Dedicated board for Mister

[somerty]

Hi guys. I’m interesting in your project, it’s really cool. I want to popularize and help this great project.

I have an idea/suggestion and I will be glad to hear some feedback from you.

I can see the huge opportunity of Mister board but also I see that now it’s not user friendly for newbies. So my idea is to create a dedicated board for cores development without current limitation. Also I want to change GUI and make it like Retroarch because I want to make the system more user-friendly and more complete. So in my imagination I want to see next happy-path for the new user: buy the board - put games to the SD card - connect and map gamepads - play.

So dedicated board must have next parts:

• Main FPGA. It’s a 484 BGA Cyclone V E FPGA.
  Ultimate version - 5CEBA9F23C8N (300k LE, $200) for 32-bit systems
  Standart Version - 5CEBA5F23C8N (70k LE, $90) for 8 and 16 bit systems
• 2 SDRAM chips (with dedicated IO, thanks to FPGA’s large IO number) for CPU and GPU
• Auxiliary FPGA (about 50k LE) for HDMI output and filters with dedicated SDRAM memory
• STM32 controller for GUI, User input, file system to SD card and reconfiguring main FPGA
• ESP32 for Bluetooth and Wifi
• DAC and HDMI Phy
• 6 PMOD inputs for any other hardware like NES gamepads, etc.

In the end the dedicated board will have 3 memories, 1 for hdmi output and filters and 2 available to core, from 120k to 350k LE, ARM core, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, HDMI.

I think nowadays it isn't very hard to make such boards because we can order PCB from China or any other company.

Please leave your thoughts and any feedback.

P.S. Sorry for grammar and lexical mistakes.
Thanks.

[ex68k]

Hi guys. I’m interesting in your project, it’s really cool. I want to popularize and help this great project.
Ultimate version - 5CEBA9F23C8N (300k LE, $200) for 32-bit systems
Standart Version - 5CEBA5F23C8N (70k LE, $90) for 8 and 16 bit systems
Thanks.

But there is the problem already. You are buying the chip for the low-cost version already at a higher price than the MISTer complete.
I don't think, anybody would go there. And your high version will be around 500-600 USD, where the air gets thin ...