Wiki_MiSTer VS oss-cad-suite-build

I think it's a bit rich to describe this as the 'future of video game preservation'.

The MiSTer project https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/Wiki_MiSTer/wiki more rightfully deserves that title. It's got a huge range of systems (across consoles, arcade and micro computers) and it's all GPL licenced. The base board is a Terasic DE10 Nano which is proprietary but all other hardware required is open source.

The MiSTeX project aims to make MiSTer portable across different FPGA platforms https://github.com/MiSTeX-devel so a DE10 Nano won't be mandatory enabling a new ecosystem of open hardware and commercial for profit solutions.

I take no issue with people wanting to make money in this space. I take great issue with trying to gatekeep system preservation behind a mostly closed system you stamp an 'open' moniker on.

Go to the source https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/Wiki_MiSTer/wiki that should have all the information you need and also https://misterfpga.org/ and https://discord.gg/4xKVg4XVYn

Cute, but I don't see the point relative to miSTer.

The MiSTer project[0] is a wonderful introduction to a practical use case for FPGAs. It uses verilog to describe how the DE10-Nano chip should be set up to resemble various classic computers, arcade machines, and video game consoles. With a single device you can have an Apple II+, Super Street Fighter II Turbo, and a SNES. Currently it supports up to the PlayStation for console cores, which is probably the upper bounds for the DE10-Nano.

The entire project feels perfectly in line with hacker mentality and is exciting to watch grow. There's nothing like playing Super Metroid with an original SNES controller on a CRT at the end of the day.

[0] https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/Wiki_MiSTer/wiki

I'd advice anyone interested to look at miSTer instead. That is open hardware proper and has a very mature ecosystem of cores, including Amiga.

Consider the miSTer as an open source hardware (in FPGA) alternative (minimig FPGA core).

Have you followed the steps here https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/Wiki_MiSTer/wiki/Samba funily enoough google pointed me here.

Here https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/Wiki_MiSTer/wiki and https://misterfpga.org/ I assume you know about these links?

You can find a lot of old computers and game consoles implemented in FPGA here:

- https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/Wiki_MiSTer/wiki/Cores

The OSS CAD Suite [0] is a good open-source toolchain for this stuff. You can then write hardware designs in the SytemVerilog language (VSCode has some plugins, I believe, but I've just been using a basic text editor) and use the build toolchain to compile ("synthesize") and program e.g. an FPGA with your designs.

(FWIW, I've only just taken a class on Verilog this past Spring, but we used oss-cad-suite and I found it pretty straightforward to use. The bundled version of Verilator had some issues on my Mac though, so I had to compile my own copy of Verilator.)

[0] https://github.com/YosysHQ/oss-cad-suite-build/

I've followed this tutorial recently, and it's amazing:

https://github.com/BrunoLevy/learn-fpga/blob/master/FemtoRV/...

The author includes detailed instruction for how to build a micro-controller in Verilog on an icestick, starting from a very simple blinker all the way to a functional RISC-V core.

My other suggestion would be: for most of the toolchain, skip your package manager and directly install the binary artifacts published on this Github repo:

https://github.com/YosysHQ/oss-cad-suite-build

You'll spare yourself a world of pain.

You can compile and install from source or you can install the TabbyCAD software suite. It can be freely downloaded here: https://github.com/YosysHQ/oss-cad-suite-build.

I use a pre-built suite of tools from Yosys called the OSS CAD Suite, you can find binary builds at https://github.com/YosysHQ/oss-cad-suite-build

OSS CAD Suite gives you the absolute latest version of GTKWave (3.4.0), plus Icarus Verilog and a bunch of other stuff. On Windows though you need to use the start.bat or environment.bat scripts though to make the tools available in a command prompt.

There's a darwin-arm64 asset for https://github.com/YosysHQ/oss-cad-suite-build/releases at least. Installation is just 4 steps (see the readme). It just worked for me on Windows and Linux at least.

You’ll need to install the latest iverilog version. The easiest way to do that is to install https://github.com/YosysHQ/oss-cad-suite-build

I'm a macOS user that's recently been looking for a great FPGA development workflow for macOS. I recently discovered this collection. I liked that this was a nightly build but wanted a way to maintain the version of the tool suite used with my sources so I built a version manager for it here https://github.com/nishtahir/icicle. I'm still testing it and ironing out the kinks but would appreciate any feedback.

It also seems like YosysHQ's prepackaged OSS CAD Suite ships with the GHDL plugin, making installation a breeze compared to building from source (just extract the suite and add to PATH).

The other is oss-cad-suite which is a more traditional binary distribution in the form of a tar ball that you download, extract and add to your path.