DMJC wrote on 2023-10-07, 11:45:

I own a MiSTer, I bought it so I could play Wing Commander: Privateer without having to have a bulky retro PC setup. I have a lo […]
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I own a MiSTer, I bought it so I could play Wing Commander: Privateer without having to have a bulky retro PC setup. I have a lot of thoughts regarding it:
AO486 Core:
Pros:
- Runs Privateer Perfectly
- Good sound blaster emulation.
- Wing Commander 1/2 work great
- Strike Commander/Hocus Pocus/Wacky Wheels/Syndicate all work perfectly.
- Anything you need a 386 for just get a MiSTer.
- FreeDOS is a gem on this thing, it runs most of the DOS games and you can run drive images of at least 8GB Fat32 (tested by me)
- Drive image swapping/ISO support is awesome. Retro PC without the headaches.

Cons:
- Little underpowered for WC 3/4 (3D Space flight performance isn't there in SVGA, playable in VGA but not ideal)
- Privateer 2 crashes ingame due to no FPU.
- 486+ it gets dodgy.
- Avoid Windows 98SE it boots but it's not worth it
- SDCard Write performance is awful (there are network mount workarounds and you can pre-load a card fast on a modern PC).

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Overall:
Worth the money, I would buy it again, however I would caution people wanting to use it for the AO486 core. PC Emulation has challenges on MiSTer (no FPU and no Pentum 1 support). There is no perfect solution for X86 retro gaming, but a MiSTer can help you get rid of 386/486 era hardware. I would recommend Retro Gamers have a MiSTer, a Pentium 2/3 era Voodoo2+ machine and a modern gaming PC, old 386/486/XT hardware is no longer needed with a MiSTer.

I don't see you mentioning MT32-Pi integration. If you don't have one, it can really make some DOS games of that era shine. The MiSTer itself can run smaller Soundfonts through FluidSynth directly. But if you are going back to 386, MT32 is much more common than General MIDI.

Almost all of the newer PC-alike console generations (including PS2, Xbox1, and anything newer) would be arguably pointless to have on FPGA.

The architectures don't suit. The complex syncs of earlier generations, replicated so well in FPGA capabilities, have been supplanted in later console generations by modern PC-like (or even "actual PC" in some cases) architectures, for which the wonders of FPGA do little or nothing that existing software emulators couldn't do just as well, if not better, on any normal PC.

Dreamcast is my only lament (that MiSTer can't handle it), but I won't be uprooting the world over that.

Shreddoc wrote on 2023-10-07, 21:16:

Almost all of the newer PC-alike console generations (including PS2, Xbox1, and anything newer) would be arguably pointless to have on FPGA.

The architectures don't suit. The complex syncs of earlier generations, replicated so well in FPGA capabilities, have been supplanted in later console generations by modern PC-like (or even "actual PC" in some cases) architectures, for which the wonders of FPGA do little or nothing that existing software emulators couldn't do just as well, if not better, on any normal PC.

Dreamcast is my only lament (that MiSTer can't handle it), but I won't be uprooting the world over that.

Is emulation able to deliver perfect frametimes? Because most of the time it feels very choppy even if the framerate is rock solid 60fps... Otherwise, I think it will still be necessary to have those systems under Fpga. Cheers

I’m planning on getting a MISTer for myself for c64 / Amiga and Arcade machines emulation. Rumors are zero frameskip provided your monitor can handle the input hz (50 / 60 respectively)

Fpgas are just emulation.

midicollector wrote on 2024-03-29, 05:48:

Fpgas are just emulation.

Emulation is one of the most exciting and advanced areas of computing and hacking, so "just" is quite a stretch.

You, in another thread today, about the PicoGUS : Every time you update this, I get more and more excited to buy one! This is seriously one of the best retro products of all time.

And I agree. But guess what? The PicoGUS is also "just emulation". So it seems that you are quite passionately in favour of this "just emulation", after all! 😀

For what it's worth, the MiSTER Pi is regularly available these days, so the cost of a complete MiSTer FPGA setup is now only ~$200 USD. At that price, I think it's a great deal.

Once it's set up correctly, it provides a convenient way of playing many old games across multiple consoles and arcade/computer systems, all in one small device. I find that be a bigger benefit than even the low latency or the high emulation accuracy. I love being able to just turn on the MiSTer and fire up one of thousands of old games in seconds.

I was impressed by the ao486 core. The REMOVED makes it super easy to get DOS games up and running, as long as they're a part of the collection. The core does chug on some more-demanding games, so they're not all super playable. For example, Command & Conquer: Red Alert is pretty laggy. Most of the games I've tried play smoothly, however - namely Warcraft II and the Commander Keen series. There are also some Windows 3.1 games available for the core, but performance may be an issue with them as well. I tried SimTower and it was too slow to be a great experience.

interflux wrote on 2024-12-26, 19:29:

I was impressed by the ao486 core. The REMOVED makes it super easy to get DOS games up and running, as long as they're a part of the collection. The core does chug on some more-demanding games, so they're not all super playable. For example, Command & Conquer: Red Alert is pretty laggy. Most of the games I've tried play smoothly, however - namely Warcraft II and the Commander Keen series. There are also some Windows 3.1 games available for the core, but performance may be an issue with them as well. I tried SimTower and it was too slow to be a great experience.

ao486 maxes out around the speed of a 486SX 25Mhz. But it's speed adjustments, support for Sound Blaster, Adlib and MIDI with special support for MT32Pi makes it a great machine for 286 and 386 software which can be difficult to get just right on faster machines. There's also an XT core being developed which will hopefully slot in at the low end to resolve all those 4.77Mhz cycle accurate dependent games.

Other computer cores are also fun to play with. I'm very appreciative of the community coming up game packs to let games just auto boot and play like a console. It makes exploring various systems much easier without needing to learning the machine inside and out to get all the settings correct to make games run.

It's a cool device. Once you have set it up it's so easy to just fire it up and start playing, just like consoles. I have paired it up with a pair of arcade sticks, keyboard and mouse. I chose a good old 17" PC CRT as the display, since it allows exact sync of the display frequency with minimal lag, and all resolutions scale up to it seamlessly. (With HDMI there will be black borders and there might be some frame skips if the core runs at different frame rate than the display - although freesync might alleviate this problem I have not tried it yet).

It features a lot of classic arcade games that are not really feasible to own due to space and cost. AmigaVision makes playing Amiga games a breeze, it's the most complete emulated system by far, might be even worth getting the FPGA for Amiga alone - even demos seem to run fine. 8 and 16-bit consoles work impeccably as well, but I'm not sure if the experience is that much different from software emulation, the controls might feel a bit more responsive and that's it.

There's a lot of room for configuration, for example you can mount your network drive and play the games from there. It has a full featured Linux underneath so you could write scripts to control your 3d printer if you would want to, but the default settings work just fine as well.

Cons I would say, it looks like a rat's nest with all cables coming from several directions, the documentation could be better, the FPGA chip is crammed full and there's not much room for improvement of the more complex cores. But these are minor gripes - for (mostly) cycle accurate emulation of 80-early 90s video games it's a neat box and I won't be going back to software emulation.

xelizor wrote on 2023-12-29, 15:40:

Shreddoc wrote on 2023-10-07, 21:16:

Almost all of the newer PC-alike console generations (including PS2, Xbox1, and anything newer) would be arguably pointless to have on FPGA.

The architectures don't suit. The complex syncs of earlier generations, replicated so well in FPGA capabilities, have been supplanted in later console generations by modern PC-like (or even "actual PC" in some cases) architectures, for which the wonders of FPGA do little or nothing that existing software emulators couldn't do just as well, if not better, on any normal PC.

Dreamcast is my only lament (that MiSTer can't handle it), but I won't be uprooting the world over that.

Is emulation able to deliver perfect frametimes? Because most of the time it feels very choppy even if the framerate is rock solid 60fps... Otherwise, I think it will still be necessary to have those systems under Fpga. Cheers

What systems are you talking about? Most arcade games for example run at weird rates such as 55 or 57hz. Typically emulators deal with this via interpolation, but that is basically just a bandaid. An FPGA machine would have to do the same for modern displays too as they can't sync to it. Some stuff will simply never be the same as the real deal, but we are at the point where many people have never even played the real thing, so they don't know what's missing. For example, I will take my R-Type pcb to the grave as all other versions feel wrong to me.

Another classic example is the trend of people buying Sony BVMs and bragging about scanlines as thick as your pinky finger. Real low-res monitors from the day never looked like that...

I can't speak directly to ao486, but the PCXT core is pretty darn good.

As a compatibility yard stick, it runs something like 90% of 8088 MPH, and 85% of Area 5150 correctly, and the remaining parts ranging from minor glitches to complete mess. That's pretty impressive given only a few software emulators can run the former, and only one, MartyPC, can run the latter correctly.

For playing Alley Cat on your CRT monitor, it's basically indistinguishable from real 8088+CGA.

SuperDeadite wrote on 2025-05-22, 01:38:

What systems are you talking about? Most arcade games for example run at weird rates such as 55 or 57hz. Typically emulators deal with this via interpolation, but that is basically just a bandaid. An FPGA machine would have to do the same for modern displays too as they can't sync to it. Some stuff will simply never be the same as the real deal, but we are at the point where many people have never even played the real thing, so they don't know what's missing. For example, I will take my R-Type pcb to the grave as all other versions feel wrong to me.

The MiSTer is able to output the off spec native refresh rate. And newer flat panels with VRR can often handle it. Some old CRTs are multisync and can also do it.

MiSTer can can do interpolation if needed and give a steady 60Hz signal.

Software emulators can't always keep proper frame pacing due to task switching FPGA doesn't have this problem.

MiSTer had an Item M72 core and can do R-Type 1 & 2. I'm curious how it feels to you. Some tournaments are using FPGA and some people also sold their original boards and made the full switch.

SScorpio wrote on 2025-05-22, 05:23:

[...]
MiSTer had an Item M72 core and can do R-Type 1 & 2. I'm curious how it feels to you. Some tournaments are using FPGA and some people also sold their original boards and made the full switch.

R-Type runs glorious if you have a VRR display (or CRT) . I have ran it on both my LG C1 and an EIZO 15" vga and it is a smooth experience
I have also read about people selling their original hardware and sticking misters in their arcade cabinets... this was one of the things I read that made me decide to get one.

The MiSTer Multisystem 2 is being manufactured at the time of writing. Looks to be the best version to date. (I have no affiliation to the system in any way, just passing on the info)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6e-k9I94JLs

Expected to be available in August 2025

https://shop.heber.co.uk/mister-multisystem2- … lack-enclosure/

The FPGA vs software emulation debate will never end, both are improving by the day, both aren't perfect. The next closest thing I've come across to the MiSTer is GroovyMAME with a 15kHz modded ATi card (Radeon HD7470 in my case) and an old 21" CRT TV modded for RGB input. GroovyMAME has an average of 3 frames total lag, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SDLu2OIpm2I I'm unable to notice that difference when playing on GroovyMAME or my original arcade boards (Slapfight, Double Dragon, Street Fighter 2 Zero Alpha) Then again, I'm a casual gamer, not a pro.

For me, it doesn't matter how the game is emulated, so long as I can't tell the difference when playing.

orcish75 wrote on 2025-05-22, 09:06:

The FPGA vs software emulation debate will never end, both are improving by the day, both aren't perfect. The next closest thing I've come across to the MiSTer is GroovyMAME with a 15kHz modded ATi card (Radeon HD7470 in my case) and an old 21" CRT TV modded for RGB input. GroovyMAME has an average of 3 frames total lag, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SDLu2OIpm2I I'm unable to notice that difference when playing on GroovyMAME or my original arcade boards (Slapfight, Double Dragon, Street Fighter 2 Zero Alpha) Then again, I'm a casual gamer, not a pro.

For me, it doesn't matter how the game is emulated, so long as I can't tell the difference when playing.

Both are recreation of hardware and can have bugs, but then there are hardware revision changes of consoles that cause bugs in some games that came out before the revision was released.

The benefit to FPGA is that it's just executing the logic without an OS or anything on top. If you output to CRT and use LLAPI for input that's directly attached to the core. Then you have zero latency. It should be the same as original hardware. If you enabled HDMI out that's a single frame of latency, and USB pooling at 1000Hz makes input lag undetectable to humans. Only lightguns that require exact time of the scanline of a CRT require that exact of input timings.

But software emulation gives you things like allow internet based multiplayer. There's some package of fighting games for MAME it's fight nite or something.

But purists will always complain about something. IMO if you are having fun, great. Keeping old hardware going is a having a project car. It looks cool and is a fun hobby. But a modern car is faster, and drives better.

orcish75 wrote on 2025-05-22, 09:06:

The MiSTer Multisystem 2 is being manufactured at the time of writing. Looks to be the best version to date.

IMHO the ITX board on Mister is the best, but I am fully a PC guy so.

orcish75 wrote on 2025-05-22, 09:06:

The next closest thing I've come across to the MiSTer is GroovyMAME ... GroovyMAME has an average of 3 frames total lag

That outlines how huge the difference actually is. On Mister via CRT the lag is around 2 ms with USB controller or less than 0.1 ms through SNAC. For comparison 3 frame lag is around 50 ms - about 25x more compared to Mister.

That being said for me even 3 frame isn't that bad since I am not a competitive player, but I can feel the difference and am happy that there are now alternatives to software emulation. Another point to validate how good the hardware is, some games have these "glitches" that allow speed runners to do tricks for the player's benefit, which are dependent on executing the correct input actions within very narrow time window (usually within a frame so around 16 ms). These kind of speed running tricks work on Mister but not on any software emulation as far as I know, so in that kind of sense Mister's emulation is "perfect" (on the matured cores).

The latest and best software emulation, suitably configured, on a suitably powerful PC with appropriate inputs and screen, can about match MiSTer in terms of lag. That probably wouldn't have been true with the state of software emulation even just 5 years ago.

MiSTer is emulation too. Just a different form.

Shreddoc wrote on 2025-05-22, 21:52:

The latest and best software emulation, suitably configured, on a suitably powerful PC with appropriate inputs and screen, can about match MiSTer in terms of lag.

No, not yet even in practice. Triple buffering requires 2 frames lag to achieve smooth frame rate. So for an arcade game running 60 fps, the powerful PC and the display needs to run 180 frames. Add black frame insertion (which is kinda built-in to CRT), that's 360 fps. Add kernel scheduler lag, input lag, etc. on top of that and there's no chance. And even if it was possible, it would be ridiculous to run a 2025 top of the line PC drawing 1000 watts to try to catch up with a cheap two decades old FPGA. By the way this is the reason why there are FPGAs (and ASICS) in the first place, not every scenario can be feasibly brute forced.

Shreddoc wrote on 2025-05-22, 21:52:

MiSTer is emulation too. Just a different form.

It's time to stop spreading this FUD (fear uncertainty doubt). There is a fundamental difference between naturally parallel FPGAs and (semi*) fake-parallel CPUs.

* When PC CPUs for example had only one core, the OS had to execute each thread separately and switching between them fast enough that it seemed for the user that all programs run parallel when in reality they shared the very same transistor logic. Now days CPUs have multiple cores (mine has 16 I think) but it's still nothing against inherently parallel FPGA logic which can execute *all* logic operations at the same time.

FPGA * is * emulation, and that doesn't make it somehow lesser just because of the stupid stigma around that word.

I'm going to quote old truths here because there's no point re-inventing the wheel - thanks elvis :

You can get an identical experience in terms of latency/lag from good quality, high accuracy software emulators that also use run ahead emulation as you can with MiSTer. Yes, that requires a somewhat complex setup and often powerful/expensive hardware (especially for something like BSNES in accuracy mode with run-ahead, but it can be done). A variety of objective frame tests, lag tests and MDFourier tests demonstrate that the accuracy is identical between FPFA and software emulation solutions with the correct settings applied.

So all these claims of MiSTer or FPGA in general being lag-free while software "can't" are simply quite wrong. However, I too prefer the MiSTer option for 2D, mostly because of the simplicity. As others have said, the ironically low volume of options are nice, and specifically for me I enjoy playing 2D games though a real CRT, which is very easy to get accurate modelines out of with MiSTer versus accurate software emulation solutions (i.e.: a powerful desktop PC, not an RPi which voids the accuracy and run-ahead capabilities for 16bit systems especially due to lack of power).

When it comes to later 3D, I actually have no great desire to have these FPGA emulated. I actually much prefer the benefits of software emulation to offer higher resolution rendering, virtual overclocking, improved load times, etc. Many 3D games already accounted for much greater latency due to animation frames, and very few require frame-perfect timing like 2D titles did. While MiSTer offers an excellent PSX core, I personally would rather play on DuckStation with highly customised video options per game. The one exception is the Saturn and PSX's library of 2D titles, which I do actually prefer on MiSTer on a CRT, or titles with pre-rendered backgrounds (Resident Evil, Parasite Eve, etc) which look wonderful on a low resolution CRT. So that's a bit of a middle ground.

But N64, for example, benefits enormously from something like ParaLLEl-RDP and accelerated 4X upscaling with all the blur removed that the console suffered from. Past that into the PS2 era, and PCSX2 is amazing. I have no want for FPGA clones of that era hardware. Same for Dreamcast, GameCube, etc. People hypothesise about future FPGA emulation of all of these, but I don't really care for the idea.

Anyways, long winded way of saying that "low lag" isn't really the killer feature of MiSTer. Moreso the sheer simplicity of "power on and play". Anyone who has had to try and troubleshoot emulators for non-technical people understand this (and even then, MiSTer is still rocket surgery for some).

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With 144Hz+ monitors and VRR/freesync/gsync, you can bypass tearing and 16ms limitations trivially. And this is rapidly becoming the preferred way to deal with emulation, not just for latency, but also for odd refresh rates (arcade games in MAME, for example, that are all over the place).

It's entirely possible to run-ahead emulate your way to unnatural latency numbers that are lower than real hardware. But again, you really don't want to outside of an academic exercise. Plenty of examples of folks who have done it. If you want to try for yourself, start on something really light weight like NES or simple Z80 based system emulation.

The irony of course is that you need some pretty expensive hardware to do so on complex multi-chip hardware like SNES. And again you do need a decent monitor. If you're emulating because the cost of original hardware is too high, it's kind of moot to go and buy a many-thousands-of-dollars system and screen to do it. Even with recent silicon shortages and price hikes, things like MiSTer offer a pretty decent way to get a consistent experience across a wide range of systems without breaking the bank.

But even then, if you've got a crap monitor, you may be forced with MiSTer to a 2-frame buffer. I have mine connected to a 60Hz consumer CRT via analogue out which is great for mainstream consoles, but no good for weird framerate things like GB/GBA, ao486, certain arcade titles, etc (all give a stable picture, but with obvious tearing). An analogue-adjustable-vsync arcade monitor would be nicer, which I have access to, but need to set up. Likewise my VRR capable OLED would be fun to test too, but is in a different room to my MiSTer setup.

When designing for Am386, AMD studied the Intel's 80386’s behavior and created a specification of its ISA, registers, and system interactions. Then they wrote new microcode and designed the chip’s architecture to match these specifications without ever seeing Intel’s original microcode or schematics. I guess by "everything's emulation" folks' argument, AMD Am386 is emulation of Intel 386, since AMD's implementation "emulates" the original 386 chip.