Posted by exodus on October 18, 2019 at 15:17:38 EST in reply to Then why don’t you explain it to me? (n/t) from SignOfZeta.
ha ha I was all set to explain it to you but then this "explain it to me" comment made me think you could just google it. Well, I'll do it anyway. FPGA supports the recreation of hardware on a modern chip. Essentially it's a chip that can almost completely accurately mimic the processes of existing older hardware by scanning everything in those chips layer by layer (literally, you should look it up, I've seen the scans). This means when you slot in a game gear game it will have the same exact slow down, the same exact sound glitches, and behave exactly as you would expect a game gear to behave, except on modern hardware that won't fail as easily, with a backlight that works, and with the ability to slot into a dock to play on your tv properly up-resed. It's not software emulation of the hardware, it's hardware mimicry down to the absolute metal of it. I don't love the form factor myself, but they're targeting the most popular Nintendo consoles primarily so it makes sense. Anyway there are not things like this every month, this is only the third FPGA-based console out basically ever I believe, and all of them were by this company (analogue), who are not nobodies, and are in fact the pioneers in the field and make really solid consumer hardware - $200 is much cheaper than I thought it'd be even, it's only that cheap because the price of chips has recently declined. most of your kneejerk reaction up there is aimed at things that are not actually relevant in this case!
n/t
Follow Ups:
Hmmm, nope. I already knew pretty much all of that. I don’t think I misunderstood anything. I for sure know what an FPGA is, I for sure know Analogue, the French company that put MVS boards in wood boxes and sold them for crazy money, right? If the Left button breaks on every one of these things because it isn’t perfected yet I don’t know that they’ll be able to fix it like Nintendo or Sony would. I don’t think I misunderstand that. Regardless of “commitment” they are a garage company. This being $200 means they got sweatshop capital and aren’t even present for the construction of these things, totally outsourced. I’m not telling you to not have fun with it, I’m just saying that I’m pre-bored of it already due to a constant wave of retro Frankenstein bullshit that frankly just looks like unimaginative pirate junk give some sheen of legitimacy just because at the moment there isn’t anything obviously better to do. (SignOfZeta) (09:42:45 10/19/19 EST)
It's amusing to follow this conversation while there are several active threads on this board (!) to the effect of "I can't tell if my GP32/everdrive/multiflash/doctor V still works, does anybody remember how to use this thing???" How many half-flashed semi-official pieces of hardware do we each own at this point? But my takeaway from the state of trying-to-maintain-your-gaming-collection is... exhaustion. When I visited my collection in Idaho over the summer, all my Playstation-compatible systems appeared to have died, my Turbo Everdrive that was stuck booting to one ROM no longer boots at all, two standalone DVD players no longer worked, along with the DVD drive in my tower PC. And I'm suspicious that some of my VHS-to-DVD burns have gone blank (or I forgot to finalize them in my hurry to transfer before the tapes rotted). On top of all that, the $3,000 / 200 lb Sony XBR TV that served as the centerpiece of my collection since 2003 is still somewhere in California because it was too massive to move. Meanwhile I'm in Virginia playing a Genesis Mini on a Samsung TV with no good solution for simulated scanlines. [shrugging ascii face] (n/t) (substance J) (11:33:35 10/19/19 EST)
