Minimig!

[matt3o]

Today I just discovered the Minimig and especially the Mini MIST board and I totally need one!



It's not emulation but an FPGA based computer. Impressive stuff.

Do any of you have experience with this board?

[Hak Foo]

My first thought is that "how is a FPGA reimplementation any better than a software emulator?"

Both are going to be inexact, but this has the added drawback of being expensive.

Think of all the "NES on a chip" designs that went into cheap knock-off consoles and other inexpensive games. They implemented the hardware, but did only a passable job of it. (some cartridges aren't compatible, some have funky sound, etc.)

While there is the chance the FPGA models could improve, I'd think you'd get faster and better results piggybacking on all the people doing emulation on normal PC platforms. It also gives you potentially more resources to work with-- if you have a Raspberry Pi, you might need to run a weak emulator like SNES9x, but if you have a fire-breathing desktop, you can use a different approach like bsnes.

[Halvar]

There was a good article about it in c't in april, and I would have been interested, but I decided it's not worth 199€ for me. If I find a cheaper source some time, I'd still be interested.

[matt3o]

My first thought is that "how is a FPGA reimplementation any better than a software emulator?"

Both are going to be inexact, but this has the added drawback of being expensive.

I believe it's very well explained here https://code.google.com/p/mist-board/wiki/WhatIsThis and in the FAQ