NesTang & SNesTang

[Manger74]

Have flashed the Nintendo firmware.bin to 0x500000 and then i was able to run the NesTang & SNesTang cores with the core loader!
What's missing are the Game Controllers. I do have Nintendo Controllers for USB. If someone could make a connection from the cores to the FPGA-Companion - two new cores would be ready for the MiSTle!

[harbaum]

I was actually planning to try this myself for quite some time now.

The game selection is handled by the core itself? I have assumed that this is now also done by the bl616 like on our cores.

We'd need to implement a way to send control data into those cores and also a way to identify them at runtime. Perhaps some minimal osd-less mode for the companion would be sufficient.

[harbaum]

I actually would like to cooperate closer with nand2mario and agree on one common companion.

Did you see his x86 cores? They use a USB connected PC running a special helper software for keyboard and mouse support. This could easily be done with our companion.

[Manger74]

As a had no input device, i was not able to open the menu. I just saw "Nestang" or "SNesTang" written on the bottom of the screen which shows that the core is up and running...

A cooperation would be great!

The Nes & SNes were in the same era as our beloved home computers. I had a friend with a Nes and i was very sorry for him because he had to buy the games! 😅

I saw the x86 cores... the 486 is for the Console 138K only but nevertheless interesting!

[vossstef]

@harbaum @Mangerrione i think that nand2mario cores shall be converted to our superior SPI and JTAGSEL_N multiplex method (end of technial possibilities on limited TANG boards).
Those UART interfacing would say is outdated and was at time of mario's development the only possible way (as GW IDE didn't supported JTAGSEL_N yet).
My hope would be that maybe only those iosys.v to be changed ?

[Manger74]

"TangCore uses a different architecture compared to individual cores (NESTang/SNESTang): Firmware runs on BL616 MCU instead of FPGA"

From what i understand, the NESTang and SNESTang cores run on FPGA only.
There is or was? a soft MCU in the core?

It would be perfect if the cores could be converted to the MiSTle/FPGA-Companion!

Only NES and SNES will fit on the TN20K i believe, the other cores require more space, i think.

[harbaum]

SNES and NES probably mainly need a ROM upload mechanism so ROMs can be uploaded via the OSD into SDRAM.

I have begun such a feature some time ago mainly to load kickstart rom from SD card. The companion side exists but the FPGA side is still missing. But that shouldn't be much to implement. It's meant to transfer into a fifo on core side so the core may actually load the data at any rate. This would also allow for some very slow streaming upload for e.g. tape files for c64 and vic.

I think I'll take a closer look at the NESTang, soon. And yes, ideally only one file in the nes core would have to be replaced.