Making a Portable Console Emulator

[Labot2001]

Hey all! I've been a lurker of ben heck for a while now, due to the awesome factor of all these portables, and finally decided to join because I actually feel the need to post a question for you all to answer

Recently I came up with an idea. I've long wanted to build my own Emulator PC-in-a-console, but never got around to it. Today however I got a brilliant idea.

Why not use some benheck know-how to make a portable emulator? With smaller and smaller mobos and chips, and cheaper and cheaper PC parts, this would be fairly feasible for me.

My main question is this. I know this is a website for taking consoles and making them portable, so I'm hesitant. Therefore, I ask you: would my portable emulator be welcome here, or frowned upon?

TIA for helpful input

[timmeh87]

People have definitely talked about it before. I dont know if I ever saw one but I dont lurk much.

I think the problem is that to make something that can play n64 games and be as small as an n64 (for example), it costs like $300 versus $5 for the actual N64. plus then its more "retro".

[bassmasta]

Beagleboard xM will run up to N64 emulation, I think.
You'll need a LCD with digital input though, and a 5V source (just use a 5v switching regulator).

[Labot2001]

Beagleboard xM will run up to N64 emulation, I think.
You'll need a LCD with digital input though, and a 5V source (just use a 5v switching regulator).

That's ARM-based, all the emulators I know of run on Windows only. I was looking at small x86 boards (mainly nano and pico-itx).

[eagle5953]

Mini-itx boards can handle N64 emulation, although they require a discrete graphics card.

You're really probably better off starting with a netbook for a foundation. Common, inexpensive, compact, capable of emulating N64 and lower, and requiring little more than gaming controls and a case mod. After all, you've already got the internals, screen, and battery...

Plus, I don't think it's really been done, other than THIS.

[Labot2001]

Mini-itx boards can handle N64 emulation, although they require a discrete graphics card.

You're really probably better off starting with a netbook for a foundation. Common, inexpensive, compact, capable of emulating N64 and lower, and requiring little more than gaming controls and a case mod. After all, you've already got the internals, screen, and battery...

Plus, I don't think it's really been done, other than THIS.

Mini-ITX will be too large for what I want to do. I'm trying to keep it as close to a 6x9' form factor (or smaller) as possible. I really want this to be as close to handheld and unclunky as I can make it. That's why I said, Pico and Nano-ITX boards.

As for emulation, here's a list of what I plan to run:
[*] NES
[*] SNES
[*] N64
[*] Gamecube*
[*] NDS
[*] PS1
[*] PSP
[*] Sega Genesis
[*] Xbox*
[*] Gameboy/GBC/GBA

*subject to power of board/grapics I get

[bassmasta]

That's ARM-based, all the emulators I know of run on Windows only. I was looking at small x86 boards (mainly nano and pico-itx).

I'm sure there are some...

What about Pandora?

[Labot2001]

That's ARM-based, all the emulators I know of run on Windows only. I was looking at small x86 boards (mainly nano and pico-itx).

I'm sure there are some...

What about Pandora?

This Pandora? What about it?

[bassmasta]

It seems to fit your needs, except it's ARM based...

[hailrazer]

As for emulation, here's a list of what I plan to run:

[*] Gamecube*

[*] Xbox*

Impossible and Impossible.

I have one of the best Laptops on the market right now. i7 Quad Core and Radeon HD5870 and I can only run a handful of Gamecube games fullspeed. And Xbox emulators are virtually non existent.

That being said this is what I currently use for quick nice emulation :
http://www.flipstartpc.com/product/specsdev.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;



It runs N64 and lower emulators perfectly.

I use this tiny controller with it.

http://benchmarkreviews.com/index.php?o ... mitstart=2" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;



The system is 5.9″ x 4.5″ x 1.6″ and 1.5 lbs. The controller is 9.9 x 4.9 x 1.2 cm ... ie very tiny.

It's a nice small easy setup to satisfy my Emulation needs

[bicostp]

And Xbox emulators are virtually non existent.

Didn't the Xbox run a pared down NT kernel with DirectX 8 on a 700 mhz Celeron? I would have thought something like a virtual machine (similar to Bochs or QUEMU) would have come out by now. Since it uses the same architecture as most desktops, it wouldn't need any recompilation would it? If they could figure out the PS2's Emotion Engine, what's the holdup on the Xbox?

[humakabula1]

i have a decent xbox emulator, stuck it on the 'blades' at school,
if you need it i can link a download site to you

[hailrazer]

As far as I know there were 3 Xbox emulators made. They can run Halo and not much else.

[humakabula1]

yar pretty much,
what else do you want to run on an original xbox?

[bicostp]

You might as well run the PC port of Halo.