News

The King is dead, long live the king!

Hello everyone! More great news, many of you were waiting for the Ironclad Plus to come back, and you let me know through your messages and the huge subscribers list for that product, it has been out of stock for almost a year but it hasn’t been in vain. I always try to make the top model of Ironclad have all the available functions and my latest advancements, and this last year has been a year with a lot of movement in the MiSTer FPGA platform, so I basically had to redo it practically from scratch a couple of times since; first came the s-video support, then the official IO 9.2 with its improvements, and then the new FPGA boards compatible with the MiSTer project, and here is the result; this new Ironclad DX completely replaces the Ironclad Plus and has EVERYTHING plus more. New features over the, now officially discontinued, Plus model: You can check all the capabilities and Read more…

By d3fmod, ago

One board to rule them all

Hello everyone! It’s been a long time since the last news post, but that doesn’t mean I’ve been quiet or absent, on the contrary I’ve been busier than ever. These past few months have been the busiest I can remember in the last few years in the MiSTer FPGA community with the completion of the N64 core, the new amazing cores that are arriving week by week, the spectacular progress of the Saturn core and… the appearance of the “clones” of our beloved DE10-Nano, which bring new possibilities for everyone and a more economical way to access this world, and that last has had a lot to do with the tremendous workload I’ve had these past few months, because instead of just produce more Lite boards I decided to hold and bury myself in schematics and diagrams… The new Ironclad Lite with support for DE10-Nano, QMTECH Cyclone V and Mister Pi: One board to rule them all! It hasn’t been Read more…

By d3fmod, ago

Introducing the Ironclad Lite

Hello everybody, long time without posting news, which does not mean I have been resting, or anything like that, and this news post is the proof of that. Introducing the new Ironclad Lite! It’s taken a lot of work to continue production and sales of the Ironclad Plus while developing and testing the new Lite model, but hard work always pays off and finally here it is. The new Ironclad Lite is the perfect economic option to make your MiSTer FPGA in Mini-ITX format, it has all the capabilities of the official mister, the essentials are there, and it also offers expansion possibilities beyond that that are tailored to the vast majority of users. Making your MiSTer durable, organized, and integrated into your living room or desk without cables coming from everywhere is no longer an option for just a few. You can see all its capabilities in the corresponding section of the website, as well as admire multiple photos Read more…

By d3fmod, ago

Batch 8 on sale now with the NEW Mt32-Pi PRO Internal Hat

Hello everybody! It has been a long time since the last news post, but that does not mean I have been doing nothing as you will see 😉 I finally had some vacations in August and thanks to that i recovered myself from years of incessant work, but before having some rest Batch 7 was completely finished and shipped and i also managed to have time to develop a new addition to the Ironclad Plus family… The Mt32-Pi PRO Internal Hat The previous UserIO2 model has been renamed to “Easy” to differentiate between both, also the price of both is not the same but renaming it makes the identification easier as i plan to keep making and supporting the “Easy” model. The main advantage of the Easy model is that it is plug and play, it needs modified cores to work but once installed it just works transparent to the user, the need for the modified cores is also its Read more…

By d3fmod, ago

New Batch available NOW, status and more updates!

Hi, everybody, I am so glad to announce that, after the huge success the previous batches had, all thanks to you, I managed to get all the necessary parts and arrange the dates with the factories to build another run of the Ironclad Plus which is already in production, you can get yours at the shop right now. I estimate it will be all assembled and shipped during the months of June and July, i have been quite accurate lately with dates, and i really, really, will do everything i can to not have any delay as i really need some rest during August for once in years 😉 First quarter of 2023 has been an optimization period, I knew what should be done and that’s why the 6th batch was announced with so much anticipation vs delivery dates, I needed to optimize the manufacturing process much further, replace some parts with easier to get ones and available at the Read more…

By d3fmod, ago

The NEW Ironclad Hi-Fi Blaster, and progress updates

Happy holidays everybody!, it has been a while since the last update, but sometimes this work is a bit overwhelming and i have to accumulate news to do long posts like this ;)… well here I am with exciting news about the advancements of the Ironclad Plus project. When the Ironclad Plus was announced about a year and a half ago, i talked about an accessory I had in mind to improve the audio fidelity and incorporate headphones output, and i did the Ironclad Plus from the beginning with a special port called “Audio Exp” with that purpose in mind. I was certain I wanted to launch such a great add-on, as I am a big fan of retro synthesizers myself, but we had a rough year, supply of the necessary components was hard, or too expensive to be practical, and the Ironclad production was taking 100% of my time… Well i managed to improve on that over time and… Read more…

By d3fmod, ago

1st Anniversary status reports and updates!

Hi everybody! it has been a weird year marked by instability in general, heavy shortages in everything we like gaming related, atrocious prices, distribution problems, and Covid still conditioning our lifestyles in some way. But despite all that we managed to get here, a full year after the Ironclad Plus launched and i cannot be more grateful with the acceptance and the feedback received, you are awesome, and it is time for celebration. mt32-Pi Internal Hat available for all previous customers: The Internal mt32-pi hat is available at the shop for all previous purchasers who didn’t have it as an option when they bought their Ironclad Plus kits, please read carefully the instructions provided and see the install diagram picture in the shop’s item. This kit is for the Ironclad Plus without the dedicated Pi-CONN connector on board (all boards shipped before summer 2022), if your board has that connector and you didn’t purchase the mt32-pi hat along with your Read more…

By d3fmod, ago

New batch available for pre-order and other updates

Hi everybody!, it has been a very busy summer but Batch 3 is almost completely shipped, only a small number of orders remain, but they will all be shipped this week. Batch 4 is in production and will start shipping before the end of September, about the advertised date this time. I will do everything i can to have it shipped asap and keep you posted at the front page, meanwhile i managed to reserve all the parts and arrange my place at the factory to manufacture another batch. The new batch, the 5th (I thought about another name this time, like “Batch 360” but, oh well…) will start shipping in December 2022 and everything remains the same, as i still cannot produce them fast enough to meet the demand and have stock available for immediate shipping, thanks to you ;). I have updated some sections of the web and pictures to reflect the small cosmetic changes and some features Read more…

By d3fmod, ago

Final Mt32-Pi Hat reveal and batch progress

Hello all!, as I said in the announcement, the MT32-Pi Hat shown at that moment was not the final design, and i am here today to show you how it looks like and explain why this is much better than before. As you see it is a full redesign: The main advantage resides in that it does not increase the total height of the Ironclad Plus with the DE10-nano + RAM mounted, it sits even lower, so it should not interfere with cases that use an HDD/SSD holder in the top cover, it allows easy access to the Pi MicroSD, also holds the Raspberry-Pi better than the preview model. It is very firmly held and durable, and that’s the main philosophy of the MiSTer Ironclad Plus; make your MiSTer build last “forever”. This final model of the Mt32-Pi Hat is the one every past or future purchaser will receive. It will also be available as a separate item from the Read more…

By d3fmod, ago

Pre-order Your Ironclad Plus Now, progress, and a mix of everything

Hi everybody, I have finally managed to get, or arrange, enough supply of parts to make another batch of the Mini-ITX Ironclad Plus, this time with the stellar addition of the Internal Mt32-Pi Hat, something i thought was not possible when i started in this, now it is a reality. It was not easy to get to this stage, the semiconductor crisis has not finished and i would say it got even worse in the last months after the war in Ukraine, gas prices (and shipping prices) skyrocketing, China’s lockdowns, etc, some ICs, specially the main microcontroller, went out of stock and you could only get them at 10X scalping prices, crazy circumstances indeed. So… go to the shop section and pre-order now! 😉 As always every purchaser has his unit assured and shipping is done in order of purchase. For this new batch the expected date when the shipments will start is September 2022, and the available quantity is Read more…

By d3fmod, ago