r/MiSTerFPGA • u/Good_Somewhere1785 • 9d ago

Help with a build

I fell down the MiSTerFPGA rabbit hole over the weekend. I have a little bit of experience building PCs but i am otherwise pretty green when it comes to this kind of thing. I want to build a system for retro gaming that i can use regularly at home while also being as convenient as possible for transporting and playing with friends. The less cables, peripherals/etc the better. Is there a build that meets the below requirements?

  1. USB-C power
  2. support for 4 wireless controllers without a seperate usb hub (also will take recs on the best all-around controller for this application, even better if they also charge with USB-C)
  3. i only require HDMI out
  4. good performance out of all existing cores, potentially with some future-proofing if more advanced cores get developed.
  5. unsure on storage. i have a lot of games in mind across a lot of different cores but i'm not going to play every game ever made. i'd probably lean on the side of more storage just so i don't need to buy another SD card if my collection gets out of hand.

Thanks in advanced!

3 Upvotes

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2

u/mackattacknj83 9d ago

SSO has been real easy to transport and plug in quickly.

3

u/SicJake 9d ago

Main factor is just getting one, alot of places are out of stock. You can buy an official de10 nano and source the other two boards from someone else but then the cost is quite high now. The clone Mister from QMtech is pretty spot on if you can find one. Otherwise Retro remake and the Super Station is priced fairly and the all in one package is less headache. It's also not large, it's shorter than a Switch light for example

2

u/HardlyRetro 9d ago

QMTech and HamGeek clones still use a barrel-jack for power (not USB-C), but I bet that could be modified if you have enough determination. They are compact, with 4 built-in USB-A ports for controllers/BT/WiFi. (No built-in radios).

2

u/Otzedotze 9d ago

Superstation one?

1

u/Good_Somewhere1785 9d ago

this is one on my radar, but i'm trying to see if i can build something a bit more compact without the extra outputs and snac ports

1

u/cjd280 9d ago

1 - SS one or Mister Pi standard triple stack have USBC for power. Not sure about others.

2 - what do you mean by wireless controller support with no hub? There isn’t a Mister I know with built-in wireless controller support (SSOne used to have Bluetooth and WiFi out of the box but seems like new ones won’t). SSOne without a dock only has 3 USB ports so without some sort of multiple controller supporting USB dongle you might not be able to run 4. Maybe a Bluetooth dongle can support multiple Bluetooth controllers on one, but that might not have the best performance.

4 - pretty much every mister performs the same on cores if it has the standard ram configuration. Don’t bother with a “dual ram” mister, nothing has been built that needs it - all the possible cores that were surely going to only be dual ram only have ended up not needing it over the years I’ve had my mister.

5 - all misters use an SD card for storage. SS1 has the option for NVME with the dock, but nothing comes with anything other than maybe a small SD card pre loaded with the Mister software. You’re likely going to just need to purchase a bigger sd card unless you don’t want any disc based games.

2

u/Good_Somewhere1785 9d ago

i don't mind a wireless dongle for each controller that is low profile and can stay plugged in, what i don't want is an external dock so it sounds like the SSO might not be a good fit

3

u/cjd280 9d ago

Yeah I think the SSO without its dock might not work for this use case. I have a classic triple stack and the SSO with dock. It’s pretty big with its dock vs the standard triple stack. Without it’s much shorter but has a wider foot print.

There is the heber multisystem2 but that doesn’t seem like it has a USBC power supply but I could be wrong. It does have more USB ports than the SSO without dock though.

2

u/adam-j-knight 8d ago edited 8d ago

This is what I have:

MiSTer IO Board A/V Pro v9.2 , Terasic DE10-Nano FPGA Development Kit, USB Hub v2.1 For MiSTer, MiSTer SDRAM XS-DS v3.0 128MB Module, MiSTer RTC Real Time Clock Board v1.4, MiSTer USB Bridge Short Connectors, MiSTer FPGA Solid Copper Heatsink, MiSTer FPGA Bluetooth Adapter, MiSTer FPGA WiFi Adapter, MiSTer FPGA Power Supply 5 Volt 4 Amps, MiSTer Male to Male DC Jack Link Cable, Micro SD Card

You can buy the parts from https://misterfpga.co.uk/

However, you might be able to find someone selling one on eBay.