@copySave
I believe the guy doing composite/s-video compatible cores is working on them on a core by core basis. Atrac17 was just talking the other day about S-Video support being added to JTFrame, so on the bright side we’re likely to get support very very soon in (the bulk of) the arcade cores:
I haven’t been following MiSTer news too closely recently but last I heard this new IO board is planned as the middle ground for people who want both dual SD RAM support to boost the memory bandwidth but also use a CRT. According to this post it’s still gonna be built off those modified cores, so I’d make sure everything you wanna play is supported before springing for a new IO board.
Personally I’ve got a CRT monitor I’m using and that thing handles pretty much anything I throw at it, so I’m probably gonna stick with it for the time being. S-Video and composite are great additions though because CRTs with the fancier inputs are getting more and more expensive.
My friend tried that Mike Simone cores on svideo (he wired up special componenet to svideo cable that’s required) and he said it’s great.
I tried composite using just straight component to rca y splitter and it’s pretty bad right now. Rainbow city, very shimmery especially Genesis core. Other cores are better but not great. But! Mike S is making connector board with luma trap that hopefully cleans up composite.
@donrumata Yeah I’ve been using a generic 1995 14 inch PC CRT with my Mister and while you can use the horizontal and vertical filters with the scan doubler to make some OK looking blending and scanlines (with the new adaptive ones to prevent over dimming), it doesn’t hit the full blast of grungy character of big working class sets in the US.
Something that MLiG video showed that I didn’t realize is how much better games sound with the low-pass audio filters. The Arcade LPF 2khz 2nd gives consoles (especially the Genesis) a nice warmth. SNES has a specific one.
@KennyL Looked like the new IO direct board could work independently from the Express bottom board, but I could be wrong. The current IO boards go for $55 so hopefully that’s all you’ll need. I’ll probably shell out for another stick of RAM though (also will get in on SNAC for 0 lag too)
And you can keep your old IO board around for when ever you get another DE10 Nano (which is always the most expensive part of the whole thing. Though I do love how tiny my current MiSTer is. A bigger foot print seems contrary.
@copySave
MisterAddons checked out the new 32X core with his new composite/S-Video IO board and the video confirms that you don’t need the big express board - you can just replace your current IO board in your setup. Might need a new (or mod your existing) case though
Also this new texture filtering option for psx core is really interesting. I tried on my crt, pretty nice. Not blurry like your usual bilinear stuff. Makes chunky texture into finer grain.
man every time I see the multisystem I think about importing it for a second MiSTer. They have their own s-video composite solution “custard card” and working psx SNAC with lightgun support
I’ve been using the unstable builds, but seeing the official core sitting along the other consoles really solidifies it. The MiSTer and its devs are amazing
@copySave just tried it out today, looks fantastic over component on my garbage-rescue TV! The 480i menus in Chrono Cross are crazy crispy. Looking forward to SNAC availability so I can use original controllers.
I’ve spent a good chunk of the last couple nights messing with it and here’s a few tips:
any PSP eboots converted to bin/cue with PSX2PSP work just fine
on that note, for PSX2PSP use the batch convert version to auto extract multi disc games into a single folder
all the hacks and translations I’ve tried have worked
if you’re using a 31khz PC CRT monitor over VGA (like me) use the VGA scaler. Direct scan doubled 15khz 480i will not work. You just have to deal with a little lag from the scaler.
I got the core up and running and was like overwhelmed. It runs great. Nothing fiddly like so many emulators. I ended up playing Warehouse 2 in Tony Hawk 2. A holy space for me. I could not tell the difference. I will probably never need to touch a real PS1 again outside of link cable play.
Have only had my MiSTer for about a week and am absolutely blown away by this PSX core. Paired a DualSense on Bluetooth and it was off to the races – was pretty shocked to find it even has vibration support. My only issue is that timing in PaRappa the Rapper is about 100x stricter than I remember it being 25 years ago, but that‘s probably my aging hands’ fault.
Been having a blast playing through Tail Concerto, very open to other suggestions beyond the critically acclaimed JRPGs.
@kory it should auto generate a new memory card for each game in the /fat/saves folder. They are only 128 kilobytes and no need to manage the cards. The card will be “game_folder_name.sav” and will auto-mount when loading the matching title.
@ffg If timing/lag is important make sure to use vsync_adjust=2 over HDMI in one of your .ini files to reduce lag to just 4 scanlines. Vsync set to 1 or 0 will have better core/display compatibility but introduce about 2 frames of lag (about 33ms) which could throw off PaRappa. For the PSX core vsync_adjust=2 should work on most HDTVs (the signal may jump around a bit to sync though)
Also here is an extensive table of USB controller latency by MisterAddons with both wired and wireless configurations: RPubs - MiSTer FPGA Input Latency
(Big ugly spreadsheet is here.)
DualSense over bluetooth is about 6ms (so less than half a frame) so it’s pretty good. Wired USB is only 1ms.
A 0 lag solution would be a CRT with component (over HDMI -> VGA -> component, or VGA -> component if you have the Analog IO board) and SNAC. Some flat panels have good latency like an LG OLED (around 1ms) but YMMV. At least use game mode or a 5ms PC LCD monitor. SNAC will only work with official PSX controllers when the adapters come out.
Some offbeat JRPGs (sorry if I misinterpreted your ask lol):
I tried Mike Simone’s analogue cores with adding his tested inductor/capacitor combos (33uH/60pF and 10uH/200pF) to composite connection and it’s not great sad to say. I don’t have breadboard so just used couple of alligator clips.
Things actually look great when not moving (sharp, no raindow, no dot crawl) but get really shimmery when moving. It’s kind of like resolution is squeezed with bad chunky interpolation. Genesis core looks most decent with ok shimmering. I dug out my real Genesis and shocked at how good it’s compostie looks on my old small Trinitron (using Turbo Duo av cable, didn’t know they’re compatible!) Mike Simone’s core actually looks sharper (too sharp for composite maybe?) but way more shimmery. Sonic water fall looks about the same (rainbowy) but you can turn on blending option in Mister core to make them really clean (close to Wii Genesis Plus GX level clean). Other 2d cores I tried (Nes, Snes, Turbo, GBA) have much more distracting shimmering. PSX core 2d parts (menu, text, etc.) are disaster but 3d parts are actually decent.
My friend tried Svideo and says it’s super damn good but composite is also bad on his bigger Trinitron. Mike Simone’s example photos/videos look better on his Toshiba TV so quality could be TV dependent. For my setup Antonio Villena’s adapter is dirtier but much more stable and usable except for Genesis core. I still gotta see how Mike Simone’s adapter turns out but I pretty much gave up on getting real console level composite out of Mister at this point…… Would be bad if Saturn core composite turns out bad because I really don’t want to play Saturn without decent composite blending dithered transparencies…
