Mister Multisystem - Upgrades!
-
05-06-2023 12:35pm#1
Having got my Mister Multisystem set up and assembled a few months back (thread here), it was time to give it some much needed upgrades. Firstly though, I thought I'd document a quick & easy setup, just incase anyone is thinking of joining the Mister club and it may be of some help.
^^ The Mister Multisystem. Just for anyone unaware, it consolises the Mister setup, offering a multitude of connectivity options, all in a lovely 3D printed case. The product page is here, and naturally you'll need to supply your own DE10-Nano too. I went for the Fossil Grey case, I thought it had a very 90's/PS1 era vibe to it...but there's other colours too. Anyway, onwards...
1) SD-Card prep and instalation
^^ Format your micro-sd card in exFAT
^^ You'll then need to burn the latest mister image to your micro sd card. I went with the latest Mr. Fusion image, which seems to be the recommended starting point.
^^ Using Win32 Disk Imager, you select the image file, choose your micro-sd card, and write the image. Ignore my drive letter changing from G: to F: above, that was because I re-wrote the image in order to grab some pictures, and my drive allocation had changed in the interim.
^^ Place the micro-sd card back into your Mister, and turn it on. You'll be greeted to the automated installation screen, just leave it to do its thing, and before long...
^^ You'll be greeted to an empty Mister screen. At this stage, there are no cores or much of anything on the system. Thankfully, there are some great scripts you can run to automate their installation. But before we can avail of those scripts, we need to give the system some internet connectivity. For the initial setup, I'd strongly recommend connecting the Mister over ethernet, really only because it'll be significantly faster (there's quite a few arcade roms that'll be pulled down with these scripts.)
^^ Once connected, you can then view the IP address and other bits of information. Noting the IP address will come in very handy later on, when we're connecting over FTP etc.
^^ If Ethernet isn't an option, then you can add a simple wifi dongle to the system.
^^ Once the dongle is connected, you can enter the Scripts section in the Settings window, and run the wifi script...
^^ Choose your wifi SSID, enter the password, and save. You'll then have connectivity over wifi.
2) Scripts
In order to get the Mister up and running, and rather than getting cores/roms manually and manually transferring them over...there's some great scripts which is automate the whole process.
^^ Go into the scripts section, and acknowledge the warning.
^^ Run the script called 'Downloader', and it'll grab some cores, games, and update the base OS files automatically.
^^ Once that script has finished, you'll notice the main screen now has some choices on it. There'll be some arcade games/cores available, and the other sections such as Computer, Console, etc, have been populated (the cores will be there, though there'll be no games for them to utilise at this point.)
We can do a bit better than the basic Downloader script though, there's another script called 'update_all' which will do a LOT more for us. It isn't available on the Mister by default though, so we'll need to transfer it over manually.
^^ Use an FTP program to connect to the Mister, and navigate to the scripts folder on the micro-sd card. Transfer the update_all.sh script over from your computer to the Mister.
^^ Now back on the Mister, go back into the Scripts section, and you'll see the update_all script available. Go ahead and run it...
^^ You can see now, it's a much more advanced script that the native Updater script, and this one comes with several options worth considering.
^^ Some of the changes I made:
Main Distribution - Set to ON
JT Cores for Mister - Set to ON, this grabs all of those wonderful public Jotego cores and associated games (if you're a Patron of Jotego, you can set this to grab the Private cores too by enabling the flag and providing a credentials file.)
Names TXT - This renames the listed cores in the Consoles section, and organises them much nicer. So instead of looking for your Megadrive system/roms under G for Genesis, it'll be renamed as Sega Megadrive and listed with the other Sega systems, and so on.
Bios Database - Grabs a lot of the console system bios files, very very handy.
Arcade ROMS Database Settings - Setting it to enabled with ensure it's grabbing all of the available arcade roms/cores. Ensure HBMame is set to YES
Arcade Organiser - Organises the many Arcade cores into easy to navigate lists, very recommended.
Unofficial Cores - Set Coin OP Collection to ON
Unofficial Scripts - Have a look inside this and see if there's anything of interest to you.
^^ After making the desired changes, ensure you save changes to the INI file before running the script.
Note - If you're going to be adding external storage, proceed to the next section, 3). That's because running the script now will pull everything down onto the micro-sd card. If you're going to be running everything on the main SD card, ignore the next section and go ahead and run the update_all script.
3) Adding External Storage
One of the sweet things about the Mister Multisystem is, it has provision for an internal storage drive (which as far as the Mister software goes, is considered as external, as it's connected over USB).
^^ On the underside of the top cover, is a dedicated place for a 2.5" drive.
^^ I went with a basic 1TB SSD, and SATA to USB Header/adapter.
^^ Now, there ARE internal headers you can connect the USB drive to (they'll need a separate adapter), OR, you can run the cable out the rear of the shell. In this instance, I went with the rear of the shell option because it'll make it so much easier accessing the drive for transferring large amounts of files over. Doing so over FTP would take significantly longer. After the initial transfer is done, I'm free then to use the internal USB header if I choose.
^^ Just before I lock everything up, a quick test to see the drive is being powered and is able to be accessed etc. You'll see here the yellow ethernet cable on the Multisystem board is missing, that's because at this point the previous repair on the DE10 I done has come undone. I needed to sidetrack and repair it again, only this time I needed a more secure way of soldering the wires down. That repair can be seen here.
^^ Once done, the shell fits back on and the SSD is up and running.
^^ Mister is detecting the attached storage, and now enables the option to Switch to USB. We don't ever need this option because everything will be handled automatically, but at least I can see the OS is playing nicely with the drive here.
^^ Now, FTP back into the system, and edit the downloader.ini file. We need to tell the downloader to use the SSD instead of the micro-sd card.
^^ I downloaded the file to the PC, added in the highlighted section on the bottom of the file, saved the file, and then uploaded it back to the Mister (overwriting/deleting the original one.) This tells the downloader script (and the update_all script) to use the attached storage instead of the micro-sd card.
^^ Browse the attached storage drive via FTP, and you'll see it's empty (barring the standard folders that Windows creates when you format the drive. Which reminds me, ensure you format this drive using exFAT.) You're now ready to run the update_all script, and it'll pull everything down onto the attached storage drive.
^^ Look at all those sweet cores coming down now, that weren't initially included in the default updater script!
^^ After a short time (depending on your internet connection speed), the script will finish.
^^ Now, browsing the attached SSD drive, we can see all of the newly downloaded files are all there, and NOT on the micro-sd card.
^^ Example of the Names TXT script flag being active, it's now Megadrive, and not Genesis, and so on.
4) Transferring Games
Curating lists of roms for the many many systems here can be a painful task. Thankfully though, as a Launchbox user, there's a handy feature that lets me export my already curated rom lists out to a Windows folder, and ready for transfer to the Mister system.
There's my NES Platform in Launchbox. 210 games. These are picked from a complete NES Romset, so having manually find them all and copy them to the Mister would take some time. Thankfully, there's a better way...
^^ If I select all the games with Ctrl-A, then use the build in Exporter, I can make a copy of all of these roms in a separate folder.
^^ Then it's just a matter of unzipping them (maybe not even necessary?)...
^^ Rather than using FTP (especially so considering the bigger rom collections like for CD based systems etc), I can quickly and easily connect the SSD in the Mister to my PC...
^^ All transferred across in seconds over USB.
^^ Roughly the same process for CD based systems, with files in CHD format. Export using Launchbox...
^^ In the case of the Mega-CD core though, they'll need to be sorted into their own folders, AND, into regional folders.
^^ Windows file explorer makes sorting them out into regional quite easy, I just searched for (USA) in the search bar...
^^ Then CRTL-X to cut them from the search result box, and CTRL-V'd them into the USA folder on the Mister SSD. All that's left now is to put them into their own individual folders (not necessary for CHD files with some cores I believe, but it's definitely necessary for bin/cue files.)
^^ This handy little batch file makes light work of it. Run the file, and it'll make folders for any file within the source directory, and then move the original files into the new folders automatically...
^^ Boom, done.
Here's the code for this batch file:
@echo off for %%i in (*) do ( if not "%%~ni" == "organize" ( md "%%~ni" && move "%%~i" "%%~ni" ) )
5) Filters
A subjective opinion, but I really dislike plain pixels on a modern display. I think they really miss out on the natural anti-aliasing provided by CRT's, and really weren't ever supposed to be viewed this way. Some people really like it, which is obviously fine, each to their own and all of that!
^^ Plain pixels. There's jaggies everywhere, and to my eye, it's ugly. Thankfully, when you run the update_all script, many of the lovely modern filters are pulled down and ready for us. Let's have a look at how to do so...
^^ When a game/core is running, bring up the Mister menu, and navigate to the right. Go into the Video Processing menu...
^^ Click on Load Preset...
^^ Click on Display Specific...
^^ Click on Sony PVM, or any of the available choices you like...
^^ And boom, instant and more pixel friendly look. I can never take good scanline photos etc, so you'll have to trust me when I say these look great. The above shows but one preset, there are MANY others, and ALL can then be tweaked to your hearts content if you so wish. You can find some fantastic looks with a little more effort. These are core specific too by the way, not global. So you'll have to do the same for each core you run.
^^ Some MSX goodness
2
Comments
-
6) Pi-MMS
One absolutely SWEET addon you can buy (link here), is the Pi-MMS cartridge addon. It's basically an MT-32 Pi in cart form for the Multisystem. For any cores that support it, it'll give you that sweet, sweet, midi sound via bare metal emulation on a Pi Zero 2W (not included, and currently, NOT easy to find.) Info on the project here.
^^ All of the bits n' pieces.
^^ This Pi came with a heatsink on the processor. There's no space for it inside the cart so that had to be removed.
^^ A very professional approach to keeping the Pi straight while soldering it into place, the Q-tip!
^^ All soldered into place now. Some of the pins can be a little awkward to get to with the iron due to how close some of the Pi components are, but honestly not difficult once you take some time.
^^ Micro SD card needed for the MT32-Pi files
^^ This card MUST be formatted in FAT32, so if you've a larger card, you might need to use a 3rd party app like guiformat to do that.
^^ All the files transferred onto the card, the the bios files placed into the bios folder (naturally I've a collection of various midi devices which I was able to dump the bios files from...)
Time to assemble the shell...
^^ Buttons in first...
^^ OLED protector removed...
^^ SD-Card inserted...
^^ Done, time to test.
^^ The cart slot is hidden/protected by the center piece here which removes.
^^ Cart in place. Thankfully, the Pi-MMS can be gotten with a new printed protector, so you don't have to look at the bare pcb when using the cart...
^^ Done, all nice and neat. Time to power up...
^^ Powers up nicely. From here we need to choose a core that can use the Pi-MMS.
^^ The X68000 is a core in development, but it has support for the Pi-MMS. I'll run this, with Akumajo Dracula.
^^ Once the core loads, it handshakes with the Pi-MMS and you get the Mister logo showing, this means it's working correctly.
^^ Be sure to choose MT32 audio from the game menu...
^^ Wow, the music is incredible to hear...really brings things up a level.
Have a listen...
Time to test with some DOS era goodness...
^^ Lets try the PC core (AO486) and some DOS goodness courtesy of the Top300 pack.
^^ Being sure to select MT32 sound...
Again, sounds incredible, MIDI definitively elevates these old games a notch. Have a listen...
So that's basically it. Within a setup like this, you've DECADES of gaming greatness, all in one, very unassuming, very aesthetically pleasing, very display unit friendly little box. It's a game changer. From Atari 8 bits, to bleeding edge FPGA cores like the Playstation and Saturn....it truly is magic. I say this as a long time proponent of software emulation (still am), and of course a lover of original hardware. Mister encapsulates the golden era of gaming, and presents it right into your hands in an incredibly accessible way. It doesn't come with the headaches of original hardware, it doesn't come with the baggage of pc based emulation, it's just there, ready to play. No fuss, no faff, pick the system, pick the game, and just get down to enjoying the game.
^^ That's it, a beauty shot to close. I have one final plan for this unit to really finish it off, but it'll be a while until I get back to it. It's going back into storage for now, and I'll actually miss having it here playing games on. That's the sign of something special.
Edit - Not sure what Boards has done with the images in this post, you can click them for bigger versions though.
Post edited by Inviere on5 -
-
-
-
-
Advertisement
-
-
-
-
-
-
Advertisement
-
-
-
-
-
-
