MiSTer and FPGA

I’ve updated the bill of materials for the Astrocade interface a little. Two items have been changed to have better descriptions and where people have let me know part numbers from Mouser or Digikey I have added them on.

Version 2.3 of the PCB has arrived, been assembled and tested … and it works without any wire patches!

There is, however, one minor problem. I added some extra bits of screen print on the wrong side. This has now been fixed on the gerbers and any future boards will be correct, but I am not changing the version number for that minor problem. (there are only 10 PCBs that have this defect, so should not cause any problems in the long run)

On the sound filter section of the PCB, the second capacitors are tantalum, which means they have polarity so there should be a small + sign to show which way they are fitted.

Check out the Bally Astrocade interface pages on the menu under “Mister” for more details of the board and assembly.

Version 2.3 has been ordered from the PCB makers and will hopefully fix the remaining incorrect track and complete the development of this PCB.

I’ve mentioned this on Facebook (on the Gorf group) and had several questions about it, so in an attempt to answer those I have added an information page to the website which will make everything clear. (click here to see it)

Version 2.2 of the PCB built for Gorf including the 5v regulation to power the MiSTer direct from the cabinet’s power supply.

This version uses a 2 amp version of the 7805 regulator and a couple of smoothing capacitors and takes power from the 12v line on the cabinet.

An alternate version uses a commonly available LM2596S DC Buck Converter which does a similar job. Beware – if you use one of these you need to set the voltage to 5V BEFORE connecting to the DE10-Nano. The one I purchased came setup for 9V.

Another option is to put a solder blob on the pad labelled “Direct_5V” on the PCB, and the 5v line from the cabinet is routed directly to the DE10-Nano. I would not use this personally with the original linear power supply, but it may be an option if you have a switcher in there instead.

Finally, the option used on most of the boards currently installed, just use the PSU that came with the DE10-Nano and connect it to the 240v line inside the cab.

I did some more testing and changes on the MiSTer -> Astrocade interface and have made some changes. Main PCB now includes a ‘Menu’ button to bring up the main OSD. The third speech only channel has been added for Wizard of Wor and I fixed the missing track from V2.

The RGB board has also had a change, I added some mounting holes (always useful!) and have moved the composite circuit for black and white Space Zap over to here.

I have also decided on a solution to the part that has been annoying me since the first version. The volume did not go as high as the original PCB. After trying many solutions I decided the easiest is to have an optional new amplifier PCB for your cab. (Only needed if you want it to go loud)

I still need to test the composite signal for space zap and try out the three possible power supplies. (direct 5v from loom, K7805-2000 regulator or LM2596 DC-DC converter)

Anyone near Norfolk UK have a Wizard of Wor, Robby Roto or Space Zap cab I could use to test the adapter boards ?

Whilst making recent changes to the Galaxian core on MiSTer, I looked at the newest games in the Mame core as well to see what had been added that runs on standard galaxian hardware.

One, that was flagged as ‘Not Working’ was “GuttangT”

I didn’t originally plan to look at this any further, but the protection it uses can be implemented within the multigame, and now that I have sorted the graphics out it looks like that will work also!

It still needs some work on the colour prom, since that is a bad dump.

So, maybe coming to the Galaxian Multigame and/or MiSTer soon!