Sega Saturn Mini Could Become a Reality, Thanks to Retron FPGA | Hacker News Reader

Sega Saturn Mini Could Become a Reality, Thanks to Retron FPGA

timeextension.com

36 pointstosh8 comments

I've always wondered why they can't just use custom ASICs for these. The common response to this question is that these mini consoles don't sell enough for the economy of scale to work out for designing and shipping custom silicon, but is that the full story? There were officially-licensed system-on-chip Mega Drive clones sold up until 2011, at cheap bargain-bin prices. Modern day mini consoles are priced like collectables and still sell hundreds of thousands, or even millions of units. Is that really not enough? Why could the Mega Drive clones do it?

My assumption was that once a manufacturing line is open, it doesn't cost that much to keep running, but it's a huge investment to re-open once shut down. I'd love for someone to confirm or deny this.

And while you are at it put a core on it for multiple systems so it can run them all.

Nice idea though retro versions of consoles that don't support the original's entire game library are so limiting. It'd be nice to at least allow for original physical media to be played, Analogue FPGA style. Not that collecting Saturn games is in any way affordable though.

Thankfully there's a Saturn core in the works for MiSTer (open-source FPGA project with support for tons of different consoles, computers, and arcade games). Still in the alpha stages, but it has improved a lot over the past year, many games are now playable. All the more impressive to me since the dev is a Ukrainian stuck behind Russian lines.

https://github.com/srg320/Saturn_MiSTer https://www.patreon.com/srg320

I recently went down the mister route. It's an amazing piece of kit but it cost me a fortune to put together. One thing I've realised after doing this is that it's not always going to be 100 percent accurate, for example I believe there is a second megadrive core in the works, because the existing one isn't that accurate. I don't fully understand the issue though. I think some cores like neo Geo are exceptionally accurate. Also worth noting is the n64 core in development, the rate of progress on it is ridiculously fast.

I'm assuming bulk of the cost was the FPGA? Were you able to buy these through non-scalpers?

Yes fpga (de 10 nano) I bought directly from terrasic and got hit with import duty , which was expected. I'm in the UK.

Terrasic shipped pretty much immediately.

The rest of the bits I bought from https://misterfpga.co.uk/

Digital io board Better power supply Plastic case Usb hub 128 mb ram

All these things aren't required, especially an io board. but I went all in right away.

I’m very happy to see FPGA emulation being picked up by a company who sells in larger volume. The boutique prices for NES FPGA emulation don’t really make sense to me.

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