Lu

MiSTer FPGA News & Updates – Super GameBoy, CD32, Commodore 128 & More

Posted on by Lu

Commodore 128 Core

Eriks5, on the MiSTerFPGA forums, made a post of a Commodore 128 core he’s working on. It’s a computer he had when he was younger and still owns, but was afraid it may die one day. So he took it upon himself to learn FPGA development and create a core dedicated to the C128.

The core is still a work-in-progress but can be downloaded from the project’s Github. If you also want to see the core in action, check out the developers youtube channel.

PCXT Core Update

The in-progress PCXT core is available in beta form and can be downloaded from the project’s GitHub.

In the latest beta, it is now based on KFPC-XT, another FPGA PC-XT core.
It’s using Sergey Kiselev’s XT 8088 BIOS project.
And a turbo mode was enabled, 4.77MHz or 7.16MHz is selectable from the OSD.

A feature from the first beta that I find really cool is the monochrome monitor simulation options. You have the option to set this to green, amber or B&W.

Jaleco’s Psychic 5

RCAVictorCo on twitter announced they are creating a new MiSTer FPGA core for the arcade game Psychic 5. The game was developed by NMK and published by Jaleco. It’s a platformer action game that features hovering as an important game mechanic.

On their Patreon page they discuss other games being worked on for the Konami GX400 hardware which are:

Nemesis/Konami GT (a beta for this core is already available)
Konami Bubble System
Salamander/Life Force
Kitten Kaboodles
Hyper Crash

Dedicated Super Gameboy Core

On the MiSTer FPGA forums paulbnl decided to take the SNES and Gameboy cores and combine them so that all Super Gameboy functions could work.

The result is a new core that only supports the Super Gameboy. Adding Super Gameboy support to the SNES core wouldn’t fit into the DE10 Nano’s FPGA so a dedicated core was the only solution.

There are different speed options for each iteration of the Super Gameboy and a SNES speed option that matches the SNES refresh rate and helps reduce stutter. There’s even MSU-1 support for Gameboy roms that support that feature.

The core is available for download in a MiSTer FPGA forum thread. If you want to get MSU1 support working on this core, you will need to replace the main MiSTer executable file with the one provided in the download link.

Play Amiga CD32 Games in MiSTer

There is no Amiga CD32 core for MiSTer, however, on the MiSTerFPGA subreddit, there is a post by user Caldor82 that explains how you can play AmigaCD32 games with the Amiga core.

Two methods are explained. One uses SimCD32 to allow you to mount CD32 ISO’s in the Amiga OS. The other methods uses either SquirrelCD32 or IDEfix. These programs create CD32 emulation bootdisks for loading the software. The process is explained in the reddit post by user Caldor82 and they also have a video on youtube showing how it all works.

Pang Core

Last week core developer Jotego gave us a hint on a new core he will reveal the following week. The hint was an action game with no scrolling.  Jotego has revealed the game to be Pang also known as Buster Bros. The core is not available yet, but Jotego shows us a picture of it running on MiSTer and gives us some details on the hardware it runs on. The core will be released next Friday, most likely for Patreon subscribers, but he did not specifically say that.

Mike Simones S-Video Cores

Mike Simone is hard at work creating more cores with S-Video support. He spent the weekend tuning some cores and is hoping to finish 46 more cores. He also show’s a video displaying the luma trap that significantly improves composite video quality. I’m currently testing his prototype adapter and the luma trap does wonders for the Genesis and Sega CD cores over composite. If you want more information on these cores, check the descriptions for some videos that talk about them.

Other Miscellaneous Updates

Core developer Ace has made a lot of updates to the following arcade cores:

  • Gyruss
  • Jailbreak
  • Scooter Shooter
  • Time Pilot
  • And Time Pilot 84

For the main MiSTer software

  • The is now automatic monitor default resolution detection through EDID. To use this feature, make sure video_mode is not used in MiSTer.ini file. DVI mode is also auto-detected if dvi_mode option is not used in MiSTer.ini.
  • Additional vscale_mode modes were added by wickerwaka
  • There’s been a direct video fix by paulb-nl
  • You can use horizontal video filter for vertical in interlaced modes, and other video adjustments made by wickerwaka
  • and there’s been other fixes and tweaks.