Rasberry Pi Developer Boards to Finish Production in a couple days.

I am going to pick one up to make a "Retro Gaming Console". It will be the core of the unit, running multiple emulators and ROM's for Atari, NES, Master System, SNES, Sega Genesis, TG-16, and maybe a few others.

http://techgage.com/article/game_emulation_in_linux/8

Whatever the Pi can handle and how much space I have on whatever card I choose will determine what goes on there. Perhaps this SDHC card...

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820220452

You can drop a lot of classic ROM's and their supporting emulators on just a few GB of space. I will have to do the math and see how much I want on there, I may be able to get away with a lower capacity card.

I will also be using a standard USB gamepad for it. I have two sitting here, one looks exactly like an SNES controller, and the other like a PS1 controller. Not 100% what one I am going to use yet. Both perform the same. Just need to decide if I want the classic look and feel of the SNES controller (likely), or the comfort of the PS1 style controller.

I will likely use the HDMI out and RCA/Audio, so the unit will be able to be hooked up just about anywhere. I have all the necessary cables/adapters already.

I plan on dropping the Pi, and everything else, into an electronic project box, if I can find one big enough. Then dressing the box up to look like an old school console.

If you don't mind Shadow, since you have far more experience in Linux than I do, I may request your advice and assistance if I have any issues getting any of it to work, such as the gamepad.

This is something I have always wanted to do, design my own portable retro console emulator, but it was never really practical or possible until now. The Pi is going to make it cheap and easy, I can't wait!!!!

That article makes the assumption its a x86 machine. x86 Linux != ARM Linux. Only thing in common is the kernel technically. The software has to support ARM instruction sets vs x86. Don't except to be able to apt-get or use the app store for your emulators. If they haven't made binarys for arm yet then you'll have to compile the source yourself with gcc so it'll work on arm. Linux is extremely portable across different arch's due to its open source nature but that also will require you to understand the source to get it running on arm. If I have free time and the emulators that don't have arm binarys yet I'll see if i can make them.

right now I could just type `apt-get install pcsx` (or click install on app store) and i'd have a playstation emulator installed. But like I said if the binaries haven't been compiled for arm you can't take advantage of apt-get so you have use gcc to compile. I think in a year most x86 programs on Linux will have ARM versions. I heard of a NES and N64 emulator working on arm a couple years ago but I haven't really kept up with it.

But yeah consider that before you buy b/c I don't want you to get a Linux machine thats harder to use than a normal linux machine and doesn't do what your expecting (easily). This is a development release since more apps needs to be ported to ARM before they can make their public release. But like anything with linux... if theres a will theres a way.

Nice, always wanted to do that. Im just going to write random python crap on mine. hahaha

Well, I will figure out something, the will is there that's for damn sure. There is no not getting it, there is no practical way for me to build what I want any other way. I will look around and see what I can find as far as emulators go.

This one claims to be designed for ARM. http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=6833

SNES: http://paqpark.nuclearfallout.net/projects/pocketsnes.php / http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=6954

Sega Genesis: http://notaz.gp2x.de/pico.php

There are actually quite a few emulators designed to run on ARM powered devices, I am just not sure how well they will work for what I want obviosuly, but I can run through what's out there and see how it works and pick the best of whats available.