NES core on MiST

[Newsdee]

I remembered Kevtris had some info on NES and found out a page on mappers that looks quite extensive. Does this help in any way?
http://kevtris.org/mappers/mappers.html

[sebdel]

NesDev wiki is better. It also cross-references kevtris site and the mapper.txt file you posted about earlier. I read them all and sometime they disagree with each other. That's where there is room for experimentation

edit: fun fact, Nintendo world championship actually works but you have to press Start on the controller 2 (which we support through the keyboard). I lost 2 hours on this.

[Newsdee]

I was wondering... NWC booted and seemed ok. Maybe you need to add a special key to push all buttons at once You could also try it on an emulator just to see what behavior you can expect (not that it's necessarily always accurate, but maybe it could have avoided spending time on it).

Anyway, great job on the improvements! It's great to see the game list growing!

[vebxenon]

Great job sebdel Yes, it's a good idea to put Select and Start on keyboard and let visible the reset option.

Regards,

Salva

[Newsdee]

I made a small change to palettes:
https://github.com/mist-devel/mist-bina ... f?raw=true

You can now switch between the FCEUX palette (default) and FirebrandX's Unsaturated-V6. The first is very common (used in the AVS) and warmer, better for cartoony games. The second is closer to the NTSC Composite standard (it reminds me a bit of the C64 colors). It's grittier and feels better for "serious" games, IMHO. More info here: http://www.firebrandx.com/nespalette.html

[NML32]

@Newsdee, thanks, I like the new look.

[sebdel]

For those who live on the bleeding edge, and provided you have Quartus, I pushed a first shot at Mapper16 (Bandai), enabling about half of these games: http://bootgod.dyndns.org:7777/search.php?ines=16. Japanese required.
I also added 512KB support for MMC1 (Dragon warrior 3 and 4).

[Newsdee]

I think I have a few of these with translation patches. I'll check.

The Bandai FC carts are pretty cool looking. I didn't pick them up because of the language, but I ought to try the games (I have a small FC collection).

[vebxenon]

I made a small change to palettes:
https://github.com/mist-devel/mist-bina ... f?raw=true

You can now switch between the FCEUX palette (default) and FirebrandX's Unsaturated-V6. The first is very common (used in the AVS) and warmer, better for cartoony games. The second is closer to the NTSC Composite standard (it reminds me a bit of the C64 colors). It's grittier and feels better for "serious" games, IMHO. More info here: http://www.firebrandx.com/nespalette.html

Could be PAL modes be adapted for this core? (50 HZ, colours, etc...)

[Atmosfear]

Alot of PAL Games have graphical Glitches i.e. Asterix while the US Version runs fine. Thats why i change the Roms for the new RomVault Dat from EU to US/JAP. Some Pal Games run fine but the Music plays to Fast. Another Reason to use the US Roms. As far as i remember there is no Country Flag in the Header of the NES Roms.

[sebdel]

Latest binary is available:
https://github.com/mist-devel/mist-bina ... 161011.rbf.

Fixed:

Code: Select all

Dragon Warrior III (U) [!]
Dragon Warrior IV (U) [!]

Added (Bandai mapper):

Code: Select all

Dragon Ball 3 - Gokuu Den (Japan)
Dragon Ball - Daimaou Fukkatsu (Japan)
Dragon Ball Z Gaiden - Saiya Jin Zetsumetsu Keikaku (Japan)
Dragon Ball Z II - Gekishin Freeza!! (Japan)
Dragon Ball Z III - Ressen Jinzou Ningen (Japan)
Famicom Jump - Eiyuu Retsuden (Japan)
Meimon! Daisan Yakyuubu (Japan)
Nishimura Kyoutarou Mystery - Blue Train Satsujin Jiken (Japan)
Sakigake!! Otoko Juku - Shippuu Ichi Gou Sei (Japan)

Seb

[sebdel]

That uses the MMC5 mapper which isn't fully supported.

In fact there is no hardware that will play it right now, because (like in The Legend of Link) they use bigger ROMs than what has ever been commercially available for the MMC5. Neither the Everdrive N8 or the Powerpak can run it.

In principle the MiST could make it work by allowing 1MB CHR and PRG roms, but that needs new development (its not a bug to be fixed).

The NES core actually allocates 2MB for PRG ROM and 1MB for CHR ROM. The problem with MMC5 > 1MB is that the prg bank selector is only 7 bit wide so by MMC5 spec, that should not be possible. If you find me where "they" put the extra bit, I'll give it a shot.

[Newsdee]

Actually it has a custom mapper with extra features, based on MMC5. They cite the ROM size as the biggest limitation for Everdrives, but there's some other stuff that could make it too much work for now.

More info here:
http://www.romhacking.net/hacks/2136/

[Newsdee]

Would it be difficult to support 4 players on the core?
I suppose it will need firmware changes too:
https://wiki.nesdev.com/w/index.php/Four_Score

[vebxenon]

Any news on the core development?

[sebdel]

Not really, but I still have a couple of months to work on the mist nearly full time, so in order to not get burnt out I switch tasks every now and then. Here's a list of things I work on:
- NES core: Persisted RAM. Status: I tried and it doesn't work. I'll try again eventually.
- YMSoC core: A core to experiment stuff. Contains a YM2149 and a YM2151 plugged to a Z80@4MHz with a hardware mouse cursor + a 320x240x2 bits video mode. I'll see if I can turn it into a nice soundchip tracker. I suspect an 8 bit system is not up to the task. We'll see. It's a work in progress, there's "something" in my github.
- Mattel Aquarius: Tape emulation. It's coming along. <== We are here
- TRS80: Tape emulation. Not started.

[ericgus]

Not really, but I still have a couple of months to work on the mist nearly full time, so in order to not get burnt out I switch tasks every now and then. Here's a list of things I work on:
- NES core: Persisted RAM. Status: I tried and it doesn't work. I'll try again eventually.
- YMSoC core: A core to experiment stuff. Contains a YM2149 and a YM2151 plugged to a Z80@4MHz with a hardware mouse cursor + a 320x240x2 bits video mode. I'll see if I can turn it into a nice soundchip tracker. I suspect an 8 bit system is not up to the task. We'll see. It's a work in progress, there's "something" in my github.
- Mattel Aquarius: Tape emulation. It's coming along. <== We are here
- TRS80: Tape emulation. Not started.

Thanks for your work on those things.. I would love to see some kind of tracker thingy that would be really neat..

Yea the TRS80 tape thing.. if you could pull that miracle off .. i'd be in heaven.. (or even if you did "program injection" ala c64 core .. but whatever works .. )

[vebxenon]

Thanks for your work, Sebdel!

[DrOG]

All of the above mentioned would be amazing!!

[mahen]

Hi everyone ! I have a little issue ! For the first time I'm trying the NES core with a 15 KHz screen. An old TV from my wife's teenager bedroom
I'm quite happy with the result !

However, NES games (both in PAL and NTSC mode) appear quite off-centered, and especially quite a few columns are missing on the left as you can see here : https://postimg.org/image/urw5d5h1b/ (yes pics are awful, I have an old phone

There is no such issue with the Amiga core (PAL 50 Hz here) :
- normal game : https://postimg.org/image/8m0i6r1gx/
- overscan game : https://postimg.org/image/vny1fj6o3/

Any idea ? Also, but this is O.T. so I can open a new thread, I did manage to disable the scandoubler for the menu, minimig, nes cores but no for the PCE and Atari ST ones... (this screen supports both 50 and 60 Hz modes as I could switch from the Amiga Early startup menu)
Edit : meanwhile I found the solution for the ST, I had to find a config file otherwise I couldn't get to the OSD to set the tos ; it then switched to the right mode.

[sebdel]

I think on these old monitor you have a setting to manually adjust the position and size of the image. I'm not surprised that it doesn't match the amiga core alignment by the way: all cores have slightly different clocks.

[vebxenon]

Yesterday I tested last Mojon Twins releases:

- Lala The Magical http://www.mojontwins.com/juegos_mojono ... gical-nes/
- MOJON TWINS GRAN SABIDURÍA – 31 in 1 REAL GAME! (A parody of most chinese multicarts) http://www.mojontwins.com/juegos_mojono ... -game-nes/

Both of them run perfectly on last NES core

Regards,

Salva

[mahen]

Hi all ! Are you sure alignment is supposed to differ so much in 15 KHz with the NES core ? Those machines were supposed to be used with the same kind of TVs, and the other cores are perfectly centered. Here I'm missing a part of the picture on the left (I don't mind if it's not perfectly centered but it's a bit annoying to lose a part of the picture).

Also, I didn't remember it used to look blocky on a TV screen but it's true it was a while ago

I'm using a 20 y.o. TV which has no horiz-vert alignment setting.

Cheers !

[Newsdee]

Try switching off the "hide overscan" feature. It's a simple overlay that hides part of the image, but doesn't recenter.

Some games do use the overscan well, for others its a mess so it's nice to hide it.

[mahen]

Yep, already tried, but even though, it's still missing a part of the picture on the left