BYO Portable

[Vicious]

Checking out [H] this morning and saw this.  My next project is definitely gonna be to build a handheld console.  Some of those are pretty bad, but to me that's incentive to make one that looks great.

[ChadTower]

What, is this guy epileptic or something?  He can build a GC portable but can't work a freakin dremel?

[Hoagie_one]

he should of definately gone teh extra mile and had someone do a professional cut  for him

[ChadTower]

It's a terrible job all around... he could have made that thing out of wood at the very least.

[HaRuMaN]

That is pretty heinous

[Vicious]

I agree.  But, it's usually things that look bad that drives someone to say "Hey, I can do that and make it look a helluva lot better."  I'm already visualizing how I would do a portable GameCube.

No offense to the person who did this, but here's an example of a 'cocktail table' that inspired me that I could definitely do something better.

[Nannuu]

Those things are burning my eyes!  Go to Ben's site to look at good console portables.  His book just came out too.

http://www.benheck.com/

[Shape D.]

these are all poorly made and look like crap.

[MrTroy]

Yeah those examples are pretty beat. I guess cause they spent more time making it work than making it look right. Also that stuff looks really hard to hold. Has anyone done a portable multiple arcade machine.

[rohan]

That's a good idea...Maybe just a bartop cab with a laptop would be cool...You could take it anywhere, but have maybe 3 hours battery life

[Vicious]

Those things are burning my eyes!  Go to Ben's site to look at good console portables.  His book just came out too.

http://www.benheck.com/

Thanks a million for that link, Nannuu.  I really want to do this so I just went to Amazon and ordered the book.  Hopefully I can build one that looks half as decent as his (but 10x better than those other ones.)

these are all poorly made and look like crap.

Hey!  I don't remember saying that (although I don't disagree, either.)

[pmc]

Hopefully I can build one that looks half as decent as his (but

Man, the 18-pack of MGD that houses a computer is too cool. You should cram your portable into a pack of cigarettes or a box of trojans something. After checking out that site, my mind is buzzing with ideas on what could be done... 

I want to mod my waffle iron into a NES.

[slycrel]

Heh, a waffle iron NES would rock.  =)

I saw that guy that nannuu linked to a couple years ago when he was first starting.  He was just finishing up the first NES handheld that he did.  He started with a number of 2600 handheld conversions.  I still have the pieces of a SNES to do the same thing around somewhere, back then I never could find a decent screen to hook it up to for cheap.

Anyhow, as far as a handheld arcade machine, look into getting an old windows CE handheld or soemthing similar -- I know that a lot of handhelds have MAME ported to them.

[Shape D.]

these are all poorly made and look like crap.

Hey!  I don't remember saying that (although I don't disagree, either.)

I actually ment to take off the quotes i figured it would be easier to put in the url quoting you first but I screwed it up.

[oldsage]

Anyhow, as far as a handheld arcade machine, look into getting an old windows CE handheld or soemthing similar -- I know that a lot of handhelds have MAME ported to them.

I honestly don't understand how come this hasn't been done before...
Project number 6: Handheld MAME!
I only need to finish five cabs and i'm there!!! 

[MrTroy]

I've started researching something like this not that long ago. I think because of the obnoxious size of mini-itx motherboards(Still not small enough) I won't be able to make anything besides a clunky mess.(See above gamecube handheld and divide that by crap) Now portable just means "Take it anywhere" not necessarily "fit in your pocket" right?

[slycrel]

  Another option would be to use an older sharp zaurus.  From what I know, these run linux as their OS.  I have a friend who has one and he uses it for mp3s, games, movie trailers, email, the works.  Oh, and it has all the normal PDA stuff on it as well.  =)  They were ~$500 used a year or so ago when I looked last, which does put a damper on the idea.

[Nannuu]

You can make a handheld Mame by doing a handheld PS2 or Dreamcast and throwing a Mame disc in.  It would have to be a modded system of course but you're already hacking it up, you may as well put one more chip in there.  To me that sounds like the easy way to do a handheld Mame.