Kustom Kid

Agreed. That's why I asked tthurman. There have been several topics about program focus, in the Pinball X forum in particular, that this may prove useful for.

Word.

Does this work for other programs, like say Pinball X, or is it GameEx only?

Can't wait to see the progress. I grabbed a Pi 3 Model B for $30, and 64 GB SD card for $12, at Microcenter yesterday. This is probably the best, not stupid expensive, power supply you'll find as well. This PlayStation/PS2 controller USB adapter works great as well. You can probably do the entire build for about $100. Living situation aside you still have to do something for yourself once in a while. Real talk. A few years ago my (now ex) girlfriend left and took our son with her. A year later I lost my house paying lawyer fees to be able to see my kid, getting child support setup (more legal fees!) and because I made some bad choices as well. I lived with my parents for 7 months to get my stuff straight and sort my life out. If I had lived a hermit's life and didn't do anything for myself, no matter how small, I may have moved out a month or two earlier, but I world have been even more miserable. I'm back to good, so I believe you can do the same.

Excellent. Glad you got it sorted out.

They're already moving to software on iOS and Android devices. If this console flops they will probably do what your suggested han. They've dominated the handheld market for like 25 years now. They're losing market share to smartphones. It's a logical step I think. As for this new system, if they release a new Metroid for it I'll get it, if not I'll probably pass.

stigzler has a few programs to do that. I'm currently using Marquee Masher on my setup. Shown here. It's not the best video, and it's not setup how I'd like it, but you get the idea.

Wouldn't editing the screenres txt file fix this?

1.)You can find your excluded roms in your gameex.ini. I don't think there's a specific list that's generated. 2.) There isn't any "easy" way to delete roms that I know of short of going in and doing it manually. For MAME you also run the risk of making games unplayable if you delete the parent rom. That depends on if your set is merged or split. I can't remember which one is which at the moment. Someone will cine in though on that.

Final update before I give it away to my girlfriend's brother. Everything mentioned before stands. MAME emulation for games up to about 1994 work great (it's a really old rom set to be fair). All other emulators up to the 16-bit era work great. Kodi is a bit sluggish, but usable. Streaming works fine, but live tv with the HD Homerun doesn't work well. It might work better with the HDHR that encodes at the box itself, and if I had a better WiFi dongle. Oh, and if it was a Pi2 or 083. He doesn't have a HDHR anyway, but I wanted to check it out for myself. Thanks for checking this thread out. I'll be sure to post any new projects for your perusal.

@hansolo77 I bought a USB cable with a switch built in. After you shut the Pi down inside the program you can flip the switch to cut power. When you want to fire it up you just hit the switch again. No need to mess with unplugging anything, and you don't have to worry about file corruption. You could go that route too, and it might be a bit easier, and cheaper.

I did that last year with a SNES. I decased a Xbox 360 wireless controller adapter and hooked it up to an internal USB header. I used the front LED for a power indicator, and controller ports soldered a USB adapter also hooked up to a USB header. The power and reset switches on the SNES case were functional as well. The pictures kind of suck, but here it is (it wasn't screwed together in the second photo). I ended up tearing it apart, putting it in a normal ITX case and giving it to my girlfriend. It was a quite bit underpowered for VPX and PS2 emulation, but it works great for her web browsing, light gaming, and for work stuff.

A little update. The Pi Zero struggles with anything past, and including, the Nintendo 64. I knew that going in. Sega 32x is hit or miss. Notably the Virtua series of games run slow. The recommended MAME core is based on a very old (.037b something something) romset. As such, the emulation is poor compared to what I'm used to. There's a lot of missing sounds and that's driving me bananas. Atari 2600, 7800, and Lynx work well. Sega Gamegear, Master System, and Genesis work well. Nintendo NES, SNES, Gameboy, Gameboy Color, and Gameboy Advance all work well. I put Kodi on it to see how that ran. I haven't messed with it too much, but I'm a bit underwhelmed. Live TV with the HD Homerun is unusable. The sound is fine, but the video is super blocky. I'm in the process of setting up a few more add-ons to see if it's even worth having on there. I can link to a list of parts and software/help pages if anyone is interested. Here's the Original Article that set me on my way after I had decided on the project. @GeorgeT I would recommend a Pi3. You'll get a better experience to be sure. You sacrifice a lot of performance to get the small size of the Pi Zero. If it's going in a Bartop there's no real reason to go that small, unless you want to save the $30. You'll also get better connectivity options out of the box with the Pi 3. That alone is worth it. The only reason I did what I did was because the Zero was given to me.

My dad is a welder by trade. He'd call that pile of mess "duck shit." Soldering wire is easy. You heat one end of wire with the iron, and apply solder to it. Then you heat the other wire with the iron and touch it to the first wire with the solder on it. Boom. Done. My old man taught me how to weld years ago. I taught myself how to solder. It's similar enough that I picked it up within an hour or so of messing around with different gauge wires, expendable PCB's, and the like.

It wasn't hard at all. I changed the end to a micro USB as well to eliminate an adapter. I just cut the wires, trimmed the outside cover a bit, soldered it back together, wrapped the individual wires with electrical tape, and covered the whole mess with shrink tubing. It only took about 10 minutes. I haven't noticed a performance hit yet. I've been able to run a WiFi dongle, two SNES style controllers, and a keyboard through the USB hub with no issue.

I was given a Raspberry Pi Zero a few weeks ago. Seeing as how I want to put emulators on all the things I gave Retropie a whirl. It's cool, but it'll never replace a PC. After trying to figure out what to do with this thing I decided to give it to my girlfriend's brother, whom I've commissioned to make custom artwork for my control panel. I figured I'd stuff it in a NES cartridge, and not two days later a story popped up in my news feed of a guy who did just that. He did most of the leg work as far as parts with handy links to Amazon and everything. I didn't veer too far from what he did, but did shorten the cable for the USB hub, and added a WiFi dongle. Below is the finished product.

+1. I used OBS to capture table videos for PBX. Worked like a champ. Pretty simple to set up once you mess around with it for a few minutes, too.

Oh you're good, man. Just making sure it's in the right spot so people can see it.

This is pretty sweet looking, @PcTeknic, but this particular sub-forum is for software user projects. The correct forum for this is HERE. Keep up the awesome work, man.

Same here. We didn't have a "close" arcade until I was 13, and even then it was 20 miles away. All of the other games I listed earlier were in convenience stores, or party stores as we called them growing up in Michigan. I'd get a quarter from mom once every few weeks to actually play a game. It was glorious. MK II came out when I was in high school, had a job, and had my own money to spend. I only got to go to the arcade once or twice a year until then. As for home consoles we got an Atari second hand in the early 80's. My brother worked for a summer to buy our NES. We got one game a year, for Christmas, for both of us. Everything else we rented, borrowed, or bought with our own money. I'm glad we didn't have a ton of money growing up. It taught is to respect, and to take care of, the things we did have.

Happy really, really, late birthday good sir!

This is a great topic. There are way too many "favorites" to list them all. Mat Mania, Strider, Mr. Do, Marvel vs. Capcom, Centipede, Double Dragon, Street Fighter II. The game I have the most fond memories of is Mortal Kombat II. They had it at the laser tag place and I could play for quite a while before someone knocked me off. The guy popping up in the corner saying "toasty" became a war cry of sorts while playing laser tag. If I needed a break from running around I'd hop on the MK II cabinet until someone beat me or I'd get near the top of the ladder and the computer would clobber me. Sometimes it was a 10 minute break, sometimes it was a 2 minute break.

Ha. I got an update on my watch while I was driving that you were live streaming a few hours ago.

Holy Lord there's a lot going on with that thing.

Congrats @TerryRed and @stigzler. And thank you, @Tom Speirs, for the recognition, and everyone else for the kind words.