MiSTer FPGA board

[fernan1234]

Maybe someday someone will be able to suggest using original media and not be laughed out of the room either...

This. I don’t understand why the ARM side of the chip could not handle an optical USB drive. It already handles the iso files in some cores IIRC. Is there really that much of a difference?

You'd just be dumping the iso on launch for the core to load it just as it would with a pre-dumped iso. People who see the appeal of this platform but also like using original discs carts should just place them on top of the little board sandwich MiSTer and be done with it.

[evil_ash_xero]

Is this seriously going to turn into a conversation about piracy?

Yes, let me go and get my hundreds to thousands of dollars arcade boards, to play on arcade hardware I do not own.

I would have thought after the spikes in prices on software, this wouldn't be a conversation.

[Konsolkongen]

Is this seriously going to turn into a conversation about piracy?

Yes, let me go and get my hundreds to thousands of dollars arcade boards, to play on arcade hardware I do not own.

I would have thought after the spikes in prices on software, this wouldn't be a conversation.

That’s not at all what I was saying though…

What’s the problem with suggesting support for original games too? People can pirate as much as they want to, I don’t care.

[Bassa-Bassa]

Resources are limited in hobbyist projects therefore are not to be wasted with demands already covered (see a couple of posts above). But that's just my opinion.

[bobrocks95]

The fact that everyone is at each others' throats at the mere suggestion proves my point. I happen to have a caveman brain that likes plugging things in and $50k in antiques collected over a lifetime. It's not something I'd recommend to anyone else, but when I propose the vague idea of future support and everyone goes completely insane it's clear the project's goals will never align with my own (and I'll keep buying disappointing Analogue products I guess).

[evil_ash_xero]

Is this seriously going to turn into a conversation about piracy?

Yes, let me go and get my hundreds to thousands of dollars arcade boards, to play on arcade hardware I do not own.

I would have thought after the spikes in prices on software, this wouldn't be a conversation.

That’s not at all what I was saying though…

What’s the problem with suggesting support for original games too? People can pirate as much as they want to, I don’t care.

While I do like to support games anytime it is possible.. the FPGA projects are for game over 20 years ago (unless you count some of the later GBA games). They're all expensive as heck, and the arcade games
are really not available to your average Joe. For instance, I'm playing Ninja Baseball Batman on my mister now, and there were only 43 boards shipped to the US.
I got into some games recently, like Over Horizon, went to buy it on EBay, and it was 2000.

The prices are just too much. If we were talking about PS4 or something, you'd have much more of a point.
That being said, I try to buy all the games that I like. But many people cannot afford hundreds of dollars for a cart.

[Udderdude]

90% of retro stuff would already be in the public domain by now .. if it weren't for greedy corporate lawyers working for a certian animated rodent company .. just saying.

[KPackratt2k]

90% of retro stuff would already be in the public domain by now .. if it weren't for greedy corporate lawyers working for a certian animated rodent company .. just saying.

Hopefully the day finally comes where members of Congress decide that they've had enough with *that company you're referencing* wanting copyright laws perpetually extended to the point where they shorten them back to the way they used to be before said company got involved.

Seriously, we can't keep letting them extend copyright laws forever, we need to take action against it. I urge everyone who is disgruntled with D****y's perpetual copyright extensions to write to their lawmakers about shortening the copyright term. If we don't do something about it, we'll have to suffer with this BS for a lot longer than we need to. The only way they'll consider is if we have a significant amount of people writing to them.

End of rant.

[fernan1234]

The fact that everyone is at each others' throats at the mere suggestion proves my point. I happen to have a caveman brain that likes plugging things in and $50k in antiques collected over a lifetime. It's not something I'd recommend to anyone else, but when I propose the vague idea of future support and everyone goes completely insane it's clear the project's goals will never align with my own (and I'll keep buying disappointing Analogue products I guess).

Don't think anyone's quite an anyone else's throat. Discussion has been rather civil here, especially compared to other forums lol

I sympathize with your goals though, there's definitely an appeal of "the best of both world" when combining the advantages and conveniences of "FPGA recreations" (at least if the core in question is extremely accurate and bug free) with the nostalgic experience of interacting with the console/system like you did with original hardware. But that's also a pretty narrow niche. The craving to insert carts and slide discs into machines remains available with original hardware, and development and design choices for everything else pick between the convenience and lower coast of loading them from modern media (which is especially advantageous compared to loading from disc-based media), or adding an interface similar to original hardware (which will either just dump the ROM/ISO, or interact with it in real time which is a niche within a niche and adds further costs, complications for development, and potential for bugs, see for example the Nt Mini).

There may also be a middle path for you in dumping your own games. Dumping disc games for almost any retro system is trivial, so "piracy" is not required. Dumping carts requires buying hardware for it, but again so does adding it to any emulation platform.

Seriously, we can't keep letting them extend copyright laws forever, we need to take action against it. I urge everyone who is disgruntled with D****y's perpetual copyright extensions to write to their lawmakers about shortening the copyright term. If we don't do something about it, we'll have to suffer with this BS for a lot longer than we need to. The only way they'll consider is if we have a significant amount of people writing to them.

This would be nice but sadly don't see it happening in our lifetimes. Doesn't hurt to try though.

[Konsolkongen]

While I do like to support games anytime it is possible.. the FPGA projects are for game over 20 years ago (unless you count some of the later GBA games). They're all expensive as heck, and the arcade games
are really not available to your average Joe. For instance, I'm playing Ninja Baseball Batman on my mister now, and there were only 43 boards shipped to the US.
I got into some games recently, like Over Horizon, went to buy it on EBay, and it was 2000.

The prices are just too much. If we were talking about PS4 or something, you'd have much more of a point.
That being said, I try to buy all the games that I like. But many people cannot afford hundreds of dollars for a cart.

That’s not true. Not all retro games are as expensive as you make them sound. Some are, but not all of them.

Optical drives in consoles are not going to last forever and sadly no one seems to care to make proper replacements for those. The scene is only interested in optical drive emulators and I think that is really sad.

Having the option to use cheap external usb disc-drives on the Mister would not be my preferred solution to this problem, but it would ensure we could keep playing our collections. It would be better than nothing at least.
This feature would take nothing away from everyone else. You could keep playing your ROMs just as you are. Some of you don’t see the appeal in playing physical media. That’s fine, to each their own. But please understand that some of use would like to see support for physical media. I am not demanding rather I am simply suggesting.

[fernan1234]

This feature would take nothing away from everyone else. You could keep playing your ROMs just as you are. Some of you don’t see the appeal in playing physical media. That’s fine, to each their own. But please understand that some of use would like to see support for physical media. I am not demanding rather I am simply suggesting.

I'm curious about what difference it would make for you between 1) grabbing a disc from your collection, dumping it into an SD card or USB drive and plugging that into your MiSTer, vs. 2) connecting an external USB disc drive to the MiSTer and have it dump the image into memory to load the game data (other than spending more time with load times).

[bobrocks95]

Ideally I'd like to see a future iteration of Mister with the GPIO available to directly interface with carts/discs, if something like that is entirely impossible via a serial interface. If the hardware literally can't do any of it that's at least different than nobody having any interest in working on it. Again I'd point to Analogue's sold out hardware using original carts proving interest in this as a decently large market segment, though I wouldn't be surprised if some people just jailbreaking a Super NT to load roms from SD just didn't know about mister as a superior option.

[Bassa-Bassa]

I'm curious about what difference it would make for you between 1) grabbing a disc from your collection, dumping it into an SD card or USB drive and plugging that into your MiSTer, vs. 2) connecting an external USB disc drive to the MiSTer and have it dump the image into memory to load the game data (other than spending more time with load times).

With the former you have to deal with selection menus against an instant plug-and-play experience which, ideally, would provide the latter, I guess. It's totally missing the point of what Mister is, I'm sorry to say. Even if the latter case were possible there would still be unavoidable differences which would ruin the original experience - purists would never be happy. I can totally respect that, mind. I still own hundreds of games and when I started using OPL for the PS2 and Phoebe on my Saturn, I also felt that something was missing. But there were so many benefits at the same time that I soon learned to never care again. So try it, you never know. Start with arcade PCBs, as likely for those you've rarely thought of keeping a collection (and you don't use them by inserting them into anything), and maybe you'll find out it's not that bad for the home stuff.


Ed.- If moral concerns about using dumped PCBs is also a factor, remember that you can officially buy the "roms" for many of them in this day and age.

[fernan1234]

Ideally I'd like to see a future iteration of Mister with the GPIO available to directly interface with carts/discs, if something like that is entirely impossible via a serial interface. If the hardware literally can't do any of it that's at least different than nobody having any interest in working on it. Again I'd point to Analogue's sold out hardware using original carts proving interest in this as a decently large market segment, though I wouldn't be surprised if some people just jailbreaking a Super NT to load roms from SD just didn't know about mister as a superior option.

The last point does have support in the past where secondary market prices for Analogue consoles shot up after a jailbreak was released or updated.

I still own hundreds of games and when I started using OPL for the PS2 and Phoebe on my Saturn, I also felt that something was missing.

Same here. I feel it especially when using these original consoles because I'm expecting as much "authenticity" as possible when I'm using them. Little details go a long way. I was pretty happy when OPL added support for the PS2 logo when loading a game, or when I found that you can set up the Gamecube bios when using Nintendont on a Wii. In spite of how good OPL is, I'd go out of my way to get a true ODE for the PS2 to see the "disc" show up in the browser and launch it from there (and to avoid any small chance of odd behavior that may remain in OPL). I'd like an ODE for the 360 for similar reasons, even though my console is RGH'd already.

Also don't particularly enjoy going through a game list to launch games. Recently commented in a Dreamcast topic how I use GDEMU with a single game in the SD card so it loads automatically like a real GD-ROM would, just to get closer to the original experience. For PS1, the XStation fortunately lets you auto-load the previously loaded game, so at least it boots "authentically" while you play the same game. Same with NES games on an N8 Pro. But when such features are not available it's not a dealbreaker either, still beats having to store individual games, dealing with bad disc drives, dying batteries, faulty contacts, etc (for me).

When using MiSTer cores I do try to simulate the original experience as much as possible. I even go out of my way to use an original Neo-Geo bios for my preferred region rather than the more convenient Unibios, for example. But at the same time my expectations when using MiSTer are a different balance of the convenience vs. authenticity tradeoff.

[Konsolkongen]

This feature would take nothing away from everyone else. You could keep playing your ROMs just as you are. Some of you don’t see the appeal in playing physical media. That’s fine, to each their own. But please understand that some of use would like to see support for physical media. I am not demanding rather I am simply suggesting.

I'm curious about what difference it would make for you between 1) grabbing a disc from your collection, dumping it into an SD card or USB drive and plugging that into your MiSTer, vs. 2) connecting an external USB disc drive to the MiSTer and have it dump the image into memory to load the game data (other than spending more time with load times).

Why are you so sure that it will be limited in that way? Is there a reason why it shouldn't be able to stream data from disc just like the original systems?

I don't like having a list of a thousand games to pick from. It often get too messy for me and I feel that I often don't dedicate enough time to a game when it's so easy to hit reset and play something else.
It's the same thing with music for me. I rip my CDs for use on my phone with headphones on the go, but when I actually want to listen and immerse myself in the audio I feel that the act of picking out an album and putting it on makes a big difference for me compared to just starting a playlist from my phone. I loose some of that dedication when I am picking from a list.

That's one of the reasons why I much prefer physical media over digital. It doesn't sound like you feel the same way and that's fine.

[jd213]

I can relate. I recently decided to get a Sanni Cart Reader v5 kit, and playing rom dumps of my own carts is much more satisfying than I thought it would be.

I also decided to dump the roms my mini consoles (which probably won't be quite as satisfying), and nearly all the tutorial videos I found focus only on adding more games to them, not on dumping the roms already on there that you own along with the mini console...

[Austin]

The "I can't play a game seriously if it's been picked from a list of 1,000 games" thing is a personal issue and a mental roadblock that I'd suggest more people try to get over.

I've been dealing with it since the early flash cart days and had that same issue for a while. One day I just told myself, "OK, I'm going to focus on a single game," picked it, then boom, finished it. It's really not hard. Just have some restraint/discipline.

I for one would not mind adapters be available for use on MiSTer as I do have a sizable CD and cart collection, but I have original hardware for that, so I won't cry if it doesn't ever happen. It's more just about being able to use these physical objects I have paid money for, which I occasionally like to do on my original hardware. Makes me feel like having them isn't a complete waste, and it does give me a more comparable experience as to what I experienced when I was growing up, which is a comfy sort of feeling in its own right. That feeling isn't why I play, however. The warm 'n fuzzies only go so far.

For actually playing, get over the list thing and just play the stupid games. Seriously.

[Konsolkongen]

Why be so condescending? Mind your own business.

[Udderdude]

The "I can't play a game seriously if it's been picked from a list of 1,000 games" thing is a personal issue and a mental roadblock that I'd suggest more people try to get over.

Randomized list picker works for me (assuming your list is curated and isn't full of mahjong, pachinko, sportsball and horse racing games).

[Bassa-Bassa]

It doesn't seem like his problem is what to pick though, but not being able to refrain himself from picking too many.

[Osirus]

It doesn't seem like his problem is what to pick though, but not being able to refrain himself from picking too many.

Is that really a problem that developers need to address though? Sounds more like a personal issue. Just don't put 1000+ ROMs on a card. Loading ROM data from a genuine arcade board vs. loading ROM data from flash storage really just seems to boil down to emotional attachment and not anything objective.

[orange808]

It doesn't seem like his problem is what to pick though, but not being able to refrain himself from picking too many.

Is that really a problem that developers need to address though? Sounds more like a personal issue. Just don't put 1000+ ROMs on a card. Loading ROM data from a genuine arcade board vs. loading ROM data from flash storage really just seems to boil down to emotional attachment and not anything objective.

There's no way to plug in a PCB and dump it. What a silly statement

Arrrrrgghhh! Matey!!!

FYI, this how that gets done.
https://wiki.mamedev.org/index.php/Dumping_roms

[Konsolkongen]

It doesn't seem like his problem is what to pick though, but not being able to refrain himself from picking too many.

Is that really a problem that developers need to address though? Sounds more like a personal issue. Just don't put 1000+ ROMs on a card. Loading ROM data from a genuine arcade board vs. loading ROM data from flash storage really just seems to boil down to emotional attachment and not anything objective.

I never said anything like that

I simply replied to fernan1234 (post is higher on this page) why I prefer using original games rather than ROMs. I just personally would like an option to use original games on the mister. That would make the platform more attractive to me.
Some people can understand my preferences, others can’t. I don’t really care.

[ldeveraux]

I simply replied to fernan1234 (post is higher on this page)

But you didn't quote, leading to the confusion we have right now. Quoting, people. Learn about it.

[Konsolkongen]

I simply replied to fernan1234 (post is higher on this page)

But you didn't quote, leading to the confusion we have right now. Quoting, people. Learn about it.

Yes I did… It’s on this very page …wow :O

[Bassa-Bassa]

I don't like having a list of a thousand games to pick from. It often get too messy for me and I feel that I often don't dedicate enough time to a game when it's so easy to hit reset and play something else.

Like this?

[Konsolkongen]

I don't like having a list of a thousand games to pick from. It often get too messy for me and I feel that I often don't dedicate enough time to a game when it's so easy to hit reset and play something else.

Like this?

I quoted fernan1234’s post, which is the same post I was referring to.

I did not feel the need to quote your condescending lecture, when I asked you to mind your own business. Sorry if you felt left out but I thought it was obvious that I was replying to you, no one else had been rude.

EDIT: Being stupid here. Apologies to Bassa-Bassa and Austin for the mix up

[Bassa-Bassa]

I don't like having a list of a thousand games to pick from. It often get too messy for me and I feel that I often don't dedicate enough time to a game when it's so easy to hit reset and play something else.

Like this?

I quoted fernan1234’s post, which is the same post I was referring to.

I did not feel the need to quote your condescending lecture, when I asked you to mind your own business. Sorry if you felt left out but I thought it was obvious that I was replying to you, no one else had been rude.

Now you're confusing me with Austin. Comedy gold thread.

[Konsolkongen]

Now you're confusing me with Austin. Comedy gold thread.

Haha yes I was. Sorry about that

I got confused by your quote since it’s not clear what you are referring to.

[Austin]

I don't like having a wall of a thousand games. It's too easy for me to get up and pick something else.