MiSTer FPGA Forum

german_user wrote: ↑Mon Sep 13, 2021 2:16 pm I noticed that the final board design is missing the two 10 pin headers next to the expansion port. Are these signals now lost, or have they been fully integrated into the slot?

Yes, these were Low voltage versions of the High voltage SNAC and user ports, they have now been integrated into the expansion slot and you just have a physical switch to select if it's running the low voltage or high voltage expansion - it can also detect this switch position on the expansion slot so the software / core can know what's connected and how it should be used etc. It's also less likely to cause problems if it's all just the edge slot rather than the 10 pin headers, they would have been bent or shorted out at some point.

Short answer, they are not lost, just integrated and we also added all the spare I/O from the DE10-nano, even all the spare arduino and analogue pins that are not currently used on the MiSTer stack design, so future expansion can get quite interesting if the community and core dev's want to support it.

Cheers,

Richard.

Thank you very much for the detailed answer, then I am reassured.

german_user wrote: ↑Mon Sep 13, 2021 2:29 pm

peterkozmd wrote: ↑Mon Sep 13, 2021 1:11 pm Yeah still waiting for the final price added up with board,power supply,case plus nano and i assume the extra addon modules. So literally everything included out the box. Really eager to know how much the complete cost will be for everything included. Anyone have any idea the total damage estimate for everything? 300? or upwards of 400 usd?

Since the DE-10 Nano alone has now become a good 20% more expensive, it is better to count on 400 than 300 Dolloar. In my opinion, however, it makes no sense to purchase the DE10 there, it should actually be cheaper in the USA.

Yes, exactly. The DE10-nano will be lower cost in the US. They are imported into the UK / Europe and seem to have a higher cost here because of that. You can't get a 'Volume discount' unless you buy a really big number of them, the price the big distributors have it listed is a really good buy price for the DE10-Nano as it's also subsidised by Intel for the educational / university sector.

Buy your DE10-Nano (or a spare) as soon as you can. At some point the component supply will become more limited and the lead time for manufacture is likely to extend, even for the big US distributors.

Here's an amazon link i think i'll order from https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07B89YHSB/
Is this their any cheaper places to get this? also with this and the mister system i should be set right? Sorry new to this. Thanks for the help.

multisystem wrote: ↑Mon Sep 13, 2021 9:51 am

Slipard wrote: ↑Mon Sep 13, 2021 9:32 am Question: maybe is it an overlook from me, but I didn't see if the case, when ordered from the Multisystem site, was 3D printed or factory molded; which one is it?

That's a great question, Initially the enclosure will need to be 3D printed, it's just the most sensible option until we can see if a tooled design is even a viable thing to do. Tooling would be quite expensive for an enclosure of this size and that also means it's fixed (we would have to decide on Option A or B for tooling). With 3D printing you can at least make changes or improvements without needing to change tooling.

It would be great to hear if people are happy with a 3D printed enclosure, I think it looks quite good in a matte finish, it's strong and I have tuned the quality for best print time/cost so it should be a viable option to print/sell without costing too much.

In my opinion, some aspects of the design would unnecessarily increase tooling costs, I've reviewed the STL's a bit for fun... It looks like you would need a couple slides to accommodate the vents and openings from multiple angles, but I could be wrong. I'm not an expert, just work in plastics and see it from sort of that perspective. Was the 3d printable case designed with injection molding in mind?

Certainly looks very interesting. I do not use Twitter, so I hope I will hear about it on Facebook or here if it becomes available in some way.

multisystem wrote: ↑Mon Sep 13, 2021 9:51 am

Slipard wrote: ↑Mon Sep 13, 2021 9:32 am Question: maybe is it an overlook from me, but I didn't see if the case, when ordered from the Multisystem site, was 3D printed or factory molded; which one is it?

That's a great question, Initially the enclosure will need to be 3D printed, it's just the most sensible option until we can see if a tooled design is even a viable thing to do. Tooling would be quite expensive for an enclosure of this size and that also means it's fixed (we would have to decide on Option A or B for tooling). With 3D printing you can at least make changes or improvements without needing to change tooling.

It would be great to hear if people are happy with a 3D printed enclosure, I think it looks quite good in a matte finish, it's strong and I have tuned the quality for best print time/cost so it should be a viable option to print/sell without costing too much.

aberu wrote: ↑Mon Sep 13, 2021 5:16 pm Was the 3d printable case designed with injection molding in mind?

Exactly the opposite, I always design for the 3D printing process first, especially it it's going to be printed on FDM machines as they have even more limitations that SLS does not.

Some designers make the mistake of designing a moulded case, then expect it to be able to be FDM or SLA 3D printed for prototypes, that's not a good path even with powder based SLS Nylon 3D printing. It should be designed for the process you intend to use, even if it's only for prototypes.

It has been designed so that it could evolve into an injection moulded design if needed, but that's not always the best route for open source hardware projects as you still get much more flexibility and freedom with 3D printing. Especially at the moment when a component / connector may have to change due to shortages or obsolescence, if that does not fit your moulded case it's going to stop production.

aberu wrote: ↑Mon Sep 13, 2021 5:16 pm In my opinion, some aspects of the design would unnecessarily increase tooling costs, I've reviewed the STL's a bit for fun... It looks like you would need a couple slides to accommodate the vents and openings from multiple angles, but I could be wrong. I'm not an expert, just work in plastics and see it from sort of that perspective.

The 3D printed design currently has no draught angles for moulding and many of the wall thickness choices are specifically for the standard 0.4mm FDM nozzle size, so they produce strong walls and solid infill where needed. If it was changed to moulding lots of these things would be changed for the moulding process and to limit mould cooling problems and defects etc.


I do this with most projects, for example below is a product we recently started as 3D printed (Left of the image - it's specifically designed to 3D print quickly), then the design was altered to produce a 3D enclosure that was going to be tooled, this could be 3D printed (middle image) but it was just to prove the models were ready to be tooled. - Then the finished tooled case is on the Right.

peterkozmd wrote: ↑Mon Sep 13, 2021 4:28 pm Here's an amazon link i think i'll order from https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07B89YHSB/
Is this their any cheaper places to get this? also with this and the mister system i should be set right? Sorry new to this. Thanks for the help.

Dont see the amazon price, but mouser is about 171$ for the DE10-Nano Kit. Digikey is about 175$.

For the RGB video out on the SCART and VGA, how many bits is the color depth?

We are trying to make sure we have enough filament and the right colours in stock for launch, any feedback on what colour and case style you prefer would be most appreciated, thank you.

Style A or B -
And a close up of the 3D printed enclosure quality, the light highlights very small layer changes and tiny defects, you don't really see these with the eye but I want to give an idea of what we are aiming for - all top layers are smooth, layer height is 0.2mm and the finish is matte PLA.

These are not post processed, so they come off the 3D printer exactly as in the images, that way we can keep costs down and if anyone wants to sand/polish/smooth or paint they can do this themselves.

Neil is going to put up some poles to capture votes on Twitter if anyone also wishes to show a preference there, thank you.

Ultron wrote: ↑Tue Sep 14, 2021 12:17 pm For the RGB video out on the SCART and VGA, how many bits is the color depth?

It's exactly the same as the Analogue output of the MiSTer Analogue I/O board, so has the same depth, colour and compatibility.

At the moment I actually prefer the white case in its original form.

multisystem wrote: ↑Tue Sep 14, 2021 8:53 am The 3D printed design currently has no draught angles for moulding and many of the wall thickness choices are specifically for the standard 0.4mm FDM nozzle size, so they produce strong walls and solid infill where needed. If it was changed to moulding lots of these things would be changed for the moulding process and to limit mould cooling problems and defects etc.


I do this with most projects, for example below is a product we recently started as 3D printed (Left of the image - it's specifically designed to 3D print quickly), then the design was altered to produce a 3D enclosure that was going to be tooled, this could be 3D printed (middle image) but it was just to prove the models were ready to be tooled. - Then the finished tooled case is on the Right.

Very cool! Thanks for the insight. The company I work at is primarily doing prototyping and production of medical and gun parts (burning both ends of the candle I suppose) for mold design, tooling, molding, and finishing all in one shop. However, we are newer to the 3d printing game, mostly just use it internally for fixtures and end of arm attachments, so I was mostly commenting as a newbie even from my indirect experience, glad I recognized correctly that it was a DFAM part.

Wow!... very nice work, love the look of the case.

multisystem wrote: ↑Tue Sep 14, 2021 12:20 pm We are trying to make sure we have enough filament and the right colours in stock for launch, any feedback on what colour and case style you prefer would be most appreciated, thank you.

Style A or B -

And a close up of the 3D printed enclosure quality, the light highlights very small layer changes and tiny defects, you don't really see these with the eye but I want to give an idea of what we are aiming for - all top layers are smooth, layer height is 0.2mm and the finish is matte PLA.

These are not post processed, so they come off the 3D printer exactly as in the images, that way we can keep costs down and if anyone wants to sand/polish/smooth or paint they can do this themselves.

Neil is going to put up some poles to capture votes on Twitter if anyone also wishes to show a preference there, thank you.

Would buy definitely a white one Please let us know when we can order!

Gyruss wrote: ↑Fri Sep 17, 2021 4:38 pm

Would buy definitely a white one Please let us know when we can order!

Great, nice to see some interest in the White, I like it too.

Neil is putting up pre-orders for patrons from next Thursday 23rd Sep, and then anyone can order the following week - Thursday 30th.

Keep an eye on https://rmcretro.store/mister-multisystem/ for the order selection and pre order pages.

What type of plasic is used to 3D print the enclosure? I prefer the white variant (B) but I am a little concerned about its UV resistance. I don't want to end up with a yellowish case (years from now).

Using Memtest, what kind of frequencies are you getting as stable from the RAM?

Ariek wrote: ↑Sat Sep 18, 2021 10:10 am What type of plasic is used to 3D print the enclosure? I prefer the white variant (B) but I am a little concerned about its UV resistance. I don't want to end up with a yellowish case (years from now).

If that would happen with my white version over the years I will use retrobright like I did with my PC- engines before, they look brandnew after when it is done

multisystem wrote: ↑Tue Sep 14, 2021 12:20 pm We are trying to make sure we have enough filament and the right colours in stock for launch, any feedback on what colour and case style you prefer would be most appreciated, thank you.

Multisystem_enclosure_colour_options_vote1.jpg


Style A or B -

Multisystem_enclosure_style_options_vote2.jpg

And a close up of the 3D printed enclosure quality, the light highlights very small layer changes and tiny defects, you don't really see these with the eye but I want to give an idea of what we are aiming for - all top layers are smooth, layer height is 0.2mm and the finish is matte PLA.

These are not post processed, so they come off the 3D printer exactly as in the images, that way we can keep costs down and if anyone wants to sand/polish/smooth or paint they can do this themselves.

Multisystem_enclosure_close_up_finish_quality.jpg


Neil is going to put up some poles to capture votes on Twitter if anyone also wishes to show a preference there, thank you.

Style A is what I would take, looks so different then all other consoles, and the Mister FPGA is really different then all others

err... wait, do I understand correctly that RGB SCART doesn't require any fussy .ini manipulation? Shouldn't I need to enter specific core profiles etc.?

If that's the case (pun intended), then count me in!

I'm interested in putting this PCB in a ITX case so I've got a few questions:
a) Can you still output VGA to SCART like the regular MiSTer IO board ?
b) Are the pins for USB 2.0, power and LED indicators compatible with regular PC cases out of the box?
c) Do you think it will fit inside a Akasa Cypher MX (208 x 203 x 45mm) case together with a 2.5" SSD? I'm not sure how tall the Multisystem PCB + MiSTer will be.
d) Does the PCB come with a IO shield plate ?

cursedverses wrote: ↑Sat Sep 18, 2021 12:51 pm Using Memtest, what kind of frequencies are you getting as stable from the RAM?

We have done a lot of memory testing and with the different batches built up so far we see around 140Mhz to 146Mhz. We have a very electrical heavy factory, lots of AC switching motors and various equipment so it's quite 'noisy' from a radiated and conducted emissions point of view.

I will have to take one home and see if it makes any difference, probably not.

We are certainly well over the 130Mhz reference point for the memory speed. And testing on the Archie core (126Mhz) Spectrum (112Mhz) and the NeoGeo @ 96Mhz and all the other cores show no issues at all in running for multiple days on the Multisystem.
Above image showing a 4 hour memory test.

We have also done comparisons with the MiSTer stack using the 2.5 and 2.9 memory modules and they seem to perform around the same, some are 138Mhz others around the 145Mhz point, putting our memory module in the MiSTer stack also gives about the same memtest results as in the Multisystem motherboard.
Above image showing a much longer test around ~40 hours

Ariek wrote: ↑Sat Sep 18, 2021 10:10 am What type of plasic is used to 3D print the enclosure? I prefer the white variant (B) but I am a little concerned about its UV resistance. I don't want to end up with a yellowish case (years from now).

It's PLA plastic (matte finish) for the 3D printed enclosure. This is a stable, strong and rigid plastic, should not be troubled by UV and colours should not fade.

lamarax wrote: ↑Sat Sep 18, 2021 6:43 pm err... wait, do I understand correctly that RGB SCART doesn't require any fussy .ini manipulation? Shouldn't I need to enter specific core profiles etc.?

If that's the case (pun intended), then count me in!

The SCART port has a few little quality of life improvements over a standard VGA to SCART cable -

You don't need to alter the mister.ini file to enable the composite sync signal output. We have an active sync combiner on the board for SCART output, so it does not care if the MiSTer composite sync is enabled or not.

We send out the RGB indicator signal so any TV's will pick up the correct input type and should see RGB as the input.
And the SCART has the option link so you can set to 4:3 or 16:9 output - again if your widescreen CRT is set to auto, and you have the jumper set to 4:3 then the CRT will format the image to 4:3 automatically.

And it just uses a standard 21 pin SCART-SCART cable, try to get a decent one with shielding and screening for the best image.

That said I have tested it with one from a UK pound shop ( yes a £1.00 / $1.50 / 2.00 euro SCART cable), and that was surprisingly both all 21 pins connected and had a screened and ground-shielded cable and the image looked as good as a £14.00 gold plated one from Amazon.

Very good news about the scart implementation, with the mess of cables and misinformation out there.

multisystem wrote: ↑Mon Sep 20, 2021 8:44 am

cursedverses wrote: ↑Sat Sep 18, 2021 12:51 pm Using Memtest, what kind of frequencies are you getting as stable from the RAM?

We have done a lot of memory testing and with the different batches built up so far we see around 140Mhz to 146Mhz. We have a very electrical heavy factory, lots of AC switching motors and various equipment so it's quite 'noisy' from a radiated and conducted emissions point of view.

I will have to take one home and see if it makes any difference, probably not.

We are certainly well over the 130Mhz reference point for the memory speed. And testing on the Archie core (126Mhz) Spectrum (112Mhz) and the NeoGeo @ 96Mhz and all the other cores show no issues at all in running for multiple days on the Multisystem.

Multisystem_SDRAM_testing_4hours.jpg
Above image showing a 4 hour memory test.

We have also done comparisons with the MiSTer stack using the 2.5 and 2.9 memory modules and they seem to perform around the same, some are 138Mhz others around the 145Mhz point, putting our memory module in the MiSTer stack also gives about the same memtest results as in the Multisystem motherboard.

Multisystem_SDRAM_testing_40hours.jpg
Above image showing a much longer test around ~40 hours

Thanks so much for this! This will definitely help with some of those more aggressive cores for sure.

robot0 wrote: ↑Mon Sep 20, 2021 8:32 am I'm interested in putting this PCB in a ITX case so I've got a few questions:
a) Can you still output VGA to SCART like the regular MiSTer IO board ?
b) Are the pins for USB 2.0, power and LED indicators compatible with regular PC cases out of the box?
c) Do you think it will fit inside a Akasa Cypher MX (208 x 203 x 45mm) case together with a 2.5" SSD? I'm not sure how tall the Multisystem PCB + MiSTer will be.
d) Does the PCB come with a IO shield plate ?

It’s not an itx board so you’ll have to ghetto mod it as usual if you want to fit it in an itx case. Since it is 17x17 cm it might be tricky to get it to work it in, you might need to make holes for the switches and stuff in the front.

I rather think that the height could be more critical than the mere dimensions of the PCB. The "Thin Mini ITX" only has a very low height, so cooling solutions from the notebook sector are also used.

Hello everyone. I'm new here. I don't own a MiSTer yet but am very interested. I'm especially fascinated to see how the Sega Saturn core turns out.

If/when I do get one, I will definitely want this multisystem console setup. It looks amazing.

multisystem wrote: ↑Tue Sep 14, 2021 12:20 pm We are trying to make sure we have enough filament and the right colours in stock for launch, any feedback on what colour and case style you prefer would be most appreciated, thank you.

Either style is good IMO, but I think I prefer B.

Also, I like the white case. Add a red logo and you have a very nice PC Engine looking design!