Advice on setting up an emulator and/or Steam PC

Gaming
1

Due to the ecent Ryzen upgrades, I’ve found myself with a spare A10-5800k, an A88X itx board, a 128GB SSD, and 8g DDR3.
I went out and bought the In Win Chopin ITX case, and a Noctua L9a cooler so I can put these parts to use (has a 150w PSU built in). Everything is a tight fit int hsi case, but eventually jammed it all in there.

I’ve intially installed Lakka (Retroarch/libretro OS), but have troubles with it working properly (it was much easier to get it working properly on a Raspberry pi).
I’m wondering if anyone can give advice on how I should work with this hardware to get something a bit fun out of it to give to one of my mates (he has his own PS4 controllers to plug in).

I guess can persist with Lakka, I’ll probably get it working properly eventually, but will it be easier just to install an OS and go Steam + emulators, maybe try to get big picture working with a retroarch front end as well, I don’t know.

Just some ideas would be awesome. Thank you.

2

Why not use Emulation Station instead of Lakka?
If you want to play games on it my suggestion is to install something like Windows N and strip it down to the bare minimum, disabling almost everything, uninstalling Windows apps and stuff like that.

1 Like
3

Don’t you need additional software installed with this?

I installed this and the EmulatorStation could not read any systems.

4

You can’t see any system in the menu? That usually happens because you didn’t load any game in the appropriate directories.

5

I found a config file I can tweak.

6

Just install ubuntu and install libretro.

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7

What about this?

Of course you don’t have to use build the cabinet

8

I would just use whatever OS of choice and install things on that. Building a system with a cut down OS that removes functionality and is specialized at one task is going to be a hassle to do anything else. Kinda like Steam OS. There is little point to it when you can install Steam and still have the rest of your operating system loaded with all the other programs and games you like.

I personally think the idea of ‘I want to control everything with my game controller but still have it multifunctional’ is insane. I just saw This Mini Keyboard From Adafruit recently for very cheap if you don’t want a full size wired keyboard. Why spend several days of your life trying to get a PC to run multiple games, emulators, and more off of a gamepad when you know you won’t be happy with the end result? I’m not singling you out specifically, as you didn’t exactly say what you goal was in this respect, but I see this same mentality over and over and it is truly insane.

With regards to the PS4 controller, I don’t know anything about consoles, but from what I understand those controllers work with Linux. Is it possible to connect them to a Linux PC with a Bluetooth dongle? I have set up a PC for someone doing something similar and the only thing I haven’t gotten yet is the controller, and they have PS4 controllers already, so if I could just get it to work via Bluetooth then that would be great. I figure this would be relevant to the OP since he mentioned using PS4 controllers wired, and a Bluetooth dongle is under $10.

2 Likes
9

I agree completely. This is more like an exception. My friend and his wife have a ps2, ps3, ps4, and gamecube, all in his tiny 1 bedroom apartment.
He wants to play snes and sega games, so I offered to set up a Pi for him. But realising these spare parts would otherwise go in a box in my wardrobe, makes sense to use it for this.

I’ve used ps4 controllers arch Linux before with bluetooth. Couldn’t get that touch pad working on it though, but most people probably wouldn’t care about that.

1 Like
10

Yep. That’s pretty much what I was thinking next.