This SNES clone is BETTER than the ORIGINAL!

[nicklmg]

Buy a Super Nt from Analogue: http://geni.us/cdBgtG
Buy an 8Bitdo Retro SNES Controller + Receiver on Amazon: http://geni.us/6TKzLN

 

Analogue's Super Nt is a third-party clone of Nintendo's SNES which claims 100% compatibility with a unique modern-retro experience. Can it really be that good?

 

 

[Canada EH]

looks cool, but its preorder

[nickyteddy]

Looks cool but I don't own a library of SNES games to actually benefit from this.

[Egg-Roll]

That Boom mic

[aura0]

Ouch that SD2SNES cartridge costs more than the console itself. Pretty cool though.

[AshleyAshes]

1 hour ago, nickyteddy said:

Looks cool but I don't own a library of SNES games to actually benefit from this.

For the Analog NT, the NeS version that came before this, there was actually second party firmware (Made by the actual firmware developer but NOT officially supported by hardware company) which allowed using the SD storage for ROMs as well as playback of systems other than the NES.  (And non-NES play obviously required ROMS since it only had an NES cartridge slot.)

[idmb]

Script writer forgot to mention that the reason the sound going from 30KHz to 40KHz matters is because to sample a frequency you need at least 2x the frequency, and 15KHz is very audible but 20KHz is not (to most people.)   

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nyquist–Shannon_sampling_theorem

 

 

[xnamkcor]

Is it the controller port that doesn't support the Super Scope, or is it an assumption that CRT HDMI displays don't exist and wouldn't work with it?

[AshleyAshes]

47 minutes ago, xnamkcor said:

Is it the controller port that doesn't support the Super Scope, or is it an assumption that CRT HDMI displays don't exist and wouldn't work with it?

It would be impossible, unlike the NES Zapper, the Superscope uses something called 'Cathode Ray Timing'.  For Cathode Ray Timing to work you need access to the analog video output's sync signal so that the gun knows exactly when a draw cycle has begun.  Since the machine is only outputting HDMI and has no analog outputs, even if you had the hardware inside running a 'dummy' analog video output just to have a sync signal to provide the Superscope hardware, the video output would not match that.  If you used an HDMI to composite adapter, that adapter wold then be doing the conversion on it's own and generating it's own independent sync signal which would not be the same as the sync signal from within the Super NT itself, so the gun would never work right.

[xnamkcor]

37 minutes ago, AshleyAshes said:

It would be impossible, unlike the NES Zapper, the Superscope uses something called 'Cathode Ray Timing'.  For Cathode Ray Timing to work you need access to the analog video output's sync signal so that the gun knows exactly when a draw cycle has begun.  Since the machine is only outputting HDMI and has no analog outputs, even if you had the hardware inside running a 'dummy' analog video output just to have a sync signal to provide the Superscope hardware, the video output would not match that.  If you used an HDMI to composite adapter, that adapter wold then be doing the conversion on it's own and generating it's own independent sync signal which would not be the same as the sync signal from within the Super NT itself, so the gun would never work right.

Jump a sync pin from the NT to the TV?

 

"If you used an HDMI to composite adapter"

That was never a consideration.

 

"You need access to the analog video output's sync signal"

Any reason why the HDMI's sync signal wouldn't work?

 

"So that the gun knows exactly when a draw cycle has begun"

You can probably get that from the TV itself.

 

 

Edited February 17, 2018 by xnamkcor

[AshleyAshes]

1 minute ago, xnamkcor said:

Jump a sync pin from the NT to the TV?

1) It seemingly doesn't HAVE one.

2) For composite video there is ONE cable that feeds that, everything is in there, color, luminescence, the sync, all of it.  You would need to somehow swap out the sync signal... But now you are carrying a composite video signal with a sync signal from something else.  Now you broke the video signal.

 

You would need to build the Super NT with native composite output basically which it has omitted because it's 2018 and if you want to play SuperNES games on a Standard def CRT over composite video you could use a SUPER NES TO DO IT.

 

What someone could MAYBE do is make a third party Superscope that used LED trackers for modern TVs and then just spit out the data the SNES expected as input but that's a whole new peripheral and well out of the scope of the Super NT itself.

[xnamkcor]

10 minutes ago, AshleyAshes said:

1) It seemingly doesn't HAVE one.

2) For composite video there is ONE cable that feeds that, everything is in there, color, luminescence, the sync, all of it.  You would need to somehow swap out the sync signal... But now you are carrying a composite video signal with a sync signal from something else.  Now you broke the video signal.

 

You would need to build the Super NT with native composite output basically which it has omitted because it's 2018 and if you want to play SuperNES games on a Standard def CRT over composite video you could use a SUPER NES TO DO IT.

 

What someone could MAYBE do is make a third party Superscope that used LED trackers for modern TVs and then just spit out the data the SNES expected as input but that's a whole new peripheral and well out of the scope of the Super NT itself.

Would using the TV's sync signal at the CRT level not work?

 

"Standard def CRT"

That was never the goal. Though, I do know of some SD CRTs TVs that can take an HDMI signal via the DVI input.

[AshleyAshes]

Just now, xnamkcor said:

Would using the TV's sync signal at the CRT level not work?

 

"Standard def CRT"

That was never the goal. Though, I do know of some SD CRTs TVs that can take an HDMI signal via the DVI input.

Okay... Let's explain the fundamentals here:

 

Cathode Ray Timing is used on a LOT of light guns.  Basically the hardware is presented to the sync signal for the screen, usually pulled from the composite video signal or from inside the hardware somehow. (Fun fact, classic 'fat' Xbox has a 5th pin on the controller ports JUST to provide sync signal to the light guns).  With this signal the gun knows exactly WHEN the screen starts bring refreshed.  The TV relies on the electron gun where an electromagnetic yolk aims the gun, allowing it to scan across all of the pixels and illuminate them.  The gun waits until the electron gun beam flashes RIGHT down it's barrel and then it does basic math.  When did the electron gun start it's cycle?  When did the light gun see see the electron?  From doing the math between those two values along with the calibration data, it is able to determine X,Y information and tell the system where in terms of X,Y that the gun was 'pointed'.  This allows the gun to update constantly as well which means mouse like movement using the gun to direct a cursor.

 

The console and the TV are a fixed system with the video signal driving the timing of the TV.  Get it?  Both the TV and the gun being on analog video are CRITICAL here. If you use a TV, even if it is CRT, with an HDMI video signal, then the screen is not refreshing in sync with the clock of the console.  The CRT with HDMI will be using it's own clock to drive it's refresh cycle.  As a result it is not possible for a Cathode Ray Timing gun to work on a TV that has an HDMI input, ANY kind of HDMI input.  The precision is important here.  The electron gun scans from the top right to bottom left of the screen every 16.7ms, so the gun is doing math WITHIN that 16.7ms just to figure out when the electron gun starts scanning and when it sees the beam.

 

Bonus fun fact: In television broadcasting all your cameras need to be on the same clock.  We call this 'Genlock' so all cameras, VRT decks and anything else are being fed a signal from a central clock and they all scan in sync with those to ensure every piece of hardware is synced up when going through the video switcher.

[AshleyAshes]

33 minutes ago, xnamkcor said:

"You need access to the analog video output's sync signal"

Any reason why the HDMI's sync signal wouldn't work?

Because the clock signal inside an HDMI signal doesn't tell the TV when to draw on the screen like a analog video into a CRT does.  The clock is there for data communications purposes, in the end it's just pushing a stream of RGB frames.  The TV can then do as it pleases with those frames, with TVs doing a range of post processing and buffering as they desire.  The clock signal from an HDMI signal is NOT the command 'You will draw EXACTLY RIGHT NOW' like it is in an analog system.

[xnamkcor]

1 minute ago, AshleyAshes said:

Okay... Let's explain the fundamentals here:

 

Cathode Ray Timing is used on a LOT of light guns.  Basically the hardware is presented to the sync signal for the screen, usually pulled from the composite video signal or from inside the hardware somehow. (Fun fact, classic 'fat' Xbox has a 5th pin on the controller ports JUST to provide sync signal to the light guns).  With this signal the gun knows exactly WHEN the screen starts bring refreshed.  The TV relies on the electron gun where an electromagnetic yolk aims the gun, allowing it to scan across all of the pixels and illuminate them.  The gun waits until the electron gun beam flashes RIGHT down it's barrel and then it does basic math.  When did the electron gun start it's cycle?  When did the light gun see see the electron?  From doing the math between those two values along with the calibration data, it is able to determine X,Y information and tell the system where in terms of X,Y that the gun was 'pointed'.  This allows the gun to update constantly as well which means mouse like movement using the gun to direct a cursor.

 

The console and the TV are a fixed system with the video signal driving the timing of the TV.  Get it?  Both the TV and the gun being on analog video are CRITICAL here. If you use a TV, even if it is CRT, with an HDMI video signal, then the screen is not refreshing in sync with the clock of the console.  The CRT with HDMI will be using it's own clock to drive it's refresh cycle.  As a result it is not possible for a Cathode Ray Timing gun to work on a TV that has an HDMI input, ANY kind of HDMI input.  The precision is important here.  The electron gun scans from the top right to bottom left of the screen every 16.7ms, so the gun is doing math WITHIN that 16.7ms just to figure out when the electron gun starts scanning and when it sees the beam.

 

Bonus fun fact: In television broadcasting all your cameras need to be on the same clock.  We call this 'Genlock' so all cameras, VRT decks and anything else are being fed a signal from a central clock and they all scan in sync with those to ensure every piece of hardware is synced up when going through the video switcher.

"the gun knows exactly WHEN the screen starts bring refreshed"

Wouldn't the TV know that and have a place to get that signal from?

 

"Both the TV and the gun being on analog video are CRITICAL here"

The CRT probably uses analog when it gets sent to the CRT hardware.

 

 

 

 

[AshleyAshes]

7 minutes ago, xnamkcor said:

"the gun knows exactly WHEN the screen starts bring refreshed"

Wouldn't the TV know that and have a place to get that signal from?

 

"Both the TV and the gun being on analog video are CRITICAL here"

The CRT probably uses analog when it gets sent to the CRT hardware.

Due to the way HD CRTs work the answer is basically no.  They do additional processing for the most part on a 480i signal that that means that the electron gun does not draw the way that an SD CRT works. (They try to deinterlace 480i signals first)

 

HOWEVER there are very FEW games that support 480 over component a handful on a few consoles.  On PS2 for example, I think Vampire Night is the ONLY Guncon game with 480p output,  The few Xbox ones should as well since it natively supported 480p on everything.  And still THAT will only work on SOME TVs.  Feel free to hit Google, you'll find a big wall with only a few exceptions in getting light guns to work on ORIGINAL hardware on HD CRTs.  Meanwhile, everything you're asking about here is just NOT going to happen on an all in one box for $189.99.  You can try to 'poke holes from your view of ignorance' but you are far, far, FAR from the first person to look at the topic of light guns on HD CRTs and you will not be the one person who goes 'AH HA!  I found a technical loop hole that just no one thought of before!'

[xnamkcor]

2 minutes ago, AshleyAshes said:

Due to the way HD CRTs work the answer is basically no.  They do additional processing for the most part on a 480i signal that that means that the electron gun does not draw the way that an SD CRT works. (They try to deinterlace 480i signals first)

 

HOWEVER there are very FEW games that support 480 over component a handful on a few consoles.  On PS2 for example, I think Vampire Night is the ONLY Guncon game with 480p output,  The few Xbox ones should as well since it natively supported 480p on everything.  And still THAT will only work on SOME TVs.  Feel free to hit Google, you'll find a big wall with only a few exceptions in getting light guns to work on ORIGINAL hardware on HD CRTs.  Meanwhile, everything you're asking about here is just NOT going to happen on an all in one box for $189.99.  You can try to 'poke holes from your view of ignorance' but you are far, far, FAR from the first person to look at the topic of light guns on HD CRTs and you will not be the one person who goes 'AH HA!  I found a technical loop hole that just no one thought of before!'

What about forcing progressive scan video mode on PS2? Any success with that making it work?

 

PS: The Super NT sends a 480i signal to the TV?

[AshleyAshes]

Just now, xnamkcor said:

What about forcing progressive scan video mode on PS2? Any success with that making it work?

 

PS: The Super NT sends a 480i signal to the TV?

I mean... I really don't know what to do with your comprehension issues at this point.  I see no benefit in continuing this.

[xnamkcor]

16 minutes ago, AshleyAshes said:

I mean... I really don't know what to do with your comprehension issues at this point.  I see no benefit in continuing this.

I guess ill just have to try it myself as soon as I get a guncon.