NES radio

[Benevolance]

I have an old standing radio that I want to mame. The guts were already gone when I bought the shell, so I'm not destroying anything historical. What I want to do is put away all my old NES, Snes, genesis and game cube consoles and replace the collection with a single system that can run my games. I've also encoded all fourteen seasons ST:NG and DS9, and I'd like to be able to stream those, too.

I priced together a budget PC for the internals, but it's still going to run several hundred dollars. And even a budget PC like that is pretty overkill for my purposes.

Someone suggested I look on Craiglist for a modded Xbox 360 that's been banned from Live. They apparently go for cheap. But I have no idea if a modded xbox/xbox 360 can do those things I want (ie, emulators and star trek movies). I'm not interested in running pirated Xbox games, and if that's all the modded boxes can do, I'm not going to waste my time and I'll buy the PC.

Secondly, if I do the PC, I was considering putting in an i-Pac encoder. If I understand things correctly, the i-pac functions like a keyboard, correct? I wire external buttons on the radio to the i-pac, and it would be essentially sending a keyboard stroke to the PC? Where I'd like to use this is to add some winamp media functions externally. Along with some features like being able to alt-tab between programs, and so on. Does that seem feasible?

[XYXZYZ]

What does the radio look like? I'm picturing a 1940s wooden radio here...

I suppose the Ipac would work, but does the radio have monetary switches or toggle switches? A toggle switch would be like holding the key down.

[phunk311]

If you are looking for something small, yet still powerful enough for most emulators check out this Acer:

http://us.acer.com/acer/productv.do?LanguageISOCtxParam=en&kcond61e.c2att101=68974&sp=page16e&ctx2.c2att1=25&link=ln438e&CountryISOCtxParam=US&ctx1g.c2att92=450&ctx1.att21k=1&CRC=750687650

I've got two of them at home, mostly for htpc type duties and they perform wonderfully. Plus they are only $200 and readily available at Best Buy or Fry's Electronics.

[Gorotsuki]

Game cube?
Is there even a good
emulator for that yet?
If there is, you'll probably
need a beefy PC to use it.
You'll be fine for the other emulators
with a low end PC.

[Benevolance]

It's newer than the 1940's but it's a former standing radio. Right now, the unit has NO BUTTONS, because the previous owner stripped everything. It's just the shell. I'm trying to find some appropriate buttons to use that will still keep the original style intact, but make the radio a more functional modern unit.

Phunk, that Acer Revo looks exactly like what I need! Certainly a lot more affordable than the $650 desktop I'd priced out on NCIX. Thanks!