MiSTer FPGA - Retro Console Hardware

I got Mister about month ago and it is my main toy I play with ever since. Mainly playing with Verilog/VHDL source codes to add new features.

Playing retro games with DualSense controller on 15KHz CRT is a bliss.
Cores offer extra features like more sprites, trubo CPU (especially useful on SNES) and choice of sound chips and other options.
HDMI scaler is also great with great CRT filters and only four lines of input lag. On VGA CRT with CRT simulation image looks indistinguishable from SONY PVM and even on LCD and plasma picture is absolutely fantastic.

But what I find most fascinating is that it is open source project with sources available on Github. I can open source and put my own changes. For example for Genesis core I changed sound chip in such a way to get it to sound nothing like YM2612 example making this console not only playable but sound incredible. Sure, emulators allow for the same but personally I find emulation much less appealing and especially emulators source code to not be as interesting even if at times easier to understand what it does.

Welcome to the party. It’s a treasure trove of fun!!!
 
Guess what came in from Spain.
 

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This is the case I'm going to use.
 

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Oooh...that's nice.
I just finished building it last night. Very easy, and straight-forward. I was done in 15-minutes or less. Works great. All connections are in the rear now. I just have to set-up the DB9 cores, since one of the main things that sold me one it was that sweet DB9 SNAC port. I already bought the DECAPOD from ANTONIO in advance. One thing that is not really a con, but annoying, is the SD CARD access on the DE-10 Nano, or should I say lack of once it is assembled. I might put in an SD extension to easily access it. Easily remedied.

I had a conversation with the creator ROBERTO about it. He suggest using SAMBA, or FTP access to it. Another suggestion was to put your ROMS (games folder) in an either internal, external HD, or USB stick. All great ideas.

Check it out!

https://www.d3fmod.com/mini-itx-ironclad-plus/
 
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I did buy the DB9 to USB SNAC converter as well to use my USB MT32
 

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Here is the DECAPOD
 

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Received my premade fan wires and connector bodies, 12v supply, and rgeek 150w pico psu yesterday, and began (re)splicing the little 5v fans to the new connector wires so I can use them with the ironclad. Need to finish that, then throw the psu jumper on the psu so I can check that the voltages are good and I didn't wire the fans backwards.

Edit: Finished splicing wires, hooked up my psu, and connected the fans to 12v with a low noise adapter, and...what's that smell...oh, the lna didn't like that much. Fans did spin, though, before stuff got melty.
 
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Hey guys.

I'm consolidating by getting the new DECAPOD that has MT32 built in. Since it is kinda pricey, I'm planning putting up for sale:

- A nearly new Decapod (pix are above)
- A complete set of DB9 splitters (NEO GEO, SNES, NES, GENESIS, TG16) from Antonio
- A USB MT32-PI with the DB9 to USB SNAC converter/adapter. (Can sell separately)

PM me if interested.

Antonio also sent me PCB files and schematics+BOM if you want to add DB9 to your MiSTer. I can send freely if you need it. (2nd pic is an example of it) You can send them to an online PCB vendor, and it is very cheap to make.
 

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Ordered a right angle dc plug for the back of the case, because the one that was on the psu I ordered wouldn't fit with all the fans mounted on the side of the case.

Ordered a (backorder) de10-nano, too, so who knows when that'll arrive.
 
I feel lucky I bought two DE10-NANO before the price hike, and now the drought.
 
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I feel lucky I bought two DE10-NANO before the price hike, and now the drought.
I got one before it went up, but I shorted something and probably fried the fpga...well, I'm not skilled enough to fix it even if its not the fpga. Anyway, $30 isn't make or break, was already kinda expensive at $179 or so. Think I've spent more than what I paid for case, mb, cpu, and psu on my last PC build altogether, but its fun so I don't mind.
 
I got one before it went up, but I shorted something and probably fried the fpga...well, I'm not skilled enough to fix it even if its not the fpga. Anyway, $30 isn't make or break, was already kinda expensive at $179 or so. Think I've spent more than what I paid for case, mb, cpu, and psu on my last PC build altogether, but its fun so I don't mind.
I started humbly with a 128MB, and a OTG USB hub. Thinking back on it, I've spent more than the Nano on just accessories, lol.
 
I got one before it went up, but I shorted something and probably fried the fpga...well, I'm not skilled enough to fix it even if its not the fpga. Anyway, $30 isn't make or break, was already kinda expensive at $179 or so. Think I've spent more than what I paid for case, mb, cpu, and psu on my last PC build altogether, but its fun so I don't mind.
Its pretty easy to kill a fpga. Ive definitely went through quite a few although I'm able to buy cheaper devices as I'm not using them for emulation.
 
All the talk of killing fpga is another reason I was anxious to get mine in a case.
 
Yeah, I burnt my little 5v fans up. Maybe it was just one before, but I finished the rest off today. XD

Should've gotten 12v fans to begin with. Dunno why I got 5v fans -- I can run 12v fans at 5v, have sufficient airflow, and it would be quieter. 🤷‍♂️ Well I have a silverstone slim 120 now, and that should be fine on its own.
 
My de10 is in prod., est. ship date in july. :D
Lol mine too. I was late to the party and ordered one in December. It was saying Jan 31 for a while but just updated to July.
 
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Lol mine too. I was late to the party and ordered one in December. It was saying Jan 31 for a while but just updated to July.
Good thing, looks like another price bump coming. mouser already bumped theirs up.
 
Redid the solder on (one side of) the 24p connector of the dc-dc PSU I got a while back, but a lot of residue from the noclean was left behind and (after unsuccessful washing with 90+ iso) I could see some corrosion on the bitty components (white fuzz where it meets the board). So today I finally washed with MG flux cleaner and put an acrylic conformal coating on it for good measure.

I also realized that the (annoyingly bright) little LED is on its own little ultra thin board, which is soldered to the PSU. Thought the green stuff was corrosion before I took a closer look.

No word on shipping status of my IronClad yet, although it looks like he added a batch status section to his website. DE-10 still shows july for expected stock, but can order direct and get it sooner if you don't mind paying a bit more.
 
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I decided to pick up a USB drive for storage instead of putting everything on the SDCard.

Creating the games folder works well for roms, but what are the options for putting other things on USB? Also interested in saves, savestates, cores as well. I really want to avoid all the re-writes on the smaller SD Card and prefer that to be on the larger SSD. Seems switching to USB mode is an option but is it the only option? What is your experience with USB mode?
 
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I decided to pick up a USB drive for storage instead of putting everything on the SDCard.

Creating the games folder works well for roms, but what are the options for putting other things on USB? Also interested in saves, savestates, cores as well. I really want to avoid all the re-writes on the smaller SD Card and prefer that to be on the larger SSD. Seems switching to USB mode is an option but is it the only option? What is your experience with USB mode?
If you re-create the folders on the SD, it should just automatically use the drive. I haven't used USB in awhile as I was trying to keep a "clean look" for my MiSTer setup by some having a 512gb SD card. Though, I'll have to re-think things once the PSX/Saturn cores are finalized. Though, you really only need a 256gb for the PSX as that should cover almost all the worthwhile content and leave you plenty of room for translations and JP exclusive stuff. Even less for the Saturn as a lot of the best fighting games on that platform are handled by the CPS cores.
 
Trying to setup a new mister install. Is mister.ini and update.ini no longer being automatically generated? I've never had to manually create them before.
 
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Should be? Haven't heard any newbs complaining on the discord yet. They did switch from downloader to updater recently (or something like that), but I don't know if that matters.

Maybe it'll spit one out if you save your settings in the UI?
 
So going into the scripts ini editor and making a change created the file, but you didn't have to do that before.

I think they are trying to simplify the install so people don't get tied up in the .ini changes since the thing just works well on VGA (CRT in my case) and HDMI out of the box on a default install. I do see they have an option to prefer external storage now. I will test it and see if it stores everything (except mister core/menu/linux) on USB now which would be awesome. Basically, I want to get to a point where I can do a clean install of mister, drop my mister.ini and downloader.ini on it and then update to only get what I want and store it where I want the first time. When I get my multisystem setup (which is in the mail) I don't want to deal with this each time I want to reinstall.
 
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I really have no idea what they are doing.

Update_all is no longer included, you have to manually install it. Fine. Update_all claims to use the new downloader. Using the new downloader itself with the config setup the way I want works fine, but doesn't update scripts folder for some reason. Using update_all (using the new downloader) won't work with the previously tested confirmed working downloader.ini, unless you delete the downloader.ini and let it re-create it.

Some how it's more confusing now than it was 2 years ago. One thing I see is it seems like they have an update_all that lets you default to put everything on USB which I was asking about before, though it's not working and crashes.
 
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I really have no idea what they are doing.

Update_all is no longer included, you have to manually install it. Fine. Update_all claims to use the new downloader. Using the new downloader itself with the config setup the way I want works fine, but doesn't update scripts folder for some reason. Using update_all (using the new downloader) won't work with the previously tested confirmed working downloader.ini, unless you delete the downloader.ini and let it re-create it.

Some how it's more confusing now than it was 2 years ago. One thing I see is it seems like they have an update_all that lets you default to put everything on USB which I was asking about before, though it's not working and crashes.
Update is now deprecated. You have to use "downloader"
 
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Downloader:
- Version 1.5 released.
- Added support for Storage Priority Resolution: External Storage will be used for installing new files under certain conditions. More info in the options section.
- Added base_path as a database-scoped option.
- Added routine for fixing certificates when they are not working correctly.
- Added support for PDFViewer, glow and lesskey (for reading docs files).
- Added documentation for tag property on the Custom Databases documentation page (useful for filtering).
- Added "verbose" option in downloader.ini for printing debug output while running Downloader.
- Critical parts of the script are now benchmarked, and the resulting output is printed when the verbose option is activated.
- Added new entrypoint for displaying connected external drives by calling the launcher with the argument --print-drives.
- Internal DB save is not attempted when no changes have been detected. This change saves time and spares writes on the SD.
- Many optimizations have been performed, taking advantage of the information provided by the new benchmarks.
- Improved readability of custom database documentation (tonurics).
- Fields base_files_url, db_files, zips, default_options are now not mandatory on Custom Databases.
- Download Filter terms can now start with numbers.
- Fixed INI path resolution when Downloader was called from unusual locations.
- Improved internal implementation for zip summaries.
- Removed url_safe_characters option as it's no longer useful. Now database URLs need to be strictly correct.
- Other general improvements: refactors, fixes, test coverage, code cleanup...
 
Thanks, I did get them but YARMUS is new to me, I will check it out.

I'll try again with downloader but it was not working if setting defaults to USB (before I went back to update_all). Anyone else got it to work?
I might try a fresh install this weekend. I'll let you know if I do.
 
I might try a fresh install this weekend. I'll let you know if I do.
Thanks. It downloads everything on the USB like it should (and filters out what you don't want) but you can't see any of the cores from menu, but you can see them if browsing file system on sftp.

Couple other things:

Is the normal update.sh also end of life?
Do you know what a good option is for getting BIOS files with downloader? Adding BIOS as a filter gets a few of them but not like PSX and MegaCD. I have them backed up but would like to find a way to easily re download them through script like before.
What's the correct way to download the scripts from the wiki? I grabbed from file viewer and saved the .sh to the mister. They didn't run. I had to roll back to some old ones I have saved.
 
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