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Comment by fcsp | Hacker News Reader

I would really appreciate if those reissue consoles would rather be FPGA based mimics of the original hardware instead of essentially correctly shaped plastic around a raspi and retropie. The perceived success of devices like the Analogue Pocket indicate to me there's a market for this, and at the audience scale of first party devices this might actually hit non-enthusiast pricing

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I do share the sentiment[1], but I also believe that the target market neither cares nor really understands the difference. So from a perspective of both design and cost margins, it just makes much more sense to use whatever cheapest ARM SoCs is available as long as it is still "adequate".

Of course form a hardware hacking perspective, the FPGA would be fantastic, but those toys are not meant for that.

[1] Even though my thoughts on what an FPGA can really do better in this situation are complex.

Tectoy is a Brazillian company that still manufactures SEGA consoles (they have the license back from the 90s).

They still use the original motherboard and whatnot...

Yet, somehow, they still manage to make it have issues, seemly they replaced several of the original chips with cheaper ones that don't have same algorithms, some games notoriously have issues (Sonic 3 for example has audio problems).

Also they removed the cartridge port from the mobo... but still left the holes and space on the mobo for it.

I find all this so confusing, why not just sell either the original hardware or an FPGA based one instead of stupid hacks?

Picture of the mobo with missing cartridge slot: https://i.imgur.com/tqOM56N.png?3

Are you certain the ICs were replaced for cost reduction, and not because the original parts were discontinued?

This seems extremely likely. From what I have seen on other products. If you are a small company, it’s almost impossible to make a device for more than 10 years before you have to redesign on new parts.

Tec Toy built systems with original ICs for as long as they could (even when the likes of AtGames had moved on to cheap-o reproductions), but they are discontinued so that's impossible. There is no way to get buy a new 68k nowadays, for starters. TecToy has used clone chips for a while now.

These use the DMC Redkid 2 "enhanced" Genesis/Mega Drive clone chips. These same chips were used in older AtGames clones as well (not the FlashbacK HD line though, those use emulation on an ARM SoC). In some sense, these are more "real hardware" than even an FPGA clone, but the clone has some flaws. It's also more configurable than the original hardware and the firmware configures it wrong, though at least this part is fixable with 3rd party firmware. The programmer of the 2018 Mega Drive game Tanglewood wrote an interesting blog post about his efforts to get his game to run well on these: https://blog.bigevilcorporation.co.uk/2018/04/18/taming-the-...

FPGA probably costs too much for these; and there's not likely enough money in them to make an accurate single chip system. (single chip NES asics exist, but accuracy isn't quite 100%; I've read that at least one of the atari 2600 retro consoles was built with one and they just ported the games to the NES)

The analogue pocket sits at 219 USD retail currently, and it has a screen with very high density and pretty high quality build in general. They are however having issues with sourcing parts leading to long preorder cycles. With the scale of these reissue consoles, and lack of a screen or batteries, I'd think it would be possible to reach the price point of these toy reissues if they came as FPGA based builds from first party. Not the profit margin though unfortunately

Strongly doubt it.

If it's sold in retail and costs 60$, the BOM needs to be less than 20$. It's hard to get just an adequate FPGA suitable for the task at that price, and there are still a lot more components needed. I expect the linux chip to const less than 5$.

FPGAs also quickly require much more complex board & power delivery designs.

The linked article mentions $80, which would give a little more room:

> The console will cost 9,980 yen before tax; at just under $80, this is in line with the pricing of earlier mini-consoles.

At the same time, on eBay the analogue pocket routinely sells for $700 - $1000, so it seems there's quite a gap in supply for this

I'd bet my house this will just be a raspberry pi-like device with an emulator. The audience that would want an FPGA will buy an analogue device. I personally bought a mega sg plus a Mega EverDrive Pro. Combined they support mega drive and mega cd (plus MSU). Excellent, but that costs around $400 combined.

I mean, I'd love an FPGA at this price point; it would be great, I'd buy two (even though I've already got the 2019 one). I just don't think it's realistic, and I'm not willing to pay what it would cost. I've got a Genesis2 floating around somewhere that I could accessorize for less, and a nice CRT to connect it to. I've misplaced the cables, some of my games, and the controllers, but you'd need most of that with an FPGA remake anyway.

Good news is a MiSTer device solves this problem, is infinitely more useful and is pretty affordable, even with inflated prices now.

There are systems that are just what you want, and they come from... er, Analogue. Specifically the Analogue Super NT (FPGA SNES clone) and Mega SG (Genesis clone). They're a little pricey and they need original carts, but they come closer to the real thing than any software emulator I know of, with almost zero lag too.

Or MisterFPGA can do all this and more. Well worth checking out for anyone into old systems. Great community as well.

Highly recommend the misterfpga, I sold my nt mini noir after getting it, so much better and less half based (for example nt mini noir's jailbreak had Genesis support but no controller remapping making it useless with the 8 bitdo genesis controller).

Also very impressive to see all the work being done on mister cores including things like Amiga, Acorn Archimedes, the first Playstation and Saturn

Why people recommend Analogue devices is beyond me.

Because they are beautiful and just work.

Mister also, just works. But yes, it's really not beautiful (in terms of living room aesthetics). I'm not being facetious, but Mister is really cheap and easy to get running and as I always say, the community is amazing. One of the best internet communities around IMO.

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