Interesting Micro mame arcade with Raspberri Pi

[barythrin]

Not me, but found it spinning around in my head for a few days so figured I'd share. http://www.instructables.com/id/Micro-Raspberry-Pi-arcade-cabinet/ I'm not sure how much the little display costs. When I was tossing the idea around in my mind I almost think it could be cheaper hacking a modded psp into a cabinet and wiring external buttons for assignment.

If there is another sale and I have nothing else (if all stars align) sometimes you can find a xx% off coupon for used game/book stores that you can snatch a console. That'd put the PSP at around $30-50.

 

[deathshadow]

Yeah, but MAME on a PSP exhales with velocity upon the proverbial equine of short stature...

Though I wouldn't think the Pi would be much better, that broadcom ARM being barely as capable as a 233mhz Pentium MMX. I'd probably use a cubieBoard or something similar; that Allwinner A20/A30 is far more made of WIN!!! As an ARM that 1ghz+ almost gets you up to the performance of a P2 450.

Of course having an actually USEFUL number of GPIO pins so you don't have to put a arduino or teensy in front of it helps too. Now I'm not saying that the number of inputs on a Pi is a joke compared to even the crappiest AtMega prototype board, but let's be honest, there are attiny's with more connections!

 

[barythrin]

Quite possibly true, I honestly don't recall if I tried any MAME ports on my psp to date. I ended up getting most things to work that I cared for at the time and the psp hacking scene did sorta die for the generation I use (2000). It was just on my mind as I'm seeing used stores carry the 1000 at least for around $60-70 on a normal day and modding seems pretty point and click on most of them now (not having to find an early 2000 model, etc) or you can just load the mod each time you boot if it can't be permanent.

I found where my psp was hiding the other day so I'll try and get some time to test mame on it just for shiggles (I only have one so I'm not modding it for an arcade at this point). But black friday sales are in our near future which could mean a spare psp for < $50.

 

[barythrin]

I really overestimated the power of the psp. Not sure why in my head it was a lot more Mhz. I haven't tested out that many MAME roms yet but as deathshadow said, performace on that does sorta suck from what I've seen :-( That's even running it in overclocked 333Mhz mode. Dunno how much tweaking it can do but that was a fairly default install from some psp forum.

Just thought I'd update since it perhaps is not worth running out and grabbing a discount psp on black friday for hax0ring.