How actively are you using your MiST?

[DanyPPC]

A) last time I used it there were major timing issues in the Amiga core affecting games I wanted to play, but mostly

Which games show that problem ?
I tested with success many games and seems to be standing in front of a real Amiga 500/1200.

B) With no HDMI output it honestly is just a PITA connecting it to any modern display

I hope in a MiST2 with HDMI output and other improvements

[Newsdee]

B) With no HDMI output it honestly is just a PITA connecting it to any modern display

I hope in a MiST2 with HDMI output and other improvements

You do know about MiSTer, right?

[ericgus]

B) With no HDMI output it honestly is just a PITA connecting it to any modern display

I hope in a MiST2 with HDMI output and other improvements

You do know about MiSTer, right?

Mister isnt really an official product (yet anyway) .. its still partly a DIY project unless you can get someone to sell you the required daughter boards .. otherwise you have to roll your own.. not everyone wants that. That said, it would be nice if someone produced a proper commercially available product or "kit" with all the premade parts included.

[Newsdee]

Mister isnt really an official product (yet anyway) .. its still partly a DIY project unless you can get someone to sell you the required daughter boards .. otherwise you have to roll your own.. not everyone wants that. That said, it would be nice if someone produced a proper commercially available product or "kit" with all the premade parts included.

You only really need an SDRAM board. A fully assembled machine would probably be too pricey given it's mostly custom parts right now.

[leech]

I don't yet suffer from the lack of VGA. My current Living room TV has one, and I have an old Dell hooked up to my next to my newer Dell monitors for my retro system. It has S-video, Composite, VGA and DVI. I even hooked up my Falcon and get 1600x1200 on it, which is a fabulous resolution for MiNT! Wish I could get a small system like the MiST to run that same setup with.

[ericgus]

You only really need an SDRAM board. A fully assembled machine would probably be too pricey given it's mostly custom parts right now.

As I said.. you need someone to either supply you the daughterboard or you need to roll your own..

therein lies the problem.. the ram board is a custom part .. you either have to get a person to make it for you or do it yourself..

perhaps someone should "kit up" those boards and the main board .. so there is nothing an novice end user has to do .. right now AFAIK no one is doing that.

[Sorgelig]

right now AFAIK no one is doing that.

Not correct. Some people are selling the boards: http://www.atari-forum.com/viewtopic.php?f=117&t=32121
And it seems more boards will be available soon.

MiSTer is more safe in term to follow the project and provide support. It's fully open. Custom boards have no complex or hard to find parts. So, it can be produced by anyone. Also, you always can save some money if you are willing to make it by yourself. And it's very cheap if you will do.

In case of fully custom boards you usually have to pay 2x 3x price due to very complex assembly and high margin of manufacturer. And of course you depend very much on producing quantity. For example, FPGArcade is always lack of supply and while waiting for free availability it become outdated already. Even Xilinx development environment stopped to support the FPGA used in FPGArcade. And price is 3x-4x times higher than DE10-nano which has bigger FPGA.

With current situation on the market where FPGA has only small fraction of market, the price for fully custom boards like MiST or FPGArcade will be very high without offering even small part of emulation comparing to dirt-cheap RaspberryPi.

[Newsdee]

The MiST still has a niche. It has MIDI native support which is important in the Atari ST legacy (lots of musicians used it). Also it is large enough to run most 8bit cores. A newer device was needed though, because larger cores barely fit in the FPGA (e.g. Genesis).

I found out recently the FPGA Arcade is planning a revamp (an updated board with newer FPGA), but there are not many technical details yet (see their forums). Let's not forget, though, that many MiST cores came from the Arcade developer (MikeJ), so having these projects help everybody as long as they share their code.

[ericgus]

right now AFAIK no one is doing that.

Not correct. Some people are selling the boards: http://www.atari-forum.com/viewtopic.php?f=117&t=32121

Oh thats good news..

The only concern I see with using a dev board like the DE10-nano is often companies will update or revise their dev boards from time to time (potentially altering them in incompatible ways for whats going on with MiSTer).. I dont know what Terasic's track record is but I have seen it happen and its annoying.

[Wayne123]

I bought the MiST because of the Midi ports, I am happy with it. I also have a FPGA Arcade board, it is nice because it can do RTG graphics in the Amiga core, still waiting on an Atari core though.

I plan on setting up a MiSTer because of the greater possibilities it will offer, I am still undecided on a Vampire 4 or 2nd generation FPGA Arcade board or the FPGA Arcade daughter board.

[917k]

I used quite a bit when I first bought it, now it usually sits on the shelf and sees seldom use these days. I like the concept of the whole thing but the cores are really a hit and miss affair. Although I am certainly grateful to the people who develop cores, I do think some people also need to realize not everybody who owns a MiST or participates in these forums is a hardware engineer, or even have a basic understanding of hardware, circuit designs, electronic theory, etc. Most of us are probably just end users who want to play some old games or relive some exciting part of our childhood.

[Newsdee]

I have used the MiST in a few parties, although we always gravitated into 2 player games on the NES. It would be nice if we could have four players but that needs quite a bit of work, both on the core and firmware. Let's hope that with new projects there will be enhancements to cores that could be ported back on this board.

[SchneiderCPC664]

Yes, 4 players for Dynablaster (Amiga) and Bomberman(NES) sounds great!

[DrOG]

Yes, 4 players for Dynablaster (Amiga) and Bomberman(NES) sound great!

As I remember, Amiga (minimig) core already supports 4-joystick mode!

[desUBIKado]

Need some Jupiter ACE explanations(and Test). If you can help, please contact me via PN.

I have tried Jupiter Ace core with audio tape loading from the UART RX port

I have used this turtle.tzx archive:

turtle.zip

To load it on Jupiter Ace core: load turtle demo1

On MiST this core always draw a incorrect column at left area of the screen. For example:

MiST-JA.JPG

However, the image is correct with Jupiter ACE core on ZX-Uno board.

ZX-Uno-JA.JPG

A video of this demo in action: https://youtu.be/u0eJ7IzYjfA?t=209

[Lroby74]

Ehm , i can't read option "i have many of them (between Mist and Mistica) and i love them all

[vebxenon]

I have a MiST only desktop and it's my main computer.

[jotego]

I use it everyday. Normally for developing and sometimes as an user. I'm very happy about the Atari ST and Amstrad CPC cores as an user.

[seastalker]

My Mist has a regular home on my desktop with a nice Nokia VGA monitor. Even when I eventually get a Mister Setup my Mist won't get 'older brother' neglect.

[lips2k15]

I use my MIST almost daily but not for what I originally intended!!! it was meant as an Amiga replacement but the Minimig core has just stagnated so I still use my original amiga until somebody adds faster cpu and RTG to it! in the meantime my mist has become my daily driver spectrum, Amstrad, C64, C16 and BEEB so its all good!!! just wish the amiga core would be developed its so dissapointing that its just kinda forgotten about.

[Specraider]

Hi there , i am a newbie at mist fpga.
I just bought it and read that vga output is a real pain in the #!!#.
I would like to ask a question but i don't know where to put it.
I really love spectrum emulation but my mist only boots with the menu core.rbf in the root remamed to core.rbf
Then i can load the spectrum core.
If i use spectrum core renamed to core.rbf together with spectrum.rom in root the mist does not boot or give No screen output.
Is it likely to be my tv with vga input that is giving me trouble .? Because i do not know how to boot esxdos .
As i read in this forum it should be pretty easy to load .Z80 and so on.
Is there Someone who can give me some advice how to continue ..it would be very much appreciated .Many Thanks

[slingshot]

Hi there , i am a newbie at mist fpga.
I just bought it and read that vga output is a real pain in the #!!#.
I would like to ask a question but i don't know where to put it.
I really love spectrum emulation but my mist only boots with the menu core.rbf in the root remamed to core.rbf
Then i can load the spectrum core.
If i use spectrum core renamed to core.rbf together with spectrum.rom in root the mist does not boot or give No screen output.
Is it likely to be my tv with vga input that is giving me trouble .? Because i do not know how to boot esxdos .
As i read in this forum it should be pretty easy to load .Z80 and so on.
Is there Someone who can give me some advice how to continue ..it would be very much appreciated .Many Thanks

I'm alway using the menu core fore core.rbf, why don't you want to select your core? Or bought MiST only for Spectrum? Well, it would be an expensive ZX then
Where did you read it supports Z80 files?

This is the best ZX core so far:
https://github.com/sorgelig/ZX_Spectrum-128K_MIST

This one is 48k and TV only, but supports SNA loading:
http://www.joco.homeserver.hu/fpga/mist_zx48_en.html

[Specraider]

Slingshot thanks for replying.
Yes I do use other cores otherwise I would be a very expensive spectrum.
I read on github that latest spectrum core has divmmc/esxdos support which should load z80 snapshots easily,but I do not know how to boot esxdos.
According to all readme files on GitHub concerning cores you can load single core.rbf in root of sd card and boot from that.
When I do this ( my sdcard is FAt 2 gb) I see nothing on led tv with vga.
I used ancient philips cm8833 rgb Scart crt monitor and again no screen output.i used three other tv screens and all of them gave output with menu core.rbf and not single cor.rbf in root of sd card.
That is still puzzling to me.i only have mist a few days so I Will need time to learn how everything works.

[slingshot]

Slingshot thanks for replying.
Yes I do use other cores otherwise I would be a very expensive spectrum.
I read on github that latest spectrum core has divmmc/esxdos support which should load z80 snapshots easily,but I do not know how to boot esxdos.

That "latest" core is actually an old and unmaintained one. Maybe it has timing violations, which prevents booting in some circumstances. Use the ones I linked, and then you probably won't miss ESXDOS, too.

[desUBIKado]

Slingshot thanks for replying.
Yes I do use other cores otherwise I would be a very expensive spectrum.
I read on github that latest spectrum core has divmmc/esxdos support which should load z80 snapshots easily,but I do not know how to boot esxdos.
According to all readme files on GitHub concerning cores you can load single core.rbf in root of sd card and boot from that.
When I do this ( my sdcard is FAt 2 gb) I see nothing on led tv with vga.
I used ancient philips cm8833 rgb Scart crt monitor and again no screen output.i used three other tv screens and all of them gave output with menu core.rbf and not single cor.rbf in root of sd card.
That is still puzzling to me.i only have mist a few days so I Will need time to learn how everything works.

If you want to work with the Spectrum core with esxDOS support read this (in Spanish): Cacharreos místicos. Parte IV: Sintetizando el core de Spectrum con soporte esxDOS para crear el core Speccy