MIST or MISTer board?

[AmigaBruno]

My Amiga A1200 recently broke down and I still don't know why this is or how serious the fault is!

I was desperate for a replacement, because it was my only Amiga apart from THEA500 Mini. I was searching for Amiga A1200s I could buy, mainly on eBay although I did look elsewhere, but the situation is that the prices keep increasing, they're nearly all auctions instead of buy it now and may be "untested" (probably broken), "for parts", unstable, or about to break down. I didn't feel there was a better way of buying a replacement apart from eBay.

I finally went for something on eBay described as an Amiga A1200 recreation, which was buy it now and based around an FPGA board called a "MiSS 1200 Board R41" by a company called 8 bits4ever on https://www.8bits4ever.net/ I feel that by getting this device I've saved money and got a system which is unlikely to break down in the near future. It looks and feels like a real Amiga A1200!

When I received this device it came with a micro SD card which had the Minimig Core installed, but no other cores. I've heard there are some other Amiga Cores I can install, though.

After some research, I was thinking about what it would be like to install a different Amiga Core, as well as to experience a lot of different computer systems, including some I've never even seen, some I've seen but never touched, and some I saw in shops, tested out, but never owned. I was planning to install something called "Mr. Fusion", which can set up a micro SD card with a full set of cores for various computers, consoles, and full blown arcade machines. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to get it to run on this system, though.

My experience with this system so far has left me wondering if the board is a MIST or a MISTer board. How can I test which one it is? It was after my failed installation of Mr. Fusion, I started thinking it might be a MIST board instead. It has no LAN port, so I bought a TPLink WiFi dongle which was recommended as compatible in a video. It has only one micro SD card slot, so I'm worried this slot may not be compatible with installing software. I started reading about installing Cores and software on a MIST board instead of on a MISTer board, then some of these techniques worked! It involved renaming an .rbf file as core.rbf which becomes the default Core to be loaded.   

Unfortunately, I ended up installing an Atari ST core as one of the most simple to install on my new SD card first of all with a TOS file and a floppy disk file, then it worked! I've managed to install a menu for selecting multiple cores since then, but the Atari ST Core is the only one working at the moment. I hope some of you can advise me whether my board is a MIST board or a MISTer board, as well as how to install and get some other cores working on it ASAP! I'll try to ignore the Atari ST Core as much as possible, but I might be brainwashed unless I can get some other cores working!!




 

[AmigaBruno]

OK, thanks! What exactly are the differences between MIST and MISTer? Have you ever used this board yourself? I ran Sysinfo which said it was about half the speed of an A4000. Sysinfo on my A500 Mini with AMINIMIGA says it's twice as fast as an A4000, though. Are these results accurate? I've looked on the manufacturer's GDrive which has various files divided into different pages for different boards.  Where it says Core files and EP3C25E module, that folder is empty, but another one called EP4CE22 module has lots of Cores. Do you know if these are compatible with my board? I should be finding out very soon, anyway. 

For everyone else who may be reading this, the board has an Altera Cyclone EP3C25 FPGA, and an AT91SAM7S256 ARM IO controller. The manual shows it has a 6 pin connector marked "ISP" and another connector or slot marked "ARM Programming", but I don't know exactly what these are for and I can't reach them without unscrewing my case. I wonder if I need to use these for something. It might be a good idea to extend these ports with special cables to outside the case.

I now have several retro computer systems installed and working on this card after managing to find a menu file, although various other menu files have been deleted from their pages.  These systems are anything I've ever used, seen, but not touched, and I hope to install some I've never even touched or seen before. The other working systems at the moment include a BBC Micro Model B, ZX Spectrum 128 (Copyright Sinclair), an Enterprise 128, and a Sam Coupé. The Apple IIe Core only boots sometimes, but has no disk images yet, as it requires .nib images, not .do images. which I downloaded. A friend of mine wants me to install a Sega Megadrive on it, but I'm not sure this is compatible now I've been told it's a MIST.

Of course, I'll be using my MIST system as an Amiga most of the time!

[AmigaBruno]

Thanks for all these details! So it seems that the AT91SAM7S256 ARM IO controller is the main component limiting the power of this board. It can add scanlines. The VGA port is my only video output.

I've been installing Cores from various Github repositories, but not all of them work. Some just give me a blank screen. So far, I've got Amstrad CPC, Apple IIe, Atari 8 bit, Atari ST, BBC Micro, MSX, Sam Coupé, Sinclair ZX Spectrum 128, all working, but I've tried and failed to get Acorn Archimedes, Sinclair QL, and SEGA Megadrive working. Unfortunately, I've found out that I can't attach .DSK images to the Sam Coupé Core. Apart from this, I went to the 8bits4ever.net GDrive, downloaded all their Cores under EP4CE22, put 2 or 3 of them into my SD card's root directory, but then found out they don't work on my EP3C25 board! I think I'll have to contact them and pay for some support, because I bought this board second hand.

I've installed RTG from an installer which came with the supplied Minimig SD card and the seller said it was from Aminet. Unfortunately, whenever I select one of the new display modes starting with MISTer, the Workbench screen resets, then just displays a blank, grey screen! I've installed and uninstalled it 3 or 4 times now. Perhaps this is because the monitor driver is called MISTer, not MIST, but I don't know. The only other monitor driver currently installed is PAL. My monitor is a Samsung LS23B350. According to the manual, its maximum resolution is VESA, 1920 x 1080 at 67.5Khz. I've heard a lot about 31Khz monitors, so does this mean my VGA port can only output a signal at a maximum of 31Khz? The maximum resolution in this manual for 31.469Khz (Horizontal Frequency) is 720x400 or 640x480.

I do lots of artwork. Several months ago, I started using an Aiptek Hyperpen 6000 graphics tablet with my classic Amiga A1200. It was recommended by the user Mixel, and designed for Windows 95 or 98. https://youtu.be/u5ixZhIxMus?si=ntf__pqq8j74_3Wz It requires the Formaldihyd driver, as well as a PC 9 pin Serial to 25 pin Serial adapter and a PS/2 to USB cable to power it. I want to get a graphics tablet to use with my new Amiga A1200 MiSS1200 recreation, but I don't know what might be compatible. It has no classic Amiga style serial port, so I need to find out where I can plug it in. It supports USB mice and USB speakers. I think the possibilities are one of the Atari style 9 pin joystick ports, or a USB port. They support a classic Amiga 9 pin mouse. The board has some kind of system where there are three different modes for the 9 pin joystick ports, but I'm not sure this is working. I had to plug joysticks into the port which is where the mouse port is on classic Amigas because they didn't work in the other port. Support might be built in to Minimig, Amigavision, or some other Amiga Core, or it might even work with the Formaldihyd driver, which supports some Wacom tablets. Can you tell me which port I can use and what driver I need?

My board has a MIDI OUT port as well as USB ports. Is it possible to go online with my board? I've bought a TPLink AC600 Nano USB WiFi dongle, which I heard is compatible with the MISTer.

[AmigaBruno]

OK, thanks! I'l try installing that driver later today.

Meanwhile, I've been in touch with the board manufacturer about various Cores not working. They confirmed that it is a MIST board. They said I could use any MIST Cores or binaries from https://github.com/mist-devel/mist-binaries

After reading their email, I deleted some non working Cores from my SD card, then downloaded some more Cores from the link above. The latest Cores I've downloaded from there are Archimedes, C64, Oric, Sega Megadrive/Genesis, Tandy Coco2 (as well as system ROMs from another site, because I don't understand how to use their CocoDragon.mra file), Texas Instruments TI99/4A, Commodore 16, and Sega Master System.

Out of these Cores, the only ones which I've got working are Texas Instruments TI99/4A, Commodore 16, and Sega Master System. I don't understand why this is.

I suppose the answer could be that the other Cores which don't work require more setting up than is explained and the people who created them think that it's obvious, but not for MIST newbies like me.

It could be my firmware version. I've been told that my MIST board is less than a year old, so I assume that the firmware is recent and doesn't need to be updated. I'm worried that if I try to update it before understanding exactly how and why this is done, then my MIST board will stop working and I won't be able to fix it myself. My current firmware version is "ARM s/w ver. ATH240105".

[AmigaBruno]

Yes, I think they do, but they don't always say they do, or which files they need! They might be system ROMs which also have to be renamed to certain names, or not renamed because the MIST thinks it's the real hardware.

A friend of mine really wants me to get the Sega Megadrive/Genesis system up and running, but I'm more into computers. However, I can't get it running! The page https://github.com/mist-devel/mist-binaries/tree/master/cores/fpgagen doesn't say it requires any other files at all. I haven't installed any games yet, because I can't insert a cartridge image until the Core starts running. What would a real Sega Megadrive/Genesis do if you turned it on without a cartridge inserted? I think it would just display the Sega logo, like the Sega Master System Core does. I might have to install the Sega Saturn Core to keep him happy in the meantime.

BTW, I haven't installed the MIST RTG drivers yet because I was too busy playing some games! I really hope the RTG modes work with Deluxe Paint.






 

[AmigaBruno]

Well, I've got the Sega Megadrive/Genesis Core running now, but I can't play any games because it doesn't recognise either of my joysticks plugged into the Atari style 9 pin ports, or my A500 Mini controller plugged into a USB port. They all work fine with the Atari800 Core, but there are some problems using them with the Sega Master System Core. I think the Megadrive/Genesis Core probably requires another file especially to configure them. If so, what is this file and where can I get it? I found some information on https://github.com/mist-devel/mist-board/wiki/Configuration-files-%28.ini%29 but I don't really understand it. On second thoughts, I may have to buy a Sega Megadrive or Megadrive Core compatible controller. If so, should it have a 9 pin Atari style plug, or a USB plug?

Unfortunately, I still haven't got round to installing the MIST RTG driver.

Where is there a forum dedicated to MIST, or isn't there one?  I've seen https://www.atari-forum.com/viewtopic.php?t=26513&start=400 but other forums don't seem to have any recent posts.

[AmigaBruno]

I don't understand how to use the keymapper yet. I've looked for Sega Megadrive type controllers and seen that they have six buttons on the right, one start button in the middle, and an eight directional joystick type key. I think this is why my joysticks and controller don't work.

 

[AmigaBruno]

GOOD NEWS! I finally worked out that the keymapper for fpgagen (Sega Megadrive/Genesis) you mentioned comes under Controls in OSD. The Settings I inputted to try and get a few games working are as follows...

Joystick swap: On
Only 3 buttons: On

I left everything else as the defaults. After this, I found that my A500 Mini controller worked with all the games I'd downloaded so far.

Some bad news is that there are a lot of Cores which I can't get running on my MiSS 1200 MIST board. The latest technique I've tried is to download a few Cores designed for the SiDi board, which I read was totally compatible with MIST, although I avoided Cores for the SiDi128, because I only have 64Mb of RAM fitted. I've been trying to get Cores for the Sinclair QL, Tandy "Coco", MSX1, Oric, C64, and Sharp X68000 running, but no matter where I get versions of these Cores from or what other files I copy into the root of my SD card, these systems just won't run. I've read all the readme files. I think they may require some .cfg files containing certain commands which I don't know about yet and that the repositories assume that everyone knows about this. These files might cover more than one Core.

As for Amiga RTG, I haven't been able to set it up from the software on the Minimig utilities disk yet. There doesn't seem to be a proper HD installer. There's a readme file and an app called Updater. I've followed all the instructions and run Updater, but there's no sign of any additional display modes. However, I've found some software called Picasso96Install on Aminet, which has lots of files, including Amigaguide docs, and claims to support Picasso96 on UAE and uaegfx, so I'm going to try and install that onto my Minimig Core next.

 

[AmigaBruno]

OK, many thanks for that information! I'll try very carefully to install P96 and RTG ASAP.

Meanwhile, I've been working on getting some other Cores working. I've now managed to get the Sinclair QL and C64 Cores working. I think in both cases this was due to installing different versions of their Cores, but I may also have renamed the QL ROM. The C64 Core is another one which seems not to do anything until you press F12. I think I'll try these techniques with the Tandy "Coco" and the Oric as well. I still don't know how to use .mra files, though.

I also found out I had no mist.ini file on my SD card for the non Amiga Cores, so I created one to try and tell some Cores which ROM files to load, but this had no effect! Unfortunately, using my MacBook with the software Pages and TextEdit, I was unable to stop the extension .txt from being appended to mist.ini. I renamed it several times, but the .txt kept reappearing, so this may have prevented it from working. I'm worried that some Cores may not be detecting my 64Mb RAM and defaulting to 32Mb, so that might be why they don't run. I also wonder if I can upgrade to 128Mb RAM.

I don't think I've found the source code for any Cores yet. It looks like various people have already created Cores for all computers that have ever existed, including some eastern bloc computers I'd never heard of before (e.g. TVC Computer). Unfortunately, I think some of the Cores available don't run on the MIST, only on the MISTer, but I'm not sure which ones these are.