[last umbra]

Agree unless those extra bells and whistles eventually make it harder to hit the 1:1 with original hardware goal

[slow pumice]

Hmm, seems I spoke too soon. I tried playing it just now and while the usual visual glitches I have seen on more accurate emulators that happen with earlier versions of the hack from making the 5-headed-duck die or god's pool of piss worked fine, I keep running into a new glitch I had never seen before. Any time there is a dialog box the background just gets replaced with a solid white. 🙁

[static field]

‎ 🎩

🧿👄🧿 ✨
‎ 🫴

[slow pumice]

Oh, also I can't see the cursor in menus 🙁

[elder pewter]

mario's mystery meat you mean?

[lost maple]

exactly. in this case, i really doubt a toggle for SA-1 behavior would take up a meaningful amount of space in the core

[slow pumice]

Yes

[lost maple]

worth trying the alternate core?

[slow pumice]

Which one?

[elder pewter]

indeed, it either expects multiplier results in 1 cycle or uses the cpu to write to sa1 registries, not sure which one it is. runs fine on my snesa1 fork

[lost maple]

#1096636309679919136 message

[slow pumice]

I am guessing I would not be able to load a savestate from the stable core in that one?

[lost maple]

might be worth asking @vast oak to pin this core for the time being?

[elder pewter]

should work fine in general

unless the state is already broken from missing sa1 features

[slow pumice]

Oh, the stable core does not have savestates yet anyway, nevermind that then XD

Let's see if the alt core works with it then

[vast oak]

ROBBY NO LIKEY SMART IDEAS AND COMPRIMISE, ROBBY SMASH!!!!

[slow pumice]

Ok, the alt core seemed to work. On top of the other things I mentioned working, I was no longer getting a white background from dialog boxes and I could see the cursor in menues. I didn't play through the whole thing though, but I did go through the Earthbound section, spaghetti hell, Chatyot village, SHMUP section, vaporwave area, rizon fortress and first part of will smith's rewind time with no issues. I didn't even bother attempting the verizon speed test though.

[lost maple]

nice, glad to hear that sorted things out

[elder pewter]

happy gaming 😄

[upbeat canopy]

Yeah, for sure! Compatibility options are great as long as they're disabled by default and don't add a big maintenance burden.

[fluid peak]

New avatar pic, very nice

[upbeat canopy]

But there are implementation reasons why that can be complex sometimes (not saying those apply to this specific case, just in general):

• Options add more code paths that needs to be tested; if you have 10 toggles you have over a thousand different combinations of options that might interact with each other in different ways.
• MiSTer is a hardware project, not a software project. You can't just add a "if this option is set, do this" branch; oftentimes implementing something in a way that behaves just slightly differently involves making a hardware block that works completely differently under the hood.

A lot of software emulators (especially older, inaccurate ones) take a high-level approach to emulation: look at the documentation for some hardware feature, and write a function that implements that spec. This works for games that are coded to the spec, but can result in different behavior for games that violate the hardware specifications (like a lot of romhacks tested in these early emulators)

MiSTer takes a lower-level approach: figure out how the hardware actually works, and recreate it. All of the hardware's quirks and weird edge cases exist because of the way the original hardware was designed and implemented. So if you build a recreation that works in the same way, you naturally get the same edge case behaviors.

E.g. the CPU multiplier works by doing one shift and add per cycle, so it takes 8 cycles to complete an 8-bit multiplication. Some early emulators just did a simple multiplication in software, which completes instantly. So there were early ROMhacks that assumed the result of a multiplication would be available instantly, and so those hacks don't work on real hardware.

But since MiSTer is actually trying to recreate the hardware, the core developers will design a multiplier that works the same way, by doing one shift-and-add per cycle. Adding a compatibility option for a single-cycle multiply wouldn't be a simple if statement, it would mean designing a completely different multiplier that can complete in one cycle (and in fact that multiplier would be much larger and more complicated, which is why the original CPU doesn't have a single-cycle multiplier in the first place).

[last umbra]

“BuT iT’s JuSt a ToGgLe ”

[upbeat canopy]

theres's also an argument to be made that a romhack that only works in an emulator isn't really a SNES game, it's just a PC game with extra steps

if you care about preserving the Authentic Experience of playing those romhacks, you shouldn't be going to FPGA developers, you should be going to VM developers so that you can emulate zsnes on windows XP

(that's half a joke, I get that MiSTer is a much more pleasant experience for playing those hacks, so I agree that compatibility options are a good idea but only where that's practical and pragmatic)

[lost maple]

i'll have to disagree with that in this case. most of the people making SMW ROM hacks in the last few years had no idea their hacks wouldn't work on real hardware, since they already worked on the SD2SNES

[upbeat canopy]

then the right solution is for SD2SNES to be improved to match the original hardware, so that people stop doing that

[last umbra]

It seems to be a constant cycle on here. A core is an almost perfect replication of original hardware, people find a romhack or obscure mapper for a bootleg game, then they come here complaining that the one obscure thing isn’t playable on MiSTer

[woeful mortar]

nada, weren't you the one who was working on making trackers work with the mister core?

I am more excited for that tbh

[upbeat canopy]

yeah!

[lost maple]

then the SD2SNES is to blame in this case for not having accurate SA-1 implementation

but my philosophy is that if it works on hardware, then it should work on mister

[last umbra]

Problem is there’s extra hardware in the chain there 😅

[lost maple]

yeah, again the SD2SNES is arguably at fault in this case

but it's not really the ROM hackers fault for not realizing that the emulators/flash carts are flawed

[last umbra]

Everyone should just use a MiSTer

[lost maple]

ideally yes

[last umbra]

Problem solved

[upbeat canopy]

I've pushed out another test build just this week fixing some stability / correctness bugs; pretty much the only thing left to do is to implement SRAM support, do some more testing, and some cleanup to get it ready for upstreaming

I'm hoping it'll be ready for review by ~the end of the year

[upbeat canopy]

Not just here -- this debate has happened literally thousands of times over the past 25 years in every emulator community

the consensus is always that we should have emulators that are as accurate as possible, because even though it breaks some romhacks today, it ensures tomorrow's romhacks won't have these compatibility issues

[lost maple]

but then you have idiots like me who still enjoy older hacks 🙂

[upbeat canopy]

Yeah, so compatibility options are nice for preserving historically significant hacks (or you can always tell people to use an older emulator)

[last umbra]

Free yourself of romhacks friend, the library is big enough without them 😉

[woeful mortar]

yeah, but super metroid map randos are so fun

[upbeat canopy]

but MiSTer in particular is a project that especially goes for accuracy every time, as far as I'm aware

[last umbra]

Pass. I generally don’t touch romhacks unless they’re translations 🙂

My backlog is big enough without them 😅

[lost maple]

that's definitely the mission statement yes, but then some cores like the N64 core definitely cut a lot of corners to fit on the DE-10. even then, one of the main reasons people enjoy it as much as they do is because of the enhancements, like the turbo core

[upbeat canopy]

If you're just using basic autosplitters / trackers, what I have now should work already for you. More complex stuff like Archipelago needs SRAM support

there's also some issue with codetracker on ALTTP, but I can't really debug that right now since codetracker doesn't work on linux

[elder pewter]

rom hacks are my jam. the original library is great and all but already played the stuff i wanted to, rom hacks keep it alive

and the rom hack content for snes is huuuuuuuuuuuge

[lost maple]

yeah, hacks and patches are arguably the main reason the SNES is one of my favorite consoles. there's just so much user-generated content out there

anyway, i still think a toggle for SA-1 behavior would be a great addition to the main core. it already exists as a separate core, so why not merge it with the main? after all, we already have options for things not possible on original hardware, like CPU overclocking, savestates, dither blending (for kirby's dream land 3), etc.

[slow pumice]

Eh, I would say that's REALLY stretching it. Also since it works in Everdrives that's also like saying you aren't real SNES games on a SD2SNES

[slow pumice]

I mean, you're asking them to release an update that will BREAK tons of romhacks that currently work and offer essentially nothing in return. I highly doubt most people are going to accept that their favorite romhack has stopped working on their expensive flashcart in the name of accuracy.

[reef widget]

If your ROMs are zipped they probably take longer to load than if not, assuming SNES core has the fast ROM loading functionality, which I think it does

But an update shouldn't change that unless that feature was disabled/broken

[upbeat canopy]

the situation is:

1. Flashcarts inaccurately emulate some cartridge hardware
2. Hackers develop against that inaccurate emulation
3. They test on a flashcart and expect their hack works on original hardware because it worked on their flashcart (even though it wouldn't work if you put it on an actual cart!)
4. More accurate emulators come along, and now and the hacks work on some emulators and not others

the correct point to break the cycle is step 3

[lost maple]

yes but it's unrealistic to expect hack creators to go back and update every single hack that's now incompatible because of info they didn't know about

[upbeat canopy]

or step 2, fix it in high-accuracy software emulators as well

[final oasis]

...maybe the incorrect SA-1 implementation from emulators/FXPAK should be considered as yet another expansion chip?

[upbeat canopy]

Perhaps, but it's really unfortunate if that holds back accurate SNES emulation going forward. How do we ensure that future hack developers are developing to an accurate target?

[lost maple]

make the accurate behavior the default one in all emulators

[upbeat canopy]

exactly!

[lost maple]

but still have a toggle for the old mode for compatibility's sake, is what i'm saying

[upbeat canopy]

Yeah, compatibility options are good where feasible, especially in software emulators

[lost maple]

we already have an alternate core for just this feature, all i'm saying is that it would be convenient for that functionality to be merged into the main core

[vast oak]

I dunno what you’re talking about but if you write a feature request using the GitHub issues it’ll probably be looked at

[upbeat canopy]

and I'm saying that'd be great as a disabled-by-default option if that's feasible! I don't know if it is for this specific change, maybe @elder pewter would know better

but sometimes, especially for hardware emulators, that's not feasible and you have to make a choice between accuracy and compatibility

[lost maple]

i would be surprised if it wasn't able to be added to the main core with all of the other options it already has

[lost maple]

was referencing this core which has different SA-1 behavior https://github.com/littlegamer87/SNESa1_MiSTer

[upbeat canopy]

i'm not gonna type all this out again ^

[vast oak]

Wacky tabacky!

[lost maple]

yeah i get it

[upbeat canopy]

the SNES core is very full, an entirely separate SA-1 implementation is definitely not feasible

but if it can be done as a small tweak somewhere inside the SA-1, then it's probably feasible

[lost maple]

i was under the assumption that's all it would be; small tweaks. the repository states that these are the main changes

maybe srg could take a look at it and give a verdict as to whether or not it's feasible right now

hell this core already has a toggle for accurate or inaccurate behavior. not sure if anything else about it is different compared to the main

[reef widget]

I am trying to catch up on this stuff, can someone summarise what the issue is?

Is it a situation where something new has been found out about SA1 hardware, that will be updated in the core, but in doing so a bunch of hacks will no longer work?

[lost maple]

older emulators and the SD2SNES flash cart had inaccurate SA-1 implementation. many ROM hacks were (unknowingly) built around these inaccuracies, so they work on those emulators and flash carts without issue. when the SNES core for mister got SA-1 support though, the chip's behavior was better understood and was more accurate, but this accuracy actually breaks many of the older hacks in question

right now, there is a fork of the SNES core (SNESa1, linked above) that adds a toggle to switch between the new, accurate SA-1 behavior, or the old, inaccurate behavior. my opinion is that the toggle should be added to the main core and set to "accurate" by default, so it runs as it should for retail games, but those who want to play older hacks can set it to "inaccurate" to ensure older hacks run properly. nada suggests it isn't as simple as it may seem, though

[woeful mortar]

I'm catching up but I believe the intention is to add it to the core if there is room after SRG does some SA-1 work #1096636309679919136 message

sorry if that was already linked to

[lost maple]

thank you, i don't think it was. i hope srg can find the time between all of his projects to take a look at it 🙂

[somber field]

I hope he can work on it after he finishes the 3DO core! 💪
||I'm kidding! He should always work on what he wants, when he wants!||

[reef widget]

If it can be done cheaply on a toggle then that is good. Hopefully someone goes and updates these old romhacks to work on the updated implementation as presumably this will be rolled out across flashcarts and emulators fairly quickly

Where has this knew knowledge a out the SA1 come from? I am surprised we are learning substantialy new things about the hardware in 2025

[woeful mortar]

SRG started a deep dive on it

[reef widget]

Oh, he really doesn't want to finish the 3DO core, does he?

[woeful mortar]

I think he enjoys the suspense at this point

we are coming up on a year since he announced that

[elder pewter]

2023 i think, it was vitor viela or something who discovered a lot. not sure when book 2 snes dev manual was leaked on archive

[woeful mortar]

Oh interesting. Was it part of the giga leak or whatever?

[fickle quiver]

Nope, much earlier. I don’t remember exactly, but early 2000s

[clever tusk]

I get why 3D0 is moreso a project to chip away at when he needs a break. the 3D0 is just not all that popular

very few people could afford one back in the day

or justify spending so much on it

I'm really hoping there'll be some form of SFX3 on the core. if I understand correctly it basically only needs to be a SFX2 without speed limitations, so its only bottlenecked by the rest of the system.

[pseudo tangle]

Hello friends! I wanted to ask something—tell me, how does the Japanese version of Campus Challenge ’92 look? Compare the tournament version with my screenshot… I was only moving sprites around.

[pseudo tangle]

Is there anyone here who can help me make an accurate reconstruction of the Japanese version? The Pilotwings logo was hard for me to make… Programs I used: YY-CHR and Tile Layer Pro.

[elder pewter]

are you romhacking your dump to make it resemble the japanese version visually or something? I dont understand

[slate hawk]

We need to create the Picture in Picture video of yourself playing as well. Everyone start buying old analog broadcast equipment or you’re not even a real gamer

[shadow turtle]

the cartridge never existed in Japan ? Hope someone it could be dumped

[crystal plover]

yeah looks like that is what they are doing

[pseudo tangle]

I have videos on my YouTube channel where I play Nintendo Campus Challenge ’92 and Powerfest ’94.

[pseudo tangle]

What I’m trying to do is make it look the same as the Japanese version used in that event.

[pseudo tangle]

The Japanese version does exist — it’s just difficult to find a real cartridge and to have the game menu dumped.

[radiant stump]

https://www.reddit.com/r/MiSTerFPGA/comments/1phvhgx/direct_save_autosave_without_going_to_the_osd_on/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

[brazen dragon]

^^This would certainly be a great QOL improvement if all cores had this ability

[radiant stump]

Yeah it would be a nice toggle IMO

[elder pewter]

it sounds better than it actually is. there is a reason that OSD feature is there because this is risky

[gleaming cipher]

That’s going to wear down the SD card very fast because some games write to the sram area too frequently

Good luck to whomever tried that hack

[spiral sigil]

Ive always exited a core via the osd so this has literally never been a problem for me

I'll take that over the nonsense of corrupt SD cards any day

[brazen dragon]

Yeah I think the simple QoL improvement of Sorg adding the "Saving..." text when opening up the OSD many years ago fixed my saving issues

[upbeat canopy]

fxpak has a background autosave, and we get fxpak users with dead SD cards all the time

it really sucks to troubleshoot, because it just manifests as weird inexplicable glitches

and no one ever thinks to suspect their sd card

[slow pumice]

What's the reason? MiSTer and some flashcarts are the only devices I know of that don't auto-write the save, just about everything else does.

[slow pumice]

There are SD cards that are meant for 24/7 video surveillance modern cards are a bit more robust than from many years ago, people run their entire OS install off of them for something like a Raspberry Pi. It would be fine if there was a delay to write or something for the games that just use it like additional RAM.

[gleaming cipher]

I don't think most o the people is going to use those types of SD cards? Anyways, having that feature as default and having no way to disable it is just plain bad.

[slow pumice]

I don't think they are even special cards. My point is cards are far far more robust now, many don't even use special cards, we don't need to worry that writing like 1K of data every few minutes is going to do anything.

Though I agree you should be able to disable it (You can in this, but you then need to manually save), but I feel in modern times letting it auto-write your save to the card really should be an option. ESPECIALLY for systems that used memory cards, it's really silly that I need to open the menu on the PSX core to save.

I'm pretty sure the eeprom chip used in PSX memcards at the time was less robust than modern sdcards

[radiant stump]

That's why I'd like to have it as a toggle perhaps with a warning

[slow pumice]

Yeah, I agree it should be a toggle with a warning, but I feel the option should be there

[gleaming cipher]

Let's see what Paul and Sorg think about that!

[slow pumice]

Har har 😛

Might as well ask the TempleOS guy to have more than 640x480 resolution

[gleaming cipher]

No idea on what TempleOS is but 640x480 should be enough for everything

[slow pumice]

Let's just say that's a hell of a rabbit hole

TLDR: Super religious person has schizophrenia and thinks God litearlly told him to code an OS that must be 640x480x16 (I think also must fit within 640K?) and that this OS will literally be some third temple that was mentioned in the bible... and it just gets more nuts from there

The OS was very impressive for one man coding it from scratch with such restructions, but like I said, HUGE rabbit hole

[gleaming cipher]

Oh the TempleOS story! I remember that and the guy is considered a genius by lots of people!

[slow pumice]

Was, he died 🙁

[gleaming cipher]

oh 🙁

[slow pumice]

He also became a lot less nice because of his mental disorder later in life sadly 🙁

Again.... 🐇 🕳️

[elder pewter]

twofold:
one, some games write to sram continuously, but flash memory unlike sram is limited in the amount of writes you can do to it. so continuous writes to your sd will definitely accelerate degradation. there is huge difference in the type of sd card you have
two, the de10 does not have the hardware for a shutdown routine, it just cuts off the power instantly, unlike the analogue pocket. since you have no control over when the mister is writing to sd anymore, that is a very big risk of data loss

[upbeat canopy]

They generally are special high-endurance cards. If you go to amazon or whatever and pick up a random cheap SD card, you get some bottom of the barrel crappy flash.

Most people just don't think about the quality of the flash in their SD card as being a thing they need

[elder pewter]

not everybody is a hardware engineer 😛 I get that

[upbeat canopy]

the safe shutdown thing is another problem fxpak users face -- you occasionally see SD card corruption unless you hold the reset button while you turn off the power, which signals the fxpak to sync

if you buy a high endurance SD card meant for continuous video recording, and you are sure to do a safe shutdown, then autosave is fine

[elder pewter]

agreed

[upbeat canopy]

but I'm a developer of the super metroid practice hack, and every few months or so we get a mysterious bug report that turns out to be an fxpak user who didn't do one of those things

[elder pewter]

the fxpak has custom hw tho, which should mean it is fixable. just add some capacity big enough to finish the write and that should take care of it

although the power that the snes can supply is probably limited, that can ruin things

[elder pewter]

you see those here too constantly. think it was only last weekend that I pointed someone here to test the sdcard. did not come back so looks like that was the issue

[somber field]

I've always been curious if those "endurance" micro SD cards would be better for something like that?

[elder pewter]

it can definitely handle more writes, but you will still have data loss if the power gets cut during a write

[crystal plover]

Yeah they are rated at higher amount of writes. Their MTBF rate is basically just exponentially better, but that still means it's a chance of wear and not a specific time when wear will happen after a certain amount of writes at a certain sector, it's just a lower chance for that sector over time.

[slow pumice]

Like I said, delay the writes to only happen like every second or so, that fixes the games that use the SRAM as actual ram trashing the card issue (Even though that should STILL not destroy the SD card. The person in the reddit post did some math and showed that running the SNES game with the largest possible save file nonstop having it keep saving would take 800 years to destroy a modern MicroSD card), and who is going to save their game then IMMEDIATELY turn off the mister before the second delay is even up?

Also if you run update_all often you are constnatly re-writing jotego's cores and now the timeline anyway

[woeful mortar]

but you aren't running update_all constantly

[slow pumice]

It writes a LOT more data than a SNES save would though

[woeful mortar]

yes, but not as rapidly

it's not the amount of data

it's the amount of writes

[slow pumice]

Regardless, the delay I mentioned would prevent a lot of this

Assuming it even would effect a modern sd card without the delay like that core dev mentioned

[woeful mortar]

There isn't any type of math that you can do to predict sd card failure. You can certainly set an expectation, but like any other wear and tear part, you cannot predict when it will fail - only that it will fail eventually

[slow pumice]

I mean, by that logic we should not use paging files on our PCs because they could destroy the SSD faster. That's going a bit extreme in worrying that auto-saving a few KB could kill the sd card

As long as we are not hammering it like it was an actual SRAM chip running RAM

[elder pewter]

it is sram, those games will likely be unplayable if you add a delay there because it also reads that data back

no wait thats not true, it is buffered in ram anyway

his math is off tho because it assumes that all capacity is available, but in mister it is permanently claimed by everybody for the roms, isos, cores and saves

[potent rune]

do sdcards do wear leveling?

you're writing the same few cells over and over if they dont

[woeful mortar]

@upbeat canopy in your opinion, why doesn't mister have larger adoption in the speedrunning community? It just feels like something like that would be easier than rgb and hdmi modding consoles so they can stream/play on a crt simultaneously

[fervent token]

imo its because its not "real" hardware

thats gonna be the common answer lol

most speed runners are going to use analog signals on crts to boot, and they can capture video outside of the chain/digitally with say, a PVM that can pass thru video to a capture card

the capture is inconsequential, the important thing is that the crt gets the signal first, everything else downstream can lag as much as it wants

[upbeat canopy]

for Super Metroid, it's been cost + lack of SNI support

the original DE-10 board is comparable in price to a console + nice flashcart

the MiSTer Pi changes that, but without SNI support it still is a worse option than an fxpak for most people

[woeful mortar]

That's fair. I think that will start to get better as more options become available. But yeah, the SNI bottleneck is real. Are you planning on PRing that for the SNES core? Or do you think it will forever be a fork?

[upbeat canopy]

I hope to upstream it

I want to send PRs for initial review by the end of the year, assuming I have enough time to work on it over the next few weeks

[woeful mortar]

it just breaks my brain when goats does a metroid marathon stream and he is switching back between emulator and SNES.

is the SNI stuff just for the snes core? or would it be for the main binary?

[upbeat canopy]

from there it's a question of whether sorgelig and co. will accept it

https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/SNES_MiSTer/issues/422

Generally speaking this is beyond what MiSTer is targeted for. It has nothing to do with preservation. SNES core is already heavy core and i would rather to keep remaining room for main purpose - emulating original platform with high accuracy. So it's under a big question if this addon will be accepted.

i'm hoping i can get it into a state where it's acceptable to the project, but I have very little experience with VLSI design, and there's the question of whether they consider it worth the logic space

[upbeat canopy]

it requires:

• support in the core
• an extra user-mode background service on the linux side for handling communication with the host
• support in the main binary for launching the additional service

the core support is not terribly complicated, the only thing is it requires a lot of extra logic in the SDRAM controller to handle arbitration between the SNES and SNI (and that block is already pretty tightly constrained on timing)

the user mode service will be optional, I plan to distribute it separately from the mister project, and I've made sure it doesn't introduce performance concerns

[upbeat canopy]

I wouldn't really expect top runners to switch away from original console. They usually prefer the "authenticity" of it, and they've already invested the time and money into high quality capture so they don't really have a reason to switch

Rather I think MiSTer is a better alternative for mid-level runners who want something nicer than a PC emulator without having to spend $$$

[woeful mortar]

that's totally fair. I just though it was weird that Eddie uses a Super NT (but, again, makes sense because the sd cart is doing the SNI work)

[upbeat canopy]

Yeah, mister has the potential to be a much better option than the Super NT

it's just that, right now, telling those people "you can't use an autosplitter or tracker or do multiworlds" is a tough sell

[woeful mortar]

oh absolutely

I had in my brain that it was an accuracy thing - I didn't even consider the whole "hey, this whole hobby is uh...timing splits...and the mister cannot do that"

[fervent token]

time... is of the essence

[woeful mortar]

I'm hopeful that you can make it work in a way that sorg and srg approve of.

[upbeat canopy]

mister has a pretty big accuracy advantage over super NT because it can output at 60.09 FPS natively

with super NT you have to choose between losing like 10 seconds an hour, screen tearing, or variable input latency from double buffering

[woeful mortar]

I know! I was really surprised that that was eddie's console of choice

[elder pewter]

did you manage to get this additional service allocated to the 2nd (idle) cpu core @upbeat canopy ?

[upbeat canopy]

i didn't do anything special for it yet

the main binary is already pinned to one core so the scheduler just naturally puts it on the other core

but it's easy enough to add a setaffinity call

it needs about 5% of a core under heavy load so i am very unworried about it

[slow pumice]

I meant a delay on writing the contents to sd, not the sram itself

[slow pumice]

What is SNI?

[fervent token]

super nintendo interface

connect snes to a computer to read data in real time

some people use it to connect to apps to read memory states and keep track of splits and things when certain in game actions happen

like say, speed runners

[slow pumice]

Never heard of this before, do they solder wires to a snes or something? Or is it that bottom expansion port?

[fervent token]

theres a few different ways

https://github.com/alttpo/sni

check the github repo for details

imo, its some super in the weeds nerd stuff, but the guys who use it, use it a lot. it's not really of interest for the average gamer who wants to just play games

[cloud stirrup]

alttp online is pretty interesting and does work on MiSTer to a degree thanks to NobodyNada #1096636309679919136 message

on FXPAK, it also supports Super Metroid, I think. haven't tried that on MiSTer yet.

[pseudo tangle]

I apologize if this is not allowed, but does anyone by any chance have this game? I’ve wanted to play it for years.

[gleaming cipher]

It was never released

[foggy storm]

i was just about to add https://www.indiegogo.com/en/projects/johnlester-4133569/justice-beaver-new-super-nintendo-game/comments looks like it never got out

[gleaming cipher]

Yep. Another scam. With compromise

[spiral sigil]

I read that as "with composite" and wondered why video signal was being brought into it

[last umbra]

Composite is a scam

RF is the one true output

[slate hawk]

It has everything together, you can’t beat that!

[slow pumice]

Technically so does HDMI

[slate hawk]

It has everything together, BUT ANALOG

And you don’t have to license it. Checkmate hdmi

[lost maple]

if only there was some kind of connector that could carry composite, RGB, and stereo audio all at once

[flint veldt]

Sharp scanlines as shaving machine.

With the age, I started to appreciate the real magic of composite.

Specially on Famicom ... I got an RGB famicom from aliexpress and it's great, but... Composite has magic.

[left burrow]

There can be only one Goemon

🤣

[slow pumice]

https://tenor.com/view/goemon-mystical-ninja-yae-impact-sasuke-gif-15211938757007107041

[flint veldt]

OH LOL !

[swift sierra]

So which filter for the MiSTer is really close to that? Cause that looks REALLY good

[radiant stump]

https://tenor.com/view/gotem-gif-18695498

[timid cloak]

Does anyone have any idea why yoshis island might be freezing for me as soon as I start the game? I would really appreciate the help if possible.

[slow pumice]

RAM issue? Or maybe corrupt save file

[woeful mortar]

Are you on the stable core?

[timid cloak]

Yes I’m on the stable core

[woeful mortar]

Try the unstable. There are some ram timing issues with certain configs and special chip games on the stable core.

Unstable: https://github.com/MiSTer-unstable-nightlies/SNES_MiSTer/releases/download/unstable-builds/SNES_unstable_20251205_164c2e.rbf

[timid cloak]

You’re awesome! Thank you

[shadow turtle]

https://github.com/srg320/Main_MiSTer/commit/74f1429ee5d06544d27f1e12b4ad90028b8d5e9c

[woeful mortar]

@pseudo tangle ^^

[pseudo tangle]

Thank you very much for preserving these games! I just need someone to test the games on a MiSTer FPGA and upload videos, since I don’t have a MiSTer myself.

Does this mean it already works on the FXPAK PRO cartridge? Because that cartridge uses FPGA cores.

[shadow turtle]

SRG320 implements those cartridge it will require update core and main mister

[shadow turtle]

I don't know

[pseudo tangle]

I was talking with Mr. @midnight pumice and he told me that the games work very well. I hope he included the Powerfest ’94 1 million points version. I hope everyone enjoys these great competition games to play with friends or family—a Christmas gift from me and Mr. @midnight pumice.

[shadow turtle]

In the main, the code identifies the header of each game and set how the core will handle those two cartridges

const char snes_cc92_header[] = {

0x00, 0x08, 0x22, 0x02, 0x1C, 0x00, 0x10, 0x00, 0x08, 0x65, 0x80, 0x84, 0x20, 0x00, 0x22, 0x25, 


0x00, 0x83, 0x0C, 0x80, 0x10, 0x00, 0x00, 0xA0, 0x80, 0x01, 0x80, 0x80, 0x00, 0x01, 0x02, 0x2D

};

const char snes_pf94_header[] = {0xC9, 0x80, 0x80, 0x44, 0x15, 0x00, 0x62, 0x09, 0x29, 0xA0, 0x52, 0x70, 0x50, 0x12, 0x05, 0x35, 0x31, 0x63, 0xC0, 0x22, 0x01, 0x80, 0xC2, 0x3A, 0x6C, 0xB0, 0xE8, 0x4A, 0x11, 0x20, 0xC0, 0xF8};

he sets also an option on the core OSD for the time
"P3oMP,Competition Cart time,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18;",

[pseudo tangle]

Wow, my respects to Mr. srg320. It’s great that he was able to add the different time settings just like on the original board. Remember that the original time is 6 minutes and 21 seconds.

[shadow turtle]

why 21 seconds ? it is precise 🙂

[pseudo tangle]

Because that was the time Nintendo set on those cartridges.

The ROMs I shared on Internet Archive come preset with 6 minutes and 21 seconds built into the game.

[shadow turtle]

I see thanks for the informations.

[shadow turtle]

PowerFest 94 10K point is recognized but not the 1m points version (maybe link to the header if two roms have different headers)

[shadow turtle]

@pseudo tangle Is it normal the headers of PowerFest 94 1m pts have this mention "PREHISTORIK MAN" ?

[pseudo tangle]

Honestly, I couldn’t tell you for sure—that was the original menu that Rick Bruns shared with me from his Powerfest ’94 1 Million Points cartridge. I only converted it into an .sfc file.

[shadow turtle]

I will inform srg320 regarding the issue for this rom hopes it doesn't share the same headers of prehistoric man game 😅

[fervent token]

rip Near

this post is from 2016

https://forums.nesdev.org/viewtopic.php?t=15281

[pseudo tangle]

Could you upload YouTube videos testing the Campus Challenge ’92 and Powerfest ’94 games on MiSTer FPGA? I’d also like to see the option you added to set the time.

[shadow turtle]

Sorry I don't have equipment for capturing...
@tulip vessel or @low basin ?

[low basin]

Thank man, I've sent you a DM.

[foggy storm]

I just edited the header in the 1 million points rom to match the 10k rom

@pseudo tangle what did you edit in the rom to set the time limit ? Unless the mister osd timer over writes it any way

The fx pak does not use the mister cores and will need to be implemented separately

[shadow turtle]

SRG320 has updated the main mister to support 1 million pts rom.

[tulip vessel]

I can take a look but not this week

[somber field]

Okay, I'm trying to get caught up on the competition cart stuff. So the carts are a collection of several roms? How exactly do they "connect" together so they can be played as they were originally intended at the competitions?

[marble violet]

The roms that work are a single file, I've only tried the powerfest roms, but they just start immediately playing.

[shadow turtle]

With the support of PowerFest 94 1m pts (Main Mister)

[somber field]

What does this file do exactly?

Oh, is that a test/unstable MiSTer main file?

[shadow turtle]

yes it is. It is a PR not merged but soon as normally all is ok now

[somber field]

Nice, just didn't click in my head that it was a MiSTer main file.

[shadow turtle]

sorry not to mention it on the message I will add it 🙂

[somber field]

So I was able to get all of them working except for Campus Challenge.

Felt like going back in time. I played in the PowerFest'94 and DKC challenges back in the day. Won a copy of Lawnmower Man for SNES in the PowerFest challege at the time...

[kindred oracle]

im a dummy so apologies if this has been answered elsewhere but is there any more indepth info on what the new sound frequency option does

[trim thicket]

Simply put, some homebrews & demos seem to work better with some theoretical values on the SPC700.
With aren't realistic & never seen on the real chip, when measured.

Like with Bad Apple Demo or the title screen of Unholy Night.

[kindred oracle]

i see. thank you for taking the time to answer!

[gritty cedar]

was able to play PowerFest 94 with the "V2" mister main and the 20151218 unstable core. pretty cool to relive that memory 😄

[weary sedge]

Does anyone have the "link" or "search term" to find the competition carts? I have been searching google with no luck. Would love to play these games. Thanks guys!

[jade epoch]

Please do not circumvent the archive.org link ban.

[pseudo tangle]

I apologize—I didn’t know that wasn’t allowed.

[jade epoch]

No stress, thank you for acknowledging.

[gleaming cipher]

Well well well I see some hax0ring was going on here…

[weary sedge]

Sorry for getting you in trouble my man

what is the correct core/rbf file?

🤣

I found the games which should be left unnamed

[slow pumice]

Poor Link...

[somber field]

So is the Campus Challenge that's listed as "original" the only one that works on the core? The other two I can't get working.

[weary sedge]

What core are you using? I cant get any of them to work lol

[cloud stirrup]

they worked for me with the latest unstable SNES in #unstable-nightlies and the MiSTer here #1096636309679919136 message

[marble violet]

^ This. You need both the core and the updated MiSTer main binary. The core alone isn't enough.

[somber field]

I've gotten all of them to work except for the two alternative Campus Challenge files. Only the one labeled as original works. All the other challenge carts work fine on my end.

One of the alternatives opens to a different title screen than the one that does work, but doesn't go beyond the title screen. The last one just opens to a garbled mess of pixels.

[cloud stirrup]

that's how it was for me on the first alternative too, i assumed the point was showing the alternate screen only. i missed that last rom, looks like it was added later.

[somber field]

Yeah, there's one called second screen, and one called repro.

Original is the one that works.

I can get the other two working in an emulator on my computer. This is the one titled "Second Screen".

Doesn't work on MiSTer. Just garbled pixels.

[cloud stirrup]

second screen is the one that just showed that title screen for me, can't go any further

does it go further on emu?

[winged delta]

Do you know if the official Analogue Super Nt core is still being developed? I noticed a bug today while using the German patch of Breath of Fire and I’m wondering whether it’s worth contacting Analogue support.

On the MiSTer, the patched ROM runs perfectly fine.

That really shows how good MISTer’s support is.

[somber field]

This is the one I can get to the title screen with on MiSTer, but it doesn't go beyond that.

That said, on the emulator I used, neither of them would go beyond the title screen either.

[shadow turtle]

maybe missing headers on main mister I didn't this one on my side

[fair widget]

With Analogue, no one knows. Sometimes years will pass and they will randomly release firmware updates, but they don’t communicate anything with their customers for the most part

[winged delta]

I’ve just contacted support. I’m curious whether they’ll respond.

Here is the bug I discovered.

A photo of the Super Nt above, and a photo of the MISTer below.

[winged delta]

It turned out that the bug might be related to the Flashcard FXPak Pro. I’ve now also tested the whole thing again on an original SNES.

[pseudo tangle]

Are you using the Ares emulator?

[somber field]

Looks like it's BSNES? I never play games on my computer (a Mac). I usually only use it to test patched roms before I move them over to my MiSTer to make sure they patched correctly.

[winged delta]

Yes, I used the ARES emulator.

It is definitely caused by the FXPak Pro.

[lost maple]

mister wins again?

[winged delta]

As I mentioned, this is not caused by the official Super Nt core, but by the FXPak Pro flashcart. I tested the same ROM with the FXPak Pro on an original SNES and encountered the same bug there. Tomorrow, I will try installing the jailbreak on the Super Nt to see whether the bug also occurs there.

[upbeat canopy]

have you ruled out a bad SD card on the fxpak?

[winged delta]

This is definitely not related to the SD card.

[upbeat canopy]

alright, as long as you've ruled it out (ideally by trying another SD card)

it's super common for fxpak users to encounter glitches like that caused by a dying SD card

[pseudo tangle]

On Internet Archive, I included the Higan and Ares emulators with their respective games. In the Higan emulator, the games are in folders, while in the Ares emulator, the games are in .sfc files. As an extra note, in the Retroarch emulator—both for PC and Android—you can also play these competition games; you just need the .sfc files and that’s it.

[vast oak]

As an American I only use .snes files!!!!

[pseudo tangle]

Check out this video—I’m using it on my Samsung Galaxy Tab A9+, first with Winlator and then with the Ares emulator: https://youtu.be/ev4NaEqIbVc?si=XLXe88-4uZ9a3I-L

[vast oak]

I’m telling Miyamoto!!!!

[pseudo tangle]

.snes files? Do those come from the SNES Classic Mini?

[vast oak]

No I’m being an idiot, sorry

[vast oak]

Shit I forgot about that sticker too

[somber field]

It will forever haunt you! 👻

The ghost of Robby past.

[radiant stump]

When does the act cease

[foggy storm]

its a shame that the fx pak/sd2snes cart does not get much love any more from its creator, if it was not for the community devs we still wouldnt have super fx/sa1/sdd1/sgb etc

[shadow turtle]

The good point it is opensource for others to contribute

[lost maple]

i thought it became closed-source after an older revision?

[slow pumice]

And it still dosen't have SPC7110, the website hasen't even been updated and still claims no SDD-1

[lost maple]

yeah, this is a big one. FXpak is an extremely capable cart, but it's in a pretty sad state compared to the mister core imo

[weary sedge]

Latest MiSTer unstable build: https://github.com/MiSTer-unstable-nightlies/Main_MiSTer/releases/download/unstable-builds/MiSTer_unstable_20251221_076b2d

SNES: add Competition Cart support.

* SNES: add Competition Cart support.

* SNES: add PowerFest 94 1m cart recognition.```

Where do i put this file above?

Its not an .rbf file???

[coarse elm]

That's MiSTer main, rename to "MiSTer" and goes on the root of the SD card

[weary sedge]

omg, cool let me try that out

[coarse elm]

If using FTP you probably need to rename the current one then copy the new one over, rather than overwriting it
Then reboot

[weary sedge]

cool im on winscp right now just rename to "MiSTer"

[coarse elm]

Yeah, rename the current one to MiSTer.old or whatever and copy the new one over

[weary sedge]

Perfect it worked. Thank you so much. Im new but learning 🙂

[coarse elm]

NP 👍

[lost maple]

i'm sure it's been asked already, but why are some core updates tied to mister main? you'd think they'd all be self-contained in their respective core

[upbeat canopy]

in this case, it's because the main mister binary has the detection logic for figuring out what type of cartridge a game uses and communicating that to the core

so new cartridge means that needs to be updated

[elder pewter]

main does the housekeeping, incl fpga programming and providing data like the rom and input

with some cores, main emulates a cd drive or a hdd

[vast oak]

main also sends me usage data on what people are playing and runs my background bitcoin farming processes

[woeful hazel]

You should put ads in mister main to get some extra revenue

[weary sedge]

See an ad for the prescription Tremfya before playing campus challenge 🤣

[woeful hazel]

I had to look up Tremfya, I think I need some 😅

[clever tusk]

I'm starting to think the SNES core might be the most feature-rich hardware based emulator(for SNES)

[radiant stump]

NES core has got to be for NES right

[slow pumice]

Interesting. I knew main handled all the filesystem I/O but I didn't know it had a role in telling the core the cartridge type too

[upbeat canopy]

i assume the reason for that is just that that kind of autodetection is really easy to do in software and painful to do in hardware

[slow pumice]

Clearly the next route to go is to completely toss aside accuracy to implement gimmicks like HD Mode 7 then!

[clever tusk]

I would love that as a separate core (SNES+?) of course it wouldnt be accurate, but perhaps more accurate than software based options.

[slow pumice]

On one hand, feels like we might be overdoing the alternate cores, on the other, we already have an overclocked n64 and psx core, as well as an alternate genesis core so...

[upbeat canopy]

i don't know enough about the internals of the core to say for sure, but a change like that sounds to me like a massive effort and very unrealistic to implement, even as an alternate core

the original PPU was very precisely designed around the target specs of the system, so things like the output resolution are fundamental to every part of the design, not just a variable you can tweak somewhere

all the memory busses, pipelines, and clocks are all designed around the exact amount of data that needs to move through the PPU each frame

in a software emulator, it's easy to write a custom renderer with whatever specs you want, since it really is just saying "ok now do 720 lines instead of 240"

but in a hardware emulator, that's essentially a complete redesign

and at the point you decide to do that, you're completely trading off everything that makes MiSTer more accurate than a software emulator. The whole point is to reimplement/recreate the hardware to get the exact same behavior; if you completely change the design like that then you've thrown that out the window and you're just another ordinary emulator when it comes to accuracy

[clever tusk]

Yeah we can only speculate unless we look under the hood. Some tweaks might be feasible.

[clever tusk]

But I'm a little reluctant to assume that everything completely is traded off. There are so many things that people were so certain about in this community, that they either had to backpedal or eat crow. So I'm comfortable with knowing that I don't know.

[clever tusk]

When I think of hardware mods, like HDMI mods for retro consoles, they have a separate board that taps into the original hardware. I imagine thats to some degree what goes on in the FPGA cores when it comes to features not in the original hardware, but I really don't know.

[slow pumice]

It's a lot easier to do something like that on a PC because you can just translate the console GPU instructions into instructions for the PC's GPU and just tell it "render these at 4k"

For FPGA you would have to basically create said more powerful GPU in the FPGA itself

[shadow turtle]

https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/SNES_MiSTer/pull/452

[vast oak]

[Download Core](#1096636309679919136 message) also updated

[swift sierra]

How do you do an alternate core on MiSTer (like this one to play the comp carts) without screwing everything else up?

[woeful mortar]

I think maybe there is a perception issue here. What are you worried about screwing up?

It’s hard to ask that question without coming off as condescending

[swift sierra]

I didn’t know if I can simply add the core to the lineup or if I have to do a major reconfiguration of my sd card

[woeful mortar]

so the unstable stuff is kind of a misnomer. it's basically just beta. so if you run the beta mister main (which is what you linked), you likely won't notice anything AND you'll be able to play the champ roms. Easiest way to update mister main is to run this script (just download it by pressing the download button and put it in your Scripts folder - it will show up in the menu). That will update the MiSTer main file.

Then you can just download the rbf from the latest snes unstable, put that in /_Console, and run it

[upbeat canopy]

"unstable" just means "it might not work right"

like the SNES unstable currently has some graphical glitches in ALTTP because they core is mid-PPU-rewrite right now

[hazy pulsar]

To be fair, stable cores might not work right. 😏

[vast oak]

I have never had any issues with any unstable cores, and if there were regressions the community is quick to find them and submit bug reports.

MiSTer has literally become the only place where I have zero concerns for installing beta software lol,

[cyan coyote]

Commits · MiSTer-devel/SNES_MiSTer https://share.google/J4C5YTmBySaXr7ep3

[woeful mortar]

better than 3do

[shadow turtle]

Great update 👍

[woeful mortar]

I wonder if this fixes the issue Nada was talking about

[shadow turtle]

https://x.com/FamicomCD/status/2004236528701395259?s=20

FamicomCD (@FamicomCD)

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays from FamicomCD!

We'll have some stuff to showcase during New Years, so stay tuned!

X · Dec 25, 2025, 5:03 PM

[slow pumice]

So did it fix a warning or is it a warning about a fix?

[short palm]

The PPU rework is great stuff. first NES by Kitrinx, now SNES

[swift sierra]

So there’s no way to do it without taking my sd card out and adding it through my pc?

I’m in front of my mister with it on now atm

[marble violet]

If you have an internet connection on your mister, you can use FTP.
Also these things are all just files. No need to reconfigure anything. Cores are just files, the menu list is enumerated at runtime, it's not preconfigured anywhere. If you add or remove files, it'll show up as soon as you refresh the menu page they're on.

The MiSTer main binary is a little more, and probably best to run that updater script that @woeful mortar linked to ensure it's updated properly.

[swift sierra]

Eh I don’t wanna screw something up by ftping (haven’t done it before lol)

So download the script in the link and put in in the scripts folder to run it once my sd card is back in the mister correct

[marble violet]

Yes. That should update the mister main to the latest unstable. You may have to restart your mister after running it.

[swift sierra]

I feel really really dumb. Where’s the download button at

Nevermind I think I figured it out 😂😕

[arctic shoal]

what are the benefits?

[swift sierra]

That’s what happened when I tried

Nevermind it worked 😁

I spoke to soon it skipped everything

Fuck

How do you find the unstable core to boot it once installed? I think that’s my problem

[somber field]

Latest cores are always in the pins.

[marble violet]

It's wherver you put it when you downloaded it. If you put it in the _Consoles folder, you probably have multiple SNES cores, and it should have a different date

[somber field]

Oh, whoops, thought you were looking for it to download. To install it, yeah you need to put it in the _Consoles folder. And then just boot it from the usual place.

[marble violet]

You can also create a new folder, like _Unstable or whatever you want to call it, alongside _Consoles, or even inside it, to keep them completely separate. Folders with an _ as the first character will be displayed in the menus

[swift sierra]

So wait…do I have to run the script to download it on my mister or ?

[marble violet]

The latest SNES unstable is 2 things. The MiSTer main binary, which the updater script downloaded. You also need a SNES core, which you can obtain from the pins here

[swift sierra]

I have my pc on and my sd card in

[woeful mortar]

So your SD card is in your PC right now?

[swift sierra]

I have my card completely set up outside of just getting the unstable stuff on it (been set up since I had it years ago lol)

Yep

Got the update unstable main sh in my scripts folder

[marble violet]

You can find the latest SNES unstable core here #1096636309679919136 message. Download that, and place it in the _Consoles folder, or wherever you want as I described above.

[woeful mortar]

@swift sierra do you see downloader.ini in the root?

Open it in notepad. add this line to the bottom [unstable_nightlies_folder] db_url = https://raw.githubusercontent.com/MiSTer-unstable-nightlies/Unstable_Folder_MiSTer/main/db_unstable_nightlies_folder.json

when you put the SD card back in your mister, run the mister unstable main script

and then run update all

it will download the latest unstable cores and put them into /_Unstable

and then you won't have to worry about it again

anytime you run update all, it will grab the latest unstable cores

and they will live in their own Unstable directory

[swift sierra]

Oooh nice I’ll do that now. Thanks

What do I open it with? Notepad?

[woeful mortar]

yeah

[woeful mortar]

looks good

make sure you save it

[swift sierra]

Got it! Thanks 😁

Fyi for those booting it up for the first time, go into Hardware, and scroll down to Competition Cart Time to change the time (it defaults at the lowest starting at 3 minutes lol)

You can go all the way up to 18 minutes 😅

[foggy storm]

it does if you enjoy hitting baseballs for 15 minutes 😆

[swift sierra]

I think the default for the competition was 6 or 7 minutes?

[arctic shoal]

savestate implemented? i cant check because i'm on a jouney

[shadow turtle]

Normally no code change just added PDF files

[trim thicket]

In any case, what a marvel of documentation we now have!

[reef widget]

https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/SNES_MiSTer/tree/master/rtl/chip/DSP

Seems to be this VHD file here?

A new .pdf shouldn't trigger an unstable build, if it has that is presumably a bug

No new SNES release in 5 months...

[tough patrol]

Depends on the auto-build backend. In the ideal world sure, have all kinds of ignores on .pdf .md .txt etc. so it wouldn't trigger a build. I'd imagine it's not that high up on the list of things to "fix" as it doesn't break anything other than wasting some compute resources to compile.

[reef widget]

I think that is now the case, and this last unstable was triggered by an actual core update

[soft atlas]

Hi guys, I can't load any SNES or Super Famicom games, my screen just stays black. This romset has been working fne until I just tried it. I tried a fresh .rbf from github as well as the latest unstable nightly, nothing works. Any ideas? Thank you.

[woeful mortar]

does the menu load? or when you load the core, it goes straight to black screen?

[soft atlas]

straight to black screen, i have to manually open the menu

[woeful mortar]

and then booting any game is the same black screen, but you can open the menu?

[soft atlas]

yes, black screen, then I open the menu, select a game and just back to black screen. thank you

[woeful mortar]

Try to load this

[soft atlas]

same thing, just back to a black screen

[trim thicket]

Does the core have been correctly downloaded ?

[woeful mortar]

show me the root of games/snes

[gleaming cipher]

Html instead of a rbf?

[woeful mortar]

I don't think it's that because we wouldn't get a menu

it would just hard crash

[gleaming cipher]

Oh right on

[woeful mortar]

I wonder if there is a rogue boot.rom

[trim thicket]

Ok, there is a menu.

Rogue file, most probably.

[soft atlas]

how can i show you games/snes?

[woeful mortar]

You should have these two files in games/sense

any other files (that aren't roms) in games/snse should probably not be there

[soft atlas]

i have those, plus mister-boot.sfc

[woeful mortar]

ok, that's ok. delete those two files and then run update_all.sh

[soft atlas]

ok, done, and still the same black screen 🙁

[woeful mortar]

this is so weird

HDMI? or are you going to a CRT?

[soft atlas]

the one that doesn't work is HDMI (just SNES doesn't work) but I have a second MiSTer connected to a CRT using the same romset and SNES works on that one. which is weird

[woeful mortar]

can you post your MiSTer.ini?

just drag the file into the chat

[woeful mortar]

overwrite the snes RBF in /_Console with this one and try again (go back to the main menu first obv)

[soft atlas]

we this rbf did open the menu on boot, but opening a game is still a black screen

[woeful mortar]

are the games on cifs? or on an sd card?

[soft atlas]

they're all on the same sd card as the system files, I have no extra storage hooked up

[tough patrol]

how about bring up the menu and reset settings

[woeful mortar]

yeah, good call. it may be worth just blowing up the SNES file in /config

[tough patrol]

/media/fat/config -> next to nuke

if all fails -> get another sd card and do over. there's a slight possbility the card goes bad.

[soft atlas]

what do you mean by 'next to nuke'?

[tough patrol]

next file to nuke

[soft atlas]

do you mean delete SNES.CFG?

[tough patrol]

yes

reset settings probably would have done the same but sure why not

[woeful mortar]

I think it does but we all know there is only one way to be sure

[soft atlas]

Deleting SNES.CFG seems to have worked! Thanks guys.

[woeful mortar]

https://tenor.com/bOZ9J.gif

Nice work @tough patrol

[magic barn]

what is this

[calm quarry]

Powerfest 94

[magic barn]

ty!

[fair widget]

does the latest unstable have savestates?

I feel like I remember seeing that it does…

[marble violet]

it does

[fair widget]

and there is a boot room file that goes with it, right?

[vast oak]

Yeah should be included as part update_all but if not I think I pinned it

Yeah it’s downloaded from update now

[fair widget]

niiice

[radiant stump]

Maybe some day the release core will have save states

[slow pumice]

It's been on the expiremental core for, like a year now hasen't it?

[woeful mortar]

save states? nah, it's only been on the unstable for 6 months or so

[radiant stump]

seems like years lol

[warm bluff]

The latest changes appear to be in a good spot, or at least I didn’t find any issues while testing a bunch of different games

So maybe release is soon

[slow pumice]

Feels like a long time to still be on unstable though

[brazen dragon]

I'm the kind of person that uses only the stable version so the wait for SNES save states to be in update_all is brutal lol

[slow pumice]

I just created a seperate folder called _Expiremental where I put unstable and variant/special feature cores

... though the problem is cores that require an update to main

Never messed with manually changing that

[brazen dragon]

Yeah the Saturn's need to use the latest unstable main turned me off from doing that. I know that the unstable main is usually extremely stable, but I don't want to take the chance. I definitely use the latest unstable cores if I'm testing though, but for playing for fun I only like to use the stable cores

[woeful mortar]

SRG is very conservative about releases. Also, I believe he and Paul are in the middle of PPU rewrite

[slow pumice]

Not sure how to even do it. For the cores I just FTP into my mister and upload teh RBF into the expiremental folder

[woeful mortar]

we likely won't see a stable SNES core until that work is done

[slow pumice]

Can I just ftp in and replace the main while the mister is running? Or does replacing the main or the menu require more than that

[woeful mortar]

if you want run unstable main, just use this script. it makes updating it painless. https://github.com/misteraddons/mister_unstable_updater_scripts/blob/main/files/Scripts/update_unstable_main.sh

that will kill the mister process, download the newest mister main unstable, reboot your machine

[slow pumice]

Does that script only update the main or also the other cores?

Also, is it possible to add this script itself to the updater so that it keeps the unstable script(s?) up to date?

[woeful mortar]

that script won't change and it only updates main, not the cores

if you want to update the unstable cores, there is something you can add to downloader.ini for that

[slow pumice]

I manually update the unstable cores in a seperate folder, I just asked because I noticed there was two scripts in that repo you linked, with one being apparently to update the cores. It wasn't clear if the main one updates both main and the cores, or just main

https://github.com/misteraddons/mister_unstable_updater_scripts/tree/main/files/Scripts

[woeful mortar]

ahh yeah, the unstable core script is kind of obsolete, but the main one is not

[slow pumice]

Hmm, the description says "This Script will update to MiSTer unstable and the unstable cores"

Seems like a short script to update the main and other cores, it's not clear if it does both or just main

[woeful mortar]

sorry, you're right, I linked the wrong script https://github.com/misteraddons/mister_unstable_updater_scripts/blob/main/files/Scripts/update_unstable_main.sh

that's the one you want - sorry

[slow pumice]

That's the one I was looking at actually

Hmm, looking through the code that I... semi-understand, seems likeit only updates main

[woeful mortar]

oh then I did link the right one

[warm bluff]

I think the comment in that file is a mistake, I don’t see anything that downloads the mister cores in the body of the script, just the mister main

[woeful mortar]

that one only updates main

[slow pumice]

Good, that's what I would want

the description claimed it did both XD

[woeful mortar]

I used it today 🙂

[slow pumice]

Nice, I'll have to add it.

Using an unstable main dosen't break older stable cores right?

(Or at least, it shoulden't unless it's a bug?)

[woeful mortar]

right, it shouldn't

I am trying to remember a time where it did

I don't think there was one

[slow pumice]

Nice 👍

[woeful mortar]

there was a time where unstable got pushed to stable too quickly and it broke saving in saturn

but I can't remember a time where games were broke by the unstable

[radiant stump]

Exactly lol

[vast oak]

I can’t argue it, it’s smarter to do that. I’m just impatient lol

[radiant stump]

Personally I only vaguely am interested in save states but I have a friend who relies on them a lot and isn't interested in installing anything unstable

[slow pumice]

You can have both cores at once, that's what I do. I put all the unstable cores in their own folder

[radiant stump]

yeah I know he just doesn't wanna bother lol

[tough patrol]

save states is godsend. as adult i can't find that long duration of uninterrupted time to play games anymore.

[brazen dragon]

Precisely. I feel the 3-4th gen in particular is an awkward era without save states since 99% of games don't have battery backed up saves

There's tons of games I want to play through, but don't want to be forced to do it all in one sitting

[left burrow]

because I see a lot of Powerfest95 posts lately. Has somebody looked into Super Famicom Box support on Mister?

[slow pumice]

What's that?

[vast oak]

Hotel rental system

[last umbra]

That’s so cool

[last umbra]

Is that yours?

[vast oak]

Hell no!!!!!!!! How dare you!!!!!!

yyyyyaaaaaaerrrgghhhhhh!!!!

[unreal lava]

you activated Robby's pirate mode

[last umbra]

Y u mad bro

[vast oak]

beep boop beep

[swift sierra]

One that clean would be a cool collectors piece.

Game capacity was…10 carts I think?

[vast oak]

I have no idea, I literally found out about it when @left burrow mentioned it

Even though it appears like I’m a retro gaming encyclopedia who’s very handsome and strong, I actually learn new stuff every day here

also humble, I’m very humble

and cool

[last umbra]

Yes

[pearl loom]

So much talent and he has no idea

[last umbra]

He’s also handsome and strong ||apparently||

[left burrow]

yeah and is already emulated in the NoCash SNS emulator

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vw422tXp1bQ

and here is all about the tech; https://forums.nesdev.org/viewtopic.php?t=9597

what is nice about it is the Kirby Coin Intro and the Menu to choose the games from

I would love to see this working on Mister. I just got the Idea because the Powerfest Games work somewhat similar

[frosty prairie]

I've had one for sale for 2 years and no buyers. $500 plus shipping or pick up in DC. I think I have 3 or 4 games with it.

[swift sierra]

Wow. Solid price assuming good shape and everything. Bet they’re north of $1000 now complete and clean

[slow pumice]

Pretty neat device, would love to see people study the hardware and rom

I bet there is unused/dummy data in there

[spiral sigil]

You could always pay me £10 for 10 minutes of gameplay and partially experience the joy

[frosty prairie]

Well if there is a dev interested I'd be happy to lend it to the cause.

[left burrow]

that was done already by a few people.

If I understand the tech stuff correct, we should have enough information about it to make it work on Mister if there is still enough space for the core.

[slow pumice]

I assume that the menu was programmed into the main ROM, meaning it didn't have support for the operator being able to choose what games they wanted?

[left burrow]

As far as I understand, there is the base rom with the menu/system stuff and the game roms. One game was always installed by default. The other games were optional. When a new game was installed, it was possible to choose it in the menu. There were only 4 games/boards. The last is very rare.

[slow pumice]

The menu lists the games though, and has graphics for them. That had to have come from the menu rom would it not? Unless the game carts were special ones that contained the menu graphic in them

[left burrow]

If you know your list of games and won't change them later, you can include all in the menu rom only. But if you plan to add more games to the list later, you need to let the system rom at least know the name of the game and send the Game Logo Picture from the Cart to the Sys rom so that it can be displayed in the menu... in theory. Not sure what they did for the box.

[slow pumice]

Well yeah, that's what I was saying. If the list of games was set then they would just have the list programmed in the menu ROM and could use the commercial game roms/pcb design. If it's meant to let you change the games then the games would need to be modified to have a title graphic that would display in the menu added to them.

[woeful mortar]

Has anyone spent a lot of time save scumming using save states on the unstable? I have been seeing some issues and I’m trying to determine if anyone else is

Basically, with the game will corrupt / crash when either I save a state or (more likely) when I load it. This happens on cifs and local (however, boot1.rom is always on cifs, so I wonder if that makes a difference)

This doesn’t happen every time, and I haven’t nailed down reproducible steps yet, but it happens at least once in a 2 hour super Metroid rando.

Things I still need to test

• does it happen on de10 based stacks (I’m playing on clone boards mostly)
• does it happen if boot1.rom (and the snes folder) is local

[upbeat canopy]

are there any consistent symptoms of the crash? e.g. if the crash usually happens right before a door transition, that narrows it down to likely being a crash on the SPC side

if it's a CPU-side crash and you're able to reproduce it in the SM practice hack, that'll give a stack trace

when you get a crash on loading a savestate, does reloading the savestate crash again? (i.e. is it a corrupt savestate or a one-time failure to load)

[woeful mortar]

Oh it’s not the game the game I don’t think. That just happens to be what I’m playing at the time. It’s on save state side for sure, because the crash only happens when invoking the save state menu items.

[vast oak]

pins updated

[upbeat canopy]

Right, but knowing how the game crashes may shed light on what specifically is broken with savestates

[woeful mortar]

The screen either completely corrupts when I try to save, or the saved state loads to a black screen

[tough patrol]

Hummmmm. I was getting it last night. I was running CPS2 core for a while and switch to SNES. Was either getting screen corrupt or game crashes. Only a cold reboot made the problem go away.

[radiant stump]

Sometimes you gotta clear it out like that with the MiSTer I've noticed

just in general

[lost maple]

i always cold reboot when switching cores personally

[slow pumice]

For some reason I read that in a menacing voice 🤣

[wise sandal]

I’ve had this happen to me many times in the past. Switching cores without rebooting (even cold rebooting) often leads to issues like corrupted graphics or crashes.

[wise sandal]

Well that was quick! I reported the bug 3 days ago. 😂 Thanks! 👌🏻

[woeful mortar]

fwiw, I haven't been able to trigger my weirdness on a de10 nano yet. I will keep poking at it

[elder pewter]

be sure to close your reports when you checked the fix 🙂

[wise sandal]

Is something considered fixed if it’s fixed in an unstable build and hasn’t been included in an official release yet?

[vast oak]

Yeah

It’s fixed in the code but hasn’t been made public yet

[elder pewter]

indeed, request is fulfilled if the fix works

this organisation wrt stable releases is something the project can improve on, I think it currently doesnt always make sense, but I also recognise that it's not always easy

[tired depot]

In Super Ninja Kun (Super Ninja Kid), the music of 5th, 6th and 7h boss stages dont load.

in both, public and unstable

[trim thicket]

@woeful mortar I have some trouble with the save state function on the last unstable version too, I can't load any savestate anymore.

[trim thicket]

Yeah, I saw just a moment ago about the issue ticket opened.

[woeful mortar]

hmmm

[trim thicket]

And I don't see any file being created when I save.

[woeful mortar]

That's weird, I would try rebooting because I can still save fine

and I haven't had the savestate bug on the new core

but there is definitely something weird in that department. not sure if it has to do with the PPU rewrite or not

I wish we had a sense as to milestone SRG is considering for another release. I haven't come up with steps to reproduce, and I don't have time to dig into the savestate stuff right now, but I also don't want to wait so long that it goes unreported

[tired depot]

in new core, nothing is created in savestates folder qith me too

[woeful mortar]

Oh hmm

i wonder if I saved but never loaded?

[trim thicket]

Very strange, only Super Ninja kun refuses to save a state.

Other games, like Super R-Type, Demon's Crest, 3 DKC are okay.

[tired depot]

Super Ninja Kun dont load music of satge 5 boss

[trim thicket]

So, that game does something wrong.

[woeful mortar]

yeah, SM is saving fine for me

[trim thicket]

I will add a comment about the broken save state system for that game, maybe it's an hint on what is going wrong.

[woeful mortar]

yeah, not saving in that game for me either

very weird

[trim thicket]

I've seen several videos of Super Ninja Kun where the music is also missing during those specific boss fights.
Apparently, it's not only the core which is affected by that issue.

[trim thicket]

I tried all the save state TEST versions done so far, none worked for saving/loading with that game...

[elder pewter]

paul already figured it out

I thought he already implemented something for games with interrupts disabled, guess I was wrong

lets see how hard this game is and if I can make it to stage 5

great. the game also has an "enhanced music" (and sfx) option in the settings menu. if that is relevant this game is gonna be tricky

[elder pewter]

indeed no music. save state shared, I'd be surprised if this is not a game bug

[sick crown]

i note 10 unused tracks in the SPC rip, so that would track

hm, i do see the music working in this video https://youtu.be/o1_9tJhq3tA?si=tMJES-a_A-BqQjbb&t=710

[trim thicket]

I have seen videos recorded from a real system and a SD2SNES flash card, which show that the music should be playing.

[sick crown]

hmmm. this speedrun of the game seems to be done on hardware but music doesn't play in those moments https://www.speedrun.com/super_ninja_kun/runs/zp4e12rz

it's not marked as emulator and i see some telltale analog interference in the signal, it does look like hardware

yet there's no music playing in those boss fights

https://www.speedrun.com/super_ninja_kun/forums/kdo58

it's a game bug apparently?

according to that speedrun.com thread, you have to enable enhanced music in the menu or it won't play on those levels?

this probably needs one more test pass on the core with that setting enabled

[warm bluff]

Wow, great find there.

Sounds like it’s a game bug, very weird

[trim thicket]

I'm checking that video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ohig3H5IKLo

The video is done on a real system and a ream card, but the person have done an edit cut just before launching the main game...

Okay, I'm updating the issue ticket with the new information.
Thanks @sick crown

Let's do a second run, when someone is available to try it.

[elder pewter]

called it ffs

[sick crown]

yeah your mention of a possible game bug is why i went looking for hardware capture that also lacked music

[tired depot]

So, switching to Enhanced Music mode solves the problem?

[elder pewter]

ill leave that for the next person to try, I already called it 😛

it's not hard with unlimited continues

and you can increase your starting lifes from 3 to 7 in the settings

[sage sorrel]

Is this one of the bosses to check? I lost count. I just turned on cheats to get here

[trim thicket]

It works for me with the enhanced music.

[trim thicket]

Issue ticket updated.

[radiant stump]

Dumb question but does latest SNES unstable have the save states?

[woeful mortar]

yep

[vast oak]

yes but not for you, there’s code specifically to disable them for you

[radiant stump]

Oh good they're a crutch

[shadow turtle]

Can someone test Super Family Tennis on real hardware ? After selection exibition on select screen, there is time to time glitches on transition screen with last unstable. I would like to confirm if it is normal or not

[trim thicket]

I see it too on Smash Tennis.

Not normal.

[trim thicket]

Some issue too on Batman Returns around the middle of the first stage.

[trim thicket]

I opened two issue tickets about our discoveries.

Maybe, it's a rather recent regression, but I miss some time for checking previous releases.

I need to leave that task to someone else.

[trim thicket]

Original game bug, the MiSTer wins again!

paulb-nl checked earlier.

[trim thicket]

Scaler issue when switching resolutions, I asked for some help and where to address the issue on MiSTer structure.

[elder pewter]

i think sorelig is the only one working on sys

the scaler is in sys

if it is a digital screen, that can also be a factor. some screens take a fraction of a sec to change video modes

[trim thicket]

For my case, yes it's a digital screen, as I don't have the physical place on my desk even for a real PVM/BVM.

[elder pewter]

what is your vsync mode set to?

I have it set to 2 and I can even see that game switching mode before the title screen, after the namco logo

[trim thicket]

vsync_mode=1

[shadow turtle]

same

[elder pewter]

your screens wont accept 2?

1 will match the refresh rate but has an extra frame buffer

that still image flickering is probably the buffered frame while it switches video mode/resolution

[potent rune]

some other cores have an option to insert black frames during resolution switches so you dont see anything weird

[elder pewter]

oh that is clever

on vsync_adjust=2 I only see 1 "old" frame after a video mode switch

the elgato has way more trouble with these resolution changes than my screen has

the elgato basically resets the capture completely and you lose about 200ms

[craggy prism]

So, I recently learned there are carts you can buy for SNES that let you play GBA games in 4:3 (stretched, no border). I was wondering how possible it would be to get something like that working on MiSTer.

These carts have their own video out instead of using the SNES, which I expect would be a pretty big hurdle.

[vast oak]

So are they even using the SNES at all?

[vast oak]

Ok I looked into it, it’s called the Super Retro Advance Adapter and Retro-bit sold it. Other companies sold the same thing under different names.

It’s effectively just a GBA clone that gets powered from the SNES cart port and received button inputs from the controller. There’s no SNES software being run and no SNES hardware is used besides what I already covered.

So there’s no real point in replicating this because it has nothing to do with SNES hardware and it’s just bad clone hardware of a GBA, which we already have a cycle accurate core of.

[lost maple]

the same company made a genesis "adapter" that functions almost identically. the SNES does nothing other than power the device and provide I/O

i messed around with one ages ago. it was not good lol

[radiant stump]

What would even be the goal?

[craggy prism]

I just wanna play gba games in 4:3 on mister, lol. A fringe case to be sure.

[slow pumice]

The Super Gameboy actually accessed the SNES hardware though right? I know it had a gameboy in it, but there were some enhanced games that were clearly running on the snes

[lost maple]

could try setting up some custom modelines for the GBA core

[craggy prism]

Yep, that’s what I’m looking into now

[somber field]

Space Invaders is literally an SNES game on the cartridge when played via the Super Game Boy.

[slow pumice]

Yeah, that's the one I most think of

[solid meteor]

and odd thing is that SGB support for the GB version on the cart is excellent

[calm quarry]

Looks like Save States still not working on Mister Pi for Mega Man X2 on that unstable.

[lost maple]

i believe games that use the CX4, OBC-1, S-DD1, or SPC7110 coprocessors don't support savestates

[woeful mortar]

yeah, I believe that is correct

[somber field]

Yeah, save states are not yet supported on that chip.

No idea if they ever will be.

[elder pewter]

you could ask yourself if it is worth the logic if there are only 2 games for it

might have to wait for the de10 successor for that, leave some headroom for other dev stuff

[trim thicket]

I wish these two games were supported, but I know full well that it's quite difficult, and that's also one of the reasons why flash cards don't support them either.

The usual method used by paulb-nl for catching some interrupts can't be used there.

[halcyon niche]

Sorry if I am asking a stupid question Do you use the turbo mode? In Super Bomberman for example there are very noticeable slowdowns if too much is happening on the screen so I use the turbo mode It’s almost unplayable at times without it

[vast oak]

It is not worth the logic or the effort drastically speaking!!!!

[slow pumice]

At least FX and SA-1 are supported? Many big games used those

[slow pumice]

I would say WHAT games they are also matter. Nobody cared to implement those two missing SNES chips because they are just for some Japanese Mahjhong games, but something like CX4 is a bit of a different story

[sick crown]

y'all, X2 and X3 have practice hacks with save states implemented.

there's probably a way to get just the save states...

might have to monkey with it, or maybe i'll ask the devs

[slow pumice]

So it's a hack that itself adds save states to the software?

[sick crown]

yes

[slow pumice]

That's a bit different than the core doing it

[sick crown]

X1, 2 and 3

well obviously lol

relevant if you want to use save states, though, no?

CX4 support for save states doesn't look like it is in the pipeline

which is why i mentioned it

they aren't ideal for casual play but they do have working save states, so presumably the save state support could be separated from the practice elements

[delicate rivet]

I have been playing with the Chrono Trigger MSU-1 patch (https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/2546/) with resume support.
However, on the SNES core, dungeon music always restarts after a battle. So... Does the core support the MSU-1 "resume" feature?

[slow pumice]

Wonder if the version of that hack that will add in the PSX FMVs will ever be finished

Or if it's even possible

[delicate rivet]

Resume support for the MSU-1 was apparently done here:
https://github.com/mrehkopf/sd2snes/pull/67
Is that supported on the SNES core? Do you guys happen to know?

[somber field]

I feel like I remember the music resuming in Final Fantasy 6? It's been a while though since I did that play through.

[delicate rivet]

MSU-1 patched FF6?

[radiant stump]

@elder rose did the work on it as I recall, I don't know if he still hangs aroundhere

on the MSU-1 for MiSTer, I mean

[delicate rivet]

Ah, let's see if he's around then. All games I tried seem to be lacking the resume feature on the core. I specifically applied an MSU-1 patch to Chrono Trigger that has resume, but doesn't seem to do it.

[lost maple]

someone needs to add the FMVs from the PS1 version of mega man X3 into the MSU-1 hack. those are the only unique things left to the 32-bit versions

[slow pumice]

Huh, I remember X3 for PC... I think I even have it from years ago, don't recall it being on PSX

Wonder which version has the better quality FMVs

[spiral sigil]

X3 was one of those odd PAL/NTSC-J only releases

Like Gregory Horror Show

[lost maple]

yeah, on playstation and saturn no less

@slow pumice the PC version has the highest-quality FMVs. the port included in the PS2 collection is about the same iirc?

[slow pumice]

Forgot there was a PS2 MMX collection, that had the MMX3 FMVs?

That collection was released on GameCube as well right? Would those be better quality?

Or the recent collections on modern systems and steam?

[lost maple]

the newer X legacy collection only includes the SNES version of X3, while the X collection on PS2 and gamecube use the 32-bit version of X3. between the two consoles, i think FMV quality is about the same

[slow pumice]

Sounds close enough for having to re-encode it for SNES anyway

[spiral sigil]

I could never really get into X3

[slow pumice]

I never really played X2 or X3, just X1 then went to X4

Really liked X4

... other than the script and voice acting that is

https://tenor.com/view/what-am-i-fighting-for-zero-iris-mega-man-mega-man-x4-gif-11050507854088787617

[somber field]

Yes. Using the Pixel Remaster soundtrack.

[spiral sigil]

X4's voice acting is perfect

Who needs direction

[slow pumice]

There are like, a dozen different options for MSU-1 soundtracks for FF6, I was using a patching program that lets you set what sets you want, it's deafault seems to mix different sets together

I tried several versions to test out and see which ones I prefer, sevearl options for the opera scene too, both with and without lyrics

[wise sandal]

I know something was implemented in the PSX core to prevent weird graphical problems during resolution changes when using the scaler. It sure would be nice if this fix could be ported to all other cores. I know SNES games don’t change resolutions as often as PSX games do, but it’s still very distracting whenever it happens.

[delicate rivet]

The FF6 MSU-1 patch is called DancingMad (available in https://codeberg.org/Dizzy611/DancingMadFF6).
There's a single version of the patch.
From there, what version of the external OST (=PCM pack) is irrelevant with regards to features.

That said, resume doesn't work with FF6 using the DancingMad patch either, so it seems that, in fact, the core is missing the "resume" feature.

I will open an issue on github about this.

[delicate rivet]

Just to be sure, and the exact same MSU-1 patched ROM has working "resume" on BSNES

So yeah, the core lacks the "resume" feature, making RPGs.. well.. less pleasing to play

I wonder how comes I am the first person to notice. Isn't nobody playing games on the MiSTer? 😄

[marble violet]

We're supposed to play games on this thing?

[delicate rivet]

No, no! How I dare? We have to worship it, all day long! 😄

[radiant stump]

A lot of people hate MSU-1

I only have one that I regularly play

[delicate rivet]

MSU-1 is a tool.. hating it seems pretty stupid. There are many interesting patches. Most are pure detritus but some are incredible.

[radiant stump]

You're preaching to the choir

[delicate rivet]

I didn't know the expression, but I was not preaching at all! 😄

What's that MSU-1 release you use?

[radiant stump]

Super Metroid Redux with the Symphony soundtrack

[delicate rivet]

Ah! That sounds nice! I will take note of that one for when resume is implemented, as I tend to notice those things a lot and it takes me out of the game 🙂

[radiant stump]

I don't think I've noticed issues with it in particular

[delicate rivet]

It's a missing feature, and since Super Metroid uses the resume feature quite a bit, I know I will notice it as I do with the FF games or CT

[radiant stump]

What would be the nature of the problem

[delicate rivet]

In FF/CT, ending a battle causes the dungeon/environment music to restart, instead of continuing from the point where it was before the battle.
In SuperMetroid, it would manifest by restarting the music every time a jingle is played (which I believe is not what the original game did)

[radiant stump]

Ah I don't know if that happened then

Redux has less jingles too so harder for me to notice

[elder pewter]

is the resume command the only delta in msu1 v2?

I came up with something and compiling a build, see if it works

[elder pewter]

also jesus christ that patch is huge

[slow pumice]

Well, they're basically replacing all the synthesized sound tracks with essentially uncompressed audio

[elder pewter]

and a lot of it too, 1.4GB

[upbeat canopy]

I've opened a PR adding support for reading and writing SNES memory over UART for SNI: https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/SNES_MiSTer/pull/462

[elder pewter]

@upbeat canopy can you close your issue for ALTTP? it is completed

[woeful mortar]

@upbeat canopy This is very cool. I see you upstreamed the mister main stuff too ❤️. Is there still a separate daemon that needs to run on top of that. Or, if the mister main stuff gets merged, will everything be self contained to the mister?

[elder pewter]

I am really close at getting msu1 resume working

[upbeat canopy]

Yes, it's a separate daemon (at https://github.com/NobodyNada/snid). I think it's best to distribute it separately so that users who don't need SNI don't have to download it (it's 5-10MB), and so that the project doesn't have to take on responsibility for maintaining and updating it.

The Linux-side PRs just adds a menu option to the UART mode menu that looks for the snid binary on the SD card and launches it.

But I wouldn't be opposed to upstreaming the daemon if that was the preference of the project.

[woeful mortar]

probably a little too niche, but I don't want to speak for everyone. Super thankful for your work here - really cool stuff

[elder pewter]

@onyx tulip can you give me the role to post in the test-builds channel? I got the resume command on msu-1 working

in the meantime, those who want to give it a spin, I uploaded it on github: https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/SNES_MiSTer/issues/461#issuecomment-3773566122

[somber field]

Seems to be working on my end. Tested it with FF6.

[delicate rivet]

@elder pewter Thanks for your work on https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/SNES_MiSTer/issues/461, works perfectly and I am going to enjoy these RPGs with un-compressed OSTs a lot!!! 😄

[elder pewter]

you're welcome 😄 happy gaming!

[delicate rivet]

Since it's tested, will you PR this to upstream?

[elder pewter]

pr is raised

[winged mason]

Hey there, I've been away from all things mister for a while. Did the SNES core ever get save states?

I'd love to replay Secret of Evermore, but I wouldn't do it without save states nowadays

[woeful mortar]

The unstable has them, but not the stable yet. They are in the middle of a rewrite of one of the components, so it may be a while before there is a new stable release

The unstable is working perfectly. I play it every day

[lost maple]

what's being rewritten?

[woeful mortar]

The PPU

[lost maple]

interesting, i wasn't aware. i knew SA-1 was under review but didn't know about the main PPU

[woeful mortar]

Yeah, I believe Paul found some issues with it (and fixed some stuff), and that activated SRG

at least, that's the story the PRs seem to tell

actually I take that back, SRG started it and Paul jumped in

[fair widget]

the funnest thing about MiSTer for me has surprisingly been the little accuracy fixes

never would have thought those would be the things that got me the most excited when I first bought one

[woeful mortar]

it's so cool

[winged mason]

Nice! I'll give it a try. Thank you

[vast oak]

pins updated

[elder rose]

I do still appear every now and then. Is this to do with the resume commit I saw go into the SNES core? Looks like Srg320 or Sorg sorted it out

I did see this and was a little surprised

[gleaming cipher]

Best teddy bear did it

[elder rose]

apologies

Thanks bestteddybear!

[gleaming cipher]

No worries! And good to see ya here

[elder rose]

I am lurking

reason I was surprised, is that the (un)official specification doesn't account for a resume

https://helmet.kafuka.org/msu1.htm

@finite saffron never added the control to the original test rom he created.

And I think he was right not to do so

[finite saffron]

rev2 with resume support is the current spec and should be added if it isn't currently included

[elder rose]

ah, gotcha

we only did rev1 it seems

nice to see you @finite saffron , been a long time

hope you are well

[radiant stump]

Hmm so I wonder are there other features of rev2 that should be considered for addition?

[woeful mortar]

I was under the impression that @elder pewter did the whole 2.0 upgrade, but maybe it's only resume? https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/SNES_MiSTer/commit/fefbccae4ea856ebab3c96e74ce0a91bf91145d7