Wish someone would make a fpga that has arcade cores.

Now that FPGA's are a thing, wouldn't it be awesome if someone or a company decided to make a custom fpga arcade system. Something that takes different types of carts for varies arcade's or can just play the roms (better idea but less legal).
Making it open source would make it easy for people to add there own core if they decide to do the work to make it.
THey should get a custom fpga with alot of chips on it and high cpu power so they can be reprogrammed to be anything easily.
Maybe be cheaper for alot of us even if it's a grand or something. But make it worth the money. Some arcade games can be thousands of dollars anyways.
I have made this topic to get the idea out there so maybe something can be done about this.

jinx5 said:

Now that FPGA's are a thing, wouldn't it be awesome if someone or a company decided to make a custom fpga arcade system. Something that takes different types of carts for varies arcade's or can just play the roms (better idea but less legal).
Making it open source would make it easy for people to add there own core if they decide to do the work to make it.
THey should get a custom fpga with alot of chips on it and high cpu power so they can be reprogrammed to be anything easily.
Maybe be cheaper for alot of us even if it's a grand or something. But make it worth the money. Some arcade games can be thousands of dollars anyways.
I have made this topic to get the idea out there so maybe something can be done about this.

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Just use Groovymame, the time and energy to get this all the way you want it will take years. And open source? Plz, there's money to be made there, not gonna happen.

I'm sure somebody out there has considered it

Like Panda said it'll most likely take a while but there are some really dedicated MAME programmers out there....

you never know. Cant deny itd be awesome

It doesn't have to be open source. Just want as many cores as possible. And emulation has it drawbacks mostly input lag. But still playable at the most part if you can get used to it. But doing a quike google search I found out that groovymame is for crt's. I guess it will be alot better on a crt since crt's generally have no input delay so it won't add up like a lcd would.
Also to note that most of these arcade boards are getting very old and going to have the effects of ageing. Having a new board would help keep arcade gaming alive in the future.

There's already an open-source FPGA system that runs original arcade games - the MiSTer. Currently up to 42 classic arcade games and counting.

https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/Main_MiSTer/wiki

nice. Is it good thou. Does it suffer from what emulation we have now. Wish it had more cpu power but that will probably increase the price alot. I don't know how fpga's work exactly but maybe it's enough since a emulator usually need more cpu speeds then the original hardware has (I hear around 7x more power then the original) and a fpga is mimic of the hardware running the game. .
It needs some work thou putting some more cores in if it can handle it.
How much is it anyways.

Try a pandoras box?

lachlan said:

Try a pandoras box?

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So handy. There's been more than one game I've crossed off my want list thanks to PB. After playing games xyz, looking at their going rates, deciding that I'm good with the PB version.

Syn said:

So handy. There's been more than one game I've crossed off my want list thanks to PB. After playing games xyz, looking at their going rates, deciding that I'm good with the PB version.

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I have yet to own one because a CGA version of the PB5 is coming which looks about 100 times better going by the recent videos of the VGA/HDMI version so I agree 100%. I had a groovymame setup which was for all intents and purposes like the real deal but it's a pain with all the config and the hardware you need sitting in your cab.

Ya I read something about pandora's box on this fourm. Which one is best. The older one's can use that jamma connector the newer one's can directly output vide vga or hdmi. From one post I read, ether from here or google it says it is just a mame emulator with a bunch of roms. I could of read it wrong or the poster was misinformed. I just don't like emulation button delay it bothers me. unless it doesn't do it somehow and I got my computer and retro pi for emulation.

Anyways talking about FPGA's I guess someone could make some flash carts using FPGA's like the neo sd. Even with a flash cart making a bunch of arcade flashcarts like for PGM, CPS 1-2-3 , ect. But I guess it won't sell as much.

Analogue did it for 8-bit systems, & now for the SNES. The thing is the game boy, master system, nes, etc were all one guy programming in his spare time for over a decade before it was a finished project. Consolidating multiple arcade board together would most likely take a monumental effort.

wingzrow said:

Analogue did it for 8-bit systems, & now for the SNES. The thing is the game boy, master system, nes, etc were all one guy programming in his spare time for over a decade before it was a finished project. Consolidating multiple arcade board together would most likely take a monumental effort.

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But would save arcade gaming for generations.
If they start with the popular arcades first (mvs,cps 1,2,3,pgm, naomi, ect) and the easy one's then it's good, then gradually add the non popular one's for provation purposes.

Mame has saved arcade gaming for generations.

Your wants are for selfish reasons...like the rest of us

Syn said:

Mame has saved arcade gaming for generations.

Your wants are for selfish reasons...like the rest of us

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Agreed. I run groovymame with a jpac and no one has been able to tell the difference at my place.

What's the best way to connect a pc or pi 3 to a crt (PVM)? I can run mame that way until I finally find a cab with a good arcade monitor in it.

F34R said:

What's the best way to connect a pc or pi 3 to a crt (PVM)? I can run mame that way until I finally find a cab with a good arcade monitor in it.

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If it's a PC you will need a graphics card that can output 15khz RGB, most of them seem to be ATI Radeon cards like the 3450 which you can hack the bios to display only in 15khz.

for a pi? I've seen things like the Arpicade, they use a hdmi to vga converter and then get the RGB from that.

jinx5 said:

But would save arcade gaming for generations.
If they start with the popular arcades first (mvs,cps 1,2,3,pgm, naomi, ect) and the easy one's then it's good, then gradually add the non popular one's for provation purposes.

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The main problem is FPGAs aren't powerful enough or cheap enough for that to be viable yet. We're quickly getting there though.

lachlan said:

If it's a PC you will need a graphics card that can output 15khz RGB, most of them seem to be ATI Radeon cards like the 3450 which you can hack the bios to display only in 15khz.

for a pi? I've seen things like the Arpicade, they use a hdmi to vga converter and then get the RGB from that.

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Oh ok. That's what I've seen so far. Just wanted to check here to see if someone was doing something differently. Thanks for the info.

Fpga strength is that you're (as far as possible) simulating a system to run (and coordinate) in parallel.

With most emulators you are brute forcing a list of simulated processes and constraining it within a set cycle to ensure it is coordinated using a faster single processor, many more complicated emulation techniques take advantage of 3rd party standards to approximate/accommodate/coordinate certain parts of that emulation.

Whilst you can do some serious amounts of serial processing on some fpgas, you're still likely going to also be branching out into coordinating parallel process and potentially broach the seriously difficult task of pairing a main fpga with other hardware.

Parting out particularly fast processes/buses into parallel tasks for some speedier and exponentially more complicated hardware like naomi is probably a routing nightmare.

Exponentially more powerful/complicated systems simply require larger + more powerful fpgas - which again will make it real difficult to nail down a single solution, even if it was possible, let alone all the features such as different memory configurations/clock channels which can prevent one solution on a certain fpga from working on another fpga... so you face this awkward situation of it really only being worth working through this once you've got a pretty good plan and hardware lined up to support that plan - something that's a considerable upfront hurdle.

I guess for arcades there are so many cores to work out. If it is one special fpga that deals with arcade games they can put extra chips to replicate most of the chips and extra chips just to be programed in the future.
Don't forget where talking about a market where one game can be 3 grand for one game, a analogue nt is 500 bucks and a newer super nt is even cheaper, more stronger just lacking the older inputs.
Also for mame you will probably pay 600 bucks on a cheap pc or up to play mame anyways.
Anything is possible, it just needs to be funded and some smart people to work on it.
I have no skills in fpga or programing so I can't help. Plus the company or organization can bank on it.
For the most part most were dealing with boards that didn't have more then 500 mhz. but putting a better cpu in there would mean the element that can't be programed into fpga for whatever reason can be emulated for those bits (I got no idea what im talking about just typing out thoughts.).