Groovy MiSTer - Connect your PC to a CRT with the MiSTer FPGA 

It really does fill the gap of the unsupported games.

Why ? When a modern PC can upscale these games, use modern shaders, textures, and run them far better than original hardware, and the Mister. Plus, the Gamecube

@@DKTronics70 you know Mc Donald's ice cream? Nowadays, I have money to buy and enjoy fancy ice cream. But, sometimes, McDonald's ice cream reminds me of great memories too. I like both.

@@DKTronics70 Because CRTs are a different animal, they offer and authentic lag free experience with perfect motion clarity, not to mention these games were made for CRTs in mind, PC emulators have horrible latency, mainly thanks to Windows overheads.

Thanks!

RetroArch does have a video player core, but I haven't tried RetroArch with Groovy MiSTer yet. From what Ive read so far, it looks like the GUI isn't supported yet and you have to runs games separately through a command.

Can't you just use a pi and convert the signal to something a PVM or just a standard CRT can understand? I planned on doing that with mine soon

@@EverScrolls That I don't know, and I'm not knowledgeable enough about that to know if there are analog video "Pi hats" either.

​@@StariusPrimeif you are just talking about outputting a video file, I think the standard composite output on a Pi supports 480i.

@@bnr32jason you would need some kind of pi hat though, right?

Something else to keep in mind that running programs with a VRR monitor is similar to this. VRR setups are basically like playing with vsync off, which is at least a frame less lag than what old setups would get.

​@@youtubesuresuckscock Interesting... I never gave much thought about VRR, but now I'm wondering how it's implemented. The clock changes all the time, or on a frame by frame basis, or line by line, por packet by packet, or something else? There must be some considerable differences in the low level implementation on DisplayPort vs HDMI, considering how different they are.

It isn't really the same as a crtemudriver setup. This has less audio latency and auto framedelay. It's better.

@@youtubesuresuckscock oh nice, then I'll definitely give it a try. thanks

Yeah, I'm wanting to try out some consoles next, but since the retroarch gui isnt supported yet in Groovy MiSTer it's. a more involved process.

@@LusRetroSource Yeeeeah I think I'm going to be waiting for someone to get to a GUI before I try all that.

Might be possible through RetroArch's video player core. But I've yet to try RetroArch. It's a more involved process in getting it to play games because the GUI hasn't been implemented yet.

Thanks!

Yea I would love to use my Guncon 2 with Operation Wolf and T2

There's never been a problem with syncing and timing in GroovyMAME. It's not the software's fault if the PC isn't fast enough to run it at full speed. How can you possibly sync at 59hz if your computer can't even output frames at 59hz, for example?

Haven't tried VGA. You can probably get your question answered on the MiSTerFPGA forum thread. misterfpga.org/viewtopic.php?t=7528&start=150

It's nothing like a video scaler. There's no scaling going on at all. The whole point of this is to NOT convert anything and display original signals at original frequencies.

​@@youtubesuresuckscock I get that, but there is also no emulation being done on the FPGA. So maybe, I should call it FPGA based video conversion? The PC is doing most of the heavy lifting here.

@@xero110 It probably just should have been called MisterGPU or something. That's basically all it is.

Yes! So many indie games are a great use for this!

I think part of why it's so low latency is because it isn't system wide. They're bypassing so many layers on the PC by having the video output from the program (groovymame and others) go directly to a udp packet to MiSTer instead of through the video driver and other layers.

@@flain283 that makes sense, it just unfortunately reduces the usefulness significantly.

I was using direct video on my Ironclad Plus, but is should work with any of the analog outputs. Remember to replace the "MiSTer" file on the SD Card with the one on Github. If it's not replaced then you will not get the bouncing screensaver.

@@LusRetroSource Appreciate it! I was just able to test with the vga port and that didnt do the trick so i'm thinking you might be right about the MiSTer file. i've replaced it repeatedly but no change. I'll have to hit the discord i think.

I've seen some people mention to use the linux "killall MiSTer" command before you replace the MiSTer file. I didnt need to do that. I used WinSCP to replace the file. You can also try to just replace the MiSTer file with the SD Card inserted into a PC, but I know you would want to avoid that since it's not easy getting the SD card from the Ironclad Plus. Hopefully the discord can help you.

Just wanted to leave a comment with solution for anyone that sees this and cares - I had to ssh into my MiSTer and run command "killall MiSTer" to kill all active connections to the MiSTer binary. From there, i grabbed fresh copies of of both the MiSTer binary for GroovyMister and the GroovyMister.rbf file. Before doing anything with them, i had to specifically right click them individually and click the little checkbox for "unblock file" in Windows. Then, i used WinSCP to copy the files to the directories specified in Lu's tutorial. Beyond that, the only other thing i did differently was put it in the /media/fat/Other folder instead of /media/fat/Utility folder. Not sure this will do anyone any good but mine is rock solid now.

You want a wired network connection, so you wouldn't want to do it with wifi on a Steam Deck.

Ha ha! That is so cool!

Don't need the RAM module.

That was the past, try doing it with modern graphics cards and let us know how you get on, good luck lol

You might have to run killall MiSTer before modifying certain configuration files because they could be locked.

@@youtubesuresuckscock Thanks ill try that!

@@youtubesuresuckscock Sorry is that a script? i tried to find it under script folder but i dont see "killall"

@@prekazirealestate3865Just press F9 to open your mister terminal, log in, and type killall MiSTer (it is case sensitive) then try editing your stuff

Did you figure it out ? I have the same issue having the conf file as read only. It’s working over WiFi but unplayable - too slow

Yeah you need one of the supported older graphic cards that can use calamity's crt drivers with groovymame. Whether any of those older cards are good enough to run ps2 emulation is doubtful though, which is why this project is compelling. All modern pc hardware power passing through to crt's when the use case makes sense.

Yes. It's up to the application to send the correct resolution and refresh rate. For example, when I tried the Groovy RetroArch Dreamcast core, it sent a 480i signal to Groovy MiSTer. RetroArch also has the ability to play videos.

Not fast enough. The whole point of this is that you can leverage the power of modern high end PC CPUs.

@@youtubesuresuckscock That makes sense. Thank you for clarifying. Even still, I wonder if it will be possible just to do kind of a low power core. Almost like a Mame-2003 type thing or Final Burn Neo.

They would need to implement Groovy MiSTer support.

I use the direct cable method. You can try using WinSCP to edit the "/etc/dhcpcd.conf" that helps you set the static IP.

There's already no need for MARS. MAME's Neo Geo emulation is better than the Mister core. BSNES is better than any FPGA SNES solution. The mister PS1, Saturn, and N64 cores are never going to catch up with PC emulators. The truth is that if you can afford a nice computer and a Mister, you're actually better off with PC software emulation than Mister cores anyway.

I bought a USB switched and that made things much better. But yeah improvements will come.

Make sure you're using a GroovyMister compatible version of GroovyMAME and NOT an older GroovyMAME binary. They are not the same thing. The whole point of this is that it doesn't need to use your video card to output to a CRT. You need to set the video output to use the mister device in the configuration.

@@youtubesuresuckscock I'm using the files referenced in the video...

@@youtubesuresuckscock I used the files Lu´s referenced in the video description so I don´t know what am I doing wrong... 😕

I remember getting switchres errors if I forgot to run the MiSTer Core before running the MAME build. Try checking the network connections and pinging the MiSTer from the PC.

You can.

@@youtubesuresuckscock but the github page only mentions mame retroarch and mednafen

@@125scratch2 It mentioned two examples of programs that support it. That doesn't mean it's the only thing that can ever support it. There's a native PC version of Final Fight that supports it and a PC frontend that supports it.

@@youtubesuresuckscock damn seems like it, this is making me want a mister lol maybe ill wait until my birthday though

seems to be 240p too, i mean why wouldnt it be if it was 480i it would be no different from those cheap adapters / converter boxes lol

It's possible to modify Dolphin to work with it. I think you can already run Dreamcast games with Retroarch using it.

Check out my latest news video. An app was released that allows you to cast your PC screen to Groovy MiSTer.

If you just plugged the Mister into a J-PAC I don't see why that wouldn't work with a standard JAMMA cabinet.

@@youtubesuresuckscock maybe! I dont own a Jpac though so couldn’t teat but be interesting to see!

This should work with current MiSTer JAMMA IO boards.

Github mentions 3ms. Most games run better using Groovy MiSTer than displaying them locally on the PC monitor I used.

@@LusRetroSource Impressive!

I recently got a small formfactor PC to dedicate to GroovyMiSTer so I plan to revisit this soon.

@@LusRetroSource *angelic church music starts playing while the the clouds part and the sunshine comes through*

Yes. You're missing the fact that you can use a completely off the shelf PC without any hacked drivers and always upgrade to the latest and greatest CPU without worrying about compatibility with some antiquated setup that happens to support those drivers. It also has lower audio latency than you can get on a standard PC setup unless you spend $1,600+ on a professional audio over IP PCIE interface.

@@youtubesuresuckscock I'm only emulating dig dug! you wouldn't need more than a £100 pc and groovy arcade on a usb/cd for 99% mame compatibility. But if you've got money to burn then go for it I guess

@@MrDirklesYou sure like plugging your ears, don't you? You can't get audio latency as low as this on your setup. For emulation with a CRT, this is the highest quality solution today. You can pretend that there's no point in it, but the truth is that it sounds like you're just another person who buries their head in the sand about the usefulness of something just because they can't afford it.

@@youtubesuresuckscock i haven't noticed any audio latency on the rhythm games I play🤔

@@MrDirklesIf you compared it side by side with this you would.

I totaly agree. The cost of this could be brought down a lot by having a simpler setup. But it's promising for sure.

It could be, but whatever FPGA is chosen will need a 1Gbps ethernet port on it (or wifi equiv).

Underpowered in other ways. It'd be better if you had 10 gigabit ethernet.

​@@flain283Even with latency fixes, wireless would be suboptimal. It's a shame WiDi died, Miracast just isn't that great.

If you already have a MISTer and using a PC next to it for emulation, this makes a lot of sense to get that PC on a CRT..

It should work.

Tried it and it is working.