Lu

MiSTer FPGA News – MINI-ITX Board, NARC, Out Run & More

Posted on by Lu

Atlantis Mini-ITX Board

The new Atlantis Mini-ITX board from Battye Tech provides an affordable way to use your MiSTer with almost any computer case. Compared to other Mini-ITX boards, this one only costs $11, but does not offer the extra features of a standard Analog IO board. If your case is tall enough, however, you can still provide your own analog IO Board and USB board. The board is on sale now.

 

Picosynth

Antonio Villena, a seller of MiSTer FPGA products, has created an alternative to the MT32pi called picosynth. This runs on the same microcontroller used on the Raspberry Pi Pico. It is also compatible with the GPIO pins on the Raspberry Pi, making it able to work with MT32Pi Addons.

 

Mystery Core Update

Robert Peip, the creator of the Playstation core, recently provided an update on a secret new core he is working on. He is initially building a software emulator for the core, as it will expedite the development process. He has made some advances on the CPU and some other subcomponents.

 

NARC Update

Pramod, who is working on NARC, wanted to make code optimizations after completing an initial build. Unfortunately, too many FPGA resources must be utilized so optimizations must be made first. The CPU is taking most of the resources as it is a big CPU with complicated instructions. Pramod mentioned that he is almost at the resource limit, but the core will fit, though it will be a very tight squeeze.

 

S-Video & Composite Discussion

I had a discussion about the s-video and composite updates to the MiSTer Framework on the Zez Retro youtube channel. We discuss the background, how it works, differences betweent the passive and active adapters and much more.
If you own a television that only has composite or s-video ports or plan on obtaining one in the future, then check out the video.

 

The Next Space

Darren__O is working on the SNK arcade game The Next Space. Darren has gotten a screen shot of the game generated from a MAME sprite RAM dump. While it is not mentioned that a core is coming, this game runs on similar hardware to other SNK games that Darren has already created cores for.

 

New FPGA Board

Antonio Villena, a MiSTer vendor, is planning to release a new FPGA board in the future and wants to provide it to developers first. Therefore, he is requesting FPGA core developers to contact him so he can send them a board. There will be two versions of this board, one with the same size FPGA chip as the DE10 Nano and another with double the size. This new board will have a different FPGA chip from the DE10 Nano and may not be compatible with the MiSTer framework, although it would be great to see it be compatible.

 

PCXT

Full operation mode for the PCXT’s XTIDE ROM is not optional.
It turns out that the Full Operation Mode generates problems with several games in Tandy mode.
Full operation mode is helpful if you want to get BASICA working.

Also for the PCXT core.
CGA CRTC and Hercules CRTC cathode ray tube controllers where updated.
These are chips generate video displays.

Also several glitches for the AREA5150 have been fixed.
The only glitch left in the demo is the water effects in the final part.
Some minor issues with the edges in the core also need to be resolved.

 

Jotego Updates – Out Run & Konami CPU

Recently, Jotego made progress in developing a framebuffer for Out Run. It had to be moved from SDRAM on to DDR RAM because of bandwith reasons.

Additionally, work has continued for the Konami CPU and tracing the first CPS3 custom chip has also begun.