This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/misterfpga by /u/Veteran_Trainer on 2024-10-21 01:17:17+00:00.

(Tl;dr at end)

Since some cheaper alternatives to the MiSTer project have shown up (namely the MiSTer Pi, which I’ve recently picked up) I’ve seen a lot of other newer users like myself having questions and problems, and looking here for help, and also I’d seen some threads about how people should learn a bit more and not be too quick to blame the hardware and so forth…

Well, my experience was lousy at first being that I did get some bad SDRAM but it was handled very professionally and I just had to wait a bit. During that time I also learned a bit more about how the whole project works and what to do and what to expect.

Once I got things set up correctly on my end and ALSO got replacement hardware, things started to work beautifully for me.

This message and my advice might be weeks late and not that wanted or needed by many, but I hope it’s still a little bit useful or valuable. If you’ve just gotten started and you’re still having a hard time - as long as your hardware works correctly - then you just need to get used to a few odd things and get set up with the right files.

So what I found was that taking a look at some of the basic info available, like the new user setup info video that Taki put out on YT, was enough to get started.

I also can’t stress enough how useful/necessary it is to have a keyboard during initial setup for certain things. I struggled too much trying to use the interface/OS without one. For some dumb reason when my whole setup just didn’t work, I couldn’t use a wireless keyboard I had and thought that maybe it was broken, so I dug out an old wired one and just got the setup right.

Correctly setting up WiFi let me do easy updating stuff which is now obviously hindered by the recent problems with archive.org, but there is still an option to install a bunch of offline stuff to get started.

If you’re familiar already with emulation and have some access to games or your own collections of roms/disc images, etc then you should be able to figure out how to proceed with that in most cases, and only some cores are a little weird and specific, but you can google around how they work and also find advice here.

My biggest gripe about the whole thing is that because MiSTer seems to be such a big enthusiast/hobbyist project, there’s not really one completely authoritative source for all news and info and so there’s a learning curve to it, and of course lots of people who are seriously interested in emulation and have been doing so with software alone and that have waited for affordable boards like what we have now… we’re sort of confused and dealing with the hiccups of some new stuff.

TL;DR - It got good for me, though. Correctly working hardware and some knowledge gained about how to use it all and set things up… now I’m having a good time and exploring more and having a lot more fun. If something just didn’t work for you initially and you had faulty hardware, it’s not your fault. After that, it does take some little bit of effort to learn the system, but it’s pretty cool and rewarding once you get it working.