Is MiSTer FPGA Overkill For My Needs?

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Mellified
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Re: Is MiSTer FPGA Overkill For My Needs?

Unread post by Mellified »

Fuzzball wrote: Tue May 11, 2021 7:33 pm The one thing I am starting to dislike with the Mister though, in all honesty, is some of the cores are so complicated to setup. I setup Neo Geo in Retroarch on my laptop in seconds. Trying to get that core working on the Mister is just so much hassle in comparison.
It definitely depends what you start with. There's a package out there that makes it really simple to setup every core I've tried.
MisterGlock
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Re: Is MiSTer FPGA Overkill For My Needs?

Unread post by MisterGlock »

I’m new to the whole scene but compared to RPI I’m loving every aspect of it. Perhaps overkill but an absolute blast to build and mess around with if you like tinkering.
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pgimeno
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Re: Is MiSTer FPGA Overkill For My Needs?

Unread post by pgimeno »

Chris23235 wrote: Sun May 02, 2021 1:02 pm There are some baremetal emulators for the Pi. They are in various stages of completion. I haven't tried them myself, but ZX Baremetal and BMC64 seem to be in a quite satisfying state:

https://accentual.com/bmc64/
http://zxmini.speccy.org/en/index.html
I've tried ZXBaremulator today in a Pi 3B+, and I was very unpleasantly surprised. The latency was comparable to that of MAME, of which I've already complained here.

José Luis happens to be a friend of mine; I'll ask him for an explanation. Meanwhile, I'll stick to MiSTer.
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darksakul
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Re: Is MiSTer FPGA Overkill For My Needs?

Unread post by darksakul »

caffeinekid wrote: Sat May 01, 2021 9:01 pm Are there any bare metal images for pi emulation? When I used retropie it used to do my head in how long it took linux and the front end to load, even on a fast SD card.
Only one I know of turns the Pi into a Roland MT-32.
And yes, I will consider that emulation despite you needing a custom hat for the Pi.

Nothing as such for video games.
It is my great regret that we live in an age that is proud of machines that think and suspicious of people who try to.
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Re: Is MiSTer FPGA Overkill For My Needs?

Unread post by pokevania »

keilmillerjr wrote: Sat May 01, 2021 12:04 pm Pi4 has composite built in. This is a huge benefit over the mister. It's also full of crap retro distros that will riddle your mind with configuring. Less money.
Pi4 is awesome for all the other stuff it can do, but the input lag is insane compared to Mister. It has runahead and some other aids for lag though. Also, you won't be connecting your Pies to a CRT TV without additional equipment, and that's where Mister shines. Pi4 will require Pi2SCRT, RetroTink, SyncMaster, or some other such high-quality analog output gear + specific configurations. Composite and S-Video can't even reproduce the image clearly.

https://www.reddit.com/r/RetroPie/comme ... scanlines/. I tried using the three-ring composite out, but all you get is a blurry, noisy, buzzing picture that does not "snap" to the tube the way original hardware did.

I'm pretty happy with pi4, but the scanline filters don't look as good as Mister's on an HDTV. Of course, Mister on a component CRT is visually perfect. Pi4 will play a much larger selection of games, however. I'd start with a Pi and then decide if you need a Mister.

The pi composite is functionally worthless in my experience.
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Re: Is MiSTer FPGA Overkill For My Needs?

Unread post by keilmillerjr »

pokevania wrote: Tue Aug 31, 2021 4:23 pm
keilmillerjr wrote: Sat May 01, 2021 12:04 pm Pi4 has composite built in. This is a huge benefit over the mister. It's also full of crap retro distros that will riddle your mind with configuring. Less money.
Pi4 is awesome for all the other stuff it can do, but the input lag is insane compared to Mister. It has runahead and some other aids for lag though. Also, you won't be connecting your Pies to a CRT TV without additional equipment, and that's where Mister shines. Pi4 will require Pi2SCRT, RetroTink, SyncMaster, or some other such high-quality analog output gear + specific configurations. Composite and S-Video can't even reproduce the image clearly. https://www.reddit.com/r/RetroPie/comme ... scanlines/. I tried using the three-ring composite out, but all you get is a blurry, noisy, buzzing picture that does not "snap" to the tube the way original hardware did.

I'm pretty happy with pi4, but the scanline filters don't look as good as Mister's on an HDTV. Of course, Mister on a component CRT is visually perfect. Pi4 will play a much larger selection of games, however. I'd start with a Pi and then decide if you need a Mister.

The pi composite is functionally worthless in my experience.
False. The Pi4 requires a cheap 3.5mm to rca av cable that many people already have at home or can get at walmart. It works fine. Try a different cable.
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Re: Is MiSTer FPGA Overkill For My Needs?

Unread post by cathrynmataga »

I find myself going to Mister for anything with a keyboard. Maybe there's an easy way to setup this, but for me, I find it finicky turning off the special keys for the retro PCs in RetroArch. Also I find the collection of arcade games in Mister more manageable than a full out PC mame install, though I go back to proper mame now and then. For consoles, often enough I just play those in Retroarch on my Windows PC, I think SNES/Genesis emulation is pretty good everywhere these days. For TG16 CD games, I have them uncompressed on a server now that I can access from Mister, but this was some fuss to get working, and I think Retroarch was easier to setup with this. If you're into this stuff, and if the money doesn't matter to you, get Mister. If you're poor, just emulate on a PC you already own, pay the rent instead, be happy.
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Re: Is MiSTer FPGA Overkill For My Needs?

Unread post by FoxbatStargazer »

Supposedly scroll_lock is supposed to toggle the keyboard going directly to Retroarch cores... "game focus" mode or something. Poorly documented but there does seem to be a way.
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