Making A "Master System"

[Disturbed0]

On the Zophar.net forums, someone made a gaming system out of a mac mini. I thought it would be cool, but of course, didn't have enough for a mac-mini.
I went to the local pawn shop and found a nice little computer for $5.00. I bought it and went home, to discover thier was a password locked into it and it was running Windows NT 4.0. I took out the bios battery on the motherboard to remove the password, then installed Windows 98SE.
When I was starting on the system, I ran into alot of problems. It had NO USB ports. I bought a Serial To USB adapter, and a X4 USB connection, and took care of that. Then, I realised it had no sound card. And, I am a computer nerd, and I had 15 of em laying around. I hooked it up, and was ready to go. Then, OMG!!1 It could only use 2/16 colors. I tried a monitor driver, which didn't work, and realised, it was my video card. My ATI Rage XL. I spent over 3 hours locating the drivers. Then, I put em on, and happily changed to 32bit color.
I made a nifty background, and put it on to make it look cool . Then, the start bar is on auto-hide to make it invisible unless you put the cursor on it.
Then, it was time to put the software on it. It is now emulating Macintosh, NES, SNES, Intellivision, 3d0, Atari (all models), GB, GBC, GBA, PSX, Apple II, Neo Geo, Turbo Grafx 16, Sega Saturn, Sega Genisis, Colecovision, and Odessy.
This system is great for people who like old systems, and want to play every game system on one machine.
The computer you use doesn't have to be a really expencive machine. The computer I used was 501MHz and 64MB Ram. My machine is bulky, but still fun to play.
In a few days I am getting my adapter to hook it up to the TV so I can play pong/final fantasy all day on my joystick

I will post some pics soon

---Disturbed0


P.S: If anyone wants to make a Master System on thier own, go to www.zophar.net for some awesome emulators. *DO NOT PM ME ASKING FOR ROMS*

[z357x]

Me and my friend made a Retro Machine once... BUT THE MOST AWESOME PART WAS WE MADE A WOODEN FRAME FOR IT IN THE GUISE OF A SWEET ARCADE MACHINE! we bought one of those old huge arcade style PSX two port controllers, bought the USB to PSX converter, super glued it to the wood frame, and spraypainted it all black. Coolist f***ing thing I ever layed hands on.

[chronomaster5042]

Two questions:
1. Which PSX Emu did you choose?
2. How well dose it run?

[z357x]

I used ePSXe and it worked fine... PSXeven works good too. It's all an issue of picking and using which drivers and plugins work best for your computer. Expirement with settings and see what is optimal together

[Disturbed0]

Originally Posted by chronomaster5042

Two questions:
1. Which PSX Emu did you choose?
2. How well dose it run?

1. ePSXe
2. It gets around 40FPS

[inky]

thats alot of trouble you went through. my xbox and home pc have been set up with pretty much every emulator for years. I prefer to play on the xbox over my pc. because big TV and couch owns 17 in monitor and semi comfortable office chair. heheh.
a guy I know on another forum has put an xbox loaded up with emulators in an old street fighter II arcade cabinet and has it all wired up to the original controls and monitor. I'd like to do that someday if I can find a decent cab for cheap.

[z357x]

Originally Posted by inky

a guy I know on another forum has put an xbox loaded up with emulators in an old street fighter II arcade cabinet and has it all wired up to the original controls and monitor. I'd like to do that someday if I can find a decent cab for cheap.

it's not hard to make one out of wood if you have the right tools. you just need to find a arcade style controller... they generally have a few laying around gamestop

[kaioshade]

Or you could always build your own arcade controller. There are plenty of places to get genuine arcade joystick parts for cheap.