Retro News 10/15

- Keys for 3DMark99 and 2000
- atxFlip
- Tribes games
- GOG releases
- PCem
- Wonderland Dizzy

Some of you might know that I recently got a Mist FPGA computer. So I am documenting my journey, sharing what I found, how to set it all up, and of course with some YouTube videos along the way. No ads for Mist videos 😀

VIDEO: What is the Mist FPGA computer?

The Mist is a FPGA computer, which is a hardware programmable chip. Not to be confused with emulation, a FPGA replicates the entire circuit and chips in hardware. No "this task needs to wait for another task to finish", everything can happen in parallel.

You can purchase the Mist FPGA computer from Germany, Poland and Spain:

https://www.dragonbox.de/de/285-mist-fpga-konsolen.html

http://www.lotharek.pl/

http://amigastore.eu/en/318-mist-fpga-computer.html

The Mist needs firmware, easily updated through the SD card reader.

It also needs cores. What are cores? Every system, like the Amiga has its core, the Commodore C64 has its core, so does the NES or Atari St. The cores basically re-configure the FPGA.

The Mist FPGA computer connects to standard peripherals such as VGA monitor, USB keyboard, mouse, gamepads. It has a headphone port for audio and is USB powered, a phone charger will do the trick.

The latest firmware can be downloaded from here: https://github.com/mist-devel/mist-binaries/t … master/firmware

The cores can be downloaded from here: https://github.com/mist-devel/mist-binaries/t … ee/master/cores

Here is my Mist with the Amiga core and Lotus II:

Long overdue...

Roland SC-55 Sound Canvas Review Guide Demonstration

SSD vs SSHD vs HDD

Something different!

In this video I am comparing how SSD, SSHD and HDD compares when rebooting the machine several times.

Are SSHD drives good value or should you look elsewhere?

I am basically quoting one of the comments posted on your YouTube video when I say that something like an SSHD (especially a 500Gb or 750Gb model from Seagate) will work great on a Athlon, Athlon XP, Pentium 3, Pentium 4 or any potential Windows 2000 / Windows XP era build.

Evert wrote:

I am basically quoting one of the comments posted on your YouTube video when I say that something like an SSHD (especially a 500Gb or 750Gb model from Seagate) will work great on a Athlon, Athlon XP, Pentium 3, Pentium 4 or any potential Windows 2000 / Windows XP era build.

Great idea. I never really considered this, but now I do have a spare SSHD, so that's a great idea to investigate...

MIST FPGA Computer First Time Guide

This is my second video about the MIST FPGA computer. This is a half hour video, packed with information that shows you how setup and configure your MIST.

I will show you:

- An overview of the MIST including all ports, LEDs and buttons
- An overview of peripherals needed
- Setting up the SD card
- Flashing the latest firmware
- Installing a core (Commodore 64)
- How to load games and demos
- Last Ninja 2 game-play

3dfx Voodoo 3 retro review

This is a in-depth retro review of the 3dfx Voodoo 3 graphics card! First video I wrote a proper script for 😊

Thank you Artex for letting me use your photos 😀

In this video:

- History / background
- Variants
- Clock speeds
- Image quality
- 2D core
- 3D core
- 16 bit colour support only
- 2x2 box filter and 22 bit equivalent (video analysis)
- Drivers
- Overclocking
- Benchmarks
- V-sync
- Lots of game footage
- Heat / cooling
- AGP compatibility
- Super Socket 7 compatibility
- 8 bit palletised textures
- Texture resolution
- and more...

5 reasons for a Windows XP retro gaming PC

Playing older games on modern operating systems is not as smooth sailing as the industry wants you to believe!

In this video we are looking at some of the issues, build a Windows XP retro gaming PC and showcase a few games with benchmarks!

philscomputerlab wrote:

5 reasons for a Windows XP retro gaming PC

Playing older games on modern operating systems is not as smooth sailing as the industry wants you to believe!

In this video we are looking at some of the issues, build a Windows XP retro gaming PC and showcase a few games with benchmarks!

Nice video!

I've been planning doing this with my now "old" main computer which just got an upgrade (I upgraded to I7 and the LGA-2011-v3 platform) . ASUS P5Q PRO, 8GB DDR2 memory, Intel QX9600 Extreme Edition CPU, SSD, Soundblaster X-Fi and a Geforce GTX295 😀

How suitable is the GTX295 for Windows XP retro gaming in your opinion?

LGA-2011-v3?

Niiiice. I'm pondering getting something similar with lots of cores to help with video rendering, but I can't justify the price 😊

Now the GTX285 is often mentioned as a really good Windows XP graphics card. Your cards is basically two of them in SLI right? As long as you can manage heat and noise, it should be a great card!

philscomputerlab wrote:

LGA-2011-v3?

Niiiice. I'm pondering getting something similar with lots of cores to help with video rendering, but I can't justify the price 😊

Now the GTX285 is often mentioned as a really good Windows XP graphics card. Your cards is basically two of them in SLI right? As long as you can manage heat and noise, it should be a great card!

Yup, I mainly upgraded for video rendering. The extra game performance was just an added bonus, as modern games did run quite well on the LGA-775 system with two Radeon R9 290 cards in crossfire. It saves me loads of rendering time and editing also goes much more smooth (which also saves me time).

Great to hear! Yes, it is the dual GPU on a single card version. I don't think it generates much noise tbh, so I'll live with it.

My two Mist videos have made it onto the github wiki page 😁

I'm close to finishing production on my next Mist video, a review of the C64 core, featuring 30 or so games.

https://github.com/mist-devel/mist-board/wiki

Here is a quick guide with some tips for making old games look better!

This is for older Windows games from places such as Steam, GOG or Origin.

I did make a nice little video. The video uses footage to demonstrate all these tweaks, well worth checking out!

Video link: https://youtu.be/P2vnKDeVO8g

But here is a brief outline of what the steps are:

Aspect ratio

Old games typically look best in the classic 4:3 aspect ratio. There is a setting in the graphics driver that lets the GPU scale the image while preserving the aspect ratio. Careful with resolutions: 1280 x 1024 is 5:4 and can sometimes result in vertically stretched images.

Resolution

With Nvidia cards you can create a custom resolution of 1600 x 1200. This will give you a very crisp, sharp and detailed image. I'm not sure if AMD supports this, but likely it does! Would be awesome for someone to test this.

AF

Texture filtering. Many games let you enable anisitropic filtering of 16x in the game. If not, just enable it in the driver. This will ensure that textures, such as tiles on the floor, look sharp and detailed as you look into the distance.

AA

And finally we can use antialiasing and get a more photo-realistic look. While many games have this as an option, you can further enhance, or override through the driver. You can also apply AA to transparent textures and for games that don't support AA, like Splinter Cell, a shader based AA technology can be used.

The result

Good looking retro games!

philscomputerlab wrote:

Resolution

With Nvidia cards you can create a custom resolution of 1600 x 1200. This will give you a very crisp, sharp and detailed image. I'm not sure if AMD supports this, but likely it does! Would be awesome for someone to test this.

It should work on AMD too. Of course you need to have 1920x1200 LCD for this... regular FHD (1920x1080) which most people have either will not support 1600x1200 at all or look ugly because of interpolation.

havli wrote:

It should work on AMD too. Of course you need to have 1920x1200 LCD for this... regular FHD (1920x1080) which most people have either will not support 1600x1200 at all or look ugly because of interpolation.

I think it looks very nice, not ugly at all. It's down-scaling basically or what Dynamic Super Resolution does. The screenshots and footage in the video (towards the end) are all done in 1600 x 1200 aspect ratio scaled to 1920 x 1080.

There are other tricks, but that is something for another video 😀

Very much liked your recent "making old games look better" video. Haven't played old Windows titles for a while and was surprised to find out that 1600x1200 wasn't included in resolution lists by default anymore.

Mist FPGA C64 core review 37 games tested

This is a video review of the C64 core for the Mist FPGA computer. I will show you how to download the core and prepare your SD card.

The core supports D64 and PRG file formats. I will show you what options the core menu has and how to load and run games.

I will give a conclusion and a compatibility score and at the end, the highlight of this video, 37 games directly VGA captured as they appear and sound on the Mist FPGA computer.

The following C64 games are featured:

Salamander
19 Part One - Boot Camp
Arkanoid - Revenge of Doh
Auf Wiedersehen Monty
BOFH - Servers Under Siege
Bombo
Choplifter
Chuck Rock
Cybernoid - The Fighting Machine
Cybernoid II - The Revenge
Dan Dare III - The Escape
Deliverance - Stormlord II
Frogger
Hades Nebula
Kickstart
Kickstart II - The Construction Set
Licence to Kill
Lotus Esprit Turbo Challenge
Moonshadow
Neuronics
Over the Net
Pac-Mania
Rampart
Rolling Ronny
Smash TV
Stone Age
Stormlord
Super Cards
Super Scramble Simulator
Super Space Invaders
Supremacy
Time Machine
Toobin'
Trailblazer
Trailblazer II
Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego
Yie Ar Kung Fu II

Early access for Vogons members:

Roland Sound Canvas VA Software Synthesizer with DOSBox and ScummVM

Finally!

Roland has released a Sound Canvas software synthesizer which faithfully simulates the SC-55, SC-88, SC=88 Pro and SC-8820.

In this video I am showing you how you can use Roland Sound Canvas VA with DOSBox or ScummVM for improved General MIDI music.

Covered are:

- How to install Roland Sound Canvas VA
- How to configure ScummVM with Roland Sound Canvas VA
- How to configure DOSBox with Roland Sound Canvas VA

A day earlier, everyone enjoy a retro slide into 2016 😊

Intel Pentium 4 3.2 vs AMD Athlon XP 3200+

Two iconic processor go head to head: Intel's Pentium 4 3.2 GHz against AMD's Athlon XP 3200+.

Benchmarks features are 3DMark2001 SE, 3DMark03, Aquamark 3 and Codecreatures.

Furthermore games with built-in timedemos are used: Serious Sam Second Encounter, Doom 3 and F.E.A.R.

Who will come out on top?

However there is more than just pure performance. What about compatibility and reliability? Make sure to watch the entire video to find out.

Throughout the video lots of gameplay footage including Need For Speed Underground, Medal of Honour Allied Assault, Morrowind, GTA III, Half-Life 2, Need for Speed Most Wanted, Knights of the Old Republic 2 and more.

The video has 4 parts:

1. The build (00:00)
2. Benchmark results (02:15)
3. Games (03:32)
4. Beyond performance & conclusion (10:36)

The motherboards used are AOpen MX4SG-4DN and Gigabyte GA-7VT600.

The processors are the Intel Pentium 4 3.2 GHz with Northwood core and HT and the AMD Athlon XP 3200+.

RAM are two 1 GB PC3200 or DDR 400 memory sticks with CL3.

Graphics cards are two AGP Nvidia 6600GT (One is from Leadtek with replaced cooler, the other one is a Palit / XpertVision).

Hard drives are two SATA drives from Western Digital with 80 GB.

Other parts are optical drive and two Sound Blaster Audigy ZS for EAX supported audio.

Windows is Windows XP Pro SP3.