madhatter667 Posted April 14, 2017 Share Posted April 14, 2017 So, the title kind of says it. I will not lie, I love me some real hardware. We all know that that isn't practical for everything. I also like gadgets, and computer stuff in general. Now, for the most part, I love me some arcade emulation. I can get a Pi 3 kit for something like $50, and there are add ons that will give it VGA out, and I think there is also component, native HDMI, among conversion options, and mods to do RGB. I am sorely tempted to pick one up. I'm already thinking that I need a USB arcade stick (want a Qanba Q1) to make the arcade feel a little more authentic... because reasons. A semi-dedicated discreet box doesn't seem like the worst thing ever. The more I mull it over, the more I think I have nothing to lose, aside from the cost of entry, which seems quickly mitigated by convenience, and space savings. Am I insane? Lol. The answer is yes... but am I insane for THIS reason? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zzip Posted April 14, 2017 Share Posted April 14, 2017 So, the title kind of says it. I will not lie, I love me some real hardware. We all know that that isn't practical for everything. I also like gadgets, and computer stuff in general. Now, for the most part, I love me some arcade emulation. I can get a Pi 3 kit for something like $50, and there are add ons that will give it VGA out, and I think there is also component, native HDMI, among conversion options, and mods to do RGB. I am sorely tempted to pick one up. I'm already thinking that I need a USB arcade stick (want a Qanba Q1) to make the arcade feel a little more authentic... because reasons. A semi-dedicated discreet box doesn't seem like the worst thing ever. The more I mull it over, the more I think I have nothing to lose, aside from the cost of entry, which seems quickly mitigated by convenience, and space savings. Am I insane? Lol. The answer is yes... but am I insane for THIS reason? Pi's are cheap enough that you don't regret buying them, my first was going to be a retro-arcade machine, but now it's a Kodi box that gets a lot of use. But now I have a second one that I will use for my emulation project, I swear! I didn't realize you could get VGA out for them, that would help me as HDMI ports are always occupied by something else. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mr_me Posted April 14, 2017 Share Posted April 14, 2017 The cost of entry is nothing compared to the time you'll put into it. But that's part of the fun. Should be good for older games. If you want a newer version of mame look here http://choccyhobnob.com/. And if you ever want 240p composite support look here http://filthypants.blogspot.ca/2017/03/raspberry-pi-240p-composite-output.html?m=1 . 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Flojomojo Posted April 14, 2017 Share Posted April 14, 2017 Just do it! Don't talk about it, you're wasting time you could be playing! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
keepdreamin Posted April 14, 2017 Share Posted April 14, 2017 (edited) forget the kit, the FLIRC case is much nicer than any of the plastic nonsense that gets packaged with the Pi 3. This should be your shopping list. here: https://www.amazon.com/CanaKit-Raspberry-Micro-Supply-Listed/dp/B01C6FFNY4/ and here: https://www.amazon.com/FLIRC-FL-53196-Flirc-Raspberry-Case/dp/B00QB6F9I0/ and whatever microSD card you want (class 10) controllers, you can use pretty much anything (ps3, ps4, wii classic) but I'm using: https://www.amazon.com/Wireless-Bluetooth-Controller-Classic-Joystick/dp/B014QP2H1E/ Edited April 14, 2017 by keepdreamin 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Master Phruby Posted April 14, 2017 Share Posted April 14, 2017 See my thread where I am building a retroPI emulation station using a X-Arcade Tank Stick with a Raspberry PI 3 built in. http://atariage.com/forums/topic/263289-the-retropi-tank-stick-project/ 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keatah Posted April 14, 2017 Share Posted April 14, 2017 (edited) The more I mull it over, the more I think I have nothing to lose, aside from the cost of entry, which seems quickly mitigated by convenience, and space savings. It is. That's a major feature of emulation. Space savings, cost, and convenience. Not to mention reliability. The ~$100 you spend won't go to waste. And if you don't like emulation on the Pi, then you can use it for something else. --- Incidentally I have yet to hear anyone here or elsewhere complain about "broken" emulator hardware. Especially with homebuilt systems and boxes or standard PCs. While I don't doubt it has happened, hardware can and does fail, it would appear to have been seemlessly replaced/repaired. Like when an older emu computer I was rolling with suffered a catastrophic cascading failure. It was no problem to be back up the next day on new hardware. Put it this way, original consoles can take weeks to repair while they are diagnosed and parts acquired. And in the process you're dealing with a lot of specialties. With emu no special knowledge or parts are involved - it's all commonplace stuff available on ebay and amazon. Edited April 14, 2017 by Keatah 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+lawdawg710 Posted April 22, 2017 Share Posted April 22, 2017 I think you should definitely go for it. I just did a little retro game project for my buddies bday using the raspberry pi and it turned out good (nothing special its been done before). Plus its fun to do in my opinion and I am no tech expert by any means!!! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+DrVenkman Posted April 22, 2017 Share Posted April 22, 2017 I've got an RPi3 running EmulationStation connected to a BT keyboard (so it can be put out of the way and only used when it's rarely needed), and an X-Arcade Tankstick as my main emulation setup. It have it connected to an old 4:3 19" LCD monitor I had laying around the garage - a $10 HDMI-to-VGA converter and a pair of also-leftover external speakers connected to the 3.5mm jack on the RPi and I've got my needs covered. The RPi3 replaces the RPi2 I was using for year or so before that - that box is being repurposed into a FlightAware ADBS flight tracking station at some point, I think - and I've got a $10 RPi Zero W connected to my daily-driver Atari 800XL as a peripheral emulator running the latest build of RespeQt software. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
madhatter667 Posted April 22, 2017 Author Share Posted April 22, 2017 I'm thinking of either doing HDMI to VGA, or getting the VGA add on board. Want to get the Qanba Q1 stick, because it should work fine, and doesn't drain the pocket as hard. BT keyboard and Mouse very tempting idea though. USB counterparts are dirt cheap these days however. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NE146 Posted April 22, 2017 Share Posted April 22, 2017 What is there to think about? It's cheap. OK so the external stuff like Power supply, SD card, case of choice, controller, or whatever the heck else you want will add to it, not to mention the banging your head against the wall when hit some random wall when configuring it add to the cost It's still well worth it for any gamer. It wont replace the real deal but is still great 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wyluli Wolf Posted April 22, 2017 Share Posted April 22, 2017 Definitely do it! I have my original consoles and carts and everdrives but the Pi is there for the Mame and Neo-Geo stuff. It's great! I'm also building my own USB joystick for it cuz why not? Plus if you don't want to collect all the original consoles, well, there you go. Just drop the roms on the Pi. Just be sure to get some good USB joysticks to go with it. Worst case scenario, you can always sell it and get back what you put into it, but you won't want to Word of warning, sorting thru Mame roms is a beast! If you just pull the stuff you want, you are set but if you are crazy like me, you end up sifting thru thousands of games (no exaggeration) to get the most you can that will work on the Pi. You have been warned! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
madhatter667 Posted April 22, 2017 Author Share Posted April 22, 2017 (edited) I'm not a stranger to MAME. Lol. Half the reason I want a Pi is to have a separate arcade archive, and maybe some of the more exotic vintage computers (MSX, X68000), though I heard DOS gaming support is pretty solid as well. Just another layer of fun, but a way to possibly keep it better organized, and compartmentalized. I'm a weirdo. Lol. Edited April 22, 2017 by madhatter667 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keatah Posted April 22, 2017 Share Posted April 22, 2017 Don't think, just do. It's a cute little circuitboard and you won't wanna sell it. Imagine back in the day having a tiny little circuitboard that could play all these games! 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keatah Posted April 22, 2017 Share Posted April 22, 2017 I'm not a stranger to MAME. Lol. Half the reason I want a Pi is to have a separate arcade archive, and maybe some of the more exotic vintage computers (MSX, X68000), though I heard DOS gaming support is pretty solid as well. Just another layer of fun, but a way to possibly keep it better organized, and compartmentalized. I'm a weirdo. Lol. Not really. You should see the shit I got going! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
madhatter667 Posted April 22, 2017 Author Share Posted April 22, 2017 I'm pretty much sold on it. Lol. I just need to see how much discretionary is left after tomorrow. Might be picking up a second/hobby/beater car. My haggle game isn't super strong, and the asking price is fair if it is as described anyway. Lol. Compact, econo car... They still matter. Lol. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wesr Posted April 28, 2017 Share Posted April 28, 2017 I have a retropi still sitting in the box here and am feeling overwhelmed about setting it up. For the price I don't think you can beat it and you can even get one to setup in a gamegear apparently. I want to set one up for arcade games but mame is really confusing to me. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Osgeld Posted April 29, 2017 Share Posted April 29, 2017 mame isnt that hard, find out what version number, is in retopie find a romset with a matching number done Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wesr Posted April 29, 2017 Share Posted April 29, 2017 I'll give it a look, i need to see if the romsets i have are even any good. First thing I need is bigger sd cards for this thing. 32gb isn't going to do much. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Osgeld Posted April 29, 2017 Share Posted April 29, 2017 (edited) what I did for my setup is use a 8 gig sd card for boot and like a 160 gig USB hard drive for storage (even over usb the mechanical hard drive is still faster than the SD card, and I already had it laying around not being used ... it was a "backup" drive back in the day) its fairly simple to get retopie to look on a different volume, and if its unplugged it looks for stuff on the SD card https://github.com/RetroPie/RetroPie-Setup/wiki/Running-ROMs-from-a-USB-drive Edited April 29, 2017 by Osgeld Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zzip Posted May 1, 2017 Share Posted May 1, 2017 (edited) I have a retropi still sitting in the box here and am feeling overwhelmed about setting it up. For the price I don't think you can beat it and you can even get one to setup in a gamegear apparently. I want to set one up for arcade games but mame is really confusing to me. Mame can be really confusing. It's awesome once you get it set up though. The reason is they periodically abandon some old ROM sets and require new ones, so you may find some games just get rejected by your version. Even worse, there's a schism between modern mame and an old version 0.37 something? The old version runs better on slower hardware, but it's version number looks higher than the current releases (so you might think you have the new one, when its a very old one) Best advice: know what version you are interested in running, and find a source of romsets for that version. Once you have that, most versions let you simply drop the zip files in a specific directory (no need to unzip) and it will find them. Edited May 1, 2017 by zzip 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keatah Posted May 1, 2017 Share Posted May 1, 2017 How many of you take the approach of setting up MAME for just your favorite back-in-the-day arcade games? Each one hand configured with its own cfg file. Each one hand "sorted" and manually put into the folder - not a mass download of a complete set. How many of you run multiple versions of MAME? 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
madhatter667 Posted May 2, 2017 Author Share Posted May 2, 2017 I have a few versions of MAME. I have MAME32 from 2005 or 2006 that runs a number of older titles that I really like. I've only recently ventured into newer versions for more recent material, but that isn't saying much. One of these days I'll figure out the CHD stuff. There's a couple games using that format I really want to run. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Flojomojo Posted May 2, 2017 Share Posted May 2, 2017 How many of you take the approach of setting up MAME for just your favorite back-in-the-day arcade games? Each one hand configured with its own cfg file. Each one hand "sorted" and manually put into the folder - not a mass download of a complete set. This sounds like a sane approach ... even though ROMs are tiny and storage is cheap and who wouldn't love a giant warehouse full of games you haven't ever played? Even if most of them are stupid mah jongg games ... some of them might have nekkid people in them It puts the lotion on its skin! It puts ALL the ROMs on the SD card, or it gets the hose again! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Osgeld Posted May 2, 2017 Share Posted May 2, 2017 (edited) I used to back in the day on dialup and 20 gig drives, today its just easier to grab a 70 gig lump, and work out the crap I dont want (like most Japanese card games etc) and configure as I come across them main problem with cherry picking roms is "OH I HAVE TO DOWNLOAD THAT" and it was from a older version and it didnt have the rev 2 beta rom in it and then it wont run or some crap with whatever mame you happen to have ... its a bigger bear to wrestle on linux distro's where mame is "you have 3 choices in the repository and they all blow, or spend the next fortnight compiling it from scratch and if it blows up tough shit cause mame community wont help you on ubuntu 19 cause they changed the wallpaper, and the ubuntu community wont help you cause you should just use the 9 year old version on the repository" least the retroarch / retro pi setup's have advancemame in them, which has been the same romset for a while, without becoming drastically outdated Edited May 2, 2017 by Osgeld 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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