Thanks guys! So one day will it be possible to use this type of hardware to configure it to later consoles i.e. Ps1/2, GC/N64 etc.?
Kevtris said awhile back that PS1 was the upper limit of current tech/his skills. I think he said N64 would run up against current FPGA clock speed limits. We'll see how fast and cheap FPGAs get over time, which will probably not happen as quickly as for normal CPUs, RAM etc.
Theoretically any of these systems could be simulated on an FPGA, it just comes down to affordability of the FPGA. As the console generations went on, systems got more complex with more custom built components whose documentation may be sparse or unavailable to the public. Patents would need to expire for some systems and components as well. Disc based systems present additional challenges:
-Including an optical drive that would behave exactly the same as the given system's would be annoying and costly
-eschewing an optical drive in favor of playing CD/DVD ripped isos begs the piracy question
-the system BIOS would have to be reverse engineered or rewritten, or you could tell customers to dump their own system bios (but everyone will just pirate it).
I could see some disc based system functionality come as a jailbreak core, running dumped games off the SD card, for existing or future Analogue FPGA system. Probably the first one we could reasonably expect to get is PC-Engine CD/TurboCD, as it's a much simpler CD add on than Sega CD.