Anyone playing around with MiSTer?

[tthurman]

  On 5/29/2020 at 7:31 PM, RIP-Felix said:

Oh, no! That would require me to find another person to help! You know...COVID factories!

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Nobody knew what COVID was back then, but they come bundled with M 95 masks these days

[tthurman]

This is pretty cool, basically adds BlissBox functionality to MiSTer.

BlisSTer v2 for Mister FPGA

 

 

 

[tthurman]

 

 

 

[RIP-Felix]

Bubble Bobble peaked my interest. That's my favorite arcade game! Cycle accurate, no lag, perfect upscale? Hell yeah, sign me up! This is one of 2 games I have always have running on my GameEX vert-screen arcade when people come over. I like the Idea of having a MISTer in there also, just for the games I like the most (mainly for the reduced input latency). This has been eating away at me for awhile now, as I want the arcade to be as competitively accurate as possible. Software emulation makes getting Hi-score more difficult. Sigh...yeah, I want one now!

[tthurman]

It's most certainly something I'm enjoying watching, but right now I don't need more stuff to pile in a corner and collect dust. 

[tthurman]

Austin is back FYI

 

 

[tthurman]

Still reading a lot about this project and recent discussions are moving me closer and closer to building one.  Here are  a couple decent "help" items for anyone else  interested.

http://www.racketboy.com/retro/mister-fpga-the-future-of-retro-game-emulation-and-preservation

 

 

 

 

[tthurman]

So I found out about a MiSTer give away back a couple / few months ago being promoted by "Porkchop Express", (aka misteraddons.com) via his twitter feed.  I of course signed up just for a shot a winning, since the odds seemed quite good.  Anyway, didn't win and have never ever cared for (or participated) the social media experience, but I decided let the emails trickle in to keep up with the goings on.  Turns out this is a wealth of retro gaming news goodness, with the likes of Mike Chi, Bob from retro RGB, etc., among others.

To the point, misteraddons has some really nice stuff, and this was just recently introduced and really sold quickly.  Today it was announced that some of the gray models where located and so are still are in stock, so should you be in the market, but on the fence about piecing it all together yourself,; well, here's a one stop shop for a bit more than four bills.

 

I'd be all over it, but it's just not a good time to be blowing money right now.

 

[tthurman]

This is a decent introduction, well at least as to where things stood back early last year.

https://nerdlypleasures.blogspot.com/2020/03/mister-mame-of-fpga-simulation-projects.html

[tthurman]

Cave 68000 core is out of beta.

Kudos to skeetbud for the heads up!

[tthurman]

I know I'm seemingly alone here with the excitement of possibilities this system brings, but I've stumbled upon another nice article that lends itself to getting into this side project on a budget.  I expect to see the arcade cores seeing more love as MiSTer matures, proving it to be a serious contender in the retro gaming realm for not only it accuracy, but also for it's lack of dependency on Windows.

http://www.cgquarterly.com/lets-build-a-basic-mister-fpga-console-part-1/

 

[tthurman]

One thing that seems to be the norm with this project is there's not really anything "standard" aside from the DE-10 itself.  Still, things seem pretty much similar and tend to be gravitating toward more common components as certain sites become more popular, but there do seem to be some unique differences in some of the add-ons.  That's the impression I'm getting anyway, so for my first add-on I went with the CBMstuff I/O board.  This fellow actually makes some really cool retro gear that's not related to the MiSTer project.  Commodore and Amiga users might want to browse his store.

Looks like there are some trade-offs, but this board has the RTC integrated, vs buying it separately, but looks to have fewer LED's.  I'm not entirely certain myself, but took a shot in the dark and ordered one.  At first I wasn't going to bother with this board since I'm planning to do everything over the HDMI output that's included on the DE-10  mainboard, but have since learned you ideally want the heatsink/fan combo this addon brings with it.

 

[Draco1962]

Seems interesting, but at the end of the day I must ask: Does it play PONG? 

[tthurman]

Come on man, any emulator worth it's salt plays PONG 

 

 

 

 

[tthurman]

In all seriousness, it's a decent little board that would be much more expensive than it is if it weren't being subsidized.

https://software.intel.com/content/www/us/en/develop/topics/iot/hardware/fpga-de10-nano.html

 

Digi-key has them too if you'd rather skip amazon's poor packaging.

https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/terasic-inc/P0496/6817231

 

[RIP-Felix]

  On 1/14/2021 at 7:21 PM, tthurman said:

I know I'm seemingly alone here with the excitement of possibilities this system brings...

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I've been following this...keep nerding out, it's being read. I just don't have much to add. I want one, but have been busy with other hardware mods and lately the PS3. I do intend to get one of these installed into my arcade cabinet at some point. I just like the idea of running an FPGA instead of paying the emulation lag tax. Although I put all that work into my GameEX vertscreen theme for my arcade. It'd be a shame to abandon it in favor of...well, let's just say they aren't placing a high priority on the frontend. It's just a big project, that I'm frankly putting off.

[tthurman]

Oh don't worry, I'll bore everyone with bumps whether they read it or not 

I'm swamped with work right now, but picking away at it.   

The DE10 board is going up, I ended up ordering mine from Digi-Key since and offset the shipping cost by throwing in some caps I know I'm going to be needing. 

On Amazon it's only available from Teraisc, and they want $15 to ship it.  I think it's caught on that this board has become extremely popular for reasons they never imagined.

I know Tom's reading and at least tempted a bit himself, so I'm hoping it grabs his attention a bit more than it has.   The nature of this thing doesn't lend itself to Frontends really, but I wonder if a border wrapper of sorts isn't possible around the core selection menu.  Should someone be able to pull it off, MAME will have some serious competition.

Regardless and like you already mentioned, I'm in for the lag-less experience.

What exactly are you doing to your PS3?

 

 

[tthurman]

So this was my final assembly:

DE10-NANO

CBMSTUFF analog I/O board - think of this one as a heat sink and fan, even if you plan to run over HDMI

USB HUB

128 MB SDRAM

128 GB microSD     - I got this at Best Buy for two reasons, one being that it was less likely to be fake and the other being it was on sale.

Case wrapper (Red) with extra set M-F standoffs

 

For the microSD, the Ultra series seems to be the go to brand, I just got the Extreme Plus because it was on sale.

 

The DE10-NANO comes with an 8GB (I think) if you just want to stick with it.   I plan to eventually run this with just the cores loaded and obtain the game titles via network storage, because no matter what size microSD card you get, it will be limited to some degree and more prone to failure over the long haul.

 

In my never ending quest for more information I was lucky to find this excellent video that explains things in both lay and more advanced levels.   This guy does VGA to SCART too.

 

 

 

[Draco1962]

That's pretty cool! So many micro options available at a fraction of the cost of a PC for retrogaming. Have considered a build thread in the Gamer Rigs subforum?

I am going to start one for my VCS upgrades. 

[tthurman]

That's a good idea now that I have all the parts shipping.  Up until now I've just had a few odds and ends and a lot of visualization.  Some of the documentation is a bit on the lacking side, I had to sort of sketch out the build just to figure what set of extra stand-offs I needed for the PCB covers, and I'm still not sure I got it right.

There are some really nice cases out there, but they are specific to the components you choose, so I played it safe.

 

These are my favorite cases, so far, but they are based upon the CBMstuff I/O board and don't currently accommodate a USB hub.

 

[RIP-Felix]

I was thinking I'd build it into my X-arcade Tanksticks. Just have HDMI out and perhaps some USB ports for controllers. Then I can plug it into any TV or dock it onto my arcade.

  On 1/29/2021 at 3:23 PM, tthurman said:

Regardless and like you already mentioned, I'm in for the lag-less experience.

What exactly are you doing to your PS3?

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Me too.

Exploring the rabbit-hole-to-hell that is the YLOD.

[tthurman]

WOW, I didn't know this was even a thing.

Is this issue mostly confined to the 60GB  backward capable models?  Mine's a 80GB, 2 USB model that I purchased in early January 2009 right as Circuit City was rumored to be going down for the count.  I recall because I had received a gift card for Christmas, and ran to the store as soon as it became apparent they were about to go into liquidation.

First one lasted maybe 20 days before the BR transport just up and failed.  The replacement for it looked like it had been gone over with 60 grit.  After battling it out with SONY support for a while they sent me a refurbished model that looked nearly new.  It's seen limited gaming use and the power and eject buttons are finicky, seems to be sensitive to humidity.  Works fine some months, not at all others, but is easily worked around with the remote I purchased, or one of the controllers.

I ran F&H on this non-stop until the project ended.

This dude modded his with a bunch of vent holes.

 

 

[tthurman]

Here's another FPGA project you may want to keep tabs on.  Replay 2 looks interesting.

 

FPGA Arcade

[RIP-Felix]

  Reveal hidden contents

That video's not bad. The bottom line is that SONY and other console manufacturers know how many thermal cycles a console will require to die. Engineers routinely simulate this in great detail. The console itself counts bootup, shudowns, and on time. This is so SONY can see if consoles coming in for warranty repair are failing according to schedule or if there is a manufacturing defect. If they are dying early, then they may have to issue a recall. Identifying that early will save them alot of money. The waranty was 1 year on the PS3. They wanted them to be reliable to just past that period, but building in extra reliability beyond that is an added expense that eats into profits. It's pretty ruthless!

Anyway, the reason is that when you chase cutting edge graphics you are increasing heat. Heat is death for electronics. The YLOD is a general HW error. It can be many things, but generally it was the GPU's Ball Grid Array (Solder balls under the RSX). A reflow is temporary, like he said. The better fix is a reball with leaded solder, which has better elasticity than SAC305 lead free.

You can stave off a YLOD, but you cannot prevent it. The chips are hot and the higher the delta T (temperature difference) the sooner they will die. But even if you were to cool them with liquid nitrogen they would eventually die. I've seen people liquid cool them, and that's pretty extreem. I did drill holes in my PS3 about 8 years ago, and it's been running fine, but I neaver really clocked that much time on it either. At least not playing intensive PS3 games.

1. Drilling holes disrupts the console's airflow design. For example, the power supply in backwards comparable models (A,B,C,E) need the air to flow from the front holes through it. Air get sucked through it by the fan. When you drill holes in the bottom of the case by the fan it removes the suction pulls air through the PSU. Instead the fan sucks cooler air directly in to the heatsink and provides the CPU/RSX cooler temperatures, which is a good idea that cools them quite a bit better, but the PSU now cooks to death. This problem can be solved by adding a fan to cool the PSU, but most people forget to do this. Monkey see monkey stupid!
2. The thermal paste SONY used between the heat spreader and the die on the chip itself is drying out. That insulats the heat and causes the chips to overheat. Most people will only replace the thermal compound between the heatsink and the heat spreaders, but don't delid the RSX and CPU (because they are glued on). It's hard to delid them properly and can destroy the console if done improperly (without the right tools). So the chips continue to overheat and hasten a YLOD.
3. Some people dont have the right security bit screwdriver needed to open the PS3 or are deterred by the warranty sticker. So they are not able to properly disassemble the console and clean out the dust periodically and change the thermal compound. It's best to do so every 2 -5 years, using compressed air dusters every 6 months to prevent buildup in the meantime.
4. Lastly, its actually important to jailbreak the console to install a custom fan curve. I don't usually advocate for this kind of thing because of the potential for abuse, but in this case there's a very good reason. The temperature curve SONY used is insane! They prioritized sound performance over thermals to a criminal degree. They won't even begin to ramp up until the CPU/GPU reach 85C! It doesn't overheat until it reached 98C! At that temp, the fan sounds like a jet engine, but at 86 it's just audible. Pure stupidity or greed...there's no other explanation. And I've been reverse engineering the console for the last 9 months, SONY's engineers aren't stupid! So this was an executive decision. They knew this would decrease the console's lifespan, and deliberately chose to do it without providing anyway for users to choose what they prefer (like giving us a "quiet mode" and a "cool mode", and a warning that quiet mode would shorten the console's life).

Basically all of that leads to a YLOD if not taken care of. You can stave off the YLOD for a good long while, but it can't be avoided forever. That's where reballing can help, but it's expensive.

What's worse is that a myth started a couple of years ago about the YLOD being misdiagnosed. That it was actually the NEC/TOKIN filtering capacitors. That the 'real fix" was soldering in tantalum caps. There are alot of people who believe this. Youtube videos show it working. The reason is because the motherboard flexes from thermal warping, by the heat of the soldering iron, hot air, mounting pressure, whatever. This causes microscopic BGA defects to mechanically reconnect and give people a false positive. The console boots afterward, they assume it was the tantalum. Then after 2 weeks the board relaxes, the BGA disconnects, and the YLOD returns.

That thread I linked is where it started and it is a funny read if you can endure 172 pages (which I just finished after 3 weeks). There is some truith to it, but it was blown WAY out of proportion to the number of consoles that actually can be fixed using that method. It looks easy, and people are hoping to avoid having to pay $100+ dollars on a reball. So it's causing alot of people to ruin their consoles!

I'm investigating the merits of the fix, trying to show it's utility and dispel the myths at the same time. It's not entirely BS, but people want to believe it's the end-all-be-all solution for every YLOD.

Anyway...it's too complicated long to go into detail here. Nor do I particularly want to rehash the 200-ish posts I've already posed at nauseam over there. You can follow my posts starting on page 137 and read up to the latest post to get a good sense of it, if you're interested.

[tthurman]

Well, looks like I'll be standing mine upright for sure.  Keeping it clean, including the occasional blowing out and reapplication of thermal past and upright should go a good ways to increasing the longevity.  Mine has mostly be delegated to sitting on the shelf, recently anyway, but I did pick up some used sports games off of ebay that I need to give a whirl.  I was thinking about  picking up a replacement drive off ebay while they are cheap, now I'm wondering if I won't just end up with a drive I don't need.

See what  you did there, ignorance is bliss