• she/her

i claim i want to make things and then i dont make things.

pfp by datcravat


mcc
@mcc

I am required to inform you that on Sept. 29 at 8 AM PDT Analogue is going to be selling a see-through plastic limited edition of their FPGA-based multi-emulator "game preservation" handheld. They will probably sell out almost immediately and you might not even be able to get one.

I've had one of these for about a month, I'm very happy with it, it has actually more limited capabilities than whatever the cheapest Ambernic multi-emulator handheld you can find on Amazon right now is but will generally give you less trouble, especially if you get the Dock and are doing stuff like using bluetooth gamepads. Core setup is kind of irritating the first time you do it but easy after that, there are a bunch of community tools. Most Mister cores seem to be getting ported over, and the device seems to be powerful enough to go about halfway through the 32-bit era. It also has very good official cores from Analogue, with special features that the third-party cores can't yet do like LCD matrix emulation, but those only work with physical cartridges (it supports GB, GBC, and GBA and there's a adapter kit for some other formats). I'm mostly enjoying it as a way to get into FPGA development without having to solder.


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in reply to @mcc's post:

The dev kits are from their own separate run (that's the point, the only difference is the back plate is cut differently for easy JTAG access). You can't just customize another unit as a devkit. However the devkit is not strictly necessary for development, you can just upload your cores via USB.

One thing that frustrates me, there's actually two parts to the devkit. One is the modified unit that lets you attach a JTAG programmer (again you don't need this, but if you buy the external JTAG programmer, it allows faster flashing and also enables certain types of debugging) without unscrewing. The other is this thing they call a "developer key" which is basically a fake Game Boy cartridge with a USB serial port, button and LED on it. This is potentially more useful than the special Pocket unit, but you can only get one packaged with the special devkit Pocket, which is surely harder to manufacture. I wish they'd just sell the developer key by itself.