MiSTer: FPGA Amiga + loads more

[DrFruit]

Tempted on one of these but what advantage would it have over a decent accelerator on a real miggy?

Cheers,

[R4M]

The most obvious advantange is the price. The MiSTer with a 32MB RAM Module is about as much as an accelerator alone. Plus you can learn HDL and implement your favorite hardware features without a soldering iron...

[MickGyver]

Originally Posted by DrFruit

Tempted on one of these but what advantage would it have over a decent accelerator on a real miggy?

Cheers,

As a bonus you will be able to run many other great cores on the side, like C64, TurboGrafx, SNES, Mega Drive, Neo Geo etc. These are all the cores available currently (most cores are in a good state):

Computer cores

• Acorn Archimedes
• Altair 8800
• Amiga
• Amstrad CPC 6128
• ao486
• Apogee
• Apple I
• Apple II+
• Apple Macintosh Plus
• Aquarius
• Atari 800XL
• BBC Micro B,Master
• BK0011M
• Commodore 16, Plus/4
• Commodore 64, Ultimax
• Commodore PET
• Commodore VIC-20
• DEC PDP-1
• ht1080z / TRS-80 Model 1 clone
• Jupiter Ace
• MSX
• MultiComp
• Orao
• SAM Coupe
• Sharp MZ Series
• Sinclair QL
• Specialist/MX
• TI-99/4A
• TSConf
• Vector 06C
• X68000
• ZX Spectrum
• ZX81

Console cores

• Astrocade
• Atari 2600
• Atari 5200
• ColecoVision, SG-1000
• Gameboy, Gameboy Color
• Genesis/Megadrive
• Master System, GameGear
• NeoGeo
• NES
• Odyssey2
• SNES
• TurboGrafx 16 / PC Engine
• Vectrex

Arcade cores

• 1942
• 1943
• Alibaba and 40 Thieves
• Azurian
• Amidar
• Arkanoid
• Asteroids
• Asteroids Deluxe
• Bagman
• Berzerk
• Birdiy
• Black Hole
• Bomb Jack
• Botanic
• Bubbles
• Burger Time
• Burning Rubber
• Canyon Bomber
• Catacomb
• Centipede
• Colony 7
• Computer Space
• Cosmic Avenger
• Crazy Climber
• Crazy Kong
• Crush Roller
• Defender
• Dig Dug
• Dominos
• Donkey Kong
• Dorodon
• Dream Shopper
• Eeekk!
• Eggor
• Eyes
• Frenzy
• Frogger
• Galaga
• Galaxian
• Ghosts'n Goblins
• Gorkans
• Jin
• Joust
• Lady Bug
• Lizard Wizard
• Lunar Lander
• Mayday
• Moon Cresta
• Moon Patrol
• Mr.Do's Nightmare
• Mr.TNT
• Ms.Pacman
• Omega
• Orbitron
• Pacman
• Pacman Club
• Pacman Plus
• Pacmanic Miner
• Pengo
• Phoenix
• Pickin
• Pisces
• Pleiads
• Pong
• Ponpoko
• Pooyan
• River Patrol
• RallyX
• Robotron
• Scramble
• Silver Land
• Sinistar
• Snap Jack
• Splat
• Sprint One
• Sprint Two
• Squash
• Stargate
• Super Breakout
• Super Glob
• The End
• Time Pilot
• Traverse USA
• Uniwar S
• Van-Van Car
• Victory
• War of the Bugs
• Woodpecker
• Xevious
• ZigZag

[bbond007]

Originally Posted by DrFruit

Tempted on one of these but what advantage would it have over a decent accelerator on a real miggy?

Cheers,

First, its new hardware, so it's not going to need recap or other maintenance any time soon.

It is also more configurable, for example, might have one configuration profile like a stock OCS A500 or A1000 with Kickstart 1.3, another like an A600 with OCS and Kickstart 2.1, and another that is more like an accelerated A1200 with AGA and Kickstart 3.1, etc...

I expect one day MiSTer Minimig will be updated to support RTG graphics and other options.

I have been working on a program called MidiLink that runs on the ARM/HPS side that (among other things) allows you to configure the serial port work as a TCP/IP modem which is another device you would need to purchase to do the same thing on a real Amiga. That is available on the Amiga, C=64, 486, Atari ST and CoCo cores. This is the C=64 core dialing Quantum Link Reloaded --> http://y2u.be/4Jz5h6qyLhk

Finally, you can check out some of the other computer, console and arcade cores you might never have exposure to otherwise. You might even be interested in running ScummVM --> http://y2u.be/e6anA4qPgfI

Hope that helps...

[DrFruit]

Wow, ok many advantages! I’m going to do some reading then think about getting one. Is their any other versions in the pipeline or is any time the right time to buy one?

[MickGyver]

Originally Posted by DrFruit

Wow, ok many advantages! I’m going to do some reading then think about getting one. Is their any other versions in the pipeline or is any time the right time to buy one?

Any time is the right time while the Terasic DE10-Nano boards are available. They are subsidized by Intel for educational purposes, the FPGA chip (more powerful than that in Vampire V4) in it costs more than the whole board normally. Currently no other version is in the pipeline. A new generation of the development boards will probably come in the (near) future though, time will tell.

[SteveMoody]

I picked up one of the DE10-Nano boards recently and ordered a RAM board off ebay. All i need now is some free time to get it all set up.

[rsn8887]

I just set up my Mister and I love it! I am using it with a cheap freesync HDMI monitor (LG 22MK430H-B 21.5-Inch Full HD Monitor with AMD FreeSync, Black). That way, scrolling at 50 Hz or any frequency is buttersmooth. The monitor also has a headphone out so I can grab the audio from there, since the Mister audio is output over HDMI. I use a USB hub for input devices. I have a DB9 to USB joystick adapter for my Competition Pro and a Logitech USB keyboard and mouse combo. Works great, apart from some issues with the mouse smoothness, see below!

OMG, I forgot how great it feels to play lagfree C64 and Amiga! Playing the game IO on the C64 core on Mister is like night and day compared to Vice or Retroarch. The Mister seemingly has no input lag, no video lag, no audio lag or stutters that I can tell! So far in my experience, nothing comes close to Mister in terms of minimum lag. Only WinUAE has similar lagfree performance, but only when I use the lagless beamrace mode, and even then I get the occasional audio stutter or slight audio pitch shift. Retroarch doesn't even come close to Mister, even after I configured it to reduce lag to the minimum.

Mister is now my new choice for Amiga and C64 gaming.

The video scaling via HDMI is perfect for my taste on my Mister. Just download and install the official mister filter pack from GitHub, and change "Filter: Internal" to "Filter: Bilinear-sharp" in each core's options. Don't forget to change HDMI output from 720p to 1080p. To change the HDMI output, edit mister.ini. In mister.ini, change "video_mode=0" to "video_mode=8" to switch to 1080p. Then, also change "vsync_adjust=0" to "vsync_adjust=2" to allow your Mister to change to 50 Hz / 60 Hz as needed and present video with no lag.

The only problem I have is that my mouse pointer motion in the Workbench is not very smooth in the Amiga core. Maybe I just have to buy a new mouse.

Oh, and also, I couldn't get my Reshoot-R to run. The game hangs during loading. But that game is a bit tricky even on WinUAE. On WinUAE, I had to switch some "CIA_Overlay" option to get it to work.

[MickGyver]

Originally Posted by rsn8887

I just set up my Mister and I love it! I am using it with a cheap freesync HDMI monitor (LG 22MK430H-B 21.5-Inch Full HD Monitor with AMD FreeSync, Black). That way, scrolling at 50 Hz or any frequency is buttersmooth. The monitor also has a headphone out so I can grab the audio from there, since the Mister audio is output over HDMI. I use a USB hub for input devices. I have a DB9 to USB joystick adapter for my Competition Pro and a Logitech USB keyboard and mouse combo. Works great, apart from some issues with the mouse smoothness, see below!

OMG, I forgot how great it feels to play lagfree C64 and Amiga! Playing the game IO on the C64 core on Mister is like night and day compared to Vice or Retroarch. The Mister seemingly has no input lag, no video lag, no audio lag or stutters that I can tell! So far in my experience, nothing comes close to Mister in terms of minimum lag. Only WinUAE has similar lagfree performance, but only when I use the lagless beamrace mode, and even then I get the occasional audio stutter or slight audio pitch shift. Retroarch doesn't even come close to Mister, even after I configured it to reduce lag to the minimum.

Mister is now my new choice for Amiga and C64 gaming.

The video scaling via HDMI is perfect for my taste on my Mister. Just download and install the official mister filter pack from GitHub, and change "Filter: Internal" to "Filter: Bilinear-sharp" in each core's options. Don't forget to change HDMI output from 720p to 1080p. To change the HDMI output, edit mister.ini. In mister.ini, change "video_mode=0" to "video_mode=8" to switch to 1080p. Then, also change "vsync_adjust=0" to "vsync_adjust=2" to allow your Mister to change to 50 Hz / 60 Hz as needed and present video with no lag.

The only problem I have is that my mouse pointer motion in the Workbench is not very smooth in the Amiga core. Maybe I just have to buy a new mouse.

Oh, and also, I couldn't get my Reshoot-R to run. The game hangs during loading. But that game is a bit tricky even on WinUAE. On WinUAE, I had to switch some "CIA_Overlay" option to get it to work.

There has been some fixes to the Amiga core since your post. Mouse movement is now smooth and several games of the few games that used to have problems are now working. Up to 384MB of fast RAM is supported.

There is now also a USB polling rate update (still beta) that results in 1ms polling rate for most controllers, this reduces the input lag even more, even if input lag was low also before this update. https://github.com/eniva/MisSTer_Gui...s-Polling-Rate

I can't recommend the MiSTer enough, it's fantastic!

[rufusonfire]

Originally Posted by bbond007

You can move files (without physically removing the SD card) in several ways:

Mounting HDFs on the loopback fileSys and just FTP files directly in. Here are some example scripts I use to do this from the main menu:

I use this for large files such as 100MB+ HAM videos.

The important thing to remember is to umount before mounting (on Minimig) or resetting otherwise you will likely corrupt your HDF. I recommend using a dedicated transfer drive (maybe 1GB or so) and not something like "Work:"

[Amiga_Mount_Trans.sh]

#!/bin/sh
TRANS_DIR="/mnt/trans"
TRANS_ADF="/media/fat/AMIGA/TRANS.HDF"
if [ -d "$TRANS_DIR" ]; then
  echo "Found TRANS directory"
else
  echo "Creating TRANS directory"
  mkdir $TRANS_DIR
fi
echo "Please Wait..."
mount -o loop -t affs $TRANS_ADF $TRANS_DIR
echo "TRANS MOUNTED:"
echo $TRANS_DIR
echo "Done..."

[Amiga_Umount_Trans.sh]

#!/bin/sh
TRANS_DIR="/mnt/trans"
echo "Please Wait..."
echo "DO NOT cancel or reboot!"
umount $TRANS_DIR
echo "TRANS UNMOUNTED:"
echo $TRANS_DIR
echo "Done..."

Hey so I'm trying to make this work on my MiSTer.

I've got my Amiga hard drive all set up and working but need to transfer files to it (I'd prefer downloading from Aminet on my PC and just FTP-ing to the MiSTer). I've create the Mount and Unmount scripts and have sent them to my MiSTer. When I try to run the mount script I get this error:

mkdir: cannot create directory /mnt/trans : Read-only file system

followed by this message:

mount: mount point /mnt/trans does not exist

And as expected, the mount point is not created. Has something changed in MiSTer since you wrote this script? Sorry, I'm not well versed in Bash scripting so any help would be awesome...thanks!

[R4M]

Just try
mkdir /mnt/trans

[Bren McGuire]

I was coming to ask about this. Is MiSTer teh best platform we can get for Amiga FPGA replacement?
I know of few:
ArcadeFPGA2 (has the Amiga core ever been released and hoow does it work?)
Minimig (no longer made, right?)
MiSTer (well covered here)
FleaFPGA Ohm (wildly unsupported from a developer standpoint, the Minimig core available for it is really old)

I think FPGA is the future but Vampire has missed the purpose, I would like to know other options.

[rufusonfire]

Originally Posted by R4M

Just try
mkdir /mnt/trans

No dice, I get the exact same error (I changed line 8 of my mount script to what you suggested)

Is there a way to directly control the device or am I only able to do that by running scripts? If I could somehow create that directory via ssh or something then I can remove the lines in that script and just mount/unmount from the script when I want to transfer files...

[rufusonfire]

Dang, answered my own question...
I was able to run the "ssh_on" script and ssh into the MiSTer and create the directory!

However, now when I try to mount the hdf I get the error:

mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/loop1,
missing codepage or helper program, or other error

In some cases useful info is found in syslog - try dmesg | tail or so.

So when I issue that command (dmesg | tail) there is one useful line of information:

affs: No valid root block on device loop1

[MickGyver]

Originally Posted by Bren McGuire

I was coming to ask about this. Is MiSTer teh best platform we can get for Amiga FPGA replacement?
I know of few:
ArcadeFPGA2 (has the Amiga core ever been released and hoow does it work?)
Minimig (no longer made, right?)
MiSTer (well covered here)
FleaFPGA Ohm (wildly unsupported from a developer standpoint, the Minimig core available for it is really old)

I think FPGA is the future but Vampire has missed the purpose, I would like to know other options.

I cannot but recommend the MiSTer, it's fantastic. It uses and updated Minimig core that is actively worked on. Besides, it also supports MANY more great cores, including the recently added NeoGeo, and Mega CD. You can connect the MiSTer to a modern monitor/TV using HDMI or to a CRT monitor/TC if you prefer. Most USB controllers, keyboards and mice are supported.

[R4M]

You can only mount Amiga hdfs when they are formatted as "Old File System" (not FFS, no International Mode). There seems to be no support for newer filesystems.

[R4M]

Originally Posted by Bren McGuire

I was coming to ask about this. Is MiSTer teh best platform we can get for Amiga FPGA replacement?

It depends on your perspective. If you want an open source system, where you are free to hack & learn, MIST and MiSTer are the only widely supported ones. And MiSTer has a much larger FPGA. i read that AGA-Minimig with the TG68K softcpu uses almost all logic cells of the Cyclone III in the MIST, whereas it only occupies roughly a third of the the Cyclone V in the MiSTer.



If you don't mind closed source products, there is obviously the Vampire. Which has RTG graphics and a very fast softcpu. It will take many years for the open source community to catch up with these features.


But for most of the available software, the performance of the MiSTer will be more than sufficient.

[sirnephilim]

The MiSTer FPGA version of Minimig emulates a 68020 CPU at 113MHz. In SysTools it benchmarks to a little more than 3x faster than a 3000 and .72x as fast as a 4000 with a 68060 at 50MHz.


Hard drive transfer speeds are a bit slow. I don't know for sure if that's just my micro SD card or not but I'm only getting about 115KB/sec out of it. Other platforms perform much better though so I'm inclined to say that the IDE emulation isn't optimized very well.


Overall though it's on par with your better class of 1200 accelerator boards and cost-wise you're getting a great Amiga experience for relatively little money, not even taking the dozens of other systems you can now access into account.


I've got mine running a pretty fully stocked WHDLoad partition and haven't run into many problems once everything was configured properly.

[R4M]

IDE speed should be around 1.5 MB/s. At least that's what SysInfo tells me. You should not move your mouse too much, though.

[dreadnought]

Has anybody tried to display the Amiga core on a CRT TV?