Analogue Duo: FPGA Based TurboGrafx-16/PC Engine Clone | Hacker News Reader

Analogue Duo: FPGA Based TurboGrafx-16/PC Engine Clone

analogue.co

54 pointszdw19 comments

After how Analogue ran the Pocket sales I just can't get excited about this. Running a five minute long first come, first serve pre-order is a great way to alienate your customer base. No one is eager to pay eBay scalpers because Analogue couldn't be arsed to estimate their demand.

Right. I signed up for a notification when the Pocket was available for order again. Instead I just got this spammed into my inbox.

This could be amazing for people who want to play the original games on physical hardware. The components in the original units are failing, as evidenced by the amount of non-working/partially working ones on eBay, and even if you buy one that works today it may not tomorrow.

I ended up getting a modded PC Engine and the Terraonion Super SD System 3. It also emulates the hardware using an FPGA, but allows playing downloaded files instead of just physical media. With the prices of many of the old games going for more than they cost originally, this was the only sane way to try them with original hardware at the time.

While the Analogue Duo contains an SD slot, it's only designed for firmware updating, and they specifically call out "does not play copyrighted ROM files". While I respect that decision, I think their goal of preserving gaming history would be better served allowing it. If I pay over a thousand dollars for Sapphire or Darius Alpha, I'm not going to put the game in the system and risk wear.

Analogue always says that on their main site and then releases a jailbroken firmware that allows to play roms through some unofficial channels. I think this is just a way for them to shield themselves from potential legal consequences.

So I'm 100% sure, there'll be a jailbroken firmware that will be able to read roms.

And if they don't, then the firmware is open and the community for retro games loves allowing the people to play their "backups".

Honestly as a whole the retro gaming hardware community is amazing. I'm part of one that's focuses on gameboys, and one member reverse engineered the firmware for a cartridge flasher because the main one from the manufacturer is so bad. now we have a new flasher and less buggy firmware.

I can't wait to see what we do to the Pocket.

If this is the case, then it will be the ultimate version of the console for me and I'll happily get one. I'm not sure if the userbase will be large enough to attract hacker attention, hopefully it will.

The DMG/GBA/GBC hacking community is oddly dedicated.

>a jailbroken firmware that allows to play roms through some unofficial channels.

Or just get a miSTer or ULX3S and use an open implementation of the turbograph.

If you care about being able to do whatever you want, don't go with a closed solution.

> While the Analogue Duo contains an SD slot, it's only designed for firmware updating, and they specifically call out "does not play copyrighted ROM files". While I respect that decision, I think their goal of preserving gaming history would be better served allowing it.

There's always an "unofficial" jailbreak firmware that lets you run things off the SD card

>The components in the original units are failing, as evidenced by the amount of non-working/partially working ones on eBay, and even if you buy one that works today it may not tomorrow.

Yeah, my TurboGrafx just sat in a box in a closet for a few years. Worked fine when I put it in there, last time I took it out to try it, it just wouldn't turn on at all.

A port[0] of FPGAPCE[1] exists for the miSTer[2]. This is all open source.

What does this commercial, proprietary, closed solution offer, if anything, over that?

[0] https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/TurboGrafx16_MiSTer

[1] https://github.com/Torlus/FPGAPCE

[2] https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/Main_MiSTer/wiki

>What does this commercial, proprietary, closed solution offer, if anything, over that?

Honestly, the same thing is almost always offers. Nicer hardware and user experience design.

People want to get up and put their Hu-Card, Turbo-Chip or CD-ROM into their console. That's really the secret sauce here. I don't know if open source hu-card/turbo chip readers exist or if you can use one with the MiSTer. They also want to use their original controllers, but I think this is an easier hurdle to overcome.

It also looks like the Analogue device is cheaper than a DE-10 + necessary modules.

The DE-10 is only about $140 in the US I believe and the 128MB SDRAM module is around $60, so they work out to pretty similar prices, although there are still no decent Mister cases. Do consider for that outlay though, Mister supports a ton of other systems (pretty much any 16-bit or earlier console/computer).

Mister doesn't have any support for any type of cartridge readers for any of the systems supported and I don't believe there is any plan to ever support this, it is all SD card based loading.

Mister works with pretty much any controller you can throw at it - original controllers through SNAC, bluetooth & USB.

Also, something missing from the Analogue console is analog output - RGB scart, VGA, etc. You can fairly easily do this with Mister now without any of the analog video add on boards.

My guess is that the Analogue TG-16 console will support their proprietary DAC add-on that connects via the console's HDMI port.

Cheaper is at least debatable[0].

[0]: https://felixleger.com/posts/20201018-misterfpga/

> Unlike the knock off and emulation systems that riddle the market today, you'll be experiencing the entire NEC era free of compromises.

Please provide details. Why is it so accurate as you claim? How does it compare to existing software emulators?

> Zero lag.

Have you measured it?

Even the original hardware had some lag. The RetroArch developers were able to surpass hardware latency by computing future emulator states ahead of time, similar to processor branch prediction. How does this system compare?

> Bluetooth.

Wireless input methods probably add to the overall latency of the system. It's noticeable on my PS4.

I think you can get a pretty good idea of how this will likely perform by comparing their other FPGA based systems like the Mega Sg and Super NT.

Their whole thing is rebuilding the hardware with FPGAs instead of software emulation which in theory provide near perfect compatibility. Not sure how you missed all of the marketing on their site about 'rebuilding it on the transistor level'.

Pendatic: LUTs are not transistors and at best they can do a cycle accurate reimplementation (which would be almost indistinguishable from the original). However it is a reimplementation and as such there's no guarantee that it's identical to the original (notably might not emulate bugs and idiosyncrasies).

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