Thread

Recreating Voodoo Graphics and a Late-1990s Gaming PC on an FPGA

189 points · 59 comments · zdw

Loading the complete thread in the background. This saved snapshot is available now. Refresh

functionmouse · 1789520449 · focus · HN ↗
Will it support 31kHz video out via VGA I wonder? Would love a period-accurate PC in my superstation one.
1. mysterydip · 1789522071 · focus · HN ↗
  I hadn’t thought of that possibility but it would indeed be fantastic!
2. hexapus · 1789524468 · focus · HN ↗
  I imagine it would...I haven't tried the core, but most of them maintain the original outputs over the VGA port. Even if, for some bizarre reason it didn't, you could just enable the vga_scaler and force it.
3. crtified · 1789540328 · focus · HN ↗
  The core is available at github and should run fine on your SS1, afaik. Be aware it's an experimental core.
  <a href="https://github.com/nand2mario/z486_MiSTer" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/nand2mario/z486_MiSTer
  There is also a recent fork by github user janisc which is developing a direct 31khz output.
  --
  Speaking to general : To be clear, none of these MiSTer cores include the Voodoo graphics portion discussed in the parent link.
  I doubt that the degree of sheer hyper-optimisation required to get a Voodoo (plus the Pentium to make it meaningful!) into a DE10-Nano necessarily exists. Never-say-never, sure, but also, just-no - hahaha.
  That work is for higher specced boards like the Xilinx discussed.
wk_end · 1789522871 · focus · HN ↗
Tomb Raider (1996) ostensibly required a Pentium, and I remember (though memory may be faulty) the demo refusing to run on my 486. Does this FPGA 486 support the additional Pentium instructions?
1. rasz · 1789524077 · focus · HN ↗
  Not require, just recommends Pentium 60 minimum. Like Quake Tomb Raider loves pipelined FPU, 30 fps on Pentium 60 vs 15 fps on 486DX2@66 and 20 on DX4@100.
  1. tharkun__ · 1789526689 · focus · HN ↗
    Whoa, you took me back quite a few years there!
    I really wanted a DX4@100 back then but it wasn't available in my area. I "had" to get a Pentium 60, which I was not happy about lol.
    Upgraded to a Pentium 200 MMX. Whoa!
    And then I also got a specific batch Celeron 300a to overclock.
    "Stole" my dad's Matrox Mystique, coz what does he need a "3D" card for?
    Wow, the times!
    samuelec · 1789549908 · focus · HN ↗
    If I remember correctly the Pentium 60 was the one that had math rounding errors, isn't it? What a memory
    0points · 1789551426 · focus · HN ↗
    This?
    <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentium_FDIV_bug" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentium_FDIV_bug
    jasonwatkinspdx · 1789570012 · focus · HN ↗
    Those Celeron 300As were quite the deal. My whole LAN party crew had them in the dual slot abit motherboard.
    tharkun__ · 1789691184 · focus · HN ↗
    Did we go to the same LAN parties?
    jasonwatkinspdx · 1789701606 · focus · HN ↗
    Heh, if you were in the PNW it's possible.
    In that era there definitely were killer deals that just spread like wildfire among people who knew. And ABit built their brand catering to overclockers/tweakers, much to the annoyance of Intel lol.
    There was also that Hitachi 19" CRT that could do 1600x1200 rock solid, and had a nicer than most shadow mask CRT. A big lot of those went up for sale super cheap on ubid or some site like that and we all found out about it through Something Awful and similar forums. We lugged those 60 lb CRTs to our small dozen person group every other weekend, along with full size ATX towers as you did.
  2. consp · 1789541410 · focus · HN ↗
    Iirc the only way of getting near 30fps on a socket 3 board is by bumping the bus to 50mhz, having fast cache and a 5x86 and enabling branch prediction and the fpu optimisations. And then wait for it to fault out. Never tried it with an Pentium overdrive though, maybe that will work but those do not like higher bus speeds. Might also be a nice difference in DX4s since the amd and cyrix parts have different fpu implementations to the intel ones.
2. Zardoz84 · 1789537925 · focus · HN ↗
  I remember playing Star Fleet Academy demo on my 486DX5@133 and a Trident 3d SVGA card at slow motion in battles. The game requires a Pentium 75 or 90 and a DirectX accelerator.
  1. tsunamifury · 1789538812 · focus · HN ↗
    Wait wait. You’re one of the rare people to ever this odd period of 486 history. What kind of overclocker did you use?
3. throwaway91033 · 1789544415 · focus · HN ↗
  I think I played Tomb Raider on my 486. I also seem to remember I had an S3 ViRGE graphics card, so perhaps that helped
shoobiedoo · 1789523160 · focus · HN ↗
So bummed out that I wrecked the HDMI out on my MiSTer. I was trying to figure out a new monitor layout and unplugged/plugged it in a few times. I could SSH into it no problem, but no HDMI out. After peeking around on the forums, turns out that the MiSTer doesn't take kindly to that while it's still on-- I forget the technical reason. Oh well. Many, many hours of fun playing games with my son on the it, I got my money's worth.
1. hexapus · 1789524198 · focus · HN ↗
  Dunno which variant you bought, but the QMTech mister clones on Ali Express are affordable, work perfectly well, and come with the expanded 128MB SDRAM expansion and analog I/O board bundled up in a convenient case. I have 2 of them, along with the MiSTer Pi, and I'll probably pick up a couple more for dedicated applicaitons (3d-printed retro computer workstation, Normal/TATE mode cab builds, and a couple just to hook up to the CRTs I have lying around).
  1. shoobiedoo · 1789541854 · focus · HN ↗
    Err I forget, it's the "real" one from Taiwan that was fairly expensive. Thank you for the tip though, I'd love to have one handy in the future.
2. jakemauer · 1789577557 · focus · HN ↗
  That's crazy I would have never ever guessed that would be an issue. I'm interested in any forum links you can share.
throwitaway222 · 1789525407 · focus · HN ↗
I had that VooDoo card- Quake 1 was amazing on it. Of course today it's not amazing.
1. matwood · 1789546220 · focus · HN ↗
  I also had the original Voodoo card. It's rare to see a before and after divide in history so clearly. When I played Quake (and ran the time test) the first time on that Voodoo, I knew computer gaming had changed.
xupybd · 1789525525 · focus · HN ↗
The lack of example videos is killing me!
jumploops · 1789532201 · focus · HN ↗
In case it's helpful to anyone, MiSTer is a project[0] that recreates classic computers and video game consoles on hardware.
What do I mean by hardware?
Rather than emulating the device in software, which can cause various issues (especially related to timing), by mapping the actual device logic to a field programmable gate array (FPGA), you can achieve an "exact" replica of the hardware.
It's a super cool project, and I highly recommend checking it out if you have an interest in old machines (Apple II, Commodore 64, etc.).
[0]<a href="https://mister-devel.github.io/MkDocs_MiSTer/" rel="nofollow">https://mister-devel.github.io/MkDocs_MiSTer/
1. utopiah · 1789534302 · focus · HN ↗
  Damn there is a whole ecosystem around that, e.g. <a href="https://ultimatemister.com" rel="nofollow">https://ultimatemister.com to buy it all built, very neat.
  1. MegaDeKay · 1789566826 · focus · HN ↗
    Check out the Superstation One [0]. Outer shell modelled after the original PS1. Optional optical disk dock. Simplified UI. Lots of outputs. Well priced.
    [0] <a href="https://retroremake.co/pages/superstation%E1%B5%92%E2%81%BF%E1%B5%89" rel="nofollow">https://retroremake.co/pages/superstation%E1%B5%92%E2%81%BF%...
    (Don't mind the strange characters in the URL above. That's a superscripted "one". Use <a href="https://retroremake.co/" rel="nofollow">https://retroremake.co/ if you feel better about that).
    utopiah · 1789568180 · focus · HN ↗
    Super cool! To be honest I'm not into emulation/retrogaming so much (even though I do have a Pimoroni Picade) but the fact that this exist as a production is very inspiring, thanks for sharing.
2. unwind · 1789539980 · focus · HN ↗
  Do note that this very cool project does not run on the "default" MiSTer hardware. This board is $250 from AMD.
  1. jumploops · 1789545933 · focus · HN ↗
    It's been awhile, but I believe the "default" MiSTer board is the DE10-Nano[0], which was released ~10-15 years ago?
    Looks like Intel is still selling them[0] but they're now around $300, they used to be under $150 if memory serves.
    If I were jumping into this today, I'd much prefer the kv260[1] from the article over the DE10-Nano, that board was limited!
    [0]<a href="https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/developer/topic-technology/edge-5g/hardware/fpga-de10-nano.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/developer/topic-tech...
    [1]<a href="https://www.amd.com/en/products/system-on-modules/kria/k26/kv260-vision-starter-kit.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.amd.com/en/products/system-on-modules/kria/k26/k...
    Sidenote: somewhat sad to see the consolidation into Intel and AMD, but FPGAs have always been second class citizens in the silicon space :(
    pipes · 1789549639 · focus · HN ↗
    Does mister work with kv260 boards "out of the box" or is the official mister target a de10 nano? (I love my mister, assembled oneba few years ago). I don't follow the project closely due to zero free time these days
    MegaDeKay · 1789566885 · focus · HN ↗
    The latter. Official MiSTer targets the DE10 nano.
    jakemauer · 1789577097 · focus · HN ↗
    You have to base your build around either the DE10-Nano or one of the clone boards from QMTech. If I were getting into MiSTer I would skip faffing around with dev board builds and just get a SuperStation One, and I say this as someone who has two MiSTer builds based on DE-10 boards. In my case I'm using a MiniITX motherboard that the DE-10 plugs into called the IronClad Plus. The SuperStation one is apparently awesome. Great IO options, reference quality analog video, and nice industrial design.
    robertlagrant · 1789554669 · focus · HN ↗
    > they used to be under $150 if memory serves
    True in more ways than one!
    chocochunks · 1789556212 · focus · HN ↗
    There are much cheaper clones of the DE10 available these days. For a little while fully assembled MiSTer's were available on AliExpress for around $150-$200 although it looks like maybe they dried up. There's also the SuperStation based on the MiSTer project for around $250 if you're patient.
    MegaDeKay · 1789567423 · focus · HN ↗
    If you want something more powerful than MiSTer and have a bit of patience, there is the Replay R2 being developmed around the Agilex 5.
    - Agilex 5 E-Series 043 (Replay2 phat) has 434,240 logic elements (LEs).
    - Agilex 5 E-Series 013 (Replay2 lite) has 138,060 Logic Elements (LEs).
    The website (<a href="https://www.fpgaarcade.com/news-2/" rel="nofollow">https://www.fpgaarcade.com/news-2/) hasn't been updated in some time but the dev now has prototype boards that he's in the middle of bringing up. It is purpose built for arcade emulation and has tons of I/O, lots of memory (both SRAM and HyperRAM), and (on the phat) a PCI connector. One or both (can't remember which) accepts an ARM daughterboard for hybrid emulation. There's a Discord for it you can track down to follow its progress basically in real time as mikej progresses.
3. charcircuit · 1789543280 · focus · HN ↗
  Both require having an understanding of what you are trying to emulate. There are systems which don't have an accurate specification so they are not implemented bug free.
4. mitxela · 1789552107 · focus · HN ↗
  "exact" is still in quotation marks because things like open bus behavior still have to be explicitly simulated. It's still a very accurate simulator, not an exact replica - much more accurate than most fast software simulators can be, though.
  1. ahartmetz · 1789594169 · focus · HN ↗
    Worth noting that timing-exact emulation is for, more or less, less than 32 bit consoles. The timing of newer hardware is so unpredictable that nothing can reasonably rely on details, which is just as well: it would probably not be possible to emulate it precisely at an acceptable speed.
    PCs have been "unpredictable" like that almost since the beginning due to hardware variation, so emulating timings isn't much of a problem for emulators, as is the case in the featured article.
ggm · 1789533431 · focus · HN ↗
I'd run the Virtual Notre Dame VRML demo in this, if I could!
Panzerschrek · 1789536823 · focus · HN ↗
Am I right that Voodoo had no early depth test and thus triangles are textured even if they are completely obstructed?
1. djmips · 1789538311 · focus · HN ↗
  If you draw front to back that could handle some of that - it does have a Z buffer.
  1. account42 · 1789552469 · focus · HN ↗
    Without an early Z test that would still do all the same calculations only to discard the fragment when it would be written to the frame buffer.
2. rasz · 1789539210 · focus · HN ↗
  The only PC desktop accelerator that could be considered early depth testing would be tile based 1996 PowerVR. ATI introduced HyperZ in 2000 Radeon DDR (R100), Nvidia followed in 2001 with GeForce 3 LMA. From what I remember Radeon compressed Z gains were surprisingly minimal, like 10-20% when turning it on/off, but Im sure it became crucial later on when real shaders (2.0) started being used.
  1. jauntywundrkind · 1789540566 · focus · HN ↗
    Amusingly, open source devs are still hacking/improving HyperZ support in 2026. <a href="https://www.phoronix.com/news/ATI-R300-Occlusion-Query-Fix" rel="nofollow">https://www.phoronix.com/news/ATI-R300-Occlusion-Query-Fix
    mitxela · 1789552303 · focus · HN ↗
    There's no good reason to get emotionally attached to obsolete hardware unless you are running a museum or just doing something cool. AMD doesn't hack on a Raden for the same reason everyone else doesn't: it's obsolete.
    jauntywundrkind · 1789587750 · focus · HN ↗
    I agree that this is more silly than practical or useful. It's just that old. It's ridiculous.
    Reciprocally though 10 even 15 year old GPUs are actually often quite good and useful, for a lot of people. They're what some people have. Many have multiple 100's of GB/s of memory bandwidth, which is pretty potent even today! That they can be so much better and that they do keep getting better is pretty amazing.
    The biggest downside imo is power efficiency. A lot of these cards are on older hotter processes. They lack modern instructions and have to brute force various features. Some signficiant downclocking, undervolting can help a lot for this!
monster_truck · 1789538207 · focus · HN ↗
I mowed lawns for two summers to save up for a Voodoo 3000 PCI, still didn't even have half of what I needed. Parents covered the rest. Basically nothing I had hoped to be able to play worked. Spent an entire summer just trying to get Arcanum to even run, never did succeed. Learned a whole lot.
Goddamn if that buyer's remorse didn't scar me for life, the amount of researching I did before any purchase from then on was obsessive. I still think of the card fondly for what it represented to 10 year old me. This story does have a happy ending, we ended up getting a Dell XPS not long after with a Pentium 3 & a GeForce 2, back when they were still beige.
1. crq-yml · 1789545537 · focus · HN ↗
  This is exactly how it was back then, roughly from when the 386-based PC clones appeared up through Windows 7. The best thing you could do was ask the local computer stores about what configurations they were building, since they got to see more hardware come through. But they struggled too. The system the store built for me in 2001 had an Athlon Thunderbird running 1.4GHz and cooling tech hadn't caught up so it hit the failsafe temps during long sessions of Counter-Strike and Serious Sam. Later, wiser me eventually figured out, two computers later, that the power supply was probably the culprit, but this wasn't much of a topic of discussion yet - power supply efficiency wasn't a priority in the 90's.
  1. mikeryan · 1789570501 · focus · HN ↗
    Fun Fact. My first “tech job” was tech support at EA in the late 90s. Serious Sam was the FPS of choice for late night LAN parties for the EA tech support and QA teams. Tech support and QA were shared resources. They’d shift people from support to QA in summer for fall/winter holiday releases and back to support around the holidays.
    Serious Sam was the one FPS that would run decently on our workstations.
2. cjrp · 1789550692 · focus · HN ↗
  I remember exactly that feeling; I had a cricket game where my PC met the minimum specs, but it ran terribly. That's the day I learned that minimum is not enough.
  1. ahartmetz · 1789595425 · focus · HN ↗
    That has changed a little. Today, you can often play OK with minimum specs. You might need to switch to an embarrassing resolution to get 60 fps. In the 90s, with minimum specs you got like 5-10 fps at minimum details (and usually fixed resolution).
3. theandrewbailey · 1789559075 · focus · HN ↗
  [delayed]
  1. anthk · 1789581270 · focus · HN ↗
    I had an Athlon XP with a GF2 and Max Payne and Deus Ex played great.
4. gosub100 · 1789569740 · focus · HN ↗
  I did something similar with a U2W 160 mbps SCSI card and 10k rpm Seagate Cheetah drive circa 2000. I saved up and found an amazing deal on eBay, shipped to the US from Australia. Waited a week, plugged it in, and found out it had no boot ROM. So it worked, but I still had to boot from an IDE disk which ruined my whole vision for the build. I was so disappointed.
  1. monster_truck · 1789661497 · focus · HN ↗
    Went through almost the exact same situation with a $250 "used" 2U in 2006 that was full of the 15k rpm cheetahs. Had to cannibalize an emachine for a drive to boot from. It was far too problematic to do anything with the linuxes of yore, but it worked great for my network administration training VMs with Windows Server 2003. Those things were loud as fuck.
    Ended up giving it away to an irc friend for the cost of shipping, they used it to start a minecraft server hosting business.
    20 years later I now have nieces and nephews wondering how I know so much about minecraft, can't wait until they're a little older so I can host one for them. Funny how much and how little things change
userbinator · 1789541869 · focus · HN ↗
It seems that within the past few years, there have been a great increase in the number of articles on low-level GPU internals/programming, which was previously a very niche subject. However, once you understand that a GPU is conceptually a processor specialised for graphics operations, with its own instruction set and RAM, then everything seems quite straightforward, and you can actually start thinking about how to implement one.
The specification is a behavioral target, rather than a circuit diagram.
Did anyone else get a slight feeling of LLM-ism from that sentence? Not a complaint, because I've noticed AI is definitely leading to some great boosts (the somewhat related <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49717638">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49717638 is on the front page as I write this.)
kriro · 1789558069 · focus · HN ↗
This is really cool at first glance and very HN worthy. I've bookmarked it and will look into it deeper. Recreates roughly my first PC setup though I think I had a Matrox Mystique so that makes it even more interesting. And I've been looking for a "I build something cool with an FPGA" kind of project to look into for a while now.
1. doublerabbit · 1789571179 · focus · HN ↗
  Myself as well, "I want my own accelerated VGA adapter" is something that's been on my bucket list for a while.
  Something that can output video and this fits the bill. I'd rather make my own video pipeline than use existing, if this can render triangles and polygons, than that's all I need.
eliauelkouby · 1789561138 · focus · HN ↗
[dead]
WorseIsBetter · 1789576572 · focus · HN ↗
[dead]
unixhero · 1789579465 · focus · HN ↗
If we get fpga aliexpress 486 laptops then I am selling all my retro x86 boxes

Open on Hacker News to reply ↗

Unofficial Hacker News client; not affiliated with Y Combinator.