Mister FPGA

Associate
Joined
21 Oct 2002
Posts
1,815
Location
East England
@Metalface Mark nice setup.

I did some research tonight about Amiga games using MIDI and it seems it really was limited to around a dozen releases from Sierra that used MIDI on the Amiga & ST. So support paled massively in comparison to the 250 or so PC releases. There has been some more recent work in the community to produce a MIDI driver which can be used on the Amiga version of SCUMMVM.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_MT-32-compatible_computer_games

Interestingly the Sharp X68000 used MT-32 MIDI support in a large number of games, so it would be interesting if this MT32-Pi Hat would extend to that very WIP core in the future.
 
Soldato
OP
Joined
26 Dec 2005
Posts
16,100
Location
Paisley
@Metalface Mark nice setup.

I did some research tonight about Amiga games using MIDI and it seems it really was limited to around a dozen releases from Sierra that used MIDI on the Amiga & ST. So support paled massively in comparison to the 250 or so PC releases. There has been some more recent work in the community to produce a MIDI driver which can be used on the Amiga version of SCUMMVM.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_MT-32-compatible_computer_games

Interestingly the Sharp X68000 used MT-32 MIDI support in a large number of games, so it would be interesting if this MT32-Pi Hat would extend to that very WIP core in the future.

Id hope so, ive watched a few youtube videos about the 68000 and its midi capabilities. My Pihat was despatched yesterday.
 
Associate
Joined
21 Oct 2002
Posts
1,815
Location
East England
I got my pihat up and running, midi sounds SO good on it!

Awesome, I need to hear it, first hand.

Funnily enough the misterfpga site has just got more in (got an email notification an hour or so ago) but there aren't many left in stock, even no. I also added the tape input board for £7.49 although I'm not sure I'll use it although I do have our family Amstrad CPC 464 in the loft so it would be cool to load some of those cassettes again.

I did read not long ago that the price of the Terasic DE10 Nano has gone up (https://twitter.com/MisterAddons/status/1384975728609882113) although the prices of the sites I checked tonight seem to be similar to what I paid in January.
 
Associate
Joined
21 Oct 2002
Posts
1,815
Location
East England
Theres guys on the facebook mister page in the uk that sell the pihat's pretty cheap @Timber

Thank you for the suggestion. To be honest I already went with the same UK site I bought all the addon boards from. Probably more expensive but with the 5% discount it was £35 for the pi hat, USB lead and tape input board (including free shipping).

Wheres the best place to stay up to date on when cores in beta go live? Would quite like to get back on Shinobi at some point.

I know @Metalface Mark already responded but I was going to suggest also r/fpgagaming as it seems to have posters that quickly get info up about updated Jotego cores. You also have the main twitter account: https://twitter.com/topapate. Also if you are supporting their patron there will be the discord channel and the main Patron pages being updated: https://www.patreon.com/topapate

I'd imagine all of those should help cover when Jotego's beta cores go live and see any videos, posts etc. Shinobi seems to have had a beta release/update about a month ago.

----

One other thing I've realised - just never gave it a thought until now - is MiSTer's support for external USB HDD/SSD storage. At the moment I'm nowhere near close to filling the 128GB mSD card but with the support of CD systems and PlayStation coming at some point I'm wondering if this should be something on my radar. I do have a separate UNRAID server but not sure I want to go down that route.
 
Last edited:
Soldato
OP
Joined
26 Dec 2005
Posts
16,100
Location
Paisley
Thank you for the suggestion. To be honest I already went with the same UK site I bought all the addon boards from. Probably more expensive but with the 5% discount it was £35 for the pi hat, USB lead and tape input board (including free shipping).



I know @Metalface Mark already responded but I was going to suggest also r/fpgagaming as it seems to have posters that quickly get info up about updated Jotego cores. You also have the main twitter account: https://twitter.com/topapate. Also if you are supporting their patron there will be the discord channel and the main Patron pages being updated: https://www.patreon.com/topapate

I'd imagine all of those should help cover when Jotego's beta cores go live and see any videos, posts etc. Shinobi seems to have had a beta release/update about a month ago.

----

One other thing I've realised - just never gave it a thought until now - is MiSTer's support for external USB HDD/SSD storage. At the moment I'm nowhere near close to filling the 128GB mSD card but with the support of CD systems and PlayStation coming at some point I'm wondering if this should be something on my radar. I do have a separate UNRAID server but not sure I want to go down that route.

Just plug a powered usb hard drive in and you will have access to all the goodies :D

I thought the same when i got mine, now ive got the PC top 300, all the sega CD and Turbo Graphics CD stuff on external hard drive. Obviously much more will be needed when Saturn and PS1 come out for it.
 
Soldato
Joined
13 Sep 2005
Posts
4,299
I know @Metalface Mark already responded but I was going to suggest also r/fpgagaming as it seems to have posters that quickly get info up about updated Jotego cores. You also have the main twitter account: https://twitter.com/topapate. Also if you are supporting their patron there will be the discord channel and the main Patron pages being updated: https://www.patreon.com/topapate

I'd imagine all of those should help cover when Jotego's beta cores go live and see any videos, posts etc. Shinobi seems to have had a beta release/update about a month ago.

Ta guys good to know will keep an eye on those.
 

GeX

GeX

Soldato
Joined
17 Dec 2002
Posts
6,850
Location
Manchester
Bumped into this very cool add-on tonight; MiSTer MT32-Pi Hat (although appears to be out of stock atm).

Using a Raspberry Pi 3 or above it adds Roland MT-32 emulation via the RPi to 'improve' the accuracy of MT-32 emulation. For cores that support external MIDI support, so Ao486, Amiga or Atari ST. Appears to need the Input I/O board for the I/O port.

A few videos on Youtube of it in action, but did initially find it via this one below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3baTI0Xlm8

I got mine built up, but not had the chance to test it out yet. It's even lovely to just look at :D

ULONzGtl.jpg
 
Associate
Joined
21 Oct 2002
Posts
1,815
Location
East England
Just plug a powered usb hard drive in and you will have access to all the goodies :D

I thought the same when i got mine, now ive got the PC top 300, all the sega CD and Turbo Graphics CD stuff on external hard drive. Obviously much more will be needed when Saturn and PS1 come out for it.

Yea, I do need to look into this. That said my current strategy which has worked quite well has been just to have a few, select choice of games for each (home) format. So I find I play more and concentrate on playing the games I enjoy this way. I do have an old powered USB 2.0 HDD which could be re-purposed if USB 3.0 doesn't matter.

I got mine built up, but not had the chance to test it out yet. It's even lovely to just look at :D

Nice stand. Possible stupid question time, but I take it that is plugged into a RPi 3 Model A+?

To me the MT32 Pi-hat looks better when plugged into the smaller, square RPi (not that it really matters, I guess). I only have the RPi 3 B+ so won't have a case that fits straight away.
 

GeX

GeX

Soldato
Joined
17 Dec 2002
Posts
6,850
Location
Manchester
Nice stand. Possible stupid question time, but I take it that is plugged into a RPi 3 Model A+?

To me the MT32 Pi-hat looks better when plugged into the smaller, square RPi (not that it really matters, I guess). I only have the RPi 3 B+ so won't have a case that fits straight away.

Yep, it's on a 3A+ and inside an aluminium Geekworm case.

Where did you get the stand? Looks mint! I just stuck a bit of velcro under mine :D

The stand was from Dale (developer of MT32-Pi), he 3D prints them to suit the 3A+ and Geekworm case combination.
You can buy them from his ko-fi store
 
Associate
Joined
21 Oct 2002
Posts
1,815
Location
East England
I got mine built up, but not had the chance to test it out yet. It's even lovely to just look at :D

I finally took delivery of my MT32-Pi Hat (and tape input) last week. And after several hours setting up finally saw it in action for the first time last night.

That said it isn't straight forward to setup, at least not when trying to install AO486/eXoFlynn's Top 300 games pack at the same time. One unhelpful post was mentioning you need a DOS/FreeDOS floppy disk image for setting up AO486. But I realised it was just a case of pointing at the two hard drive files in the AO486 core (after realising F12 doesn't work). And the MT32-Pi Hat isn't as plug and play as I thought. The videos I watched on Youtube don't even mention you had to setup a mSD card for the Pi itself. I also had the 'low voltage - chk psu' message which I had to amend in the config file to bypass. That said it's a wonderful set-up for old DOS games when you have everything running - so convenient. It would be nice if the MT32-Pi Hat could do Roland SC55 emulation too (I assume it doesn't?)

I do notice my RPi 3B+ and Pi Hat get fairly warm, so with that in mind I've just splurged on a RPi 3A+ (£30), that Geekworm Aluminium case (£21) and what is currently the last of those homemade vertical stands linked above (thank you for the link). I figure the MT32-Pi Hat should look great.

One last thing is the USB lead I got with my Pi Hat is very, very short but believe you have to use certain leads if I want something longer, otherwise the Pi Hat doesn't work (correct me if I'm wrong here).
 
Last edited:
Associate
Joined
28 May 2021
Posts
1,305
Location
St Albans
Sold my MISTER, not used enough. But its certainly a great piece of kit...

Any major updates to cores in last 6 months to tempt me back?
 
Back
Top Bottom