ultimate gaming system for old school games.

Isn’t it amazing to have a game system that can play all games in all the system at once? This is a open question for yourself, but to me, I think so. For the most part, with today’s computing power, such thing can easily be done than ever before. In fact, with any one of seventh generation gaming console such as the PS3, can easily make that happen. Well, except for the fact, the money and legal issue of course.

However, we can easily setup a ultimate gaming system with a mini computer and the Linux operating system. The bad news is you need to have a computer that have TV-out, and the cables that allow you connect to the TV, such as S-video to RCA and 3.5mm to RCA. Cables choice can be vary depend on what output you motherboard support. The good news is, all the software you need are FREE. Ideally, you would want a mini PC with font USB port, so you can easily connect to any TV and controller, just like you did with your game consoles.  Thanks to the Linux OS, you can pretty much choose any controller you want, even the wii remote (wiimote.). There are also a few things you might want to add to match up personal need, such as USB hub, IR remote, and some usual stuff for PC like keyboard and mouse. Anyway, you got the idea.

Let’s start with mini PC, ideally, you would want a mini PC that has a solid case(properly aluminum), 2 to 4 font USB ports, both s-video and RCA video TV-output, RCA sound output (or at least some kind of sound output.) Of course the less converting need to be done, the better it is. However, usually, you can’t really have all of these feature at once. This is just to give you an idea what you should looking for. The only one that is absolutly nesseccry is the TV-output. You must have either s-video, or RCA video, or both. VGA(D-sub)/DVI, however, only work with modern TV(LCD, or Plasma), so if you want your system work with the older TV, s-video and RCA video is the way to go.

In term of computing power, You need a CPU running at least 550Mhz in order to run GameBoy Advance emulator at full speed.  However, I recommend a CPU running at 1.0Ghz in order to have everything running perfect smooth, and exact fast when you have to. You will need at least 256MB of RAM to run the system and any EMU smoothly. All though I do recommend 512MB to 1GB of RAM. Just in case, you want some music play while playing games, or use the system as a media player for video. All those extra computing power would be come handy when you need them. I recommend a 60GB or 80GB HHD for storage, It takes about 45GB to hold, all NES, SNES, GB, GBC, and GBA ever exist. (Don’t ask me how I know about that.) So 60 - 80GB seem a reasonable size for HHD.

Sense we are mostly dealing with 2D graphic, any video controller these days should handle the job pretty well, unless you want to have some enhanced EMU such as ePSXe running in enhanced config, then you might thinking about a better video controller. One thing for sure is that if you are looking into mini PC, your choice for video controller are limited. Feel free to install or remove the opitional drive. If you are mostly doing rom base games, you wouldn’t need a opitional drive. Even if you want to play CD-r base games, you can still use iso. Not just that make the games running faster, it is always easier to care your games around. Removing the opitional drive would save you a lot of power from  your system too, and that mean, you will have a cooler system.

What controller to get is really up to you, anything that use USB sure work under Linux, Although so native PC controller would be easy to setup than the one, which make for console such as PS3 or Xbox 360. And YES! As I mention before, you can even use the Wii remote to play your games. visit WiiLi.org  for more detail. You can even use non-USB controller. I, however, will leave that to you to figure out.  I do recommend you to get a USB Hub, if your system doesn’t have front USB port. It would make things a lot easier for your controllers. Of course, if you are using wireless, then this kind of problems doesn’t apply to you. Also having a USB IR remote can be very handy as well.

When all the hardware is ready, we should start think about the software. First, we need an OS. (No really =.=!) Almost any desktop Linux will do the job, So pick the one you like. On some distro, you might need to compile the EMU yourself, and some other, they have binary pre-make. I personally like Arch Linux, and Debian. Arch Linux give me the maxium computer power with the i686 optimized kernel, and I can only install the things I really need on the system. While Debian is taking a good standard, and rock hard solid. if you take my suggestion and remove the opitional drive, there are internet base installation for both of the system, so all you need is put a img on your usb, book the system up, and install the whole system from the internet, it is not really a problem to in linux without an opitional drive.

Once, the OS installation is done, you can now install the your favorite EMU. On my system, I installed NES, SNES, and GBA EMU. It is again, really up to you what to pick, and what fit you the most. I use FCEU for NES, Zsnes for SNES, and vistualboy Advance for GBA/GBC/GB. There is a good amount of EMU rnning under Linux, so you should find yourself getting almost anything you would want.

I do agree there are much more EMU run under Windows, and some are actually much better then the one Linux have, such as pj64 for N64. The reason why I don’t choose windows is because it is much heavrier then Linux, and you will have to install a few extra software to maintian it, and yet, not as easy as Linux for twisting around. Beside that, I didn’t really find any front end for for lanuching the EMU with games, which under Linux, I have sever on top of my head would do the job. As the end result, you would like to have a system, that can allow you search games, lanuch the games, and close the game, all done by a remote, or control. It would be a bit ticky to done all this with just a control, however, it would be extemely easy with a USB IR remote, just like what you would do with your media center remote. Once, you get your OS, EMU, and front end setup, your ultimate gaming system is ready to go. All you have to do is loading in games.

Posted by ioky February 2009

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