anyone making a fpga snes with hdmi?

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Kismet
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Re: anyone making a fpga snes with hdmi?

Post by Kismet »

supermario4 wrote: but the avs exists so how's it not possible to have it as a product then?
Look on eBay, people want between $90 and $160 for original model NES systems.

The AVS is $170 and only does 720p, the NT Mini is $450 and does 1080p

AVS: Xilnix Spartan 6 (about $18)
NT Mini: Altera Cyclone V (about $50)

The NT Mini also has two simultaneous outputs, HDMI and RGB/SCART/SVIDEO/Composite.

As I mentioned earlier for a FPGA-SNES, just the exact-same FGPA on the $600 development board is $426 alone. So we don't know what the minimum FPGA needed is yet. If we want a model that can just read a SD-card with games on it, that would require a much more expensive FPGA to emulate all the expansion chips. It's still too early to determine what can be built.

The people who built the AVS and the NT Mini are addressing the part of the gaming market that desires preserving the accuracy and ability to play the original cartridges. The NT Mini additionally has utility as a competitive gaming/streaming device due to having two outputs. Likewise it allows people to not have to risk losing/destroying their original NES.

I'm absolutely sure if the cost can be narrowed down, someone could kickstart a project to build a few prototypes using new-old-stock SNES parts, and an overpowered FPGA to leave some headroom for fixing bugs, and then when all the games have been tested a cheaper model could be built using the prototypes. But I don't expect a $200 FPGA-SNES.

We are getting too ahead of ourselves. It's very likely Nintendo will produce a "SNES classic" like they did with their NES classic, which are just software-emulators (like the Retron 5 or Retro Freak) and that may increase interest in playing SNES games authentically, or maybe people will just settle for the less-accurate-but-cheap product from Nintendo. A lot of interest in emulating the NES accurately is because the NES emulation on the Wii/WiiU color is actually poor on the TV (but OK on the WiiU controller.)
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supermario4
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Re: anyone making a fpga snes with hdmi?

Post by supermario4 »

tepples wrote:For one thing, there's far less logic in an NES CPU and PPU than in a Super NES S-CPU, S-PPU1, S-PPU2, S-SMP, and S-DSP. This means it can all fit in a less expensive FPGA.

For another, the NES CPU and PPU have been decapped, delayered, photographed, and simulated, allowing white-box testing of low-level details. See "Visual 2A03" and "Visual 2C02". The Super NES custom parts have not yet.
when will it be possible then?
Zonomi
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Re: anyone making a fpga snes with hdmi?

Post by Zonomi »

Kismet wrote: However I do expect that eventually (maybe 4 years out from now) some kind of "universal console platform" will be designed that would let you connect original cartridges and controllers to new "base units" that would let you emulate any 8 or 16 bit console/computer that ever existed. Single-machine FPGA units are too expensive just to emulate one machine. There are current attempts right now for computers and arcade machines, but they largely rely on old-stock parts (which is how the Analogue NT started) instead of emulating all the chips. Eventually they will all realize that a common FPGA platform would bring down the unit cost on the FPGA.
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calima
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Re: anyone making a fpga snes with hdmi?

Post by calima »

supermario4 wrote:when will it be possible then?
They day someone with those expensive tools and weeks/months of time decides to do so :P
supermario4
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Re: anyone making a fpga snes with hdmi?

Post by supermario4 »

calima wrote:
supermario4 wrote:when will it be possible then?
They day someone with those expensive tools and weeks/months of time decides to do so :P
:(
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yxkalle
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Re: anyone making a fpga snes with hdmi?

Post by yxkalle »

The Analogue NT mini can't do HDMI and analog video at the same time.
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Guspaz
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Re: anyone making a fpga snes with hdmi?

Post by Guspaz »

It also notably outputs the native NES 60.08Hz over analog outputs, so the "inaccurate because 60Hz" isn't actually true. It's only doing 60Hz over HDMI.
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