Lu

MiSTer FPGA News – Atari System 2, Quarter MiSter, Multisystem Cart Support & More

Posted on by Lu

Atari Falcon Chips Decapped

On the MiSTer FPGA forums, user pepito posted about about some custom chips for the Atari Falcon being decapped.

This was a project that started back towards the end of 2024. Because of this team, we will have complete die shots of the Videl, SDMA and Combel chips. They are still looking at how to get better results for the SDMA and Combel chips.
At the moment, the hi-res die shots are not available but will be released publicly, without any restrictions, in a few months.

The Atari Falcon was Atari’s final personal computer that provided some significant upgrades over the previous ST models. It didn’t sell very well, so it was soon discontinued.

 

QuarterMiSTer

There is a new way to remotely manage your MiSTer FPGA setups. timsu on Patreon has announced early access to QuarterMiSTer.

During this early access period, supporters of Sorgelig, theypsilon, wizzo or JOTEGO on Patreon, get access for 1 device for free!

If you back QuarterMiSTer directly, then you get access for up to 5 devices.

At full launch, QuarterMiSTer will be free for all users with a single device for core features. No paywall.

What’s working?
-Dark/Light mode (based on your OS setting)
-Adding, editing and deleting MiSTer devices
-See what’s running
-Artwork for Arcade cores
-Browse the menu and launch games and cores
-Taking and viewing screenshots
-Agent auto-updating
-Reset

 

Ajax/Typhoon

Jotego has released a beta core that runs Konami’s shooter A-Jax. There are two types of stages in this game. Some stages play like a standard vertically scrolling shooter, and you control a helicopter. Other stages are pseudo 3D with cool scaling effects. In these pseudo 3D stages you control a fighter Jet.

This game does require an updated beta key that is available to only Patreon subscribers. Once the core is out of beta, then it will be available to everyone for free.

 

Future Jotego work for 2025

Jotego also gave use a quick update on some things he will be working for the second half of 2025. This includes support for Run & Gun, a basketball game and support for CPS3. It was mentioned that a new hardware release will be tied to these games. It’s unclear what that hardware is.

Jotego also wants to finish ongoing open betas for the System 18 and Neo Geo Pocket Color cores. For System 18 there are only a couple of games missing and for the Neo Geo Pocket Color core his team is still ironing out game saving and some compatibility issues

 

Atari 800 & 5200

There have been a lot of changes to the Atari 800 & 5200 cores by woj with the following:

-A DMA based fast XEX loader
-There’s a substantially extended range of supported cartridge types, including DCART, and also Super Cart for the 5200 core allowing to run many of the new homebrew titles on 5200
-There’s an option to boot the D1: disk directly. With this option you will not have to press Option and Reset to start games.
– There’s an option to work with the pure 800 mode and its common memory configurations, including a 4 controller support. This is triggered by OS selection.
– The 5200 core now also supports 4 controllers and the core now has a joystick 1 and 2 swap option.
– Fixed and fully working ATX disk image support with the ability to choose between 1050 and 810 (timing) behaviors, all ATX tests by DjayBee of AtariAge are reporting expected results.
– Improved Joy2B+ support
– D3 and D4 drives were added
– You now have the Ability to stack carts on top of a stacking-enabled SDX cart, alternatively mount left and right carts separately in 800 mode
– There is Special support to load Ultimate 1MB and SIDE2/SuperCart SDX ROM images including Ultimate RT clock emulation (fully working with initialization from the MiSTer system clock)
– There are Many core UI improvements, including an option to clip the sides of the screen to hide GTIA garbage, structured menus, and loading / setting up OS images from the UI,
– There is PBI ROM emulation with a simple Atari BIOS that enables direct DMA communication with the mounted ATR images
– For sound there is an improved sound mixer for Pokey / GTIA sound / Covox that is more accurate
– Pokey serial timing fixes making all ACID tests now pass with the core,
– The 4MB memory option has been re-implemented to follow the Axlon banking method, getting rid of the non-functional PORTB based banking (it is actually known not to work well on the original hardware).

 

MiSTer MultiSystem 2 Cartridge Support

A video from the MiSTer Multsystem team was posted showing Game Boy physical game cartridge loading. Richard Horne had this to say about the video.

“It’s a proof of concept prototype, we are working on a demo to show off the cartridge interface, more to show soon.
We will release the info and ask the community if they want cartridge adaptors made.
Testing various carts, interfaces and functions. What are you playing first?”

 

Zaparoo Updates

The Zaparoo porject has updated both the mobile and a the core service.

A major update to the Core service is NAS support that has limited support for downloading and installing media from a remote URL. There have also been many bug fixes.

The mobile app was also update with the following:
-a new stop button was added in the now playing section.
-Non-Pro users can now use launches a few times a day to try out Zaparoo.
-The NFC/Camera toggle has been changed to a single camera button. I think this will make accessing the camera easier.
-Launch on scan/continuous scan toggles have been moved to the settings page (feedback please if this is a bad change!).
-Zaparoo.app deep links are now MUCH more reliable.
-and More

 

MiSTer Organize

MiSTer Organize, a project that will help you keep your games organized, recently pushed its July update and includes the following:

MiSTer_Console Additions:
-NES 2.0 Collection
-GBA Borders

MiSTer_Console_Private Additions:
-English Translations Update – https://lolsuite.org/
-Infidelity SNES MSU-1 Update
-Rumbleminze SNES MSU-1 Update

Exclusive Content:
-No-Intro Private Aftermarket games.
-SNES MSU-1, complete set, which includes the latest revisions from Infidelity, Project Nested, and Rumbleminze. Also includes Game Boy and Game Boy Color MSU-1 for the Super Game Boy Core. These games have been tested to work on the MiSTer.
-Mega Drive MSU-MD, complete set. Each .md file has been renamed to cart.rom saving you the time of renaming them. These games have been tested to work on the MiSTer.
-SMB Arena Hacks.
-RetroAchievements ROMs Collection.
-English Translation ROMs Collection.

MiSTer Organize is a project that will help you keep your games organized for browsing games on your MiSTer. It contains custom DAT files that instruct it on how to organize games.

 

Atari System 2

An Atari System 2 FPGA core is in development by the same person who developed the System 1 core. It’s in the very eary stages and the GitHub mentions this about its status:

  • In simulation the T11 CPU can execute instructions
  • Audio non existent, needs to be coded
  • Video circuit missing contents of 512×4 PROM (82S131) used for video ROM address decoding, this is a showstopper for now until a PROM can be dumped by someone with physical access to a PCB
  • Output of simulation of video circuit with RAMs preloaded with data dumped from MAME
  • Only PlayField (PF) and AlphaNumerics (AN) data rendered, because MotionObjects (MO) requires the above mentioned PROM data.”

The Atari System 2 can run games like:
720
Accelerator (Prototype)
APB : All Points Bulletin
Championship Sprint
Gremlins (Prototype)
Paperboy
Super Sprint

 

Neo Geo Pocket Color

Jotego spent more time on the NeoGeo pocket core and as a result, got the following games working:

-Metal Slug (Monochrome version was broken before )
-Ogre Battle Gaiden
-Last Blade
-KoF Battle de Paradise

 

Run & Gun

Jotego also gave more info on the future core that runs on Run & Gun hardware. This core is now close to completion and several games are playable.

Other games that run in this hardware are:
Asterix
Bucky O’Hare
Dragon Ball Z
Dragon Ball Z 2 Super Battle
G.I. Joe
Lethal Enforcers
Overdrive
Cowboys of Moo Mesa
Xexex

 

Other MiSTer FPGA Updates

And other miscellaneous MiSTer fixes and updates are:

MegaDrive:
– Various fixes (nukeykt, Cray Elliott)
– Fix SMS Megadrive pad mapping (Kevin Coleman).
– Fix for cartridges (paulb-nl).
– Change HSync to a normal length of 4.7us (paulb-nl).
– Updated framework.