The return of the SNK beast! - NeoGeo AES+

[rubber_jonnie]

Not sure who's seen this in the news at all, but the NeoGeo is back in the form of the AES+

Details can be found here: NeoGeo AES+

It's a 1:1 replica of the original using remanufactured ASICs, so is fundamentally an exact replica and will work with original cartridges and the 10 remake carts that will be available at launch in November.

Of course there are modern improvements such as HDMI as well as RGB out and some other features such as overclocking.

Remakes are also going to be avaiable of peripherals like the arcade stick, joypad and memory carts - again all backwards compatible with the original and 1:1 copies of the originals.

It looks pretty exciting as prices are reasonable compared to original hardware. I'm very interested :)

@Icky Can I tempt you?

[alexh]

It's a 1:1 replica of the original using remanufactured ASICs, so is fundamentally an exact replica

It's all marketing hype. This is the free, open source, fan made, MiSTer FPGA AES core by Furtek and Jotego commercialised.

SNK provided no technical information about the original design. SNK confirmed that no-one involved in the original AES hardware still works for the company and the original designs are lost.

[HigashiJun]

Was also quite excited by this news but it will be definitely nay for me...

[rubber_jonnie]

It's a 1:1 replica of the original using remanufactured ASICs, so is fundamentally an exact replica

It's all marketing hype. This is the free, open source, fan made, MiSTer FPGA AES core by Furtek and Jotego commercialised.

SNK provided no technical information about the original design. SNK confirmed that no-one involved in the original AES hardware still works for the company and the original designs are lost.

Well I guess that remains to be seen as there seem to be a lot of NeoGeo people waiting to review it, so if it doesn't pass muster it will get found out very quickly.

[Higgy]

I don't think we can say in one hand FPGA is not emulation it's the exact original machine, then when this work is used to remake an old console then it's wrong.
It 'should' be the original machine just with different chip configuration. Could say a 1-chip SNES is similar.

I also read Jotego's FPGA work was the Sound element and it was Furtek's IC decapping, which has gone into the AES+.
Slingshot from MiST did a massive amount of work converting Furrtek's work into FPGA suitable code, which MiSTer then took on.

Wasn't the traditional IC development method (ignoring original Amiga days of wire wrapping massive boards to replicate a chip) to first use FPGA then from that get ASICs made.

I have pre-ordered. Just getting a ~30yr old AES arcade stick is quite expensive so £180 is not too bad I think. I am planning on using a 15-pin to USB to connect the AES+ arcade stick to my MiST/MiSTer so get the original feel (and easier access to it's library).
Also I was wanting to trade a X68000 for an AES, so now just buying one for £180 I've got the better deal :)

Thing that is annoying me is that PLAION won't say if ordering via them, if we (UK) will get hit by Import/TAX. Plenty of UK based sellers so not a big issue.

[alexh]

The MiSTer FPGA core is a very good core. Unlike most cores it was reverse engineered (by Furtek) from decapped die shots and converted to synthesisable HDL code by him and Slingshot. Most cores are not as accurate as this, pure guess work based on incomplete datasheets, inspection and emulator code and are rarely similar to the original design in all but functionality.

But the MiSTer FPGA core doesn't use DRAM like the original, but SDRAM which means the memory controller will have had to be fettled. I would imagine this will be the same on AES+

The sound chip (Yamaha YM2610) was implemented from the datasheet by Jotego, he's very experienced in doing sound chips, however (as he will testify to) the internal implementation of his cores will not be how they were designed originally. There are analog components in the original chip including filters and mixing which are tuned by ear. That said I have read that the JT12 core analog output on MiSTer is very very similar to a real YM2610. I'm curious to know how they get the same results over HDMI.

Finally this is not an FPGA, at some point in the past (date unknown) they took a snapshot of the design, added extra features (such as cartridge I/O & decryption) and turned it into a structured ASIC (half way house between very expensive ASIC process low price chips and free FPGA process and very expensive FPGA chips) but in the last few weeks bugs have been found and fixed.

https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/NeoGeo_ ... ts/master/

Now these fixes could be back-ports from AES+ development? Or they could be so minor no-one will ever notice? Unsure.

[alexh]

I am planning on using a 15-pin to USB to connect the AES+ arcade stick to my MiST/MiSTer so get the original feel (and easier access to it's library).

Have they announced that the AES+ arcade stick actually use MiST/MiSTer compatible protocol? I would be very surprised if they are normal USB HID

[rubber_jonnie]

I am planning on using a 15-pin to USB to connect the AES+ arcade stick to my MiST/MiSTer so get the original feel (and easier access to it's library).

Have they announced that the AES+ arcade stick actually use MiST/MiSTer compatible protocol? I would be very surprised if they are normal USB HID

The new ones use the same plugs as the original arcade stick AFAIK (Looks like a large square or 'D' 14/15 pin plug) and are supposed to work with the original console. Original accessories will work with the new console and vice versa.

If there is USB involved then it is somewhere on the inside, because externally it looks pretty much identical to the original console and there aren't any USB ports that I can see.

[alexh]

The new ones use the same plugs as the original arcade stick AFAIK and are supposed to work with the original console.

That's great they will work fine with MiSTer who use USB inputs via what they call SNAC to interface to original joypads.

https://misterfpga.co.uk/product-category/mister-snac/

[Higgy]

Sorry what I meant is I will build a DaemonBite adaptor:

https://github.com/MickGyver/DaemonBite ... ollers-USB

To convert original controller signals to USB protocol.They work well for the other controllers.

For example playing Atari Jaguar games on either MiSTer or PC without the original (if not the best design) controller feels very wrong. I can fool myself if I have the original controller and even more so if using a CRT.