13 ms·
FPGA N64
- nemo1618 3y agoLooks like the most recent youtube video was 3 years ago, and the most recent twitch stream was 2 years ago. Anyone know the actual current status of this?
- speps 3y agoMaybe he was hired for this: https://www.analogue.co/3d https://www.analogue.co/3d The timeline matches, 2 years between hire and announcement. Discussed a few days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37901025 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37901025
- grobibi 3y agoSee also: https://github.com/RobertPeip/Mister64 https://github.com/RobertPeip/Mister64
- garciansmith 3y agoReally impressing the progress he's made with that MiSTer core, especially since for years people said there was absolutely no way an N64 core could work on the MiSTer's DE10 nano FPGA board.
- christoph 3y agoAh, so this is the same as the Mister core? I thought it was a different codebase from the Mister core as I couldn’t see any mention of Mister, DE-10 or Nano on the page, so blindly assumed it was developed for a much larger FPGA (making my earlier comment below redundant).
- InvaderFizz 3y agoNo. The GitHub link is to Mister64. Which is an impressive WIP, but is not related to the main article linked here. I'm most excited for the next generation of FPGA retro consoles coming in the next 6ish months. Specifically the MARSFPGA. All the existing Mister cores, plus a bunch of new stuff enabled by a better and newer FPGA. The estimated price is $700, that's reasonable for those of us with large disposable income that want the retro kit with no hassle, easy access for the kids, and high Wife Acceptance Factor. I'm also looking forward to all the upcoming arcade cores for the MARSFPGA.
- naikrovek 3y agoit's much more about the community knowing for sure that something was impossible while also not knowing what they were talking about. each person said it was impossible because they read someone else say it was impossible, which itself started way back early in the project when someone said that any 3D console would be impossible. this was obviously always possible, but it required someone who wasn't indoctrinated into the community. the community behind a project is always both the very best and very worst thing about any project.
- blitz_skull 3y agoWhat is this? Besides apparently a hardware compatability... thingy.. for N64?
- a_t48 3y agoHardware emulation for an N64 with HDMI out
- asveikau 3y agoI haven't been following the scene too closely, but there's been a huge ecosystem of fpga clones of 90s video game consoles in the last few years. The "mister" project is one such endeavor. The market for the original hardware, old cartridges and mods for things like better video signals or Bluetooth controllers is also popping.
- assimpleaspossi 3y agoThat's the million dollar question for so many hardware and software projects where the information is linked to some page that says nothing about what it is or what it does including the github link to its creator here.
- pjmlp 3y agoIt looks incredible, great amount of work invested into it.
- christoph 3y agoLooks like great work! I feel it’s worth mentioning that there is also an N64 core for MisterFPGA now - https://misterfpga.org/viewtopic.php?t=6947 https://misterfpga.org/viewtopic.php?t=6947
- exabrial 3y ago> Cache memory with duel clocks :) Just a nitpick, don't mind me. This is a neat project Dual = There are two clocks Dueling = The clocks are swinging swords at each other
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- fb03 3y agoeach clock has 2 swords wielded in their 'hands' ?
- reactordev 3y agoPerpetually slashing each other in turn. To keep that cache fresh? To “cut down” on cache size? To conquer cache daemons?
- djbusby 3y agoShaving time off my development estimates hoping for sunshine.
- jonhohle 3y agoA dual wielding duel?
- isoprophlex 3y agoRelated: Analogue have a N64 FPGA clone "coming in 2024" https://www.analogue.co/3d https://www.analogue.co/3d Not much info on the page, also I'm not in any way affiliated. Just think it's cool that this is getting commercialized.
- badlucklottery 3y agoRobertPeip (FPGAzumSpass, the developer of the Mister PS1 core) also an open source N64 FPGA core in development: https://github.com/RobertPeip/Mister64 https://github.com/RobertPeip/Mister64
- bluescrn 3y agoAnalogue make cool stuff, it's just a shame that their business model seems so strangely focused on enriching scalpers (extremely limited supply and numerous 'limited edition' releases even when the standard model is unobtanium - and most of them end up straight on eBay for silly prices)
- philistine 3y agoEither they're their own resellers and don't want to change, or they can't get enough FPGA cores so they turn to silliness to market their very limited inventory.
- rlabrecque 3y agoSimilarly they offer very little support, almost no communication, and yeah, just kind of weird.
- ericlewis 3y agoThey’re a really small company and lean heavily on their sibling company 8bitdo for some bits. Getting the FPGAs is the problem generally, and the same reason why it’s hard to find a mister. They usually similar chips too. The size of the company also explains the support issues.
- pcchristie 3y agoI've bought everything they've made, but they don't have great customer support. The only shipping they do is extremely expensive express shipping internationally. They had some adapters that were previously OOS come available, but the Pocket system was OOS. I emailed them, asking them if I could buy the adapters, have them put them aside, and reserve the Pocket, and have them ship it all at once whenever the Pocket was in stock. I even offered to pay it all up front so they weren't put out. They basically (politely) told me to suck it up, and buy both, and pay ~ 100 AUD each time to ship them express, separately.
- placesalt 3y agoRelated, any recommendations on low-cost ways to start playing around with FPGAs? Boards, chips, projects?
- derefnull 3y agoeducational developer kits https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/developer/articles/technical/fpga-academic-boards.html https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/developer/articles/t... there are a few different major brands
- ooterness 3y agoDiligent makes several boards for the educational market, prices in the sub-$200 range. (And the devices are small enough they can be used with the no-cost version of the AMD/Xilinx toolchain.) https://digilent.com/shop/fpga-boards/development-boards/introductory-boards/ https://digilent.com/shop/fpga-boards/development-boards/int... For online courses, I've heard good things about Nand2Tetris but have not tried it myself. https://www.nand2tetris.org/ https://www.nand2tetris.org/
- arein2 3y agoI looked at nand2tetris a while ago briefly and I have the impression that it focuses too much on making complex circuits. The target audience for nand2tetris are people that want to understand how the CPU works, and nand2tetris focuses too much on how to make logic using nand gates leaving other areas uncovered. I recommend the Ben Eater youtube chamnel, he has a series of videos about building an 8bit computer, that in my opinion is much more informative for a curious person.
- drivers99 3y agoI’ve gone through the nand2tetris course (parts 1 and 2) and I’ve also physically built Ben Eater’s projects. nand2tetris covers many levels of abstraction; it is both lower and (much) higher level than Ben Eater’s projects, which is one of its main points: you can create something in one level of abstraction and then build on it in the next level of abstraction. It only starts with logic gates (a single one to start with, “nand” obviously) and goes through the other logic gates that can be built from nand gates, then various digital logic built on that, registers and other synchronous logic, ALU, full CPU, full computer. Hardware is only the first half of the course. Then you build a stack machine, assembler, objected oriented language compiler, a software library I think, and finally a game you write in that (doesn’t have to be Tetris). So the whole second half is layer on layer of software abstractions starting from the hardware. I would say it handwaves over video output and keyboard input because it’s not what they’re teaching about, while Ben Eater shows how to physically build such things. Ben’s is purely hardware up through 2 main registers, an alu with only add and subtract, an 8 bit digital readout, no real input (besides updating RAM to input the code & data using switches), 16 bytes of RAM (4-bit address), and control unit to implement machine language with a few opcodes. His 6502 project starts with a CPU which is already far beyond where the 8-bit computer ends and builds a computer architecture around it (RAM, ROM, I/O, and peripherals: video, keyboard, serial). nand2tetris is normally simulated and Ben’s covers physically building things which has its own set of lessons/skills to learn. Coincidentally I ran across a crossover of the two projects today: a video of someone who built a breadboard version of the nand2tetris 16-bit cpu (called Hack)! https://youtu.be/L-azf9ecvfo https://youtu.be/L-azf9ecvfo
- alephnerd 3y agoTake that Sony! (The PS2 is also implemented on a FPGA. Idk whether the PS1 is or isn't though)
- monocasa 3y agoThe PS2 is not implemented on an FPGA. There might have been some internal dev hardware with some FPGAs, but nothing released.
- semiquaver 3y ago(Obligatory “is this website hosted on the N64?” joke)
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- trollied 3y agoHN has hugged it too hard. archive mirror link: https://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.ultrafp64.com https://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.ultrafp64.com
- rdlw 3y agoIf anyone is interested in new projects for N64 hardware, Kaze Emanuar has an amazing series about optimizing Super Mario 64 to run incredibly complex romhacks on original hardware. Interestingly, SM64 is usually throttled by memory speed. This means that using 'inline' is detrimental to performance, since making the program larger can cause another read from memory. Here's an overview video, he has many more specific videos about specific topics: https://youtu.be/t_rzYnXEQlE?si=6yNnsTxOr7M5v4ub https://youtu.be/t_rzYnXEQlE?si=6yNnsTxOr7M5v4ub
- kibwen 3y ago> new projects for N64 hardware There's an entire community doing N64 homebrew: https://n64brew.dev/wiki/Main_Page https://n64brew.dev/wiki/Main_Page , including a faction who are working on a Rust SDK (basic demo: https://youtu.be/XmlmvRrRFqs https://youtu.be/XmlmvRrRFqs).
- rdlw 3y agoI know a lot less about the homebrew community but it's also very cool! Do you know of a big project that would be an interesting entry point for getting into the community?
- kibwen 3y agoAFAIK most homebrew games tend to be the product of lone developers, rather than large collaborative efforts. I could be wrong though; there's a Discord linked on the wiki that you could ask in for ideas.
- phoboslab 3y agoRomhacks are typically modifying the compiled binary ROM image. Kaze' work is based on the painstakingly disassembled code from the n64decomp project[1]. He's working in C, modifying the game and compiling it again for the original hardware. Not sure I'd call that a "romhack". Great videos though! [1] https://github.com/n64decomp/sm64 https://github.com/n64decomp/sm64
- make3 3y agomirror: https://archive.ph/7KXgz https://archive.ph/7KXgz
- thehias 3y agoThe project UltraFP64 will be released as Analogue 3D only.
- sbarre 3y agoSource?
- ChuckMcM 3y agoThat is quite an achievement! It extends the range of fully realizable game consoles that are realizable in inexpensive FPGAs. At one time I saw a web article on FPGA versions of arcade game architectures (looking it up it seems that became the 'mistercade' project for JAMMA compliant cabinets). I'm always amazed at the creativity here, both in the original designer's part and in recreator's part of reproducing that same vision.
- crtified 3y agoFor the thousands of people in the MiSTer FPGA ecosystem, some of whom bought the hardware [0] as long ago as 2020, for well under $200 (it's more, now [1]), a featureful FPGA N64 core - developed by Robert Peip, who is paid, most would say very deservedly, thousands per month via P_treon) - will be coming soon as a free update, once the already very advanced work is complete. The betas are playable now, and there are near daily updates. [0] https://mister-devel.github.io/MkDocs_MiSTer/setup/requirements/ https://mister-devel.github.io/MkDocs_MiSTer/setup/requireme... [1] https://www.terasic.com.tw/cgi-bin/page/archive.pl?Language=English&CategoryNo=167&No=1046 https://www.terasic.com.tw/cgi-bin/page/archive.pl?Language=...
- nix0n 3y agoWhy did you censor "P_treon"? Or are "a" and "_" close on your keyboard?
- crtified 3y agoNo great reason, other than a vague unease at the tacit promotion (to people, and/or to future spiders/bots) involved in citing the name of a specific corporate - it being a largely irrelevant side element of the greater point I was here to make.
- LeoPanthera 3y agoI never got a MiSTer but I was always vaguely interested. Has the hardware been updated in all that time? Or is an updated one likely in the future?
- MegaDeKay 3y agoIt doesn't mention the FPGA platform used for this so I did a bit of digging. Looks like Digilent's "Nexys Video Artix-7 FPGA: Trainer Board for Multimedia Applications". This goes for $550 and of course doesn't count all of the PMOD's and other hardware hanging off the board. https://digilent.com/shop/nexys-video-artix-7-fpga-trainer-board-for-multimedia-applications/ https://digilent.com/shop/nexys-video-artix-7-fpga-trainer-b...
- edude03 3y agoTo be fair it's not clear (and unlikely) that that's the lowest end fpga this could run on. It's more likely that's what they had available
- amelius 3y agoThat's some plumbing even Mario and Luigi would be impressed by.
- tombert 3y agoI wonder if we're going to hit a wall on cycle-accurate software emulation; Higan is pretty cool, but even that requires a fairly beefy CPU considering it's emulating something reasonably primitive like the SNES. I know nothing about electronics, but the recent uptick in FPGA game systems like the MiSTer getting Playstation and N64 support, I am hoping that FPGAs can pick up where Higan left off; it would be great to get cycle-accurate emulation of the Xbox 360 some day since I never fixed mine after getting a red ring.
- philistine 3y agoI do not believe it is possible to run an Xbox 360 game without copyrighted code from Microsoft. So we might see it from projects just like this one, but I wouldn't hold my breath for Analogue to ever release anything past the PS2.
- tombert 3y agoConceivably we could get some kind of Wine/ReactOS thing couldn't we? Something that recreates the APIs well enough to play most games? That said, I acknowledge that that would take a lot more work, and it might not be economically worth it for Analogue or the MiSTer people to bother with it.
- phire 3y agoCycle-accurate software emulation is a topic that I've been looking into on and off for years. The Higan concurrency architecture hit a wall because it needs to sync between modules every single cycle, what gets very expensive as the clock rates go up. But you don't need to sync every single cycle, especially once CPUs started getting caches, so we just need a new concurrency architecture that's flexible enough to only sync when needed. I've been experimenting with an actor based concurrency model which seems to be fast enough for a cycle-accurate N64 emulator (though I won't know until I have the RSP and RDP implemented). I'm hoping it might even be fast enough for 6th gen consoles, perhaps when combined with other techniques like a cycle-accurate jit and fine-grained memory locks. I'll have to post an article if it ever gets to a workable state. ------ As for cycle-accurate FPGA emulators, I don't think they are cost-effective even for something like the N64, yet alone a 360. You can get 90% of the way there with a cycle accurate CPU, shared bus, cycle accurate RSP/RDP. But you have to map the RDRAM onto DDR3 memory and the timings don't really line up. The linked UltraFP64 project doesn't even try for accurate RAM timings and will preform better than a real N64. I suspect the WIP n64 core for MiSTer is much the same. You could build a custom board with memory that actually matches the timings, but that gets expensive.
- snvzz 3y agoI see a donation button, but not a link to the source code. Not sure this thing is open source hardware, or available to anyone in any form, or even real.
- knigge111 3y agoWow, just wow! For me, these guys are god's!
- phendrenad2 3y agoIs there any wrapper for mister cores that allows them to work on a PCIe FPGA card? It would be cool to have an N64 inside my PC.