OK, thanks! What exactly are the differences between MIST and MISTer?
The MiST (a_Mi_ga, atari ST) is a "homebrewed" and open sourced board by Till Harbaum (aka MasterOfGizmo) and you can find everything about it here:
https://github.com/mist-devel and here
https://www.atari-forum.com/viewforum.php?f=115The MiSTer hardware is really a developer board from Terasic, with some additional addons such as SDRAM and I/O-board, the project was started by Alexey “Sorgelig” Melnikov, and was based on the MiST firmware and cores, but has evolved a lot since then.
The big differences are
* MiST is purely FPGA with just a minimum microcontroller to run the firmware (the framework that bootstraps the whole thing, and loads the cores, display the menus etc), and its output is VGA.
* MiSTer has a dual-core ARM CPU in addition to the FPGA. It boots Linux on the ARM system and the "firmware" which is used to load cores etc on the FPGA, runs as a Linux-program. In addition, output from the FPGA cores are directed out to HDMI, while the firmware from the Linux side can alter it with various filters (scanlines, upscaling, blurring, and much much more) There is an option to output to RGB through a VGA port as well, using one of the many I/O boards that exists.
Still, the FPGA soft cores for MiST and MiSTer share a lot, many developers have both, and so bug fixes in one is rapidly also brought to the other.
From an Amiga/Minimig point of view, both offer RTG (P96) and RTA (AHI), but the MiSTer has much more RAM and can do much higher resolutions/depths. And speaking of RAM, MiST and clones are typically limited to 32, 64 and latest 128MB of SDRAM, while MiSTer has similar limits on the SDRAM it also has 512MB of DDR RAM, of which you can dedicate for example 256MB as FastRAM to Minimig. Both MiST and MiSTer can go online using a PPP link over serial port, with MiST the serial port is the physical port on the system (often already used by MIDI ports), while on the MiSTer the serial port is a virtual interface on the Linux side, as if there's a virtual null-modem cable stretched between the system running on the FPGA and the Linux running on the ARM.
From a general point of view - the MiSTer has a _much larger eco-system, with tons of cores for Arcades and various computer systems. And there are now MiSTer clones as well, which are more affordable and available than the original Terasic DE-10 nano. Rumours has it that there will be new MiSTer clones in the future with different form-factors, like has happened with MiST clones.
https://misterfpga.org is the home of everything MiSTer.
Have you ever used this board yourself?
I have both MiST and MiSTer, I don't have a MISS1200 (yet).
I ran Sysinfo which said it was about half the speed of an A4000.
My MiST scores 0.67 the speed of A4000 68040, so a bit more than half the speed.
Sysinfo on my A500 Mini with AMINIMIGA says it's twice as fast as an A4000, though. Are these results accurate?
The Sysinfo speed test mostly shows how fast systems are at running the Sysinfo speed test, which may or may not be indicative of how fast it runs other software... benchmarking is a tricky thing
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.
This I don't know the answer to.
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.
Normally, you should not have to use those, unless you somehow manage to brick your system. Then these can be used to reprogram the firmware from scratch, using USB blaster. Beware, there was a firmware update not too long ago that potentially could brick MiST systems because of a long-existing bug in the firmware. The work-around was an intermediate firmware that just fixed the bug, allowing the next upgrade to be successful.
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!
As do I
