Went shopping!
(español abajo)
Thanks to your support I visited a sellert today and bought new games to translate to FPGA. I am really excited about these titles. All the PCB's worked but Rastan Saga had no sprites on screen and Nemesis (Gradius) seems to be completely broken. I may repair them as part of the conversion process.
I do have a backlog of tasks but I didn't want to let pass the opportunity of visiting this seller and I think it was worth it. Please let me know what is your favourite from the games I bought today. Oh, you can have a look at the PCB photos attached to this post.
(español)
Gracias al apoyo recibido por vosotros hoy he visitado a un vendedor de placas y he comprado varias para pasar a FPGA. Son títulos míticos para mí y todas funcionan. Bueno, el Rastan Saga no tiene sprites y el Nemesis está roto del todo. Pero seguramente podré arreglarlas mientras las convierto a FPGA.
Tengo muchas cosas pendientes aun pero no quería dejar pasar la oportunidad de comprarlas. ¿Cuál es vuestro juego favorito de los que he comprado? Por cierto, las fotos de las placas están adjuntas a esta entrada.
Comments (12)
Rastan!!! Hope it comes one day!
OMG I was also thinking that no one was working on Nemesis, and worked on it (with schematics only) as my first real FPGA project. Hahaha. ;) but I quickly realized that It was not an easy pick for a start, with all those Konami proprietary ASIC. Then I was more working on the audio part of the board, because only one IC is unknown (5289) and it seems to be a simple table. But without the real hardware at hand it is not that simple. I checked the code in MAME but there is no table data for it. It would be easier with the real hardware to increment the 12bit address bus and send the control respectively on LD1 and TG1 to see the result on the 5bits output on each channels to recreate the table
That's interesting to hear. I have it on my to-do list but I'll probably do X68000 right after CPS so I don't think I'll touch Nemesis in at least two months. MAME source code has a lot of information, although it usually misses bus timing aspects so you need the real board or the schematics to fill the gaps. Of course, games with full schematics available and no custom chips are the easiest to do and you can also be confident about the fidelity of the conversion.
I actually started working on Nemesis under the assumption that it wasn't really on anybody's radar compared to CPS1 or System 16, but I'm starting to think that it's a bit too much for my first "real" FPGA project, especially with only the schematics and no board or analysis equipment. The graphics system feels like a victim of the "second-system effect", and really makes me appreciate the elegance of Neo Geo. One important thing for supporters to note is that the various "Nemesis hardware" or "GX400" games only really share the graphics board and 68000 CPU. The rest of the CPU/sound board is somewhat unique for each game, so it's not like it's just a ROM swap to get Salamander or Twinbee (although, as noted above, the graphics board is no small part of the work).
Hi Steven. I am not working on this right now -and I don't plan to do it soon- but I know of someone who is. If you are writting your first port to FPGA, I would try to go with something smaller. Like Dig Dug, which seems to be pretty straightforward -judging from the gameplay itself. Some early games can be deceptive like the Popeye core I am writting now. I thought it was much easier than it actually is. Another option is to write first the core for a commonly used chip, like a microcontroller or a CPU. The Arkanoid core is missing the microcontroller because there is no core for it yet.
Me ha costado decidirme, pero me decanto por Nemesis! :D Compré una alhambra y me gustaría iniciarme con las VHDL a ver si algún día pudiera ayudar. Si me permites ¿sería muy complejo una opción en la GUI para guardar/cargar el HISCORE del gng?. Si no recuerdo mal las posiciones de memoria en están en el hiscore.dat de MAME, ¿no? ¿Crees que algo así sería interesante? Muchas gracias y enhorabuena por alcanzar los 150 patreons!
No es terriblemente complicado pero tengo que investigarlo. El core debería pasar información al procesador de MiST/MiSTer para que este grabe en la SD y esa ruta no sé si existe para cores arcade en estos sistemas. Lo investigaré.
Incredible that Rastan ended in 4th place, it was an amazing arcade at the time, and also super difficult, I only knew one guy in may arcade that could play it until completion with one coin. Cabal is also really fun.
it's hard to choice:) rastan=operation wolf, rainbow island-ex, Volfied; Nemesis= lifeforce/salamander, twinbee...
He votado por Moonwalker. Como nota curiosa, os dejo esto por aquí: "Buy a cheap working Clutch Hitter pcb and move the moonwalker rom board, the ceramic 8751 mcu and install the kit 68k and eproms. *If* the existing roms on the moonwalker board are ok, this should give you a working board, albeit with a Clutch Hitter label on the pcb" You could even put the original program roms and FD1094 on there as well to see if they still work. Failing that, you could leave the Clutch Hitter rom board on, and move over all the eproms, double checking the jumpers are set the same as the moonwalker romboard. The Cluther hitter rom board is the same one moonwalker uses. Source: <a href="http://www.neo-geo.com/forums/showthread.php?198726-Sega-System-18-Care-Suicide-Battery-Question/page2" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">http://www.neo-geo.com/forums/showthread.php?198726-Sega-System-18-Care-Suicide-Battery-Question/page2</a>
The daughter board of Clutch Hitter and Moonwalker are not the same. They are both Sega 18 boards but can not be converted due to their difference. As for the suicide battery it would be cool if that could be duplicated but the ROMs have already been decrypted and a standard M68000 CPU is already in VHDL.
Moonwalker is a Sega 18 PCB it will be similar to the Sega16 PCBs and the Sega16 PCBs are the golden age of Sega arcades Shinobi, Golden Age, Altered Beast, ESWAT, Alien Syndrome and many others.