An extra option or two has been added to the DIP settings on “Gorf” and “Gorf (Program 1)” Both now have an “Autocoin” option. This can be used instead of freeplay and it will automatically insert the correct number of coins when you press Start 1 or 2 to let you start with 2 (low)…
The classic shoot’em up Space Firebird has been completed as a core and added to MiSTer. It uses the weirdest video hardware of any game I have ever seen, and this core was created in an attempt to understand the circuitry a little better. The sprites are in 3-3-2 colour, via a lookup table (same…
Following a request from a user on the MiSTer forum and since I was looking at making some changes to the Scramble core anyway I decided to add support for the game Cavelon. It uses rom banking which had to be added in, and once I got that working I discovered that I also needed…
The original sound hardware for Cosmo has been reverse engineered from schematics generated by The Guru of Mame fame and has been added to the core on MiSTer The original hardware runs at 333Khz which is way too fast for the audio output on MiSTer (maximum 96Khz) and sounded wrong at the correct speed. (due…
The problem with the high score saving for Gorf and Wizard of Wor should now be resolved. You can now see the settings menu when the OSD button is pressed, although background will be black or just stars, which allows you to change the settings once more. Reloading the scores will no longer cause other…
I have removed the downloads for the images with High Score saving for the moment as I have found a couple of problems during further testing. They will be back when I sort out these problems!
I have added two new images to the “Putting it Together” page (here) that now implement the NVRam that could be used with the hardware. The games that support this are “Gorf” and “Wizard of Wor”. These versions will allow you to save the high scores to the SDRam card whenever they change. To do…
It seems that Coin Op Collection have completed a Snow Bros core for MiSTer before I did. Not really surprising since I have taken ages on this one. I had suffered from one of the same problems as they did, so at least I was on the right track. For the moment I will look…
Just a quick shot as it appears I have finally got the code for the Pandora graphics chip to work as intended. This is not running game code, I just grabbed the memory content for the colour and sprite registers and load it for testing, but after several false starts it is finally behaving itself….
I used one of the Astrocade PCBs recently to make an adapter to allow me to put a MiSTer setup into my Crazy Climber cabinet. I populated the video, a single sound channel and the regulator, added an amplifier and then wired an edge connector and video pins to plug into the cabinet. End result…
The new version of the RGB PCB has arrived, along with the updated design for the composite output for Space Zap and I have assembled one and connected it up to my Amiga monitor. It now has potentiometers to allow the signal levels for Sync and Video to be adjusted to work nicely with your…
An attempt was made to put the Astrocade interface into a Space Zap cabinet sporting a monochrome monitor. It didn’t work so I began investigating exactly what the problem was. It seems I misread the MiSTer IO schematic, and put a GND where a vertical sync should be, so it was not actually passing the…
Wizard of Wor has finally been tested! Almost a year after I did the original image for this game, it has been fitted to a cabinet and I’m pleased to say that after some minor problems the image has been updated and works as it should. Had a request for a change, which may also…
If you have been keeping up with the MiSTer forums, you will know that there are now at least two DE10-Nano clones being produced, with one, the QMTECH version being available now, and another one due soon. The one pictured is the QMTech version, and this one has the 128Mb SDRAM fitted direct to the…
The MiSTer image for Gorf using the Astrocade interface has been updated. For those of you running them in an arcade environment where customers have to put money in, it will now accept coins from both coin slots (with separate options in the DIP settings) In addition, the SLAM will now work, so if someone…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
I know it looks the same as the pictures from the Multigame connected to a galaxian PCB, but this time I updated the Galaxian core on the MiSTer to allow me to run the multigame on it. It should make testing things a lot quicker since the MiSTer is always connected and ready to go….
Populated the necessary locations for Gorf on the new board, did some sanity checks to make sure I wasn’t putting 5v down any lines to the DE10, discovered a missing track and some layout errors. It all works and I even managed to get the speech working from DDRAM, so you don’t actually need to…
The MiSTer core for Cosmic Guerilla has been completed. This core uses a TMS9900 CPU where the original uses a TMS9980 (8 bit version of same CPU, just does 2 byte reads/writes instead of 1 word read/write). However, game speed is controlled using vertical counter, so should be the same as the original. Sound effects…
I thought that swopping the CPU in the cosmic core to allow me to do Cosmic Guerilla would be simple. How wrong was I … 16 bit vs 8 bit, different memory read write signals, different port handling, even the reset is different! Anyway, for the first time it actually shows something running on screen….
One of the first things I did on the MiSTer once I had acquired a setup was to take the code for the Astrocade console, add in the additional hardware used by the arcade versions of the games to see if I could get them running. (See original post here) Following that I then decided…
I managed to complete another core for the MiSTer today, been a while as I needed to get the two PCB’s working enough to sample the sounds. But all of the games from Mame’s Universal Cosmic driver that use a Z80 are now on there. Cosmic Alien, Devil Zone, Magical Spot, No Mans Land and…
Following on from Astrocade hardware, I thought I would like to do a core as near as possible from scratch. So apart from using the Z80 from opencores, and basing the timing code on that used in the Pacman core, I went from the Crazy Balloon schematics to produce a complete core for it. Where…
Well, what a weird year it has been so far. I’ve been learning to code in VHDL and Verilog on the MiSTer platform. The first task was one I have wanted to do since I bought an FPGA Replay was to take the existing Bally Arcadia console core, add in the necessary extra ram, pattern…