RetroN5: Hands on first look

[stardust4ever]

I wasn't exactly looking for a play by play to that question as much as trying to drive it back on topic.

The supposed 'best' clone out there I hear some say for SNES on a chip tech would be the Poke Fami DX latest revision of it. I have no real idea why, but I'm not sure I've found a video covering that one. I found one, but it pissed and moaned how stuff even the supaboy can run were sketchy.

If it weren't Chinese engineers solely responsible for the R&D on these chips, I believe a flawless 100% compatible SOAC would be possible for each console. Put a team of US or even German engineers on it. Not just NES, SNES and Genesis, but SMS, 7800/2600, Coleco, Commodore, TG-16, GB/C, GBA, Neo Geo, and others. N64 has too fast CPU and too much RAM currently, but someday, it too, can be reproed. Add a cheap laptop PATA or SATA CD-ROM drive into the equation, and you've got a whole host of other systems, Turbo CD, Sega CD, Saturn, Dreamcast, Playstation, all with the benefit of not needing a plethora or cart slots. Even better an all-in-one mega system with 8 or 9 different cart slots and a CD drive using an FPGA solution with HDMI output.

[Zap!]

Obviously you haven't seen the statistics. Overall violent crime is down slightly, but mass shootings have actually had a dramatic increase over the past five or so years. All mass shootings will create a media circus whether the perp survives the aftermath or not. Mass shootings are far more common now than 15 years ago. A deranged FedEx employee just opened fire on 6 coworkers with a firearm last week as the most recent event.

Mass shootings are certainly down from the 30's. I heard a stat recently that said said they were, and at first you say "yeah right" but if you think about it, it makes sense. There were so many "St. Valentines Day" type mob shootings that are almost nonexistent compared to today.

Now, are they down from the the 90's? No idea, but one of the biggest ones ever was at a McDonald's in the 80's. I think they are about the same, but could be wrong.

[Satoshi_Matrix]

man, Digitalpress has really gone downhill with the lack of moderating. Can we please move this crap to off topic/general discussion? This has nothing to do with the RetroN5.

[JSoup]

man, Digitalpress has really gone downhill with the lack of moderating. Can we please move this crap to off topic/general discussion? This has nothing to do with the RetroN5.

I don't think a lite side discussion is anything to get your panties in a bunch about. The fact that we can have the odd tangent without a bunch of people responding with pitchforks and chants of "Burn the off-topicers!" is one of the better things about this forum.

[Tanooki]

Very true and also no attacks over things being less than 100% pure too. People here put the games and the discussion of such things whatever the format first and take it a little less seriously enough you can derail into other stuff without causing a small putsch in the process.

[stardust4ever]

Nothing wrong with a little off-topic banter.

*sigh*

UPS apparently dropped the ball again. Destination scan at 6:46am this morning in my home town. Apparently, it wasn't out for delivery or I'd have gotten it by now. It's past 7pm and all the trucks have likely gone back to the warehouse. Now it seems I've got to wait 'till Monday to get my Super Retro Trio.

Shreveport, LA, United States 05/02/2014 6:46 A.M. Destination Scan
05/02/2014 5:23 A.M. Arrival Scan
Jackson, MS, United States 05/02/2014 1:50 A.M. Departure Scan
Jackson, MS, United States 05/01/2014 11:29 P.M. Arrival Scan
Memphis, TN, United States 05/01/2014 7:46 P.M. Departure Scan
05/01/2014 10:34 A.M. Arrival Scan
Baldwin Park, CA, United States 04/29/2014 1:28 A.M. Departure Scan
Baldwin Park, CA, United States 04/28/2014 5:25 P.M. The shipment has been dropped off and is now at a UPS Retail Location.
04/28/2014 5:19 P.M. Pickup Scan

[Tanooki]

Yeah it's like around I think between 6-8(can't remember exactly) they stop doing later deliveries and given the time it was last scanned that's just screwy it didn't show up.

[Satoshi_Matrix]

I''m not trying to be an off topic nazi here, just that we've had three pages filled with shootings talk on. isn't it time to get back on topic?

but yeah, it's ironic - in a way, this entire thread is off topic. Go back and look at page 1. Originally, this topic was the impressions of a guy who looked at the Retron5 prototype and then had to [remove] his statements. Then we all took over the thread and it became the successor to the old Retron5 is a thing apparently thread.

[stardust4ever]

My super Retro Trio arrived, yay! Youtube video is currently uploading. DSL is slow as crap, sans any errors, my unboxing and Super Mario / Duck Hunt playtest video will be live in a few hours.

Came with a couple awesome retro stickers, and the duty cycles are not messed up!


Video link (pending successful upload):
http://youtu.be/Ll3LSMe1yUU

[Satoshi_Matrix]

According to one of my contacts, the NOAC is the same one that Retro-Bit has been using for the past several years. No MMC4 and MMC5 support, occasional MMC1 hiccups, oversaturation and poor DCPM samples.

I won't be able to confirm until I get it and throw it through a battery of tests, but if I have no reason to doubt my contact. So nothing's different there it seems, which sucks. If I were to guess, The SRT probably uses the same chipset in the standalone RetroPort Adapter combined with the Gen-X or even the RetroN3 v4. Speculation until my review unit arrives in a few days. and get a good look at the motherboard, unless someone else wants to tear it open and send me some detailed photos of the motherboard. only then can i start to confirm/deny and look for possible fixes and improvements. I'm also curious what GOAC it's got going on.

[stardust4ever]

Really crappy unboxing Video is live.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ll3LSMe1yUU

I can confirm the NES duty cycles are not effed up like with the older Yobo clones. That seems to be the biggest obstacle preventing me from enjoying my games.

I opened it up and took a snapshot. Each cart slot has it's own daughterboard and the SNES and Genesis sides are stuffed with chips. I'm assuming the NES glop-top is on the reverse side. I didn't want to disassemble further to avoid damage.

EDIT: Digitpress ruined the image by overcompressing it. There is a larger version here:
http://nintendoagemedia.com/_usermed...0BDDFE0CDD.png

[Tanooki]

I''m not trying to be an off topic nazi here, just that we've had three pages filled with shootings talk on. isn't it time to get back on topic?

but yeah, it's ironic - in a way, this entire thread is off topic. Go back and look at page 1. Originally, this topic was the impressions of a guy who looked at the Retron5 prototype and then had to [remove] his statements. Then we all took over the thread and it became the successor to the old Retron5 is a thing apparently thread.

True enough and started at the very early days of the year, and since then Hyperkin has pissed off most of it's online base that wanted or did preorder into buying this thing so it's not a large shock the thread went from curiosity and positivity to pitch forks and lynch mob postings along with going to talk about other stuff and competitor hardware that hasn't flipped the base the bird.

Seems stardust is on the right track to figuring this thing out as it really has me curious, but I won't be buying it for certain as it offers none of the perks the hyperkin unit has since I already have the hardware (or adapter for famicom) already.

It's just SMB but the sound effects aren't hosed up so that's a plus so far for the audio, and what I can tell from the video the colors seem to represent alright too.

[Satoshi_Matrix]

thanks for the photo statdust. Can't read everything due to lensflare, but the second link is high enough resolution to make out that the Genesis daughterboard uses a TCT 6801. This means I really was right when I speculated the SRT is just a consolidated Gen-X and Retro Port, and the SNES side is probably the same as the Retro Duo 3.0 or possibly the RetroN-3 4.0.

Still need to confirm on monday or whenever Retro-Bit's package arrives (I live in Canada, so shipping delays) but it seems that this clone isn't going to be quite as exciting as I had hoped. large portions seem to be recycled.

[stardust4ever]

thanks for the photo statdust.

The original pic is 4000x3000, about 5 Mb, but it's too big to upload so I reduced it to 1600. My Flickr account dosen't allow viewing full res although it lets you can upload the original high res photos. I bought the system to use it so I'm not going to unscrew the PCBs to show the backsides as I run the risk of damage to the wires connecting them.

Looking back I made a few errors in the video. The unboxing has to be done in one take, not the playtesting, but I'm lazy in the video editing department. I should have stopped the camera after the unbox then set up the equipment instead of let the camera roll the entire time. Next time, I'll use a tripod. I also have some SD capture hardware I can use to capture output. I may to a side by side comparison of NES, Yobo, and Trio using the AV capture. The reversed duty cycles on the old Yobo really make every single game sound like ass.

Also looking for an excuse to show off my arcade controller every chance I get, which is a bit buggy on real hardware and apparently doesn't work at all on my clones due to excessive power draw; should have stuck with plain old stock NES controller. The box pulls 70+ mA due to all the added digital turbo schematics in it, excessively huge for a controller, and probably has too large filter caps in it that cause a mini surge whenever I hotplug it. I used 1kohm pullup resistors instead of 10k because I had a bunch on hand, and cheaped out using NPN transistors as inverters instead of real logic chips and also used diodes instead of logic gates to combine signals. A couple 74hc00 chips would have sufficed; I have spares. I need to rebuild the circuit anyway.

[stardust4ever]

BUMP. To avoid futher derailing the thread, I am moving all future discussion of the Retro Trio to this topic:
http://www.digitpress.com/forum/show...=1#post1999701

Everyone update your subs...

[Damaramu]

I went ahead and got me an Ouya, and after a few hiccups trying to update the thing I am beyond pleased with it. The Retron 5 is reminding me of the F-35, with delays and price increases. For now, I'll just stick with the real hardware it "imitates" and the Ouya. Thanks for the recommendation on that one, Satoshi!

[videogametrader]

Ohhhhh... I'm sad to read that. For a few reasons-lag issues being foremost- I really prefer playing retro games on a CRT. Damn. This could be a deal breaker for me.

From what I understand, the reason for HDMI only is due to the ability to play PAL games. But i could be wrong.

[Leo_A]

PAL games has nothing to do with this being HDMI only. This thing isn't outputting anything at its native video standard so even if there was such a thing as PAL signals being unable to be transmitted through some styles of cables (which I don't believe to be the case), it could simply convert it.

It's HDMI only because that's all it needs. The primary appeal of this thing is its HDTV capabilities and since HDMI is standard, it simply doesn't need anything else.

[stardust4ever]

PAL games has nothing to do with this being HDMI only. This thing isn't outputting anything at its native video standard so even if there was such a thing as PAL signals being unable to be transmitted through some styles of cables (which I don't believe to be the case), it could simply convert it.

It's HDMI only because that's all it needs. The primary appeal of this thing is its HDTV capabilities and HDMI is standard. It simply doesn't need anything else.

Most HDTVs should be able to accept a 50Hz signal over HDMI, but please don't quote me on that. My 2006 Sanyo HDTV is extremely tolerant and even accepts 50Hz refresh rates over composite if I attempt to play PAL games on my NTSC Atari (although the bottom gets chopped off, and true PAL formatted signals (ie PAL timings, not NTSC @50Hz) display in grayscale). My ASUS Monitor accepts a forced 1080p 50Hz over DVI/HDMI no problem, even though it's not officially supported via handshake.

Bear in mind few PAL games were actually optimised for PAL speeds. Those that were not optimized should run fine at 60Hz; those that were optimized (like PAL Super Mario Kart), you can run at 50Hz assuming your display supports said refresh rate. Most HDMI chipsets should accept the signal, however I would be weary of forcing a 50Hz refresh rate on NTSC TVs though. If your TV doesn't like it, you may have to find another display that displays 50Hz in order to navigate the menus and change it back.

[Satoshi_Matrix]

I went ahead and got me an Ouya, and after a few hiccups trying to update the thing I am beyond pleased with it. The Retron 5 is reminding me of the F-35, with delays and price increases. For now, I'll just stick with the real hardware it "imitates" and the Ouya. Thanks for the recommendation on that one, Satoshi!

Glad to hear it. The Ouya really is the coolest thing to come out in years. There are so many reasons to buy it now. There's the emulators of course, but I can't stress enough how awesome some of the games developed for Ouya are, especially for retro gamers. There's a game on Ouya called Antichromatic that plays like a mashup of Battle Kid, Ikaruga, VVVVVV and Metroid. and it's free. It's absolutely a blast to play on the Ouya.