A lesser known feature that has proven to be super useful during my day to day use of the Mister, has been the possibility to add your own docs for on-the-fly reading. For those who don't know, there's an [Help] option in the OSD that can be accessed both in the global context (i.e. without having a core loaded) or in the local context of a core. I thought other people might find this useful too, so here's a how-to for those interested.

Before I start, here are some examples of what I added myself:

• An overview of the Hotkeys for the device
• A cheat sheet for computer cores

* even though most of the information that is part of this sheet is already available on a per core basis, through each core's [Help] menu, I personally end up using this nicely summarized version most of the time.

How-to

The Mister OSD supports showing different types of files, including TXT, MD and PDF (I haven't tested other text oriented formats, so feel free to let me know if you have), but PDF is by far the most user friendly option due to the following idiosyncrasies:

PDF Rendered as defined in the PDF, which is MUCH more flexible, especially regarding text size and the possibility to include images

MD/TXT 1. By default, the content in these files is rendered using a small white font, on a black background. Your milage may vary depending on the screen you use, but in general, based on my personal experience using it on both CRT and medium/large-sized LCD/OLED screens through HDMI (32" & 77" @ 1080p), it's not ideal;

1. When you reach the end of the file, an unskippable "Press any key to continue" prompt will appear that forces you to press a key/button to close the file. This is quite annoying and tends to be triggered accidentally very often in my experience.

note 1: There are ways to improve readability of MD/TXT files, but I don't think it's worth going down that road instead of simply using a PDF due to the aforementioned issues. That said, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so whatever works best for you.

note 2: I also tested PNG and JPG files and those didn't seem to be supported.

Adding docs

works for any supported file, but I've made it specific for PDFs for the afore mentioned reasons

1. Source/create the PDFs you want to add to Mister;

pro tip 1: when printing web-based content from within a browser you can use this Chrome extension to create nicely formatted documents. This plugin tends to yield much better results layout / content flow wise than the Save/Print to PDF options offered by browsers!

pro tip 2: use your preferred text editor's Export / Save / Print as PDF functionality to create a PDF from your chosen TXT, MD, etc. files.

1. [optional] Create a subfolder folder called "@Mister" inside the "/media/fat/docs" folder using an FTP connection or "/docs" when accessing the microSD card directly. By using "@" as a prefix, the folder will show up at the top of the [Help] menu for easy access. Note that you can call this folder anything you want or you could simply place the doc in the /docs folder, or one of its existing subfolders. These subfolders map to specific cores, making it possible to view the doc in a convenient way through the [Help] screen inside a core's [System] menu section;

2. Copy your PDFs to the desired folder, e.g. the aforementioned ".../docs/@Mister" folder.

That's it, now the docs will be available through your mister's [Help] menu (see below for instructions).

Viewing docs

While no core has been loaded

1. Open the OSD and go to the [System Settings] menu (by pressing [left / right], depending on the current screen);
2. Open to the [Help] menu item;
3. Open the subfolder you created earlier, if any (e.g. "@Mister");
4. Highlight the doc you want to view and press [Enter] (Keyboard) or whatever you have configured as the [Accept / OK] button on the controller you are using.

After having loaded a core

1. Open the OSD and go to the [System] menu (by pressing [left / right], depending on the current screen);
2. Open to the [Help] menu item;
3. If the doc wasn't placed in the folder for a specific core, open the ".." entry to go to the parent directory to navigate to the relevant folder;
4. Open the subfolder you created earlier, if any (e.g. "@Mister");
5. Highlight the doc you want to view and press [Enter] (Keyboard) or whatever you have configured as the [Accept / OK] button on the controller you are using.

Navigating through a doc

Press the [up / down] key on your keyboard or controller to go to the previous / next page (PDF) or line (MD/TXT) respectively.

notes regarding MD / TXT files: 1. You can also press the button you have mapped to Mister's [Accept / OK] button to scroll forward an additional line; 2. When you reach the end of the file, an unskippable "Press any key to continue" prompt will appear that forces you to press [any] key/button to close the file.

Exiting the viewer

To exit the viewer, you can use one of the following methods:

• Press [Escape] on your keyboard, followed by [any] other key/button;
• Press the button you have mapped to Mister's [Back / Cancel] button, followed by [any] other key/button;
• [MD/TXT only] Press the button you have mapped as the Mister's global [X] button;
• [MD/TXT only] Scroll to the end of the file and press [any] key/button when the "Press any key to continue" message appear at the bottom of the screen.

Let me know if I've missed anything / something isn't clear, and enjoy!

Noob here. I got my mister set up and run the update. But when I tried a couple of games all I get is a message saying missing zip and hi pitched noise. I thought I was good to play arcade games with all the rims already there unlike console games. What should I do? Thanks

Althought the Psychic 5 cor ebeing available since the 1st of September, the Update_all wasn't installing it, so I had to manually set it up.

Anyone knows if there is a comprehensive list of MiSTer cores not included in the Update_all script?

Looking for a list of arcade cores. Is it as simple as just scrolling the arcade folder (takes too long) or is there a list somewhere? Thanks.

Just curious if anyone has seen this phenomena. Ran an update_all script last night and noticed (to my horror) that all the toaplan games were missing from the arcade list. I figured I had to be out of my mind so checked again and indeed they were all gone. Did another update_all script and they came back. Has anyone seen anything like this before or have any idea what might cause it to happen?

I'm trying to get Little Big Adventure installed in MS-DOS 6.22 on the ao486 core. The installer gets as far as copying compaq.dll and then says installation failed, returning to the installer menu. There's also a momentary display glitch that occurs across the whole screen (not just the core output) when it happens.

I'm installing from a disc image I took of the game CD, which matches entry http://redump.org/disc/84302/ on redump though the tracks are slightly different lengths. I've also tried installing from the floppy disk version that I found somewhere but a similar issue happens. The disc image works on DOSBox; I've not tried the floppy version.

I ran the update script about a week ago so fairly up to date on the core. DOS was installed following the instructions at https://www.jamesfmackenzie.com/2021/02/06/mister-ao486-core-part-1-dos-quick-start/

Am I missing anything obvious? If there's no easy solution then I'll stick with DOSBox but I'd rather use my Mister if possible.

It's not an option for me to flip my CRT for vertical orientation, unfortunately.

Do I have to use a VGA scaler to flip it? I tried the cocktail setting with the dip switch but it didn't work.

I am using Antonio's VGA to S-Video adapter connected to a Trinitron.

Could someone tell me what settings to achieve this? I don't mind a few frames of lag.

Thanks.

I have tried looking through forums for any info on this but have been coming up dry

I am wanting to use the Retro-bit wireless Genesis controller on the MiSTer… wirelessly, and I specifically want to use this controller. On the documented table of input lag it is listed as 30 ms through the Daemon adapter wireless which is waaaaay too high for me.

If I were to plug in the dongle to the SNAC adapter for the Genesis (which I’m assuming it should work as this controller works on the OG console) would that effectively reduce the input lag down to whatever it would be plugged into an actual genesis?

Same question as well for 8bitdo’s SNES wireless controller they made for SNES plugged into SNAC, thanks

I stopped using the inline barrel connector switch a while ago because it was causing usb dropouts. Since then I’ve been manually plugging and unplugging which is no good.

I am looking to buy a couple of retro SNES Bluetooth gamepads and wondered if I need to buy a Bluetooth dongle for each game pad?

I was wondering if anyone had experiences how much power the MiSTer uses when running some of the more powerful cores, like psx, saturn, etc. I am wondering how little power it could be if you wanted to make something like it portable. My 2nd thought is having it as something like a cartridge that you could possibly plug into an Analogue Pocket or connect via usb to something like a Steam Deck.