JOTEGO
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Development Update
🕑 Added 2023-07-21 18:31:24 +0000 UTCThe NeoGeo Pocket core is taking most of our time at the moment. All monochrome games boot up now and are somewhat playable (see details here) but they all have problems and the core is only working on MiSTer at the moment.
I didn’t know the system before and I am quite surprised at the quality and personality of the titles. As it happens, this hardware has some odd tradeoffs. Particularly, using PSG sound rather than FM or multi-channel PCM is odd, given that they went all the way to have a Z80 CPU just for sound. Other parts of the system have a better balance from my point of view.
Not releasing things on Fridays is always a bit stressful to me. But, I am very proud to see that our patrons are supporting this long development and are not running away because we have not released a new core in July.
Like the time I developed the QSound DSP for the CPS2 core, we need to resource to random testing of the CPU in order to debug it fully. This consists of generating random instructions for the CPU and running them on the Verilog module and on an ad-hoc model (emulator). We compare the outputs of the Verilog and the model and when they disagree, we have to check both and fix the wrong one. This technique is particularly good at finding multi-instruction bugs, where the problem in executing an instruction actually manifests on the next instruction. I delayed going this route because writting the simulation test bench and the CPU model to use in comparisons is a lot of work. It will probably take us two weeks to have it working. This should help us catch most of the remaining bugs, which could just be 2 or 3 at this stage.
Because part of the benefit of this technique is gained only when the person developing the model is different from the original designer, once I have the random testbench working for a few instructions, my assistant will finish the rest and I will work on a different core in the meantime. I will try to make the next arcade core particularly appealing to make up for the gap in July.
Twitter user Leland sent us a PCB for The Fairyland Story. I am quite hesitant to take up any new work nowadays but because this one is rare, loved, simple and undocumented, we accepted it. Esperanza, who has just finished Konami’s X-Men schematics (loaned by Atrac17), will start working on it on Monday. She was building an adapter and testing the board today.
Español
El núcleo NeoGeo Pocket está ocupando la mayor parte de nuestro tiempo en este momento. Todos los juegos monocromo arrancan ahora y son algo jugables (ver detalles aquí) pero todos tienen problemas y el núcleo sólo funciona en MiSTer por el momento.
No conocía el sistema y estoy bastante sorprendido de la calidad y personalidad de los títulos. Resulta que este hardware tiene algunos inconvenientes extraños. En particular, usar sonido PSG en lugar de FM o PCM multicanal es extraño, teniendo en cuenta que llegaron a tener una CPU Z80 sólo para el sonido. Otras partes del sistema están mejor equilibradas desde mi punto de vista.
No lanzar cosas los viernes siempre me resulta un poco estresante. Pero estoy muy orgulloso de ver que nuestros mecenas están apoyando este largo desarrollo y no huyen porque no hayamos publicado un nuevo núcleo en julio.
Como cuando desarrollé el DSP QSound para el núcleo CPS2, necesitamos recurrir a pruebas aleatorias de la CPU para poder depurarla completamente. Esto consiste en generar instrucciones aleatorias para la CPU y ejecutarlas en el módulo Verilog y en un modelo ad-hoc (emulador). Se comparan las salidas del Verilog y del modelo y, cuando no coinciden, hay que comprobar ambas y corregir la errónea. Esta técnica es especialmente buena para encontrar fallos multiinstrucción, en los que el problema al ejecutar una instrucción se manifiesta en la siguiente. He retrasado esta opción porque escribir el banco de pruebas de simulación y el modelo de CPU que se utilizará en las comparaciones es mucho trabajo. Probablemente tardaremos dos semanas en tenerlo funcionando. Esto debería ayudarnos a detectar la mayoría de los errores restantes, que podrían ser sólo 2 o 3 en esta etapa.
Dado que parte del beneficio de esta técnica sólo se obtiene cuando la persona que desarrolla el modelo es diferente del diseñador original, una vez que tenga el banco de pruebas aleatorio funcionando para unas pocas instrucciones, mi ayudante terminará el resto y yo trabajaré en un núcleo diferente mientras tanto. Intentaré que el próximo núcleo arcade sea especialmente atractivo para compensar el vacío de julio.
El usuario de Twitter Leland nos ha enviado una PCB para The Fairyland Story. Soy bastante reacio a aceptar cualquier trabajo nuevo hoy en día, pero como este es raro, querido, sencillo y no está documentado, lo aceptamos. Esperanza, que acaba de terminar los esquemas de X-Men de Konami (cedidos por Atrac17), empezará a trabajar en ella el lunes. Hoy ha estado construyendo un adaptador y probando la placa.
日本語
NeoGeo Pocketコアは現在、私たちの時間の大半を費やしています。すべてのモノクロゲームが起動するようになり、ある程度遊べるようにはなったのだが、（詳細はこちら）どれも問題があり、コアは今のところMiSTerでしか動いていません。
私は、以前はこのシステムを知らなかったので、タイトルのクオリティと個性にはかなり驚いてます。たまたまですが、このハードウェアには奇妙なトレードオフがあります。特に、FMやマルチチャンネルPCMではなくPSGサウンドを使用しているのは、わざわざサウンドのためだけにZ80 CPUを搭載していることを考えると奇妙なことです。その他の部分については、私から見ればもっとバランスが取れていると思いますが。
金曜日に何もリリースされないのは、私にとっていつもちょっとしたストレスです。しかし、パトロンの皆様がこの長い開発を支えてくれていること、7月に新しいコアをリリースしなかったからといって逃げ出さずにいてくれていることをとても誇りに思います。
CPS2コアのQSound DSPを開発した時と同じように、CPUを完全にデバッグするためには、CPUのランダムテストにリソースを割く必要があります。これは、CPUのランダム命令を生成し、Verilogモジュール上とアドホック・モデル（エミュレーター）上で実行することから成り立ちます。Verilogとモデルの出力を比較し、両者が一致しない場合は、両方をチェックして間違った方を修正する必要があります。この手法は、複数命令のバグを見つけるのに特に適しています。ある命令の実行中に問題が発生し、それが次の命令で顕在化するような場合です。シミュレーションのテストベンチと比較に使うCPUモデルを書くのは大変なので、このルートに入るのを遅らせました。おそらく2週間はかかるでしょう。これで、現段階では2つか3つかもしれませんが、残っているバグのほとんどを捕まえることができるはずです。
このテクニックのメリットの一部は、モデルを開発する人がオリジナルの設計者と異なる場合にのみ得られるものなので、いくつかの命令に対してランダム・テストベンチを動作させたら、あとはアシスタントが仕上げ、私はその間に別のコアに取りかかることができます。次のアーケード・コアは、7月のギャップを埋めるために、特に魅力的なものにしようと思っています。
ツイッターユーザーのLelandが『フェアリーランドストーリー』のPCBを送ってくれました。私は最近、新しい仕事を引き受けるのをためらいがちなのですが、この作品は貴重で、ファンに愛されていて、シンプルで、文書化されていないので、引き受けることにしました。コナミのX-MENの回路図（Atrac17から拝借中）を完成させたばかりのエスペランサが、来週月曜日から作業を始めます。彼女は今日、アダプターを作ってボードをテストしていました。
Comments
Packetfetcher
Is this still being worked on or did you hit some impass? Thanks!
Kevin Rowland
That monitor is radtastic. Of course its not branded.
Kyle Vega
What kind of monitor is that?
JOTEGO
We will resume CPS3 work but as NGP is dragging us a bit, I'm giving priority to the Konami cores as a side task because I can provide some new cores on that area in parallel with the NGP effort. I wouldn't be able to move the NGP and CPS3 projects at the same time.
Tatton Partington
This is awesome! Work has been busy and I haven’t been able to pop in and check the status. You all are making incredible progress. The core is coming together so much faster than I thought it would. Thank you!! I’m excited to hear what you think about the NGPC games you’ve checked out so far. This is such an amazing platform. The spritework in almost all of these games do an incredible job of using all if the real estate on the screen in a way that makes the games feel like they are something more than just a handheld. This is especially true with the fighting games. The sprites are so charming and full of character. The scale opens up the screen in a way that makes the gameplay feel fast like an arcade game. It feels like there was a remarkable amount of care and attention that went into every little detail. SNK really captured lightning in a bottle with the Neo Geo Pocket and its games didn’t get anywhere near the reach exposure they deserve. I’m so excited for folks to be able to explore and discover games from this library that I absolutely adore. Thanks for all your hard work to make this core a reality, and thank you so much for keeping it prioritized! I’m guessing it’ll be a little bit before a beta version comes out, but it’s going to be worth the wait and I’m eager to hear everyone share their favorite games and new discoveries later when it launches.
Timothy Watson
Tbh, the pocket has no interested to me as I prefer the CRT feel etc, not to take away all your hard work, as I'm sure it's of benefit to many. Any news on starting on the CPS3 again? or this dead in the water being as how complicated the PCB infrastructure is.
Kevin Bunch
Very excited about this news on the Pocket! Yes, it does have a great lineup of games. Fingers crossed a two-player core option is doable, as a lot of those fighting games hold up very well.
Francisco Blazquez
great work! No problem at all with lack of updates when the job is so well done
David Moylan
Thank you to the whole team for the most excellent work you are performing. Cheers :-)
Bob Zindle
Thanks Jose and team. Great progress. High quality work is worth waiting for.
Mark Saunders
Always excited for the future and what you’ve done and doing. Cheers team JT
Max Smith
I'm in this Patreon for the long haul - take your time to get stuff right! You and your team do amazing work, and honestly, I have so much backlog to play on my MISTer at this point, I don't know when I'd even get to the new cores!
Richard Maxey
Take all the time needed! Your cores are of the highest quality and worth the wait
Matthew Caron
Inasmuch as they matter, I have some thoughts: 1. Hard / involved things take time. Getting it correct is important. I'm currently doing a lot of work with the EM9304 Bluetooth chip. I've been working on it for a month. If I get it wrong, I risk bricking an existing install base, necessitating a recall and repair, which would be not good. Take your time, do it right, we will be here. 2. I was not really familiar with the NGP, but you have piqued my interest. 3. That X-Men was probably the machine into which I fed the second highest number of quarters back in the day (Konami's TMNT was #1). I am eagerly awaiting it, as I'm certain my children have never seen it, and I'm not sure if my wife has. Will be fun to play as a family. 4. I am enjoying Aliens. Thank you.
Mat Azel
Thanks a lot for the update, good luck to you guys!
Findamember
Good progress is what we see. NGPC is getting closer and closer. In the meantime we have time to enjoy previous cores from you. These days I am having a blast with the titles in JTAliens and revisiting JTS16 after recent fixes. Thanks for the update!
Filip Kindt
Quality b4 quantity
Brendan Flood
I agree with everything here. Take as much time as it needs as long as you post updates. We're all excited for this core, and I'm sure we'd all be excited to play even when it's only monochrome games working at first.
ARCADEAGES
Very happy to continue supporting and investing in the team’s knowledge. People have waited decades for such cores… What’s a few more months? Cheers!
Michael Deutsch
Thanks for the update and for continuing to work on the NGPC core. I got one instead of a GBC 20+ years ago and had a lot of fun with it. It’s such a under appreciated system and to me it’s worth the wait to get it right.
Dandi and Matija
Not getting a new core every month just makes us appreciate the times when we do get one even more
ronalvel .
I always look forward to Arcade cores, hopefully I can keep working on that, thanks !!!
Retro Tuna
Sounds like there a good bit of progress with the pocket core, been looking forward to this and yeah the pocket has some great games including some very good fighting games, i used to love mine bit gutted i sold it back in the day ohh well hindsight.
Pixel Cherry Ninja
Thanks for the update. I'm hyped for next Friday 😁
