Episode 143 is Online.
On this week’s episode of You Don’t Know Flack I delve into the MiST computer, a new FPGA-based system designed to run Amiga and Atari ST software. I talk about how difficult it is to get the MiST up and running, compatibility issues, and whether or not I’d recommend one.
Link: Episode 143: MiST Computer
Link: Archive.org Download Mirror
Link: The YDKF Website
Link: The YDKF Forum (The Gas Chamber)
Link: The YDKF RSS Feed
Link: The YDKF Facebook Page
Feeds: iTunes | Stitcher | Podcast Pickle
Voice Mailbox: 405-486-YDKF
Episode 143: MiST Computer
Episode 143: MiST Computer
Flack
www.robohara.com | www.facebook.com/robohara | www.twitter.com/Commodork
www.robohara.com | www.facebook.com/robohara | www.twitter.com/Commodork
Re: Episode 143: MiST Computer
Just listened to this episode. Thanks for the mention. You were absolutely right that the biggest downside to this thing being the abysmal lack of organized documentation. I like figuring things out as much as the next guy, but holy crap! If I didn't grow up on the Amiga in the first place, I would have been completely lost.
BTW, I've posted so much in the forums lately that you may have missed this, but I did a post last week about some weirdness with the Amiga core memory settings and how to work around it, and also on getting WHDload to work on the MIST.
You mentioned having to play Pinball Fantasies with the bottom of the screen cut off because it was a PAL version and you were running in NTSC. There are two ways to deal with that. The obvious one is to get an NTSC version of Pinball Fantasies. I know it exists because I bought it in a brick and mortar Amiga store in Wood River Illinois back when it was released. The other way to deal with it (and this will work for stuff you can't find NTSC versions of) is to create a config where you're starting up in kickstart 3.1. If you hold down both mouse buttons when booting in 3.1, it will go to a BIOS-like menu that will let you toggle video between PAL and NTSC, turn peripherals off and on, bypass the startup-sequence (Amiga version of Autoexec.bat) and more. The only trick with that is that your monitor will have to actually support displaying in PAL for that to work.
I'm still waiting for the VGA-HDMI upscaler I bought from a Chinese vendor on Ebay to get here. I'm hoping that among other things, it will normalize the video modes enough to allow more modes to work on more of my TVs and monitors. If the thing ever gets here (and I'm starting to wonder) I'll let you know what I find.
BTW, I've posted so much in the forums lately that you may have missed this, but I did a post last week about some weirdness with the Amiga core memory settings and how to work around it, and also on getting WHDload to work on the MIST.
You mentioned having to play Pinball Fantasies with the bottom of the screen cut off because it was a PAL version and you were running in NTSC. There are two ways to deal with that. The obvious one is to get an NTSC version of Pinball Fantasies. I know it exists because I bought it in a brick and mortar Amiga store in Wood River Illinois back when it was released. The other way to deal with it (and this will work for stuff you can't find NTSC versions of) is to create a config where you're starting up in kickstart 3.1. If you hold down both mouse buttons when booting in 3.1, it will go to a BIOS-like menu that will let you toggle video between PAL and NTSC, turn peripherals off and on, bypass the startup-sequence (Amiga version of Autoexec.bat) and more. The only trick with that is that your monitor will have to actually support displaying in PAL for that to work.
I'm still waiting for the VGA-HDMI upscaler I bought from a Chinese vendor on Ebay to get here. I'm hoping that among other things, it will normalize the video modes enough to allow more modes to work on more of my TVs and monitors. If the thing ever gets here (and I'm starting to wonder) I'll let you know what I find.