FPGA is the way forward for #Retro #PCMasterRace

Been digging further into this MiSTer board.

While intel is saying this is for DARPA and industrial applications. We all know the truth; it’s really a gaming and IOT platform.

With a built-in HDMI, dual ARM Cortex A9 CPU, 1Gb SDRAM, and optional 7 port usb hub. This thing blows the average PI and software emulation out of the water.

This comes from pairing of an on chip FPGA which can run just about any core one can program. Some notable ones found by Colin/MisterAddons.com:

  • NES: Plays well to me. still adding mappers, but there are so many of them
  • SNES: Plays great and includes support for many special chip games. This is how I plan to finally beat Donkey Kong Country 2 and 3.
  • Genesis: Plays great. Audio is still being tweaked as the Genesis has a Yamaha audio chip that hasn’t been fully defined in FPGA terms
  • TurboGrafx: Plays excellent
  • Arcade: Most seem very authentic, without having the original PCBs to compare against.
  • Amiga: One of the most complete cores
  • 486: Runs, but doesn’t play all 486sx titles at full-speed but 8086-80386 titles does well.
  • Master System: Runs well in reviews.

With the 6502 and 6809 cores the question comes, can it run @Bill’s 6502 python? Will we be able to pair it with an esp8266? And what else can we do with it?

Extra details


I think r/fpgagaming is a pretty active subreddit, so any body interested might want to check them out.

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If it faithfully implements the instruction set, my code should work, though I think it will fly rather than run…

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