Hardware Homebrew Others Great year for the MiSTer FPGA project so far

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Just came here to write the same.
It's (again) just ARM and vibe coded but at the same time it's a great opportunity to play this gem on a CRT which is amazing imho.
It's especially cool that there are core variants for 16:9 and 4:3, depending on what you currently play on.

Btw I spent the last two days playing Pico-8 on my CRT with the MiSTer. I'm blown away by how "natural" that feels. Never imagined it would look that awesome on a CRT. Plays very well with the 8Bitdo M30 (as every other 2 button system too).
Everyone who has a MiSTer hooked up to a CRT, don't sleep on that! Get the PICOwesome v1.5 pack and throw the carts (total size: 86 MB) on your MiSTer.
As much as it sucks that it's on the ARM side, I'm just thankful I can play it, and I haven't run into any issues beyond the 4:3 graphical cutoff (which is unavoidable). Getting Street Fighter III (PS2 version on the ARM side, ported by the same guy) was quite the unexpected treat. I wonder what's next on his plate, because he's an absolute mad-man. I love anything we get on this little FPGA box, ARM or not.

And I installed that PICOwesome v1.5 pack you suggested. Pico-8 is so weird, how the games are essentially embedded in the game art PNG files. I dig it, but it's weird. Because the console isn't even real. Pretty cool to have a home on MiSTer, of all places. I'd love to see it get an Analogue Pocket port eventually.

Regarding CRTs, I only have my fake one currently that's a 1024x768 IPS panel, but Sonic Mania still works fine on it and looks great. I use the Generation 5 console filter on it, and it's nice. I hope they add composite blending as an option in the future, so waterfalls look better on non-CRTs.
 
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As much as it sucks that it's on the ARM side, I'm just thankful I can play it, and I haven't run into any issues beyond the 4:3 graphical cutoff (which is unavoidable). Getting Street Fighter III (PS2 version on the ARM side, ported by the same guy) was quite the unexpected treat. I wonder what's next on his plate, because he's an absolute mad-man. I love anything we get on this little FPGA box, ARM or not.
I absolutely agree. It's ARM and vibe-coded, I get it. But the alternative is not having it at all on the MiSTer.
Also it's my device for those kinda games anyways. It's hooked to my big OLED and my childhood CRT at the same time. All my controllers are paired to it. So why not player other stuff such as Sonic Mania, SF3 and Pico-8 on that as well? I'm all in for it.
Didn't expect anything of those things that happened recently so I'm pretty hyped what that dude is coming up with next. He's got is Claude AI and pipeline ready so I'm pretty sure he'll drop more stuff soon.
I'd still love to see a proper way to play Paprium with 60 fps on the MiSTer. FPGA would be awesome but I'd be fine with ARM as well.
But maybe he'll just port some other stuff from things like PortMaster that are "cheap" enough to run on the ARM.
And I installed that PICOwesome v1.5 pack you suggested. Pico-8 is so weird, how the games are essentially embedded in the game art PNG files. I dig it, but it's weird. Because the console isn't even real. Pretty cool to have a home on MiSTer, of all places. I'd love to see it get an Analogue Pocket port eventually.
I think the ARM on the Analogue Pocket is way weaker / smaller. Hence why the menu is also that simple.
Having Pico-8 there would be super cool due to the screen's aspect ratio but I doubt it'll ever happen. I don't even know if openFPGA allows the devs to use the ARM side.
 
I think the ARM on the Analogue Pocket is way weaker / smaller. Hence why the menu is also that simple.
Having Pico-8 there would be super cool due to the screen's aspect ratio but I doubt it'll ever happen. I don't even know if openFPGA allows the devs to use the ARM side.
Jotego after CPS3 will work on Neogeo Pocket Color (finally!) but I really wish Kevtris would port the built-in core to Open FPGA like he did with the others.
 
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Odelot implemented hardcore mode (!) achievements in his first core: NES

Didn't expect this that soon. We're cooking!
 
found this on ebay sounds suspiciously too good to be true and at that price?
That has nothing to do with the MiSTer. It's just one of those generic Chinese HDMI-sticks with pre-installed Android or Linux and some retro games emulation stuff.
Don't buy it. It's highly likely even worse than building something on your own with a Raspberry Pi Zero.
 
That or the Hamgeek MiSTer clone are the best values for price currently imho. Go for it.
Hopefully Taki can eventually have the SuperStation one up for sale someday soon, without having people to sign up for pre-order batches. He needs to just close the ordering for a few weeks and build up some perpetual stock.
 
Hopefully Taki can eventually have the SuperStation one up for sale someday soon, without having people to sign up for pre-order batches. He needs to just close the ordering for a few weeks and build up some perpetual stock.
Yeah or as time goes by he just meets (and satisfies) demand so he'll always have a good amount of them in stock generally.
Also with everything that happened to the MiSTer lately, I'm more impatient than ever regarding the MiSTer handheld. I want it now! Achievements and Pico-8 were always things that those Chinese (software) emulation handhelds had over a MiSTer but with that being a thing of the past now, that'd be the ultimate retro gaming handheld for me.
Bring it on, Taki!
 
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Yeah or as time goes by he just meets (and satisfies) demand so he'll always have a good amount of them in stock generally.
Also with everything that happened to the MiSTer lately, I'm more impatient than ever regarding the MiSTer handheld. I want it now! Achievements and Pico-8 were always things that those Chinese (software) emulation handhelds had over a MiSTer but with that being a thing of the past now, that'd be the ultimate retro gaming handheld for me.
Bring it on, Taki!
Regarding the MiSTer handheld... I don't see it being very good on battery life without a major FPGA revision being scaled down to a smaller nm size and better optimized for maximum battery life. My MiSTer Pi sucks down power like crazy because the FPGA is so power-hungry. I'm curious to see what power-saving measures he takes (if any), or if it will just come with a huge battery.
 
Regarding the MiSTer handheld... I don't see it being very good on battery life without a major FPGA revision being scaled down to a smaller nm size and better optimized for maximum battery life. My MiSTer Pi sucks down power like crazy because the FPGA is so power-hungry. I'm curious to see what power-saving measures he takes (if any), or if it will just come with a huge battery.
Analogue Pocket also uses Cyclone V and from a very brief read, can apparently clock to around 8 hours of battery life. It's clearly possible, but I don't know nearly enough to tell whether it's the other components or MiSTer itself causing the drain. :blink:
 
Regarding the MiSTer handheld... I don't see it being very good on battery life without a major FPGA revision being scaled down to a smaller nm size and better optimized for maximum battery life. My MiSTer Pi sucks down power like crazy because the FPGA is so power-hungry. I'm curious to see what power-saving measures he takes (if any), or if it will just come with a huge battery.
Analogue Pocket also uses Cyclone V and from a very brief read, can apparently clock to around 8 hours of battery life. It's clearly possible, but I don't know nearly enough to tell whether it's the other components or MiSTer itself causing the drain. :blink:
Yeah the Analogue Pocket only has 65k LE (vs. 110k LE on the MiSTer) but has a somewhat okay-ish battery life.
The MiSTer also only needs 5V whereas the Nintendo Switch needs 15V but I'm not an electrician and don't know sh*t lol.
My take is: If I'm getting 2 - 3 hours of battery life out of it, I'm fine. I don't have more time to play on a day anyway and even then I often just leave the power plug in (for example on my Steam Deck).

Also there's this:
 
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Yeah the Analogue Pocket only has 65k LE (vs. 110k LE on the MiSTer) but has a somewhat okay-ish battery life.
The MiSTer also only needs 5V whereas the Nintendo Switch needs 15V but I'm not an electrician and don't know sh*t lol.
My take is: If I'm getting 2 - 3 hours of battery life out of it, I'm fine. I don't have more time to play on a day anyway and even then I often just leave the power plug in (for example on my Steam Deck).

Also there's this:

Taking off any extra ports from the board that you won't use or need in handheld mode will also slim things down, most-notably the Ethernet port being the tallest thing on there.
 
Taking off any extra ports from the board that you won't use or need in handheld mode will also slim things down, most-notably the Ethernet port being the tallest thing on there.
Yeah. You probably also won't need too many USB ports in handheld mode.

The ideal solution would be a docking station that offers Ethernet, multiple USB ports and VGA out (and HDMI pass-through). Because I'd still like the handheld to have direct HDMI video-out if you're in a hotel or something and don't have your docking station with you.
 
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Yeah. You probably also won't need too many USB ports in handheld mode.

The ideal solution would be a docking station that offers Ethernet, multiple USB ports and VGA out (and HDMI pass-through). Because I'd still like the handheld to have direct HDMI video-out if you're in a hotel or something and don't have your docking station with you.
I'm sure when Taki Udon reworks the board, a lot of stuff will be passed through. I expect HDMI and a single USB at a minimum.
 
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Be sure to check out MiSTer Companion btw:

https://github.com/Anime0t4ku/mister-companion

1778667568952.png


Since v4.0.8 it can auto-update itself.
It also features viewing your achievements from either within the app itself or by installing the ra_viewer script onto your MiSTer.

I refuse to live without that tool. :P It's super convenient to install other stuff such as Sonic Mania or the OpenBOR and Pico-8 cores.

A mobile app for Android is also coming soon.
 
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