7 ms·

MiSTer FPGA: Recreate classic computers using modern hardware

164 points by lnyan 4y ago

Aromasin 4y ago
I've wanted to give Mister FPGA a go for the longest time, but the boards are never in stock any time I look. How are people getting their hands on them?
- gchadwick 4y ago
  Apparently if you buy direct from Terasic you can get hold of them. The downside is a large shipping cost and import duties/taxes on top. I have heard of people successfully getting them shipped from Terasic offices within the same country as them to avoid the import duties issue.
  - krupan 4y ago
    Speaking from ignorance of the details of this project, but couldn't other FPGA's/boards be used? Is it using some Terasic specific features
    - flatiron 4y ago
      There’s a required RAM module for most cores that slides into the de10 nano. The software and the Linux kernel are also tightly coupled. Individual cores can be ported to different FPGAs though. The SNES one for example was recently ported to the analogue pocket.
    - MegaDeKay 4y ago
      The Terasic boards are essentially an evaluation board and despite the recent price increases, still give you a lot of hardware for the money. Other boards that come close in capability and have what you'd want for something like an emulator platform (like HDMI out) are a lot more expensive. Pretty sure Sorgelig (project lead) has said he has no interest in ever porting it to a new platform. Doesn't mean someone else couldn't, but it would be a major effort to do so and keep up.
- etiam 4y ago
  Tough, given the difficulties the last few years I guess. But Terasic have the FPGA board listed for pre-order with estimated shipping at the end of this month. I haven't had opportunity to get one before either, so I'm not sure how the availability for expansion cards has been.
- fermentation 4y ago
  It’s rough. I followed the misteraddons owner on twitter and waited a few months for them to notify that kits were back in stock
- sigstoat 4y ago
  placed a backorder on mouser and then just waited. easier than constantly checking and hoping. they don't charge your card until it ships.
  - terinjokes 4y ago
    I did the same thing at the beginning of the year with Digikey. Shipped a few weeks later.
- peterkelly 4y ago
  I ordered one direct from Terasic back in June and received it in about 2 weeks. Cost excluding shipping was $243.
vintermann 4y ago
There's one thing you don't get, which I see many people find they miss: savestates. It's technically possible and I know a few cores try to support them, but it's just a million times easier (and more reliable) if you do everything in software anyway. Hardware emulation has a pretty small niche between software emulation and real hardware. If you care about accuracy at all costs, real hardware is usually still available and not too expensive, and if you care about convenience, software emulation is better.
- fermentation 4y ago
  I personally have found it more enjoyable to play a lot of games without savestates. Playing earthbound a few years ago I was constantly savescumming. My recently replay on mister without savetsates was way more enjoyable because the stakes were higher. Wouldn’t want to play a Mario World rom hack without them though
- reidrac 4y ago
  > real hardware is usually still available and not too expensive I all depends. There's a "retro" bubble currently and people ask silly money for the original hardware. Then capacitors burst, original hardware needs maintenance, and is not something everybody can do. The MISTer provides an experience that gets very close to the original hardware, without all those nuances.
  - vintermann 4y ago
    Oh they ASK silly money sure, but do they get it? I only keep track of the Commodore part of the retro world, and from what I've seen, most machines are still cheaper than they were at launch, not only in inflation adjusted terms but in absolute terms too. Even machines which are bought for restoration and resold (with fresh capacitors and QoL modifications like modernized video output) are very reasonably priced. I think the underlying reason for those low prices is that software emulation really is the better option for most people.
- flatiron 4y ago
  I’m unsure what you mean about hardware emulation not being reliable. Save states is a good point. SNES for example does not have them. Adding that stuff as an after thought is extremely tricky. Most newer cores are creating with save states in mind for two reasons. Makes debugging much easier as you can share states with testers on top of the QOL you get with that feature for end users. PSX for example has really good save state support with rotating save states.
koala_man 4y ago
For anyone else wondering about the name: it's actually "MiSTer", from "MiST on Terasic [FPGA board]", with "MiST" being a previous "aMIga/ST" FPGA reimplementation effort.
- lnyan 4y ago
  Seems that HN automatically replaces "MiSTer" with "Mister" when I submitted this post
  - layer8 4y ago
    As the submitter you can edit the title after submitting to undo any of HN’s auto-normalization.
  - dang 4y ago
    Twont happen again. Not if followed by "FPGA" that is.
    - worldmerge 4y ago
      Is there a blog post on how HN works? Like what's CMS, is it a totally custom CRUD system? Does it use super fancy data flows like stack exchange?
      - dang 4y ago
        It's a totally custom CRUD system. That's as good a description as I've heard. I don't know what super fancy data flows are. That probably means we don't use them.
        worldmerge 4y ago
        Cool, thank you. Re: data flows: a while back StackExchange had a blog post about their data processing. Like it was a lot of Redis and Postgres.
Koshkin 4y ago
FPGAs are fun, for sure, but I still have never felt the flair of “authenticity” from the use of FPGA as opposed to software emulation on a microcontroller or the PC. In fact, software emulation is so much more practical, and you can simulate pretty much any aspect of it that you wish, not just the CPU and some peripherals. A modern flight simulator is another example of using software to bring the user’s experience close to what it would be in reality (especially with the VR gear).
- randombits0 4y ago
  Um, I don’t understand how you might feel software emulation has more “flair of authenticity” than a MISTer rig. FPGAs don’t emulate hardware, they are hardware. They are almost exactly like the original.
  - greenbit 4y ago
    I wonder how much the misapprehension that FPGAs somehow emulate is due to the fact that the way we configure them looks so much like code. VHDL is ghastly, but I prefer it over verilog bc verilog seems to actually try to look like C. I think especially for beginners it's too easy to lose sight of the fact that while you may "read through" your VHDL/verilog, that when it hits the FPGA fabric it's all going to happen in parallel. Maybe if the source matter were made to resemble data more than code, we could simultaneously ditch the verbosity of VHDL and the imperative algorithm appearances of verilog. I'm thinking maybe JSON at the moment. =P
  - BearOso 4y ago
    They're hardware, but not the same set of logic as the original systems. They still rely on reverse engineering efforts that occur when developing software-based emulators. They produce the end results that were measured from the original system, but not the exact behavior. As a result, they're not naturally more exact than a software emulator. Where the FPGA comes in handy is in concurrent logic and a fixed clock. This makes synchronization easy, and that is what makes software emulators much more demanding.
    - 4y ago
kaoD 4y ago
I'm curious, is there any advantage to this over software emulation, besides "I did it because I could"? (which is of course cool in itself).
- stbenjam 4y ago
  It's a good way to learn about FPGA's. Other thna that, the FAQ has a good example about where the Amiga software emulation falls short: > Let's take a well-known emulator, UAE, emulating an Amiga. On a Raspberry Pi 3, you can run some Amiga CPU benchmarks and get crazy numbers like 100 times the original 68000 processor. So you may assume you have an emulated Amiga that is 100 times faster than real one. No, you don't. If you run different kinds of demos or games, you will see the video stutters sometimes. For example, if you play the well-known "State of The Art" demo by Spaceballs, you will notice video stuttering at some points, while a real Amiga 600 with 1x CPU speed plays the whole demo very smoothly. https://mister-devel.github.io/MkDocs_MiSTer/basics/faq/#why-use-fpga-when-other-proven-solutions-exist-such-as-raspberry-pi https://mister-devel.github.io/MkDocs_MiSTer/basics/faq/#why...
- layer8 4y ago
  It removes the need for a high-end CPU for accurate emulation, and potentially reduces video/audio lag.
- foft 4y ago
  If you want to eg add original ports and hardware interfaces that tends to be easier with an fpga: cartridges, midi etc. Of course you can do that in software/ bit bang. Though it’s complicated by emulator timing, they tend to run frame by frame and sync at the end of a frame.
- cmrdporcupine 4y ago
  Latency. It doesn't matter how fast your emulator is, throughput-wise. Your operating system (and other stuff) sits between it and output and input devices. And usually adds multiple frames worth of latency. There's ways to improve this, certainly, but you won't get that experience "out of the box." Now, it's also possible to accomplish this by running emulators "bare metal" or "close to the metal" like my friend Randy did with his BMC64 project: https://github.com/randyrossi/bmc64 https://github.com/randyrossi/bmc64
ilaksh 4y ago
It seems like there really needs to be an alternative that uses more available hardware.
dtx1 4y ago
I applaud the MiSTer Project for their brilliant work. I'd even be interested in buying something like it. But the most complex console it can emulate is a ps1 and that can be emulated perfectly fine in software. I wish most 5th gen/6th gen consoles were in reach to emulated with it. But alas that's out of the question and even software emulation is still far from great for most of these consoles and require beefy hardware...
flatiron 4y ago
I was lucky enough to get in on this when the boards were ~$130. It’s one of my favorite pieces of tech. It “just works” and the UI is very good. Updating is super easy and it even goes and grabs the MAME Roms for you. CPS2 games feel much different than my MAME box running Arch. I can 100% pick up the controller and I’m a few seconds know which one I’m playing. The video processing presets have some that make the games look amazing. Psx I mainly play rpgs so latency isn’t a huge deal there. If anyone has any specific questions let me know. I think they are twice the price now but even at that I would probably rebuy. I use it probably 8-10 hours a week so worth a good investment.
- radicalbyte 4y ago
  Same here, it's a fantastic piece of kit. Better than my retro consoles. Only real downside is that I just don't have the time to use it much :(
fortran77 4y ago
Can you actually buy a DE-10 Nano FPGA board today? The links say "pre-order"
- badlucklottery 4y ago
  For a semi-normal price? Probably not. Terasic has been getting stock pretty regularly though and their pre-order dates don't seem to be too far off reality.
dang 4y ago
Related: Mister FPGA: The Future of Game and Computer Emulation - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29439279 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29439279 - Dec 2021 (64 comments) MiSTer FPGA GBA Splitscreen Multiplayer - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27547848 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27547848 - June 2021 (9 comments)
giantdude 4y ago
It's a shame it's not on a Xilinx FPGA. I am out.
easygenes 4y ago
For those more generally interested in learning FPGAs and computer architecture, MiSTer is a nice platform to explore. I recently found a good series of videos looking at it from this perspective [1]. 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qxgM9NPrhqw

164 points by lnyan 4y ago

I've wanted to give Mister FPGA a go for the longest time, but the boards are never in stock any time I look. How are people getting their hands on them?

gchadwick 4y ago
Apparently if you buy direct from Terasic you can get hold of them. The downside is a large shipping cost and import duties/taxes on top. I have heard of people successfully getting them shipped from Terasic offices within the same country as them to avoid the import duties issue.
- krupan 4y ago
  Speaking from ignorance of the details of this project, but couldn't other FPGA's/boards be used? Is it using some Terasic specific features
  - flatiron 4y ago
    There’s a required RAM module for most cores that slides into the de10 nano. The software and the Linux kernel are also tightly coupled. Individual cores can be ported to different FPGAs though. The SNES one for example was recently ported to the analogue pocket.
  - MegaDeKay 4y ago
    The Terasic boards are essentially an evaluation board and despite the recent price increases, still give you a lot of hardware for the money. Other boards that come close in capability and have what you'd want for something like an emulator platform (like HDMI out) are a lot more expensive. Pretty sure Sorgelig (project lead) has said he has no interest in ever porting it to a new platform. Doesn't mean someone else couldn't, but it would be a major effort to do so and keep up.
etiam 4y ago
Tough, given the difficulties the last few years I guess. But Terasic have the FPGA board listed for pre-order with estimated shipping at the end of this month. I haven't had opportunity to get one before either, so I'm not sure how the availability for expansion cards has been.
fermentation 4y ago
It’s rough. I followed the misteraddons owner on twitter and waited a few months for them to notify that kits were back in stock
sigstoat 4y ago
placed a backorder on mouser and then just waited. easier than constantly checking and hoping. they don't charge your card until it ships.
- terinjokes 4y ago
  I did the same thing at the beginning of the year with Digikey. Shipped a few weeks later.
peterkelly 4y ago
I ordered one direct from Terasic back in June and received it in about 2 weeks. Cost excluding shipping was $243.

vintermann 4y ago

There's one thing you don't get, which I see many people find they miss: savestates. It's technically possible and I know a few cores try to support them, but it's just a million times easier (and more reliable) if you do everything in software anyway. Hardware emulation has a pretty small niche between software emulation and real hardware. If you care about accuracy at all costs, real hardware is usually still available and not too expensive, and if you care about convenience, software emulation is better.

fermentation 4y ago
I personally have found it more enjoyable to play a lot of games without savestates. Playing earthbound a few years ago I was constantly savescumming. My recently replay on mister without savetsates was way more enjoyable because the stakes were higher. Wouldn’t want to play a Mario World rom hack without them though
reidrac 4y ago
> real hardware is usually still available and not too expensive I all depends. There's a "retro" bubble currently and people ask silly money for the original hardware. Then capacitors burst, original hardware needs maintenance, and is not something everybody can do. The MISTer provides an experience that gets very close to the original hardware, without all those nuances.
- vintermann 4y ago
  Oh they ASK silly money sure, but do they get it? I only keep track of the Commodore part of the retro world, and from what I've seen, most machines are still cheaper than they were at launch, not only in inflation adjusted terms but in absolute terms too. Even machines which are bought for restoration and resold (with fresh capacitors and QoL modifications like modernized video output) are very reasonably priced. I think the underlying reason for those low prices is that software emulation really is the better option for most people.
flatiron 4y ago
I’m unsure what you mean about hardware emulation not being reliable. Save states is a good point. SNES for example does not have them. Adding that stuff as an after thought is extremely tricky. Most newer cores are creating with save states in mind for two reasons. Makes debugging much easier as you can share states with testers on top of the QOL you get with that feature for end users. PSX for example has really good save state support with rotating save states.

koala_man 4y ago

For anyone else wondering about the name: it's actually "MiSTer", from "MiST on Terasic [FPGA board]", with "MiST" being a previous "aMIga/ST" FPGA reimplementation effort.

lnyan 4y ago
Seems that HN automatically replaces "MiSTer" with "Mister" when I submitted this post
- layer8 4y ago
  As the submitter you can edit the title after submitting to undo any of HN’s auto-normalization.
- dang 4y ago
  Twont happen again. Not if followed by "FPGA" that is.
  - worldmerge 4y ago
    Is there a blog post on how HN works? Like what's CMS, is it a totally custom CRUD system? Does it use super fancy data flows like stack exchange?
    - dang 4y ago
      It's a totally custom CRUD system. That's as good a description as I've heard. I don't know what super fancy data flows are. That probably means we don't use them.
      - worldmerge 4y ago
        Cool, thank you. Re: data flows: a while back StackExchange had a blog post about their data processing. Like it was a lot of Redis and Postgres.

Koshkin 4y ago

FPGAs are fun, for sure, but I still have never felt the flair of “authenticity” from the use of FPGA as opposed to software emulation on a microcontroller or the PC. In fact, software emulation is so much more practical, and you can simulate pretty much any aspect of it that you wish, not just the CPU and some peripherals. A modern flight simulator is another example of using software to bring the user’s experience close to what it would be in reality (especially with the VR gear).

randombits0 4y ago
Um, I don’t understand how you might feel software emulation has more “flair of authenticity” than a MISTer rig. FPGAs don’t emulate hardware, they are hardware. They are almost exactly like the original.
- greenbit 4y ago
  I wonder how much the misapprehension that FPGAs somehow emulate is due to the fact that the way we configure them looks so much like code. VHDL is ghastly, but I prefer it over verilog bc verilog seems to actually try to look like C. I think especially for beginners it's too easy to lose sight of the fact that while you may "read through" your VHDL/verilog, that when it hits the FPGA fabric it's all going to happen in parallel. Maybe if the source matter were made to resemble data more than code, we could simultaneously ditch the verbosity of VHDL and the imperative algorithm appearances of verilog. I'm thinking maybe JSON at the moment. =P
- BearOso 4y ago
  They're hardware, but not the same set of logic as the original systems. They still rely on reverse engineering efforts that occur when developing software-based emulators. They produce the end results that were measured from the original system, but not the exact behavior. As a result, they're not naturally more exact than a software emulator. Where the FPGA comes in handy is in concurrent logic and a fixed clock. This makes synchronization easy, and that is what makes software emulators much more demanding.
  - 4y ago

kaoD 4y ago

I'm curious, is there any advantage to this over software emulation, besides "I did it because I could"? (which is of course cool in itself).

stbenjam 4y ago
It's a good way to learn about FPGA's. Other thna that, the FAQ has a good example about where the Amiga software emulation falls short: > Let's take a well-known emulator, UAE, emulating an Amiga. On a Raspberry Pi 3, you can run some Amiga CPU benchmarks and get crazy numbers like 100 times the original 68000 processor. So you may assume you have an emulated Amiga that is 100 times faster than real one. No, you don't. If you run different kinds of demos or games, you will see the video stutters sometimes. For example, if you play the well-known "State of The Art" demo by Spaceballs, you will notice video stuttering at some points, while a real Amiga 600 with 1x CPU speed plays the whole demo very smoothly. https://mister-devel.github.io/MkDocs_MiSTer/basics/faq/#why-use-fpga-when-other-proven-solutions-exist-such-as-raspberry-pi https://mister-devel.github.io/MkDocs_MiSTer/basics/faq/#why...
layer8 4y ago
It removes the need for a high-end CPU for accurate emulation, and potentially reduces video/audio lag.
foft 4y ago
If you want to eg add original ports and hardware interfaces that tends to be easier with an fpga: cartridges, midi etc. Of course you can do that in software/ bit bang. Though it’s complicated by emulator timing, they tend to run frame by frame and sync at the end of a frame.
cmrdporcupine 4y ago
Latency. It doesn't matter how fast your emulator is, throughput-wise. Your operating system (and other stuff) sits between it and output and input devices. And usually adds multiple frames worth of latency. There's ways to improve this, certainly, but you won't get that experience "out of the box." Now, it's also possible to accomplish this by running emulators "bare metal" or "close to the metal" like my friend Randy did with his BMC64 project: https://github.com/randyrossi/bmc64 https://github.com/randyrossi/bmc64

ilaksh 4y ago

It seems like there really needs to be an alternative that uses more available hardware.

dtx1 4y ago

I applaud the MiSTer Project for their brilliant work. I'd even be interested in buying something like it. But the most complex console it can emulate is a ps1 and that can be emulated perfectly fine in software. I wish most 5th gen/6th gen consoles were in reach to emulated with it. But alas that's out of the question and even software emulation is still far from great for most of these consoles and require beefy hardware...

flatiron 4y ago

I was lucky enough to get in on this when the boards were ~$130. It’s one of my favorite pieces of tech. It “just works” and the UI is very good. Updating is super easy and it even goes and grabs the MAME Roms for you. CPS2 games feel much different than my MAME box running Arch. I can 100% pick up the controller and I’m a few seconds know which one I’m playing. The video processing presets have some that make the games look amazing. Psx I mainly play rpgs so latency isn’t a huge deal there. If anyone has any specific questions let me know. I think they are twice the price now but even at that I would probably rebuy. I use it probably 8-10 hours a week so worth a good investment.

radicalbyte 4y ago
Same here, it's a fantastic piece of kit. Better than my retro consoles. Only real downside is that I just don't have the time to use it much :(

fortran77 4y ago

Can you actually buy a DE-10 Nano FPGA board today? The links say "pre-order"

badlucklottery 4y ago
For a semi-normal price? Probably not. Terasic has been getting stock pretty regularly though and their pre-order dates don't seem to be too far off reality.

dang 4y ago

Related: Mister FPGA: The Future of Game and Computer Emulation - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29439279 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29439279 - Dec 2021 (64 comments) MiSTer FPGA GBA Splitscreen Multiplayer - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27547848 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27547848 - June 2021 (9 comments)

giantdude 4y ago

It's a shame it's not on a Xilinx FPGA. I am out.

easygenes 4y ago

For those more generally interested in learning FPGAs and computer architecture, MiSTer is a nice platform to explore. I recently found a good series of videos looking at it from this perspective [1]. 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qxgM9NPrhqw