Subj : Re: Wordstar 7.0 Archive
To   : deon
From : loke
Date : Tue Jun 03 2025 04:41:00

 de> How is the Mister FPGA with running the AO486?
 de> 
 de> I nearly invested in one a while ago - at one point, I was planning to
 de> rebuild my BBS on one to relive what I did in the 90s.

Absolutely fantastic. There are two PC cores for it: PCXT which is basically what the same suggests.

AO486 is the other core, and it's basically the optimal 486 PC one could get back in the day. It includes both a Soundblaster and an MT32. The CPU is up to 90 MHz, but you can set it as low as 15 MHz.

The modem emulation presents itself as a regular serial modem, and you can dial a BBS by typing "atdtsomehostname.com:1234". There are a buch of other at commands one can use to control it. One fun thing is that it also emualtes the modem sounds.

I could wax lyrically about the other cores as well which are really great. When coupled with a low latency 4k monitor and a Retrotink 4k, you get as close as you can get to the original hardware without actually getting the real thing, including CRT monitors.

With this setup, I'm actually able to complete the timing game between levels in Uridium on the C64. Something that was basically impossible on regular emulators due to latency.

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A49 2024/05/29 (Linux/64)
 * Origin: Al's Geek Lab -=- bbs.alsgeeklab.com:2323 (21:1/126)

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