MiSTer FPGA Forum

Posted: **Thu Jun 11, 2020 6:01 am**

Will it only work with a second SD card in the I/O board, or will it also work with an USB HDD or a card that is connected via a USB hub?

Posted: **Thu Jun 11, 2020 6:20 am**

benitoss wrote: ↑Thu Jun 11, 2020 4:09 am Here You have the two screens of configuration

photo_2020-06-10_22-54-09.jpg

photo_2020-06-10_22-54-19.jpg

Everything is working now ( VGA (15 Khz and 31 Khz), HDMI, Keyboard, joysticks, sound , and the second SD or VHD file) unless the 2 MB of memory in SDRAM.
All tests done in BRAM (maximum 400 Kb available) are good but the system has not enough memory to start the menu system.
If I solve the SDRAM memory issue the core is gonna work perfectly.

Later I can add the RTC, the UART WIFI and simulate the PI system with a UART and I2S connection (very similar that the emulation of the Munt is doing in the ao486 core, in fact we can use similar program that the Pi uses)

Regards

Really great work @benitoss...can't wait to compare your core to my actual SpecNext.

Posted: **Thu Jun 11, 2020 7:12 am**

To accelerate the implementation of the ZX Next core I have published in my GitHub the actual core.
https://github.com/benitoss/ZXNext_Mister

The core needs to use the second SD or the VHD image that you can get here : https://github.com/benitoss/ZXNext_Mist ... xt_vhd.zip

Actually it only uses 400 Kb of BRAM Memory, we only need implement 2 MB using SDRAM and it will Work

Regards

Posted: **Thu Jun 11, 2020 7:23 am**

@benitoss, great work mate ! , We just need to know how to correctly instantiate that SDRAM

Posted: **Thu Jun 11, 2020 10:16 am**

Would like having it.

Posted: **Thu Jun 11, 2020 3:40 pm**

One important thing to point out !!!
The original file zxnext_top_issue2.vhd (similar to our zxnext_Mister.vhd file ), in line 1011, has defined the address as

Code: Select all

sram_addr <= (zxn_ram_a_addr(20) & zxn_ram_a_addr(0) & zxn_ram_a_addr(19 downto 1)) when zxn_ram_b_req = '0' else (zxn_ram_b_addr(20) & zxn_ram_b_addr(0) & zxn_ram_b_addr(19 downto 1));

In my code, I use the address in sequential mode to facilitate to read the data in Burst Mode in the SDRAM

Code: Select all

sram_addr <=  zxn_ram_a_addr(20 downto 0)  when zxn_ram_b_req = '0' else zxn_ram_b_addr(20 downto 0);

Regards

Posted: **Thu Jun 11, 2020 3:40 pm**

benitoss wrote: ↑Wed Jun 10, 2020 2:52 pm Thanks for the answer. I appreciate it
Could you give me a core example of your first strategy ?

Regards

It's quite generic work. Many cores do this. Minimig, Atari ST, SAM Coupe, Archie, TS Conf.

Posted: **Mon Jun 29, 2020 1:37 pm**

Little question: is there any way to reset current machine from OSD? In my setup this option is greyed out and only becomes available when I change the ZX model.

Posted: **Tue Jun 30, 2020 1:33 am**

I think it might be F9 or maybe F10 on the keyboard if my memory serves me correctly as I haven't played the ZX Spectrum core on the MiSTer in a week or so. You can change your disk image while a games is running and then press one of those function keys (it might even be F11) and it will reboot.

Posted: **Tue Jun 30, 2020 8:31 am**

All the special keys are near the bottom of this page: https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/ZX-Spectrum_MISTer

It's Ctrl-F11 for a warm reset, Alt-F11 for a hard reset.

Posted: **Tue Jun 30, 2020 11:06 am**

Thanks, these are handy shortcuts, but I was talking about OSD. Reset works normally for other micros (Amstrad, C64, etc) so I was wondering why is it different for Spectrum...a bug?

Posted: **Thu Jul 02, 2020 11:18 am**

I agree it would be nice if the option to reset was available regardless of whether you changed the machine type, but I'd call that a usability design flaw, not a bug.

Posted: **Sun Aug 02, 2020 4:26 pm**

any updates?

Posted: **Tue Aug 11, 2020 8:27 am**

Give love to @benitoss !

Posted: **Tue Aug 11, 2020 7:42 pm**

If you cannot wait the "real" ZX Spectrum Next Issue 2 Kickstarter campaign launches shortly.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/sp ... xt-issue-2

I already own one, so I'm super curious to compare it to @benitoss's core.

Posted: **Tue Aug 11, 2020 8:23 pm**

Fully backed in 5 min, not bad. I had my finger hovering over the pledges, but seeing that ~300 quid price tag was a bit of a damper. Still, good luck to them and hopefully it will result in more active users and more software.

And now, yeah, it's all about @benitoss

Posted: **Tue Aug 11, 2020 8:29 pm**

The early bird sold out in the time it took my payment details to go through so I missed it. Let's see what the future brings here

Posted: **Wed Aug 12, 2020 3:21 am**

I can't face shelling out 300.00 GBP for the Next - I still need a case and a USB board for MiSTer.

Hope Benitoss has made some progress on the Next core. Hopefully no news is good news!

Posted: **Wed Aug 12, 2020 7:51 am**

I am sure many people know about the Spectrum Next project.
https://www.specnext.com/
It is an FPGA implementation with some bells and whistles attached.
Is there any chance that someone can organise a port to the MiSTer? There is already a port to the ZXDOS:
https://github.com/zxdos/zxdos-plus
So I imagine it wouldn't be out of the realms of possibility that someone with the correct skillset could port the code?

Thanks for reading.

EDIT:
I made this a new thread and didnt realise this was being discussed here. It was merged into this thread by a moderator, so excuse me if it seems I am not making sense

Posted: **Wed Aug 12, 2020 5:18 pm**

I wouldn't expect benitoss to do any further work on this by the looks of it. They seem to have made this very clear on the github page, where it says:

"This core contains the latest version of framework and will be updated when framework is updated. There will be no releases. This core is only for developers. Besides the framework, core demonstrates the basic usage. New or ported cores should use it as a template.".

I'm grateful for the work done so far, and I'd definitely be interested to see if anyone else picks it up.

Posted: **Wed Aug 12, 2020 6:05 pm**

that is just from the mister standard template
https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/Template_MiSTer

Posted: **Wed Aug 12, 2020 9:13 pm**

Well, there you go, now I feel a fool. Still, perhaps there's hope it'll get more work at some stage then. So not all bad.

Posted: **Sun Sep 13, 2020 6:32 am**

Seems like there's progress on the ZX Next core:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1fXEVpndimA

but....

"You need the dual addon SDRAM(32 MB)-SRAM(2 MB) of Manu Fehri",

quoted from Manuels post: https://www.facebook.com/groups/specnext/

Posted: **Sun Sep 13, 2020 3:12 pm**

https://gitlab.com/SpectrumNext/ZX_Spectrum_Next_FPGA

Posted: **Sat Sep 19, 2020 1:28 pm**

Here's the memory module required for Mister to run Spectrum Next:

https://manuferhi.com/p/dual-memory-for ... b-2mb-sram

I hope there can be a 128MB version eventually - swapping the ram when I want to use the Next is not appealing, or a second Mister!

Although the core is running software, there are currently a few issues to iron out on the core according to Fernando on the Spectrum Next Facebook page.

Posted: **Sat Sep 19, 2020 3:31 pm**

I'm still not really sure I'm getting any use out of my 128MB card anyway. I don't run arcade cores and certainly not NeoGeo ones because I have original hardware for that. At the time I bought my 128MB card that was the only use for it. I don't know if it still is.

Posted: **Sat Sep 19, 2020 4:29 pm**

GBA has some titles that use more then 32MB if you have the 128MB addon all though they will use the ddram if you dont so its not actually needed but is recommended i think i will wait to see what happens before rushing out for a new ram board

Posted: **Thu Dec 10, 2020 11:28 am**

I would really love. Maybe new jotego's memory driver will help this zx next development.

Posted: **Sun Feb 07, 2021 3:01 pm**

I dont know if I am going mad, but I could have sworn when I ran the update_all script today, I saw a SpectumNeXt mention in the scrolling update information.

Am I going mad?

Posted: **Sun Feb 07, 2021 6:01 pm**

RetroP wrote: ↑Sun Feb 07, 2021 3:01 pm I dont know if I am going mad, but I could have sworn when I ran the update_all script today, I saw a SpectumNeXt mention in the scrolling update information.

Am I going mad?

No, You're not mad.

Here: https://github.com/RW-FPGA-devel-Team/ZXNext_Mister

Cheers.

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