MARS FPGA

[bmoc]

I just heard about this: https://twitter.com/MARSFPGA

Details are scarce but here are a few things that are known at this point:

-$700 for the complete unit
-Q4 release with 10,000 units
-Capable of 4K60 output

Custom motherboard with:
-Ti180 FGPA
-An ARM chip of some kind

A lot of the details are scattered through twitter threads, news articles, and forum posts. It is hard to tell what is factual and what this unit will be capable of emulating. I don't think any working prototypes have been shown to the public yet so definitely keep your expectations in check.

My biggest questions are: Can MiSTer cores be ported easily? Could 6th gen console cores be theoretically possible?

[Melek-Ric]

Still too early for me to be interested in this and since I just got a Mister put together this year, I am in no hurry to spend more money on another gaming box. Plus the Mister is starting to get great Saturn and decent N64 support, so that might be enough for me as I already own all the 6th gen consoles. I have no doubt that this will do DC, PS2, probably GC. May not do OG Xbox though. But a SX will do those as well once Dev mode is enabled right now, not FPGA, but good enough for a lot of folks.

And I don’t think it would be legal the company to port the Mister cores to this device themselves. And we don’t know if the company will open it up or it’ll have to be jail broken by the community. The Mistex project is aiming to make Mister cores forward-compatible with other hardware but it’s a long ways off.

Custom hardware is also an issue. The strength of the Mister is the De-10 Nano base hardware with flexible add-ons.