Main > Raspberry Pi & Dev Board
Can I get a rough overview of Raspberry Pi and emulation gaming?
PiNoob:
I was in your shoes a few months ago. I love the old arcade games and have been thinking of building a MAME cabinet for years. Stumbled across Pi and Retro Pi project and thought I'd just go ahead and do it. I'm a total Pi noob. Despite IT background, haven't used Unix in years. So, at this point, I'd say layperson. I'm doing this as much for my kids as for me. And to date, I've only put MAME roms on the "Magic Box" (as my kids have dubbed it).
I took this in stages.
1) Bought a Pi kit and some simple USB nintendo style controllers. My thought here was to see if I could actually get it to work and if the kids showed any interest. Other posters are correct, there is more cost. The kit I got was about 70 from Amazon and included pi3, case, power supply, and sd card. The USB controllers wer $12 a piece. It WORKS. Most of the issues I had getting the games I wanted to run had to do with ROM conflicts. Finally downloaded some of the rom repair tools and found a complete package of ROMS. I'd say 80% or more of them work. Run just like in the arcade.
2) Once I got the kit to work, then it was time to plan next step. My build is a portable control panel. So we can take the "Magic Box" to friends houses for parties and the like. Someday will likely become a dedicated cabinet, but for now control panel. So, I went to Ultimarc and bought half of what I needed. I went with Ultimate I/O , one servo stick, and some buttons. Again, baby steps. Wanted to make sure it worked. Perfect right out of the box. Nothing fancy required.
3) Ok, now for the rest. Another servo stick, trackball, spinner, and more buttons. This was where the problems started. I had to get firmware upgrade from Andy to make the trackball work and some config changes were required. Mame4All doesn't recognize trackballs, took me a week to find that post. But works like a charm with AdvMame. I still haven't been able to get the spinner to work. Put that on the shelf for now. Can still play tempest with trackball, not the same, but it's close. I do have an issue with the RGB buttons lighting up. Once EMulation station starts, the buttons turn off. The I/O runs it's startup and it looks good, but then darkness. Hoping someone can help with that, trying to get RGBcommander to work to see if that will solve it.
So, my journey was baby steps each way to prove it out and not just dump the big dollars until I knew it worked. I went with quality controls because I expect to do full cab in the future. And while the PI will handle most of want I want to do, for that cab I'll likely go PC. I know PCs way better and there is much better support. But for a fun portable project, Pi works great.
Batchman:
And, yup, these are the kinds of things I needed to know. Still has it's place, and great for building a fairly portable system (if I use a regular computer I may have to yank it out of it's case to fit it in the pedestal) ... just include the computer -inside- the control panel ... but no spinner, and having to add on the power supply, maybe better to go the regular route for this one. Meanwhile, had no idea computers were so cheap.
So how fast a computer do I want to look for to be able to handle the earlier stuff?
JDFan:
The earlier stuff will run on pretty much anything made in the last 10 years -- but with prices what they are something around a core2duo 3.0 ghz. will run all of that and some of the more recent stuff as well - so is a good starting point for something that is cheap and runs well. If you have trouble finding a cheap one that is 3.0GHz. or faster you can always go with a slower Core2duo based 775 MOBO and just replace the Chip with an e8400 for around $5 ( http://www.ebay.com/itm/Intel-Core-2-Duo-E8400-CPU-3-0GHz-6M-1333-Processor-SLB9J-/282088390817?hash=item41adc740a1:g:tP4AAOSwOVpXazEv ) as long as the MOBO supports them which most will
Or a slightly faster (3.16 Ghz.) e8500 for $7 ( http://www.ebay.com/itm/Intel-SLB9K-Core-2-Duo-E8500-Socket-775-CPU-Processor-3-16GHz-6M-1333/272281744240?_trksid=p2047675.c100008.m2219&_trkparms=aid%3D444000%26algo%3DSOI.DEFAULT%26ao%3D1%26asc%3D37252%26meid%3D987467ca7fcc4d7d94740d3013cf5342%26pid%3D100008%26rk%3D4%26rkt%3D5%26sd%3D282088390817 )
Batchman:
Thank you very much for the information. (Can't remember the last time I bought a desktop computer, but it was probably close to 15 years ago ... I'm out of contact with the whole thing). Been using laptops for the last decade or so.
heykool69:
I'm planning on building an arcade emulation with the Pi as well. After looking thru many videos and tutorials on Youtube, i find that installing and get the MAME games going seems to be much easier than messing with a Frontend like HyperSpin.
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