[BozemanLUG] January Meeting

[Scott Dowdle]

Greetings,

I have a real neat topic to discuss for the upcoming meeting.  The only question is when do we want to have it?  Normally it would be Thursday, January 2nd.  Being the 2nd day of the year I thought maybe people would prefer the following Thursday, January 9th?  Does anyone have a preference... or an inability to attend one or the other?

Here's the topic: The MiSTer Project.  What is MiSTer?  From their wiki page (https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/Main_MiSTer/wiki):

MiSTer is an open project that aims to recreate various classic computers, 
game consoles and arcade machines, using modern hardware... 
MiSTer utilizes a readily available FPGA board called the 'Terasic DE10-Nano'

Basically the hardware is a SBC similar to the Raspberry Pi except for the fact that the CPU package contains an two components that interface with each other:

1) 800MHz Dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 processor
  and
2) Intel Cyclone V (FPGA - Field Programmable Gate Array)

The board normally would cost more than $300 but Intel has been subsidizing it as a development board to promote their FPGA products so it costs about $130.  The manufacturer provides a Microsoft Windows-based development environment for it but the board itself runs Linux ARM.

The MiSTer Project basically provides an alternative Linux image for the board that is more end-user focused.  The MiSTer Project is also a clearing house for a number of "cores" (some produced before the MiSTer Project or the DE10-Nano even existed that have since been ported to the DE10-Nano).  What is a "core"?  A MiSTer "core" is an FPGA definition/program that can reproduce a computer, a gaming console, or a stand-up arcade machine by sort of "shape shifting" the FPGA logic hardware to fairly accurately replicate all of the needed components of a large number of devices.  FPGAs differ from software-based emulators in that the components that they replicate can run in parallel and accurately reproduce the critical timing of the original hardware.  The vast majority of software-based emulators are not capable of parallel execution and have a much harder time accurately reproducing accurate timing... as a result a lot more hardware resources... providing a differing experience on computer systems.  Summarizing that, FPGA-based systems can more accurately reproduce retro hardware with far fewer computational resources.

That's all fine and good but what "cores" are available from the MiSTer Project?  How powerful is the FPGA system in the DE-10 Nano board... and what is the upper-limit on what hardware it can replicate?  That's what I'll discuss at the meeting.  Executive summary?  This project is amazing and for over a year has been a hot-bed of very active development with some fantastic results.  There are quite a number commercial retro-gaming products on the market that do one or two systems quite well but the MiSTer Project / DE10-nano board combination provides about $75K worth of hardware replacement value... and the list of available "cores" continues to grow.  Oh, and the DE10-nano can also be used as a Desktop Linux system for those that might also want that.

For anyone who wants to do MiSTer research before the meeting, there are dozens and dozens of enthusiast produced videos on YouTube and the MiSTer Wiki is pretty darn good too.

TYL,
-- 
Scott Dowdle
704 Church Street
Belgrade, MT 59714
(406)388-0827 [home]
(406)994-3931 [work]