Saturn Emulation Station

[TSTR]

I have a plan in the works for my Saturn emulation station. It's a little too early to be specific yet, but there's a PC at the goodwill for $2.49 that has caught my attention. My cheapy-sense is tingling.

id buy that for a dollar

[Exhuminator]

Messed around with SSF yesterday. I successfully emulated GunGriffon and Princess Crown, played them for a bit. Unfortunately Golden Axe: The Duel wouldn't emulate worth a damn. Maybe if I mucked with the settings enough I could get it to go, but I wasn't up for that yesterday.

Anyway, I'm thinking of emulating Panzer Dragoon Saga soon. Now I know that SSF can do it. What I'm wondering is if I need/should bother to beat the first two Panzer Dragoon games on Saturn before that. I know they aren't RPGs, but do they have significant story aspects that need to be understood before moving on to Saga? Or is Saga its own unrelated thing, plot wise?

[ElkinFencer10]

Messed around with SSF yesterday. I successfully emulated GunGriffon and Princess Crown, played them for a bit. Unfortunately Golden Axe: The Duel wouldn't emulate worth a damn. Maybe if I mucked with the settings enough I could get it to go, but I wasn't up for that yesterday.

Anyway, I'm thinking of emulating Panzer Dragoon Saga soon. Now I know that SSF can do it. What I'm wondering is if I need/should bother to beat the first two Panzer Dragoon games on Saturn before that. I know they aren't RPGs, but do they have significant story aspects that need to be understood before moving on to Saga? Or is Saga its own unrelated thing, plot wise?

It's mostly an unrelated thing. It's been a few years since I've played it, but I seem to recall there being some nods to the previous games, but nothing that really ties the plots or anything. You should be fine jumping into Saga first (though I suggest you play the other two games just because they're fantastic).

[samsonlonghair]

Messed around with SSF yesterday. I successfully emulated GunGriffon and Princess Crown, played them for a bit. Unfortunately Golden Axe: The Duel wouldn't emulate worth a damn. Maybe if I mucked with the settings enough I could get it to go, but I wasn't up for that yesterday.

Anyway, I'm thinking of emulating Panzer Dragoon Saga soon. Now I know that SSF can do it. What I'm wondering is if I need/should bother to beat the first two Panzer Dragoon games on Saturn before that. I know they aren't RPGs, but do they have significant story aspects that need to be understood before moving on to Saga? Or is Saga its own unrelated thing, plot wise?

Would you care to post the specs of the machine you are using to run ssf, Ex? Please & thank you.

[Exhuminator]

Would you care to post the specs of the machine you are using to run ssf, Ex? Please & thank you.

Ah I was just running it on my office computer at lunch. Emulator ran like a charm at full compatibility settings on that rig anyway. Here's its meager specs:

Intel Core i5-3470 @ 3.2Ghz
NVIDIA GeForce 9300 GE
4 Gigs of RAM

[samsonlonghair]

Thanks Ex. Good to hear that it won't take a beastly computer to run.

Okay ladies and gentlemen, here's the box that should become my Saturn Emulation Station if everything goes according to plan:

I have a plan in the works for my Saturn emulation station. It's a little too early to be specific yet, but there's a PC at the goodwill for $2.49 that has caught my attention. My cheapy-sense is tingling.

id buy that for a dollar

But would you buy that for two dollars and forty-nine cents?

Five dollars? Hell no! Better mark that box down half price.


It's a form-factor PC. I was initially concerned that I would be working in tight spaces, but everything opens out on hinges nicely. Looks like I have two expansion ports on the top-right corner of the mother board. I think one is a PCI express x16, and the other is...either PCI or AGP...I think. In either case, it's a small form factor. I'll see what I can dig up that may work here.


Out with the old RAM.


In with the new RAM. I have four sticks like this, so 8GB total. This came from another old PC that I bought at another thrift store.


I harvested this 500 GB SATA hard drive from the same PC that provided the new RAM

And... she boots! It turns out there's an old copy of Windows 7 on that 500 GB hard drive. People should really be more careful with their data. There are a couple BIOS errors that may cause me some trouble down the line, and I need to reformat. I'm not really interested in having access to someone else's data.

Once I get this PC stable, I'll try to run SSF.

Edit: here's the specs from cnet:
http://www.cnet.com/products/lenovo-thi ... ies/specs/

[Anapan]

I know that computer so well - my parents still run one of 'em as their main desktop.

This is despite my dad having a 3Ghz i5 hooked up to his big-screen plasma, and my mom having a 2.8 Ghz quad-core i3 hooked up to a 42" CRT in the den for watching yoga youtube videos that also does her Wii Fit - they only just want that computer!
I brought that computer home for my parents after their old hand-me-down died many years ago.
After a few years of happy usage, one of it's large capacitors grenaded and destroyed the mobo. (this was a common occurrence for a few years with many desktops - faulty caps from Taiwan).
They loved it so much, and even 4 years ago it was only $30 shipped to have the exact same computer shipped here. There was no question about using the superior computers running windows 7 on bigger screens - just make that mini PC tower work again with all their settings (yeah, I had already duplicated all of the settings and files into their bigscreen modern video playing computers and update them every 6 months so they have backups - those are for TV...).

They are still running it. They love the hyper threading - it's so futuristic.



It's running XP Performance Edition (IE downgraded to V6 and all nonessential functions disabled - 300m ISO loadable from USB) - PM for details - it makes this computer run snappy!
I believe it will run SSF at full speed (Performance/FPS) given the ram upgrade (I ran it decently on much less back in the day). Gameplay should be nearly perfect too. The hard-drive will certainly be able to maintain the CDROM speed while loading.
The only problem with the computer is that truly demanding processes test the hyperthreading virtual dual-core the cpu claims to have. In a browser, when the amount of memory is low, and you have a SWF or HTML5 (youtube) video playing, it will not function well. Similarly, SWF games can be painful.
Its integrated graphics card can be tweaked using some intel labs utils if you wish to interface native emulator resolutions to an external CRT.

I believe that given the right tweaks, you can make that computer output an RGB signal to a CRT (monitor?) to have nearly the same experience someone with a Saturn and a Rhea SD iso loader does.
If you wish to mess around with the onboard intel video, Let me know and I'll dig up the links for the utilities.
Further, some (much more expensive than the computer) decently cheap hardware can transcode that tweaked native RGB resolution video from the intel onboard video card into Component 240p video and you can plug it into a CRT television.

You made a good purchase! Cheers!