BlisSTer

MiSTer, a small community of people sharing love and respect for older systems and wanting to keep enjoying these older systems for days to come. Seem likes a pretty nice little project to help along its way. One thing it lacks is the ability to talk to controller one on one. The MiSTer prides itself on this aspect and USB controller are not all that great for it. What if there was a way to communicate to a controller minus all the USB overhead? Wait a minute, there is! Why not use the LLAPI... We have produced a demo board for the MiSTer to our satisfaction. It performs as well as any of the current USB board options and extends the new features and options that will come to be rather attractive to many MiSTer fans. The Normal Bliss-Box products that adapt almost any wired controller to USB is integrated on this board. Though USB is not the only option. With some help from a developer Jamie (Kitrinx) a few cores are taking advantage of the LLAPI. Bliss-Box has engineered a way to communicate over USB with a proprietary two wire interface. The protocol, when engaged, tells the USB to stop communicating. The information is then routed via the serial (USB 3.0) port on the MiSTer board and read directly into the selected core. Interestingly this protocol was not designed for this purpose. It was not until Jamie saw the connection and came up with this plan to communicate directly with the controllers and cores. The new designed will have the same form-factor minus the incorrect placement of the micro port, a toggle for power, and a new header for remote power on. The board is equipped with two reset buttons for the Bliss-Box ports. These are to reset the ports and update the firmware. We are keeping the remaining 5 USB ports for the user’s discretion. This board is a direct fit for the exiting USB board including the micro USB bridge board that many people have been using. We are also going to see about a blue board design color.