Pi in the sky. ?

[John 11]

The whole point of them is to encourage people to tinker and discover that sort of thing for themselves.

 

I suppose you could get one for a 12 year old and get them to figure it out for you.

 

For me, the tricky part is the woodwork.

[anywebsite 10]

I'll get one as soon as someone posts a step by step guide on building a MAME machine using this device.

 

Step 1: connect tv, sd card, usb hub with keyboard,mouse & games controller, connect to usb power source & turn on.

Step 2: Install Fedora ARM, or other Linux.

Step 3: Install MAME (yum install mame, or use add/remove software menu).

Step 4: Copy games.

Step 5: Play games.

 

Hardest part is the woodwork, if you want to make it look like an authentic arcade machine.

Edited December 30, 2011 by anywebsite

[denomis 10]

I'm gonna pick up a couple of these one for the car and one will make a great onlive console. How's the support for 3G dongles in Linux

[nubile 10]

How's the support for 3G dongles in Linux

 

Crap, in a word, in my experience.

[denomis 10]

Crap, in a word, in my experience.

 

Reading your posts in this thread I'll wait for someone else to reply

[nubile 10]

Reading your posts in this thread I'll wait for someone else to reply

 

Believe me, i've tried with Linux and to get my wifi dongle to work it needs the driver modifying, something i'm on the limit of my knowledge doing, even with help.

you may be more savvy with such things and find it a doddle.

[denomis 10]

Na I'm a novice when it comes to Linux I was just hoping I might be able to stick puppy linux or maybe Ubuntu on it

[nubile 10]

I'm sure they'll be ones that will work straight out of the box, mines only 6 months old but doesn't and requires messing witn ndswrapper or whatever it's called, which frankly i can't be arsed with when it works just fine with windows.

[John 11]

Step 1: connect tv, sd card, usb hub with keyboard,mouse & games controller, connect to usb power source & turn on.

Step 2: Install Fedora ARM, or other Linux.

Step 3: Install MAME (yum install mame, or use add/remove software menu).

Step 4: Copy games.

Step 5: Play games.

 

Hardest part is the woodwork, if you want to make it look like an authentic arcade machine.

 

I'm betting 2 & 3 won't happen and possibly 4 if you can find the image.

 

I'm somewhat expecting it to boot directly to MAME without any need for Fedora/Linux etc.

[anywebsite 10]

I'm gonna pick up a couple of these one for the car and one will make a great onlive console. How's the support for 3G dongles in Linux

 

Most 3g dongles work without any trouble.

[anywebsite 10]

I'm betting 2 & 3 won't happen and possibly 4 if you can find the image.

 

I'm somewhat expecting it to boot directly to MAME without any need for Fedora/Linux etc.

 

You need an operating system to be able to run mame, which is just a normal application.

 

You can get custom 'livecd' versions of Linux that will boot straight into mame (Linux is running in the background to do OS stuff, but you never see it), but they're usually compiled for intel x86, rather than ARM, so you might need to make your own, or hope somebody else has the same idea & makes one.

 

Some popular Linux distributions, like Fedora & Ubuntu have versions compiled for ARM. It wouldn't be impossible to configure them to start straight into mame.

Edited January 1, 2012 by anywebsite

[John 11]

I'm still betting that they will be a version that doesn't sit on Linux or similar OS and is specifically designed for running in a MAME cabinet.

 

The Raspberry Pi isn't fragmented and that the reason why it is feasible to do.

 

I can see a version of OpenGL Lite being available that runs natively on Raspberry Pi built in GPU and it will be a matter linking in the library add the appropriate headers. No OS needed. Games written for this device will run this way too and from what I can tell, the Quake III demo does just that.

 

There are not many joystick / buttons designed for the MAME so there isn't a need for 100's of drivers. Reading packets from a device memory location is easy and so a config file to add the popular ones is all that required.

 

The sound is the trickest part.