Topic: I bought a Raspberry Pi

[idolminds]

If you don't know what a Raspberry Pi is, you can check out the official site. The TL;DR version is it's a small single board computer that is fairly cheap and can be used in all kinds of fun projects. There are several models that vary in power, from the Zero, the Model A, B, B+, and the Pi 2. I managed to get in on a site selling the Pi 2, the fastest model, for $20. Score!

Raspberry Pi's are barebones when you buy them, though. I had some of the stuff I need (mouse, keyboard, microUSB cable and a suitable wall plug for power) but just placed an order for the other stuff I will need to really get going (HDMI cable, case, spare microSD cards). Hopefully those should arrive sometime this week and I can get to tinkering. Since this is on the gaming board it should be obvious that I am going to do some gaming stuff with this thing. Namely, an emulation machine!

It's a fairly popular project for Pi's. The Pi 2 has more RAM and a quad core processor compared to the other models which makes it work quite well for emulation. Apparently it can handle everything up to can including the original Playstation, though N64 is not that good I hear. My plan is to fill is with fun multiplayer games from various consoles and the arcade so I can have a little easy to transport box that I can plug in to peoples TVs and have a good time. I'll post in this thread with my progress.

[Xessive]

Nice! I'd love to see what you get up to with it.

[scottws]

The price of the RaspberryPi 2 is right, but I just don't know what I'd really do with one.  I thought about making it a front end for MythTV, either MythTV or Kodi, but I'd need a computer to use as a backend.  I just have this 2009 MacBook Pro and it isn't on all the time.

[idolminds]

It's taking a while since I had trouble with an order I had to cancel and reorder. But that stuff is arriving this week so I'll be all set up soon. I had enough today to fire up the Pi for the first time which was pretty exciting. Boots super fast (it was fully booted by the time I could switch my monitor to the second input) and I messed around with the "default" Raspbian OS. Seems like a fairly usable little system. LibreOffice was preinstalled and worked well. Wasn't able to test internet browsing since the wifi dongle hasn't arrived yet. A special Pi edition of Minecraft was also preinstalled so it was neat to just run around in that for a bit.

Wifi dongle and my USB controller should be here in the next day or two so mid-week I'll hopefully have the emulation stuff all set up. Of course just my luck the RetroPie OS I'm planning on using just got updated today so I have to go redownload it. Sigh...

[Quemaqua]

I still really want one of these for an emulation station. I would so love that. Maybe someday ...

[idolminds]

Woo! I had it all set up and running a bit earlier today. Well, not totally set up since I need to do some configuration and transfer more ROMs over. But I was playing Windjammers on my TV using a tiny console I can travel with so I've got the thing I wanted all along. Now its a matter of changing the screen filtering (I like my pixels sharp) and working out which emulator is best for arcade games. I ran Sunset Riders in one and the sound was just bad. Luckily there are like 6 other arcade emulators preinstalled, not including various editions of MAME.

More to come!

[idolminds]

Worked out the screen filtering thing. The scary thing about the setup is it looks user friendly at a surface level but pretty much any configuration takes you into what looks like old DOS config menus. Luckily things like editing certain config files are GUI based so you don't have to open a text editor to make changes but it's still not really n00b friendly. One thing I wanted to do was disable some emulators from appearing on the menu. A couple end up showing by "default" because there is a file in it's ROM directory, but isn't a ROM. Or sometimes is, like the Infocom port. I don't want to play Zork on this thing so it can go. You can edit a cfg file to comment out the systems you don't want to show, but I fucked that up and hosed my install. Oops. The easier and safer thing to do is just delete the files out of the directories of the systems you don't plan on using. I really don't think trying to run Dreamcast games on this thing would be a fun experience.

I guess the next step is to hook up the wifi and do some content scraping. It will look through your ROMs and download cover art and things like that to make the selecting of games nicer than just a text list.

[idolminds]

Oooh, this is neat. Three indie games just got released for the Raspberry Pi for free. They Need To Be Fed, Super Crate Box, and Maldita Castilla. What do they have in common? They were all made with GameMaker. The creators of GameMaker are hosting the downloads so they can see how much they are downloaded and maybe getting other devs on board with the numbers. Personally I hope they release a RPi exporter for GM. Would be really cool to be able to quickly make games for it.

[Cobra951]

This thread is an education for me.  Pretty cool stuff.  It reminds me a bit of the 8-bit kit computers of the 70s.  I never would have known any of this existed.  At those prices, it's hard not to look, at least.