There have been some significant updates to the Saturn core of the MiSTer FPGA since Shiro checked in on its progress last month.
The most recent update came this week when developer Sergey Dvodnenko, aka SRG320, pushed out new code Tuesday on his Github.
The changelog indicated that the update fixes PDR registers, fixes DMA writing to BBUS, fixes vblank erase and updates signaltap files. Dvodnenko did not tweet any clarifications on what those changes translate to in plain English.
The latest version of the core, which comes in two versions for one or two sticks of RAM, can be downloaded from a stickied post in the Saturn channel on the MiSTer Discord server.
Users on that server found some games booting up on the core for the first time, including Rayman, Batsugun and Battle Garegga.
Others reported music working better in some games.
“music works now all the time in Nights and Wipeout [2097] … it’s better in Sega Rally too”
— Kuba
Still others said they found better stability.
“Fighters mega mix seems a lot more stable. Like a lot more”
— Digital Goober
Before this week’s update, Dvodnenko pushed one out Oct. 28 that fixed a litany of issues. He detailed those in a tweet at the time:
- CPU:
- -fix interrupts (House of the Dead)
- -fix FRT status flag clear (Daytona USA hangs)
- SCU:
- -rework interrupts logic (Shinobi Legions, Rayman)
- -fix unsupported addresses and modes for DMA (MechWarrior 2, Spot Goes to Hollywood, Robo Pit)
- SCSP:
- -fix pitch calculation (Herc’s Adventures)
- -fix monitor register (Hardcore 4X4)
- -fix Sound stack write
- VDP1: fix subroutine return address (Quake)
- VDP2: fix RBG1 screen (MechWarrior 2)
- SMPC: fix INTBACK command (NBA Action 98)
- Fix access to cartridge area (Die Hard Trilogy)
About a week ago, Video Game Esoterica tested game compatibility with the latest core at the time and uploaded a video about it:
Dvodnenko released his first build of the Saturn core in May this year. After that, he updated it just once — in mid-August — over the next four months, perhaps owing to the fighting in Ukraine where he lives.
His situation may be improving, though, because he’s updated the core almost weekly since the end of September.
If you’re interested in supporting Dvodnenko, check out his Patreon.
The MiSTer is a field-programmable gate array, a chip that can be changed by programming it to physically emulate retro video game consoles. It includes an SD card reader from which “cores” and games can be loaded.
The cores are the programming that tells the FPGA chip how to configure itself to reproduce the performance of a console. There are cores for a wide array of consoles, from the Atari 2600 to the PlayStation — and now, at least in an early form, the Saturn.
Danthrax is a contributor to the Shiro Media Group, writing stories for the website when Saturn news breaks. While he was a Sega Genesis kid in the ’90s, he didn’t get a Saturn until 2018. It didn’t take him long to fall in love with the console’s library as well as the fan translation and homebrew scene. He contributed heavily to the Bulk Slash and Stellar Assault SS fan localizations, and has helped as an editor on several other Saturn and Dreamcast fan projects such as Cotton 2, Rainbow Cotton and Sakura Wars Columns 2.
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