/nestang

NESTang is a Nintendo Entertainment System emulator on the affordable Sipeed Tang Primer 20K FPGA board.

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NESTang - an NES emulator for Tang Primer 20K

NESTang is a Nintendo Entertainment System emulator for the affordable Sipeed Tang Primer 20K FPGA board. The core logic comes from fpganes. I added DDR3 and HDMI interfaces and other things.

This is still a work in progress. Here's what works.

  • Majority of games I tested work.
  • 720p HDMI video and sound output.
  • PC-side loader program for game loading and controller input.
  • Cycle accurate emulation quality as we nearly recreated the NES circuits.
  • Needs a MiSTer SDRAM module. Similar to MiSTer, SDRAM is needed for its low access latency required by emulation. (v0.2 no longer needs SDRAM! 😃)

Setup

Interested? Here's what you need:

  • Sipeed Tang Primer 20K with Lite Carrier Board. About $30.
  • Muse-Lab HDMI PMod: aliexpress or taobao.

Now wire the HDMI module up following the wiring instructions.

Then it's time to enjoy some NES games，

  • Download a NESTang release.
  • Start Gowin Programmer, and program nestang.fs to the board. If you see a colorful NES palette, then your setup is working.
  • Connect your game controller/controllers to your PC. I use a pair of old Xbox 360 controllers.
  • Run loader.exe -c COM4 game.nes (replace COM4 with your port number) to load the game game.nes and run it.
  • If it didn't work, loader.exe -r game.nes will print messages from the core.

Hurrah! and enjoy.

Next steps

See NESTang changes.md.

Here are what I may work on when I get time. No promise though. Suggestions and pull requests are welcome!

  • A way to work without a PC.
  • Support Tang Primer 20K dock when it comes out. The dock comes with HDMI on-board so we have an even cleaner setup.
  • Support more games.
  • An enclosure?
  • Cheats support.
  • Saves and loads.

Special Thanks

nand2mario 2022.9