This script initializes or updates the SD cards for either a MiST or SiDi FPGA retro system.
It tries to create a complete as possible collection of cores and their required ROM files to get an out-of-the-box working SD card.
There are seperate scripts for Linux and Windows hosts.
With PowerShell installed on a Linux system the Windows genSD.ps1 script is executable on a Linux system too.
This script only collects the work of many other contributors (FPGA, Hardware, Software, ...) to generate a 'distribution' for the systems mentioned above.
Thanks to all these contributors for their work (see links to repositories for only some of them).
After executing this script appr.
| MiST | SiDi | |
|---|---|---|
| .rbf | ~230 | ~200 |
| .arc | ~1100 | ~900 |
| .rom | ~1150 | ~930 |
files are collected/generated.
The SD card must be
- at least 32GB
- formatted (FAT, FAT32 or exFAT)
or use a folder on HDD with the same available disk space
simply call the script with minor parameters:
genSD [-s <mist|sidi>] [-d <destination SD drive or folder>]
with
| option | description | example |
|---|---|---|
| -s | Target system (mist or sidi). If this option isn't specified, sidi will be used by default. |
-s mist -s sidi |
| -d | Destination folder the target folders and files are generated. If this option isn't specified, SD\sidi will be used by default. |
-d /media/SD-Card -d E: |
| -h | Show some help text. | -h |
- Initialize SD card for MiST, SD card in drive E: (Windows)
genSD -s mist -d E: - Initialize SD card for MiST, SD card mounted to /media/SD-Card (Linux):
genSD.sh -s mist -d /media/SD-Card - Initialize SD card for SiDi, SD card in drive E: (Windows)
genSD -s sidi -d E: - Initialize SD card for MiST, create in subfolder (Windows)
genSD -s mist - Initialize SD card for MiST, create in subfolder (Linux)
genSD.sh -s mist - called without parameters: Initialize a subfolder for SiDi (Linux)
genSD.sh
This script fills/updates an SD card or folder with
- the Computer/Console/Arcade Cores (organized in subfolders)
- the required ROMs and optional sample Game/HDD files
- ARM Firmware update file
- default mist.ini
to get an SD card which can be directly plugged into MiST or SiDi.
The generated folder structure:
├── Arcade
│ ├── Gehstock
│ │ ├── ...
│ │ └── ...
│ ├── Jotego
│ │ ├── ...
│ │ └── ...
│ ├── ...
│ └── ...
│
├── Computer
│ ├── Amiga
│ ├── Amstrad CPC
│ ├── Atari ST
│ ├── C64
│ ├── ...
│ └── ...
│
├── Console
│ ├── Atari 2600
│ ├── Astrocade
│ ├── Nintendo NES
│ ├── ...
│ └── ...
│
├── <core subfolders unfortunately required in root folder>
├── ...
│
├── <additional rom files unfortunately required in root folder>
├── ...
│
├── core.rbf # <- menu core
└── firmware.upg # latest ARM firmware update file
The Arcade cores are installed with their required ROM files.
The information about the Arcade cores/roms is parsed from the .mra files (e.g. for jotego's cores) and converted to .arc files together with the converted .rom file.
During installation, several temporary folders are created in the folder of the genSD script:
├── repos
│ ├── jotego # Jotego repository
│ ├── mame # cache folder for MAME Arcade ROM files
│ ├── MiST
│ │ ├── binaries # MiST core repository
│ │ ├── gehstock # Gehstock MiST core repository
│ │ └── sorgelig # Sorgelig MiST core repositories
│ └── SiDi
│ ├── ManuFerHi # ManuFerHi SiDi core repository
│ └── eubrunosilva # eubrunosilva SiDi core repository
└── tools # required tools for executung this script
It is a good idea to keep these folders as the next run will be much faster (git only needs to be updated and not cloned, the download of the MAME ROMs can be skipped, ...).
This saves more than 10GB of data not being fetched again.
The .vscode folder provides a workspace file for Visual Studio Code with pre-configured
- plugin recommendations
- Bash Debugger
- PowerShell Debugger
- script debug environment
A configuration file for PowerShell ScriptAnalyzer is provided and used by both Visual Studio Code and the Windows test script
There are initial test scripts to be executed with Linux and Windows.
Threse scripts will
-
do some script checking
-
generate a destination set for
- mist
- sidi
with 2 runs:
- 1st: run with empty cache (=initial run)
- 2nd: run with cache and SD (=update run)
Both folders should contain same content at the end (assuming no git or source repo update in between).
Additionally, a full log for each set is created in the 'SD#' folder with some summary at the end:
- Missing core .rbf files
- Missing MAME ROMs
- MAME ROMs with wrong checksum
- MAME ROMs with missing parts
- some statistics about the number of .rbf, .arc and .rom files
Additionally it is always a good idea to compare the Linux and Windows generated sets and logs.
Please keep in mind that each test execution will consume about 40GB of HDD space (the Linux version more as it will test the PowerShell script too) - not talking about the test run time (several hours)
For testing specific cores, please refere some test code left disabled in the scripts.
- exFAT and DOS attributes (Linux version only)
MiST and SiDi read FAT, FAT32 or exFAT (since firmware_210525) fomatted SD cards.
The menu core uses the system attribute (to show subfolders) and hidden attribute (to hide cores from menu).
Linux can write these attributes on FAT or FAT32 drives and SD cards (msdos/vfatfilesystem, written byfatattr), but not yet on exFAT formatted cards (fuseblkfilesystem).
This will hopefully be updated in the future (or somebody has a hint how to modify these attributes on exFAT drives).
If the Linux script detects a non-FAT/FAT32 filesystem, it asks to continue as the folder attributes can't be set correctly.
The windows Powershell script doesn't have this issue. - .mra parsing of ROM files
The ROM file names parsed from the.mrafiles refer a MAME version.
Unfortunetly many ROMS, if fetched from their referred MAME version, don't match. I tried to find a best matching set of download URLs incl. some extra handling, but for some ROM archivesmrastill complains about checksum mismatch or missing parts:
ROMs not found:
mikiek.zip,rastsagaabl.zip
ROMs found, but with MD5 mismatch or missing parts:
journey.rom,sxevious.rom,xevious.rom,clubpacm.rom,combh.rom,wbml.rom,lottofun.rom,spdball.rom,topgunbl.rom
Any support here is appreciated. - ROMs #2
As this is an early version, there are lots of ROMs and Games to add/fix.
But I think here we have a structured base to improve in the future. - files and folders required in root folder
Many cores require special files and folders in the root of the SD-Card for their ROM/Game/... files. This makes in my opinion the folder structure a bit messy, especially if we want to have a full core distribution.
I would recommend the default root folder of a running core is by default the folder of the core, what would make a modular setup of the SD card much easier.
May be somebody (or I myself) finds the time to introduce this feature in the ARM firmware. - mist.ini
Currently the script simply uses the default mist.ini from the main repository.
Generating a configuration with optimal settings for each core would be a nice additional feature for this script.
Jotego provides a mist.ini extension for his cores. - Missing Jotego Cores
Some .mra files in the Jotego repository refer missing .rbf files in the mist or sidi folders (->issue): \jtaliens.rbf,jtsimson.rbf,jttmnt.rbf,jttwin16.rbf:
in jotego beta phase, only available via Patreon/GitHub sponsorsjtoutrun.rbf,jtkiwi.rbf:
not enough ressources with MiST/SiDi
- MiSTer support
Need to check the typical MiSTer setup and align with this script.
Target systems of this script are MiST and SiDi (much cheaper than MiSTer).
It would be nice if all cores would be built for both MiST and SiDi as the hardware features are nearly identical
(Thanks to Jotego for his Arcade repository with all releases for multiple FPGA platforms)