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Raspberry Pi vs a 60 in 1 for a Cocktail Cabinet
macattack:
I am also in the process of out fitting 4 dedicated cabs with raspberries, for the simple stuff it works a treat.
Www.xtremepinball.com
elvis:
Making my fifth cabinet currently, and this one will be a gift for a non-technical friend.
All of my previous cabinets have suffered some sort of hardware failure in their life. Getting in there and troubleshooting a whole PC that is intermittently failing is a pain in the butt. Dealing with trying to get adequate cooling and fans working, mounting video cards properly if they're not onboard, and other dramas has been annoying.
I'm going with a Raspberry Pi for this current project, as it's going to reduce a lot of problems. All of my previous cabinets ran Linux (I'm a Linux sysadmin by trade, so there's zero learning curve for me). The cabinet itself will only need to run 80s games (the recipient is a guy in his 40s who has no care for 1990 and newer games), and the ~5 games he really cares about are all supported by MAME4ALL.
I'm liking the idea of something that will power up easily when the cabinet comes on, but small and power friendly, and have no real need for massive ventilation requirements to work. Mounting it will be easy enough. I can take an image of the SD card with the games and config, and replace the RPi easily if it fails.
For this particular cabinet, it's a win. I wouldn't put it in a cabinet where I wanted to run more modern games (CPS1/CPS2 fighters are my thing, so I'd avoid RPi for them).
jaharr01:
Yeah I'm late to the party too but I Thought i would put my 2 cents in. Rasberry pis are really more of a gadget for most people. However I have one with xbmc that plays 1080p video from a non ssd harddrive without a hitch. Now I don't know if a P4 will do that without stuttering. The biggest difference in a pi vs windows PC is bloat. There is no bloat with a pi. Even leaned out xp has bloat. I haven't tried mame on my pi but it would probably play anything on a 60 in one board. Rasberry pis have come a long way there is a lot of community support for them. They are still only built for tasks. Would a PC be better probably. How much energy does a p4 use 60 watts per hour. A rasberry pi uses usb voltage.
I have ran mame and Nes emulators on my droid tablet and they run without a hitch. I don't believe there can be a clear winner here.
1.For durability the 60 in one would have to win. You fart on a rasberry pi and they would break.
2. For power usage the pi would win because those cards I believe are 12 volts. But that's not much of a victory
3. For adaptability the pi would win hands down. you could run the same pi to run xbmc just swap a card out.
4 price a pi is 40+ dollars. A 60 in 1 is what 40 to 60 plus you have to buy a jamma harness. So the pi is a slim winner.
5 for speed I would say it is relatively even..
6 ease of setup I imagine would go to the 60 in one. Even though now pis are relatively easy but not that easy.
Given these standards I would say it is still dead even. Myself having a pi the durability factor would sway me. Those little pis don't like it when they aren't shut down properly. If I was setting up a cocktail cab I would use the 60 in 1. . But that's just my opinion.
kahlid74:
--- Quote from: elvis on June 21, 2014, 05:39:27 am ---Making my fifth cabinet currently, and this one will be a gift for a non-technical friend.
All of my previous cabinets have suffered some sort of hardware failure in their life. Getting in there and troubleshooting a whole PC that is intermittently failing is a pain in the butt. Dealing with trying to get adequate cooling and fans working, mounting video cards properly if they're not onboard, and other dramas has been annoying.
I'm going with a Raspberry Pi for this current project, as it's going to reduce a lot of problems. All of my previous cabinets ran Linux (I'm a Linux sysadmin by trade, so there's zero learning curve for me). The cabinet itself will only need to run 80s games (the recipient is a guy in his 40s who has no care for 1990 and newer games), and the ~5 games he really cares about are all supported by MAME4ALL.
I'm liking the idea of something that will power up easily when the cabinet comes on, but small and power friendly, and have no real need for massive ventilation requirements to work. Mounting it will be easy enough. I can take an image of the SD card with the games and config, and replace the RPi easily if it fails.
For this particular cabinet, it's a win. I wouldn't put it in a cabinet where I wanted to run more modern games (CPS1/CPS2 fighters are my thing, so I'd avoid RPi for them).
--- End quote ---
I've built 8 cabs now, all Running some form of Windows and none have failed hardware wise or experienced software failure. The cab I built in 2003 is running Windows XP with a Pentium III 800Mhz and works like a beast. The CMOS battery finally died but it in no way affects the computer. It's UDMA HDD still runs without issue or weird sounds. We can say I'm lucky, or we could say I take time to read reviews and choose components with longer MTF/MBF or better components.
If you're building a 60 in 1 the Raspberry Pi is fine. If you're building a MAME machine the Pi IMO isn't the way to go. Go the route of Beagle or another faster slim System but the Pi just isn't meant for that.