Smallest PC Build
A project that Dennis has been planning for years is to build a real-life gaming arcade cabinet. Owning a vintage arcade machine is often considered a rite of passage in the gaming world but, they have been increasingly difficult to find. One common solution to this problem is to build an emulator machine and if you are handy with tools the process is rather straight forward. Or, you can take the easy way out and buy a kit or even a fully assembled cabinet. From there you will need to install a monitor and the control board and even that can vary depending on your end goal.
With the physical parts complete the only thing left is how to emulate the games you want to play. Early machines used an old PC and ran some software called MAME. This software would emulate the old control boards and allow the ROM file to run just like it did in the arcade. As it would turn out all of this can be supplanted with a Raspberry Pi and a software package called RetroPie.
RetroPi is a GUI front end that will interface with all of the major emulator platforms allowing you to run arcade games along with ROMs from Atari, PlayStation, Nintendo and many I have never heard of.
My how far technology has come.
Related Links
RetroPie
Broken NVMe Drives – Who Failed?
In this segment Darren talks about a recent purchase of a Muskin Pilot NVMe drive. This is a SSD that we have reviewed before and is quite speedy with a rather attractive price tag. As many long-time listeners will know Darren is a fan of the Amazon service and loves to buy what he can from there so, he decided to purchase this drive from Newegg.
Despite the longer shipping time the cost was the same and to reward his purchase decision the Newegg fulfillment department promptly put the drive into a padded envelope and “dropped” it off with UPS. UPS has been known to handle packages with care and was super careful when allowing the extremely light padded envelope to slide between two larger boxes allowing the padded envelope to take the shape of the remaining space.
Unfortunately for the NVMe drive Mushkin had elected to package it in a clamshell which offered only protection from opening by the end user and really no resistance to bending. This allowed the drive to snap and ultimately make Darren rather sad.
On the positive, Newegg is excellent at replacing damaged goods and three weeks later Darren was imaging his hard drive and back to playing Battlefield.
Related Links
Mushkin Pilot NVMe Drive
Episode 127 featured music:
Little People - Start Shootin' (http://www.littlepeoplemusic.com/)
