Slashdot Mirror
How Hardware Artisans Are Keeping Classic Video Gaming Alive (fastcompany.com)
Slashdot reader harrymcc writes, "If you want to play classic Nintendo games, you could buy a vintage Super NES. Or you could use an emulator. Or -- if you're really serious -- you could use floating point gate arrays to design a new console that makes them look great on modern TVs." He shares Fast Company's article about "some of the other folks using new hardware to preserve the masterworks of the past."
Analogue created its system with HDTVs in mind, so every game looks as good or maybe even better than I remember from childhood. Playing the same cartridges on my actual Super Nintendo is more like looking through a dirty window... Another company called RetroUSB has also used Field Programmable Gate Arrays to create its own version of the original Nintendo. And if you already own any classic systems like I do, there's a miniature industry of aftermarket hardware that will make those consoles look better on modern televisions.
The article also notes "throwback consoles" from AtGames and Hyperkin, as well as the Open Source Scan Converter, "a crude-looking device that converts SCART input to HDMI output with no distinguishable lag from the game controller." Analogue's CEO Christopher Taber "argues that software emulation is inherently less accurate than re-creating systems at the hardware level," and describes Analogue engineer Kevin Horton as "someone who's obscenely talented at what he's doing... He's applying it to making perfect, faithful, aftermarket video game systems to preserve playing these systems in an unadulterated way."
And in the end the article's author feels that Analogue's Super NT -- a reverse-engineered Super Nintendo -- "just feels more like the real thing. Unlike an emulator, the Super Nt doesn't let you save games from any point or switch to slow motion, and the only modern gameplay concession it offers is the ability to reset the game through a controller shortcut. Switching to a different game still requires you to get off the couch, retrieve another cartridge, and put it into the system, which feels kind of like listening to a vinyl album instead of a Spotify playlist."
The article also notes "throwback consoles" from AtGames and Hyperkin, as well as the Open Source Scan Converter, "a crude-looking device that converts SCART input to HDMI output with no distinguishable lag from the game controller." Analogue's CEO Christopher Taber "argues that software emulation is inherently less accurate than re-creating systems at the hardware level," and describes Analogue engineer Kevin Horton as "someone who's obscenely talented at what he's doing... He's applying it to making perfect, faithful, aftermarket video game systems to preserve playing these systems in an unadulterated way."
And in the end the article's author feels that Analogue's Super NT -- a reverse-engineered Super Nintendo -- "just feels more like the real thing. Unlike an emulator, the Super Nt doesn't let you save games from any point or switch to slow motion, and the only modern gameplay concession it offers is the ability to reset the game through a controller shortcut. Switching to a different game still requires you to get off the couch, retrieve another cartridge, and put it into the system, which feels kind of like listening to a vinyl album instead of a Spotify playlist."
Yeah, I see. I don't think you know what floating point is and in what context to use it. Hint: FPGA is not it.
What you are looking for is "Field Programmable Gate Array".
Where is the slashdot of my youth?
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
FPGA == Field Programmable Gate Array, not "floating point gate array"
"floating point gate arrays"
lmfao.
Maybe someone will double down and say, well, FPGAs can be used to implement floating point math and so it's not incorrect to call them that.
AC keeping slashdot alive since 2009.
:-D
Along with emoticons as a 7 bit clean version of emojis :)
And an internet that wasn't 90% garbage but rather 50 percent usable information and 50 percent stuff people found interesting? :)
Where I like when emulation can speed up gameplay...
Buying 99 potions, for example.
Over, and over, and over, and over, and over...
> floating point gate arrays
LOL
Not only are you submitting an article about a console that was released a month and a half ago, you've invented a completely new form of technology while you're at it. Good job, subby.
If it's not open to be reproduced by anyone it's not preservation, because once the company dies it's dead, and nobody can learn from it / check it / improve it.
If it's not the original hardware, it's emulation. On a lower level than the usual software emulators, but still emulation.
Harry McCracken is the editor of Fast Company, and as you can see all he does is submit their own articles. The technical term for that is spammer.
As a long time (now ex) FAE for one of the top FPGA manufacturers and slightly longer /. reader - this is poor. Really poor.
except that not until the 32bits (some) / 64bits (most) game console era did those start to have any FPU.
(with maybe some custom DSPs embed in some cartridge and the FM synthetisers being exceptions)
so building a SNES reimplementation in FPGA is about the only situation where you don't need floating points.
the editors should stop writing summaries one their phone (with autocomplete on).
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Of all the articles and videos I've browsed about the super nt, the fast company one was not one of the better researched or presented ones. I think it simply made it here because of the submitter. That said, the super nt hardware itself is quality.
I came to post this. I haven't done hardware design in 20+ years, but even back in the 90s FPGA was Field Programmable Gate Array. My understanding is that the technology has come a long way since doing VHDL synthesis on SunOS/Solaris machines like we did back at Ga Tech when I was in school.
No, really, FPGAs have come such a long way that they're no longer working in pure binary... :)
And in the end the article's author feels that Analogue's Super NT -- a reverse-engineered Super Nintendo -- "just feels more like the real thing. Unlike an emulator, the Super Nt doesn't let you save games from any point or switch to slow motion, and the only modern gameplay concession it offers is the ability to reset the game through a controller shortcut. Switching to a different game still requires you to get off the couch, retrieve another cartridge, and put it into the system, which feels kind of like listening to a vinyl album instead of a Spotify playlist."
I do love this part of the original story. Kids these days... Watching a movie was a lot more special when you had to go to the video store, physically choose and rent a videocassette, and rewind it at the end. Nowadays, downloading it or watching on Netflix or the pay-per-view on the PVR, it's a lot less special.
If you had a Betamax machine as we did, the dwindling number of titles and even rental stores made it more likely you'd sit through a movie you'd rented, even if it wasn't the best. Hamburger, The Motion Picture. A review at the time said, "A very funny movie could be made about the fast food industry. But this isn't it." What the hell, that movie stands up today as a remarkably bad piece of 1980s nostalgia - and actually worth seeing for that very reason. And I watched it, and remember it fondly, because I rented it at Beta Barn (okay, Jumbo Video)... then stuck it out because I wasn't going back to the video store.
Waiting for the TV to warm up before you watched it is not at all like the modern experience of turning on your modern TV and waiting for it to boot. It was a lot more tactile, too. You'd turn the knob and hear the hum of the degaussing coil for a half-second or so, and then you'd look into the back and see the heaters in the tubes slowly coming to their dull-red glow. On most TVs, usually the sound would come in, faintly at first, then more forcefully as the horizontal circuits warmed up and the audio output tube started to get B+ Boost from the Damper tube. You'd start to hear a 60Hz buzz as the vertical output tube came up and was rattling around the laminates in the vertical output transformer and the deflection yoke. And then finally, the high voltage rectifier tube, powered off the flyback and therefore dependent on the horizontal stages, would warm up and a picture would appear on the screen. But don't sit down, you're fiddling with the vertical hold control and the fine-tuning for the first half hour until the set is at its normal operating temperature and all the components have stopped drifting. Then you get to dick with the rabbit ears (and if you're rich, the tint control!).
The death of tactility in my media is the thing that I miss the most. The smell of vacuum tubes and beeswax-impregnated paper capacitors in my radio and TV, the satisfying sound of the reel brakes in my Roberts 770X as it brought 1800 feet of tape to a stop without tearing your hand off, the frustration of having to repeatedly re-dial your pulse-dial phone to get past the busy signal at your newfangled ISP before you got a carrier and had to rush to get the phone into the cradle of the modem, and the tick-tick
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
If I want old games to look good on modern hardware, all I need to do is select the proper options in that emulator
But then you still have to
1. buy a Retrode to get the ROM image from your cartridge,
2. add support to the emulator for whatever coprocessor the cartridge might have (if any, and if it isn't something common like DSP-1, CX4, GSU, or SA1), and
3. deal with greater input lag through a general-purpose PC operating system than this FPGA console would have.
I've talked to Kevin Horton in #nesdev on EFnet, and he explained that the upscaling uses a circular buffer of pixels that adds less than 2 milliseconds of lag.
There are plenty of differences among the revisions of the Super NES chipset. The most obvious from the program's point of view is a bug fix in the DMA controller between CPU version 1 and CPU version 2, and some games reportedly have to slow down somewhat on launch-window consoles to avoid triggering the bug.
But the last revision to the chipset was the "1CHIP", which appeared in the last full-size Super NES consoles as well as the smaller New-Style Super NES (SNS-101). The 1CHIP has the cleanest analog video output, but certain aspects of its behavior are about as different from the common console ("2/1/3", or CPU version 2, PPU1 version 1, PPU2 version 3) as the PlayStation game support in the PlayStation 2 is from a PlayStation. This affects games like Air Strike Patrol. So I'd say that if the low-level emulation is as least as close to a 2/1/3 as the 1CHIP is, it's Good Enough(tm).
You still have a point, however, about what happens to the design once Analogue goes under or if something happens to Kevin Horton.
While you were listening to the crackle and hiss, the rest of us were listening to the music. It has a lot to do with what you focus on.
Sure, we could all hear the crackle, but it wasn't what you listen for. Do you stare at the seat backs when you go to a movie theatre?
"argues that software emulation is inherently less accurate than re-creating systems at the hardware level,"
I don't know if I'd believe this. I mean the Genesis is kind of infamous that different versions of the physical hardware from Sega don't get the sound right on the newer revs of that systems so I'm not going to assume a hardware implementation is going to have an advantage over a software solution.
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
Picture discs were pretty awesome too.
2018 and I still can't buy a cart that plays every SNES game on real hardware.
About 2 years ago I took up repairing and selling retro consoles. I still do programming, but it's a fun hobby that I keep getting better at.
It's an FPGA-based emulator of an old gaming system. There is nothing special except that it can't do save games and more that regular emulators can do. It's not any better than a good emulator, higan can and does match the performance of this overpriced system, even better it doesn't require the original cartridge.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
Black people in the theatre are the equivalents to crackle and hiss on vinyl.
Please don't let the hipsters get in on this cause that will = so called artists trying to be artis-anal but instead they will just end up sounding awfully nasal...
yes, old consoles (or home computers) look horrible on 4k flat screen tv's.
that is why all real retro gamers also keep several crt tv's around.
On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.