MiSTer -- FPGA implementation

[krusty_benediction]

There is more an availability issue than a price issue I think.

Ordered one from mouser in November, the delivery date has been progressively delayed until June.
I have finally cancelled my order and bought one directly from terasic (and here it is the postal fees that hurt...).

I have not yet tested Amstrad CPC stuff (and will probably never do as I have the real machines at home).

[Gryzor]

Well, ordering from Terasic is an availability issue that affects pricing too (postage being a huge part of it...). And I can't make heads from tails regarding Intel's subsidy on it any more  Lucky to have got it a while ago...

I do have real machines here of course, but for a quick play to check out a specific title it's so much easier - MiSTer sits directly beneath my laptop monitor, hooked to its second HDMI, so...

Btw, @SerErris , the link you gave is the exact kit I got, with max mem. Nice piece of kit

[SerErris]

Yep the hardware emulation of an FPGA is like real .. without the hazzle of the old hardware ;-) ... so it comes as close as possible to the original, but obviously a real 464 keyboard cannot get emulated.

[Gryzor]

I just love my MiSTer. Cheap it may be not, but it's awesome fun, especially coupled with the MT32-Pi hat!

When I got the 'original' MiST, I had no idea about FGPAs etc. I just got it because it sounded fun, mainly for the father-of-all ST core, and since I had some downtime at the time it seemed like a good idea. I still cannot explain why I feel this feels better than using emulators on my Windows machine, I really can't. But at the time MiST felt awesome and I ended up spending way too many hours trying all the different menu releases on it.

And now, all those machies and packages like the DOS top-300... wow.

I think jotego is releasing Sly Spy today, so it will be a good day

[arkive]

Yep the hardware emulation of an FPGA is like real .. without the hazzle of the old hardware ;-) ... so it comes as close as possible to the original

That's the theory. In reality, an FPGA core is only as good as its implementation. And these are mostly not 1:1 replicas of the original chip logic, which is what many (most?) people imagine about "hardware simulation". Some are more exact, some less, and there are still bugs being found even in such super mature and scrutinized cores as eg SNES. Ao486 (the PC 486 SX) core, for example, is an emulator conversion, optimized for FPGA.

That said, it really does feel much better than emulation, but I always wonder how much of it is in our heads, and how many people would pass a blind test

I can't imagine my retro-life without it thou, it's just so super convenient, and also the best solution bar none for CRT use. But I still do keep my real machines around, since they offer a totally different "feel".

[GUNHED]

100% for sur and max I don't really know I'll measure.

Any idea about maximal speed compared to a regular CPC?

[Gryzor]

I can't imagine my retro-life without it thou, it's just so super convenient, and also the best solution bar none for CRT use. But I still do keep my real machines around, since they offer a totally different "feel".

The thing is, I went into MiST without knowing what to expect, and it still felt so much better and intuitive. I just don't know why. But when it comes to MiSTer, those scanlines and filtering are just sublime

[SerErris]

100% for sur and max I don't really know I'll measure.

Any idea about maximal speed compared to a regular CPC?

I think it is 2x

[zhulien]

Is the Mister core based on the Terasic T-Rex core?

[SerErris]

No, it is based on the DE10-Nano.
https://www.terasic.com.tw/cgi-bin/page/archive.pl?Language=English&CategoryNo=165&No=1046#contents