Jagosaurus wrote:While not my camp yet (use PC emu personally), if we had a simple Raspberry Pi tutorial, that'd drive traffic and help people out as well.
Not even a tutorial, just a "check this out" Raspberry Pi article would get a lot of traffic. Those things are so popular right now. I would suggest an article that's more like a Retro Gaming 101 write up for it. It could mainly cover how you can use one as an all-in-one retro emulator (RetroPie) and then briefly show off other cool popular projects like Gameboy Zero / Super Pi Boy and the like.
Jagosaurus wrote:This RB thread is a great ongoing list of flashcarts & ODEs:
http://www.racketboy.com/forum/viewtopi ... &hilit=ODE
I'd be all for if we wanted to turn this into an article for the main site. My suggestion would be to take the "What is a flash cart?" and "What are the main benefits of a flash cart?" part of that post and turn it into the article, then maybe briefly cover the most popular flash carts, but then link back to the thread for the individual cart write ups. Reason being is that the info/features of the flash carts have been changing so rapidly that the article would be quickly outdated if we put them there. If they're in the forum post, I can keep them up to date. The "What is a flash cart?" part is never going to change.
You might have noticed at the top of the linked thread I had plans for other articles as well. Disc drive emulators are the equivalent of flash carts for disc-based consoles. And in my mind flash carts, repro carts, homebrew carts, disc drive emulators, and backup devices like the Retrode all crossover in the land of preservation. Which, I think is important for more people to be talking about. I've been wanting to write these up for a while now, I just have a hard time getting my thoughts into words.
But speaking of... The "maker" community has really exploded in recent years. Never before has it been so easy to get your ideas produced in physical form. With 3D printing being accessible to many, and PCB manufacturing being very affordable, we're seeing more and more awesome stuff happen. People are doing amazing things with FPGAs and stuff like the Raspberry Pi. Then there's Kickstarter / crowd funding helping bring things to the public. There's really too many things to list, but that's a good thing. Since the RB articles stopped flowing, there's now an endless ocean of things to write about.
For example: Clone consoles use to be a cringe worthy thought, but not anymore. There's the Retron5, RetroUSB's AVS, the Revo K101, The GB Boy Colour. I haven't even seen a forum post here about the upcoming Super Retro Boy. And we really dropped the ball not having a NES Classic article. The traffic from that would have probably crashed the site.
Another example: Getting better AV output out of retro consoles. What we have available now is a zillion times better than what was available 5-10 years ago. The Hi-Def NES kit, the NESRGB kit, the UltraHDMI, to name a few. Then there's the modless, plug-and-play component cables from HD Retrovision. The XRGB upscalers. These things are amazing and each deserve their own article.
I'll stop there before we go too far into the rabbit hole. There really is an amazing amount of retro gaming goodness out there right now.
edit: Hell, even an article covering how awesome the maker community is right now would be neat.
Some other ideas I've long had for articles:
1: The 6502 processor. This processor had a huge impact in the world of computers, and one (or a variation of it) can be found in a lot of popular devices such as Atari, Commodore, and Nintendo.
2: The Burning Guide. The burning guide that I wrote has become out of date. I made a revision to update it, but it was never published. After thinking about it more, I would want to do more than just update it. It was written more as a how-to for burning games that you download. I would like to turn it into a how-to guide for reading/writing disc images, which is really what I was after in the first place. The info would be there should you choose to download games and burn them, but it wouldn't be blatant how to burn your pirated games. This would also expand the guide to learn how to back up your legit discs, which can tie into what CRT and Jag were talking about with things like ODEs, Open PS2 Loader, etc. Retro gamers use to say "backups" with an eye wink because they really meant "pirated games you downloaded." But we have legit reasons to backup our games these days because of disc drive emulators / HDD loading.
3: Power Supplies. I'm not sure if this would be good for a main page article, or better as a forum thread. Basically, I've just been compiling any info I've come across regarding power supplies and I've been wanting to organize it into a write up. It would cover listing the specs for OEM power supplies (confirmed by pictures of the actual PSUs, which were submitted by forum members in an old thread), and somewhat brief how-to's on diagnosing, finding replacements, repairing, etc.
Racket, if you're reading this, I guess I'll shot you an email if I get the chance. I would like to volunteer to write up some stuff, I just don't think of myself as the strongest writer. I think I can do OK (but just OK) if I'm more or less reviewing some piece of kit or some tech how-to, but that's about it. For example, I don't even know where to start for a 6502 write up. I can get a bullet point of all the interesting facts about it, but I don't think I'm a creative enough writer to spin them into something that would be a good read.
edit: Everything I said above, I posted it here so others can give me feedback. Point out what you think is a good idea or bad idea. Expand on something. Modify an idea if you think it's a good idea but not necessarily the right track. Et cetera.
Aww, you're so sweet.
