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alexh wrote:FPGA is too small to do anything great. MiST FPGA is approx 200% bigger FPGArcade is about 500% bigger
farvardin wrote:very nice, but expensive as hell!
alexh wrote:FPGA is too small to do anything great. MiST FPGA is approx 200% bigger FPGArcade is about 500% bigger
Dal wrote:Some could argue this is what allows the Spectrum Next to retain some of the spirit of the original machine.
Greenious wrote:In many ways, this is like someone designing an ST(E), with integrated accelerator, FPU, hardware overscan + other hardware improvements people have come up with over the years, added HDMI/VGA output, SD-card etc while still keeping all the ST's ports and thrown in a few more videomodes with a spriteengine for good measure, made it fit in an ST case or designed a new atari-inspired one, all for the price of buying an all out pimped STE. without the hassle...
Looking at the kickstarter, they got like 1450 backers, 60 of them opt for the board only, more than 1300 is going for the out-of-the-box ready experience at double the price. ie, the case alone is to most worth more than what is under the hood.
While I adore MiST, IMHO, putting just a stock ST(E) in an FPGA in a plain black box without most of the original ports alienates a huge potential audience. My friends can go gaga over my old ataris/retrogear, but to them, the MiST has no soul whatsoever.
Total Eclipse wrote:
That's an interesting point of view. I too am a fan of MiST, and the work done on some cores, including the Spectrum one, is incredible. What does the Spectrum Next offer over a FPGA board like the MiST? For some, I think that the Spectrum name, and the case design, carries more weight than the contents.
A MiST is cheaper than a Next, its Spectrum core has a faster maximum CPU speed than the Next ("accelerator" aside (which is Pi Zero)), and the MiST has the FPGA space to run many more cores. However, as you suggest, the packaging itself makes a difference - witness many positive comments made about simple case renderings. If your MiST was hidden inside a ST case, maybe even making use of the original keyboard, would that give it a soul?
The "enhancements" are also interesting (sprites, 256 colour modes), but that got me thinking as well. This "new" Spectrum will only be known to a few, so is it really a Spectrum at all? That then raises a further question about plugging together parts to make a new core (rather like the MiST tutorials, where a CPU is added to a video generator) - based on the features and cores already available for MiST, what would you pick and chose to put into a totally new MiST computer? A 68020 CPU? SID sound? A video mode from an existing machine (tile mode from the MegaDrive perhaps)?
farvardin wrote:very nice, but expensive as hell!
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