Mister FPGA

Metalface Mark · 12 Dec 2020 at 22:39

Picked up a mister FPGA system today, i gotta say im seriously impressed with it.

Ive dug out my old 25" CRT TV and things are playing just as they used to, after years of thinking regular emulation and mini consoles its a real cut above.

Im looking forward to the upcoming Playstation core, any other mister fans in here?

Metalface Mark · 17 Dec 2020 at 14:01

Im completely in love with it! Been playing a lot of snes and commodore 64 so far. Thats a nice case, ive got a coloured one Timber but i might switch it up.

Metalface Mark · 14 Jan 2021 at 20:39

iamwilf said:
Really tempted by this, but can't give up crt shaders in regular emulation.
Wish I'd kept my Sony pvm crt monitor now, would have been perfect for MISTer

there’s excellent scalers and scan line options in the mister , let me know if you want to see what it looks like on my LG oled or old 4.3 lcd

Metalface Mark · 15 Jan 2021 at 18:48

iamwilf said:
Sure I'd love to see the scanlines on the lg OLED. I'm using one with Retroarch, amazing picture. Thanks

One pic on lg one on the dell, If there’s a specific game you want to see or different scan line modes, that’s 25%

Metalface Mark · 16 Jan 2021 at 16:55

im not using integer scaling.

Yes it does allow custom aspect ratios

you can change between 25% 50% and 75% and 100% scanlines, this was at 50% i think.

Metalface Mark · 13 Mar 2021 at 17:14

New Alien Vs Predator core this weekend, its superb.

Metalface Mark · 13 Mar 2021 at 19:54

JoeBoi said:
I decided to finally order the parts for a MiSTer build after seeing some impressive progress on the Playstation core! I received all the parts yesterday. I have managed to try out a few of the cores, really impressed so far.

@Metalface Mark - I take it those CSP cores are only available to Jotego Patreon subsribers? I might have to sign up, I am interested in trying The Punisher and AvP.

Yeah, you need to be a sub to get the cores, they will come out on full release for everyone though if you can hang on a bit.

Metalface Mark · 21 Mar 2021 at 10:04

JoeBoi said:
You can change it, save and it'll be permanent. There is a few default wallpapers but that one was my favourite.

On a side note, I see an Atari Lynx core got released yesterday. Supposed to be pretty good.

Yeah its nice, been mainly playing Street Fighter Alpha 2 this weekend.

Metalface Mark · 26 Mar 2021 at 22:27

Great new arcade cores today from Jotego - Xmen Children of the Atom, Vampire Hunter, Dungeons and Dragons Tower of Doom and Dimahoo - all cps2 cores.

Also good work on the saturn core this week, looking very promising.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DLZJ9FLhSUw

Quite possible this year we will have fully functioning Playstation and Saturn cores which is really exciting.

Metalface Mark · 26 Mar 2021 at 22:46

JoeBoi said:
I saw that Saturn video earlier, pretty amazing progress made in a short amount of time!

Cool CPS2 releases, I really need to sign up to Jotego's patreon.

Well worth it!

Metalface Mark · 4 Apr 2021 at 13:26

Shinobi this week from Jotego, we also got Time Pilot 84 during the week.

Metalface Mark · 7 Apr 2021 at 09:17

Timber said:
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

He did have stock on friday, ive ordered one.

Metalface Mark · 7 Apr 2021 at 20:36

Timber said:
Cool. Yea I'm sure he'll have stock in soon, just sold out for now.

I only just got around to running the update_all script on mine over the weekend. Which kinda shows how successful my initial setup was but also I've probably been neglecting my MiSTer a bit.

I haven't used the AO486 core at all so it was quite interesting last night seeing this eXoFlynn's 300 game pack. Makes me think I do need to spend some time with the this core at some point.

Also from what I remember the Amiga had very few games that used MIDI hardware?

Yeah, i read that some ST and Amiga games used midi, i got it mainly for the PC stuff, i bought a second mister today which i think ill keep mainly for PC stuff.

Metalface Mark · 7 Apr 2021 at 20:49

This is my current setup while I wait for my pvm to arrive

Metalface Mark · 9 Apr 2021 at 11:25

Timber said:
@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.

Metalface Mark · 15 Apr 2021 at 14:21

I got my pihat up and running, midi sounds SO good on it!

Metalface Mark · 6 May 2021 at 08:49

Theres guys on the facebook mister page in the uk that sell the pihat's pretty cheap @Timber

Metalface Mark · 6 May 2021 at 10:01

Zatoichi.uK said:
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.

Misterfpga.org has a changelist.

Metalface Mark · 6 May 2021 at 14:19

Timber said:
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.

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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

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.

Metalface Mark · 7 May 2021 at 14:10

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

Marvel vs Capcom as a minimum today from Jotego, maybe something else too.