A project dedicated to create an FPGA implementation of the Philips CD-i to be usable for the MiSTer FPGA project. As every Philips CD-i player has a different hardware, this project focuses on reverse engineering the "Mono I" PCB. This mainboard is used in models like the 210/00, 210/05 or 220/20.
Most games which only utilize the hardware of a base CD-i, should work as expected. Titles which require the Digital Video Cartridge will NOT work as the required hardware doesn't exist yet. The RAM expansion of the DVC is included and will enhance some games.
Place cdi200.rom as boot0.rom in /media/fat/games/CD-i.
Place zx405042p__cdi_slave_2.0__b43t__zzmk9213.mc68hc705c8a_withtestrom.7206 as boot1.rom next to it.
This core is tested against these files and their respective md5sum:
2969341396aa61e0143dc2351aaa6ef6 cdi200.rom
3d20cf7550f1b723158b42a1fd5bac62 zx405042p__cdi_slave_2.0__b43t__zzmk9213.mc68hc705c8a_withtestrom.7206
Due to legal reasons, they must be sourced separately.
Save files are stored inside an 8K NvRAM. MiSTer will create one save file per CD. Whenever the NvRAM state changes, the "User" LED will light up, indicating a change is queued to store. When the OSD is opened, the NvRAM will be flushed to SD card.
The save files containing the NvRAM are compatible with the CD-i emulation of MAME.
Digital gamepads, analog gamepads and mice are supported for use with this core. To play a title, load a CD and press on the play button at the start screen. CD images can be stored as CHD or CUE/BIN format.
- My NTSC CRT television set is not getting a stable image
- Please switch the core to NTSC and reset via OSD. This should fix the problem.
- This can be performed blind with: OSD, Down, Action, 5x Down, Action
Core Utilization:
Logic utilization (in ALMs) 13,856 / 41,910 ( 33 % )
Total registers 16295
Total block memory bits 630,471 / 5,662,720 ( 11 % )
Total DSP Blocks 66 / 112 ( 59 % )
- Find a better solution for reducing CPU speed
- Black flicker during intro of Ultimate Noah's Ark in 60 Hz mode
- A workaround is CPU overclocking. Problem not visible on real machine.
- Give a signal to the user when CPU data stalling occured
- Find a better solution for CD data stalling (take a screenshot or plug in a USB device)
- PSX core seems to halt the whole machine to avoid this situation
- Fix regression: Audio hiccups during Philips Logo in Burn:Cycle
- A workaround is CPU overclocking
- Add missing MCD212 features
- Pixel Hold
- Investigate input responsiveness (skipped events?)
- Investigate screeching sound effect in the menu of "Golf Tips"
- Fix hang on audio track stop or change in media player
- Cheat support?
- Digital Video Cartridge MPEG Decoder
- Investigate "Gray border glitch" at the top of "Myst" gameplay (seems to be only one plane)
- Fix reset behaviour (Core is sometimes hanging after reset)
- Investigate desaturated colors / low contrast in "Photo CD Sample Disc"
- Probably fixable with 16-235 to 0-255 scaling
- More investigation needed
- Find a solution for the video mode reset during system resets
- The ST flag is the issue here, causing a video mode change
- Add SNAC support (IR remote + wired controller)
- RC5 support is added. A test using real hardware is required.
- Add 2 player support
- CD+G
- Possibly adding support for other PCBs (like Mono II)
- Refurbish I2C for the front display and show the content as picture in picture during changes?
- It might not even be required at all.
- A dump of the SLAVE 3.2 ROM is required to fix some hacks
- I2C front panel data is not correctly handled (e.g. Play button)
- The IR codes from the Remote have the same issue when media control buttons are used.
Even so, the sim folder seems to be the correct one, it is deprecated. It was used for mixed language simulation with the free version of ModelSim when the project has started.
The sim2 folder is the current one, used for most development and makes use of Verilator for improved performance.
This MiSTer core would've probably never been possible without the reverse engineering efforts of certain people. Thanks to CD-i Fan for the insights into his closed source CD-i Emulator. Also Thanks to MooglyGuy, which took on the task of implementing a CD-i emulator into MAME, which I used to analyse the program flow of the CD-i boot process.
- https://github.com/TobiFlex/TG68K.C
- https://opencores.org/projects/68hc05
- https://github.com/cdifan/cdichips
- http://www.icdia.co.uk/microware/index.html
- https://github.com/Stovent/CeDImu/blob/master/src/CDI/OS9/SystemCalls.hpp
- playcdi (by CD-i Fan) (auto play for Mono I PCB)
The production quality of the CD-i hardware and the software running on it is sometimes questionable. For this reason, I've created a small list of some known quirks, someone might suspect of being caused by emulation errors but are also present on the real machine.
- Is the "Digital Video Cartridge" supported?
- No! Please stop asking!
- Potential development on the DVC might only start after everything works without bugs on the base machine.
- The map of "Zelda - Wand of Gamelon" has micro jitter during scrolling
- This also happens on real 210/05 hardware
- "Hotel Mario" seems to have the first samples of every ingame song repeated
- You have good ears as it is barely noticeable. This also happens on real hardware.
- Some earlier CD-i titles have both stereo channels swapped
- Yes, according to an internal memo from Philips there were manufacturing issues and some early players have the left and right channel swapped. This might explain discrepancies.
- One known quirk is inverted stereo on the "Philips Logo Jingle" of "Zelda - Wand of Gamelon"
- During the rotating transition in "Myst" there are glitched lines at the bottom
- This also happens to some extent on a real 210/05 hardware and is caused by a misplaced Video IRQ The video data is changed while it is displayed.
- When I load a save game in "Burn:Cycle" it plays a short and unclean loop of noise until I do something
- I thought that was a bug in the core at first too. However, it is actually like this on a real CD-i too.
- The music of Burn:Cycle sometimes has "pops" and "clicks"
- This game is special. It doesn't play music from CD like most games for this system would do.
- Small loops of sampled music are loaded from CD, stored in memory and randomly concatenated together to create the background music. These samples are sometimes not very "loopable" creating a pop at looping points.
- This issue is reproducible on a real 210/05 as well
- The music during the Philips Logo animation of Burn:Cycle has broken audio
- This issue is reproducible on a real 210/05 as well
- For some reason, it seems to be absent on other models with different hardware, like the 450/00
- The problem can be fixed by overclocking the CPU
- Burn:Cycle - Random flickery animated text in front of the "Psychic Roulette" credit card terminal
- This actually happens on the real machine. I also thought this might be a CPU speed issue, considering that the flickering disappears if the CPU is slightly overclocked.
- Flashback: The audio and video during the intro are asynchronous
- This curiously happens on the real machine as well and doesn't even depend on 50 or 60 Hz
- It seems to be an oversight by the developers when the game was ported to CD-i
- When dying in "Zelda's Adventure" the accompanying sound effect doesn't match the audio data on CD
- Good catch! This is a programming error which can be reproduced on a real CD-i 210/05 as well, which causes the audio playback to start one sector too late.
- The same phenomenon exists in the "Help cutscene" of "Zelda - Wand of Gamelon"
- It is not audible in that game, because of silence in the beginning
- The intro music of Zenith is played only on the left audio channel
- Yes, this happens on a real 210/05 too. To be sure, I've tested it as well on a 450/00. It seems to be an oversight by the developers.
- During the cinematic intro of Kether, the screen flickers to black on some frames during the fading slideshows
- This curiously happens on a real 210/05 too.
- If I mash the buttons really hard when booting up Tetris, I get a colorful glitched screen instead of the Philips Logo
- Congratulations for this obscure finding. This happens on a real 210/05 too!
- During the intro of "Zombie Dinos vom Planeten Zeltoid", the title text looks like the last row of pixels is missing during the scaling effect
- Yes, an oversight it seems. The scaling operation is broken, even on the real machine.
- QuizMania - Missing animation graphics during intro and alignment issues during video playback in menu
- This game seems to have problems with 60Hz/NTSC mode. Both issues can be reproduced using real 210/05 hardware
- I assume that this was a local production for the italian market and no testing was performed on NTSC machines
- Inside the settings menu on the start screen, there are purple glitch pixels on the right edge of the screen
- How could they miss this? It is also present on a real 210/05
- Lemmings is running slow on the core when compared to the Amiga version
- "Oh No!" Explodes It is running as slow as on real hardware, but it seems that the CPU Turbo fixes this issue and makes it behave more like the Amiga version.
