A post on Reddit, my second favorite website to this one, inspired me to try my hand at the Retropie Project. The project has gained popularity for its do-it-yourself appeal that has encouraged many retro gamers to build their own emulation consoles from scratch. Really, all you need is this tutorial and some spare time to make it all work. Skills in electronics are helpful but not required. A little research on your own time can go a long way with this project and results are bound to be good... supposedly.
Inspired and excited, I'm setting out to build my own Retropie Console out of my burned out PS3. The PS3 had a good five year life before finally going kaput. We shared many good times together in and out of warranty and sadly, she's now far beyond repair. So, I'm going to cannibalize her guts and replace them with a Raspberry Pi board that is actually smaller than the discs the old PS3 use to play. She's probably smiling down from PS3 heaven right now. This is what she would have wanted... I guess.
What are my goals?
The post I saw on Reddit, linked here , showed what a man was able to do with a broken NES. He made a few customizations to the outer case, connected a few wires, tweaked the software a bit, and wallah he was able to do this.
Up until I saw that picture I had been ho-hum about the whole idea. I figured it was over my head, beyond my budget, and not worth my time. But when I saw that he could navigate all of the games on his emulator, excuse me, plural emulators, I lost my adult mind. The nine year old me came back to life inside my brain and everything went white for an unknown matter of seconds. Almost immediately, images of myself being able to play any old school game on my TV using one device with any retrofitted usb-controller I could obtain channeled through my mind. Any NES, any SNES, any Genesis, MAME, or Atari game I could find a ROM for, I could play! I could play them in my living room, I could navigate the software without a mouse, and could do it all with a controller! After my tremors subsided and the puddle of blood that had leaked from my ears and tear ducts had been wiped clean, I started buying materials and hardware off the internet. "I will make this happen," I said out loud. My cat looked over at me, squinted, and then looked away with an acute arrogance that only cats can convey which obviously meant he doesn't believe in me. But I'll show him.
So far...
As the weeks go on and my project progresses I'll post my updates here on the blog.
As of right now I have an empty PS3. If you've ever been curious as to why your PS3 weighs so much, it's because it consists of 80% screws. Some of the screws were even screwed in with other screws! At last, I finally have an empty case and around 900 spare screws.
I picked up this SD card which will effectively act as my hard-drive for the device. A list of compatible products for the Raspberry Pi can be found here.
I also have a Model-B Raspberry Pi. It's the one very crucial and non-optional piece for this project.
What is a Raspberry Pi?
That's okay, I didn't initially know either. In short, it's a computer. It's the size of a credit card, operates from a single-board, and was designed with the intention of promoting the teaching of basic computer science in schools. It has HDMI, USB, and Ethernet ports built in and uses an SD card for booting and long-term storage. The Pi will operate the entire emulation once I download the OS, roms, emulators, and interface to it which will be covered in a future article.
Is it silly to have a credit card sized computer inside a giant empty PS3 hardcase?
Yes, but I'm a silly person. It will have an unusable disc slot and have plenty of useless inside space but the irony is a bit of what appeals to me. I also plan to decorate the outside of the PS3 case with some 8-bit art to legitimize its retro appeal.
If anyone has thoughts/suggestions/or questions about this undertaking, feel free to comment.
I'm still in gathering mode as I try to compile all the resources and hardware I need to make it work before I sit down and try to make anything permanent.
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