Re: Who has an Emulation Box Setup They Are Proud of?
Posted: Sun Jun 20, 2021 5:44 pm
I know its an old topic, but I have had a theory for while on this front. I think the untapped market on this is front is Thinclients. They are cheap, more powerful than competitors, and can use standard windows or linux emulators.
For example a Wyse 7010 can be bought for under $50:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/174505713267
They sport a AMD G-T56N, up to 8 gigs of ddr3, and a standard sata harddrive. The AMD G-T56N is an APU of the bobcat era with an Radeon HD 6310 on the die. The passmark is 460 so it is about the same as Athlon 64 3100 or a Pentium D 915 aka medium grade mid 2008. This is good enough Win7 with launchbox and emulate anything up to Dreamcast without issue. Obviously swapping out the components and a win7 license would knock the price up a bit, and if you are doing Dreamcast or Saturn you are going to want to add on a cooling system since it is passive by default. Price wise it is about the same as a Pi4 8gig build and is about the size of 3dvd cases.
But that is only one option. If you can drop $150 on a unit, a Wyse 5070 has a Intel J4105 or J5445 processor, which can run PS2 and Wii games. You will need to add a fan, but it uses an M2 M drive and ddr4 ram and has a Intel 605 in it. Being that this is the current model, they are not super cheap yet, but once they get cheap I plan on getting a couple for retro pc gaming, they will run most everything up to 2012. Similar power:
https://youtu.be/KmdNvD0QfJY?t=569
For example a Wyse 7010 can be bought for under $50:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/174505713267
They sport a AMD G-T56N, up to 8 gigs of ddr3, and a standard sata harddrive. The AMD G-T56N is an APU of the bobcat era with an Radeon HD 6310 on the die. The passmark is 460 so it is about the same as Athlon 64 3100 or a Pentium D 915 aka medium grade mid 2008. This is good enough Win7 with launchbox and emulate anything up to Dreamcast without issue. Obviously swapping out the components and a win7 license would knock the price up a bit, and if you are doing Dreamcast or Saturn you are going to want to add on a cooling system since it is passive by default. Price wise it is about the same as a Pi4 8gig build and is about the size of 3dvd cases.
But that is only one option. If you can drop $150 on a unit, a Wyse 5070 has a Intel J4105 or J5445 processor, which can run PS2 and Wii games. You will need to add a fan, but it uses an M2 M drive and ddr4 ram and has a Intel 605 in it. Being that this is the current model, they are not super cheap yet, but once they get cheap I plan on getting a couple for retro pc gaming, they will run most everything up to 2012. Similar power:
https://youtu.be/KmdNvD0QfJY?t=569