MiSTer

The Mistercade is most likely the 'better' IO option due to it's functionality but the Irken board prioritizes simplicity with an emphasis on arcade codes only. It's as close to a plug and play solution you're going to get and outside of a few examples, you never need to configure controls. Unfortunately, you still get stung with customs as it's got to come from Norway.

My MisterCade is now installed in my cabinet. Best part about it is that there's a GitHub repo full of configuration for inputs and stuff.

And just before I did, I got the display calibration (mostly) sorted. Need to pull the cabinet out to access controls on the flyback to do any better.

Same - been really loving it

I'd say to plug it in and run the update script then get the update_all script so you have the majority of downloading done.

Also - RMC has a discord server if you have any questions or problems with it

This dude switched to a Mister from GroovyMame.

You could reuse the JPac and stuff with Mister. You’d need the SDRAM expansion and some sort of analogue out as well as the DE-10 Nano. Does that cost €350 now?!?

This was the site I found yesterday when trying to buy one:

Ultimate MiSTer PRO BlisSTer Editionhttps://ultimatemister.com/product/ultimate-mister-blisster/

– Official MiSTer I/O Board XL 6.1 – Official Memory Module XS-D 128MB SDRAM (NeoGeo, System 16 and CPS compatible) – Low Latency BlisSter rev.2 Hub Board with flash firmware (che…

thanks for that link colonel panic. His photo is an ancient pc and graphics card alright and mister looks like a good upgrade. I personally wouldn't be fussed about it being neater as it's in a cab.

Id agree with the comments in that thread about groovymame being far more advanced/difficult to set up and that probably means far less people have tried it.

Would love to see someone do a comparison with mister, groovymame and real pcbs for lag and emulation quality. like the my life in gaming guys or digital foundry.

Hopefully they come down in price and ill pick one up to see for myself. Would put it in one of the vertical jamma cabs to replace the scrappy vertipi setup as it seems to fit that market space for jamma cabs.

I think i would prefer the Mistercade, just gotta hold off for stock to come in.

I see some people ordered DE10 Nano from the Terasic Taiwan website.

Yeah I'm really regretting not buying one ages ago, it's getting toward the kind of cash I'd expect a bit more than just a bare bones board for.

Ultimate Mister had some complete kits listed the other day for 360 euro, they went pretty quickly though.

I was really tempted to buy one but the price got a bit mad after shipping & VAT.

That got delivered really quickly through FedEx, no customs either.Unless they try and hit the company like they did the last time.

Shipped Wednesday, received Monday.

Sounds like the next batch of MisterCades will come with some tweaks and another board that will do consumer safe RGBS.

I’m really happy with my MiSTerCade after a couple of months.

Thanks for the heads up, just nabbed a preorder there too :)

I've been fooling around with the PSX emulation it's pretty good even in incomplete iteration. Ordered myself a Guncon 2 off ebay as well because I believe that's going to have compatability across all the cores so I'm looking forward to trying that out. I don't think I've ever owned a lightgun. Maybe I rented one with Time Crisis back in the day?

PSX on MiSTer now has CDDA working well, had a play around with it

Also the Saturn core is making great progress;

https://twitter.com/DiniertoDesigns/status/1495106280893173760

Also the Jaguar is coming along nicely on the MiSTer , needs double SD RAM though

To anyone with a MiSTercade or another MiSTer to jamma setup - how do you wire up your harness so you have both Neo Geo button 4 and the three kick buttons sorted? Is there a MiSTer solution to this?

Just occurred to me while wiring up the kick harness last night, you obviously can't wire one of the kick buttons in if it's already wired to Neo Geo button 4 via the jamma harness.

Not sure if maybe you can wire them both in simultaneously? Not something I've tried before.

Oh that's a good point! The MiSTer shouldn't care where the buttons are coming from and you can probably just map one of the kick harness buttons to Neo Geo button 4 - makes sense.

I've yet to figure out what 'double SD RAM' means, any insight?

ah, reading the post now https://misterfpga.org/viewtopic.php?p=44331#p44331

Looks like someone is working on a way to keep a type of analogue IO board even with dual RAM modules

Yeah you lose the dual output with that solution.

Finally caved in and ordered one from terasic.com.tw. Have to see what all the fuss is about.

Can i hook it up to a cab with a jpac?

Honest to God people going nuts over this like it's the best thing ever. I'm still a cynic wondering has nobody ever heard of hooking up a pc with groovymame/demul/m2/supermodel/teknoparrot. I'll do an crt input lag test between real pcb, mister, pi2jamma and groovymame on a cab and report back. Has anyone done this yet?

At the very least I expect it will replace the vertipi setup in the vertical cab.

I think the hype is a little bit more than just the games running and more around the preservation and accuracy side of things. It also has a really healthy level of development currently going on for it.

You're right though, as a daily cabinet driver for actually playing games, some of the other emulation options are already brilliant and I wouldn't be in a rush to replace everything if I already had a decent Hyperspin setup.

I quite like that these FPGA units are so small and relatively plug and play if you get a complete kit. I'm beyond faffing around getting things set up so am hoping once the MiSTercade arrives I already have an ultimate mister and can just plug them all together and lash them in the cabinet.

Don't automatically buy into the notion that FPGA = accuracy, because it doesn't. It can be, but not by virtue of it's existence. Latency is the big seller here, because there's no underlying OS overhead. Have a quick read of the late (and very great) Near's thoughts on things, from a few years back, there's some fantastic truths in here that many with an axe to grind/profit to make don't like hearing - https://archive.md/2018.07.07-112551/https://byuu.org/articles/fpgas-arent-magic/

That said, I think FPGA solutions are, really great. I love everything about them, have an Analogue Pocket pre-ordered, and would dearly like to pick up a DE-10 and a MiSTer Multisystem, maybe next year if supply of DE-10's gets anywhere normal again! I also love software emulation, and have spent countless hours curating a couch-ready experience that offers me everything from Atari to modern systems, with zero/low latency, stunning shaders that really give good crt's a run for their money, all controllable with a controller. So both approaches have their strengths.

Near (in the above link) also shares some thoughts on the parallel processing side of things:

Again, I do think FPGAs do offer benefits, but put one in blind taste test with original hardware and a properly configured emulation setup would catch many a purist out.

Latency is definitely noticeable when comparing a low power device or vanilla emulation setup to OG hardware or fpga solution. There's games that just absolutely break your heart where additional latency is introduced, so for most, that's where fpga truly shines.

That said, when runahead came along, it was revolutionary. It immediately nulified additional latency, and transformed how games felt. For the first time in decades, emulation felt on par again with OG hardware.

However, not all RA cores support it (it requires save state functionality to function), so the likes of MAME won't support it. That puts MiSTer out in front in this case latency wise for those cores.

The other huge seller for me with MiSTer is the analogue video out. Long known to be awkward with modern pc's, MiSTer is literally plug and play.

I'd strongly agree there, for no fuss plug and play, there's nothing else out there that rivals it. You can achieve similar with software emulation, but to do it justice, you have to face a significant learning curve.