Lu

MiSTer FPGA News – PSX Core, FPGA to ASIC, Rodland Sound and more

Posted on by Lu

R-Type Core Developments

Core developer wickerwaka has gotten R-Type running on the MiSTer FPGA. It’s still needs a lot of work, and it is unsure what will come out of this core.

But even if this R-Type core is never released, Atrac17 and Darren__O are working on a core for the Irem M72 hardware which R-type runs on. They are concentrating on getting Dragon Breed working first, and then will work on other games for that hardware.

Jotego Updates

Jotego had to roll back an update for the CPS core that fixed a bug in Carrier Air Wing. It turns out that fix caused issues in other games so he will try to find a proper fix now.

Block Block recieved a small update with added joystick support.

RetroCastle Prototype PSX SNAC Adapter

RetroCastle has built a prototype SNAC adapter for the Playstation core. Bob from retroRGB was able to test it and briefly spoke about it. It currently has support for real memory cards, lightguns and of course, original Playstation controllers. Since it’s still a prototype, there’s still work to be done, but it does look like it’s going to be a nice fully featured device.

 

MiSTer Documentation

If you want to help contribute to MiSTer documentation, Birdybro wrote a quick guide that shows you how to make edits to the documenation GitHub. All edits are still approved by the administrators to ensure the quality.

 

Sky Robo Beta Core

Thanks to Atrac17 and Darren__O, another Nichibutsu arcade game has been released in beta form. The game is Sky Robo, also known as Big Fighter. Sky Robo is a horizontally side-scrolling shooter where you take control of a ship that can also transform in to a robot. Each ships form, determines the type of attacks you can perform.

To get this beta core, you can either install it manually or use the update all script and enable unofficial distributions.

 

FPGA to ASIC

FPGA implementations of the chips used in our retro consoles and computers can help with their preservation. One way that these FPGA implementations can accomplish that, is with the ability to create actual physical clone chips from the FPGA code.

Mathew Venn on twitter, has shown that this is possible with open-source tools. He used Jotego’s verilog implementation of the sn76489, a sound chip used on both the Sega Master System and Genesis, and used the opensource tools to come up with a design that’s ready to be sent for manufacturing. He’s not planning to produce these, this was only done for educational purposes.

Matthew aso has a course that teaches you everything you need to design your own ASIC.

 

RodLand

Sound for Pierco’s RodLand core is starting to be implemented. Jotego’s YM2131 sound chip implementation is being used and Pierco has it starting up in the core. To finish the audio, two more OKI chips still need to be hooked up.

 

PlayStation Core Update

A new official release of the PlayStation core is available that implements all the progress made since the last one. Just run your update script to receive it. Notable update are

  • A hack for PAL games to run at 60Hz without being cut off vertically.
  • The Data cache option that speeds up games was renamed to Turbo. I think that’s a more fitting name. This option activates the data cache as well as fast GTE commands.
  • Mappable pause and dualshock mode switch buttons were added
  • and much more.

Many games and were improved by this update, to get a list of games affected and all the updates and fixes, visit the MiSTer FPGA forum post or the developers GitHub.