Emulation box build

I am looking to build myself a separate computer for emulating old games from computers and consoles past.  The machines I am looking to emulate include Amiga 500, Amiga 1200, Atari ST, Sega Master System, Sega Genesis, NES, SNES, N64, Playstation 1 & 2, etc.  Having looked at what micro computer kits there are, I have noticed the release of the Raspberry Pi 2 B.  At the moment this looks like a good base for such a build but never having done this on an ARM based machine I was wondering if even with 4 A7 cores @ 900 MHz and 1gb ram if it would be man enough for the job.  Any ideas or recommendations as to what kit I should use for this?

I am also excited that I will be able to use a free version of Windows 10 on this kit rather than having to jump through Linux hoops of fire.

The main issue I can think of is that winUAE (amiga) will not have been compiled to run on an ARM instruction set yet. I suspect you will have similar issues with other emulators.

I do know that  UAE works beautifully under Ubuntu and I'm sure there is already a version compiled for ARM.

http://blog.petrockblock.com/retropie/ Is what you want to look at. Was designed for the previous Pi and ran most stuff fairly well when the processor was overclocked. 1Ghz base and more ram should in theory mean its more than up to the job.

That looks cool, thanks for posting that up I hadn't seen it before.

how bout an AM1 platform?

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/rRgLHx

+1

 

I have a similar build placed in an old Xbox case. Cost ~100 bucks all said and done.

There is a special version of UAE for the Raspberry Pi so I am not too fussed on that count.   The main challenges for me is the wiring, programming the Teensy 3.0 controller to make the keyboard work and then working out how to set up the software as I am unfamiliar with Linux.  The bit that I think will be the hardest is programming the controller as I don't know how to program in C.

Great link.  Thanks.  That should save me a whole heap of work in the later stages.

I already have the parts, besides going for an AM1 build would have put me out of my pricing and space limitations.