Awesome new NESPi4 case

maschine

Hi folks,

just take a look at the new NesPi case:

alt text
http://retroflag.com/nespi-4-case.html

I think the SSD option is just awesome. Do you think the OS has still to go on an SD Card? Or could it all be run from SSD which would significantly speed up load times.

Cheers

OldSchool

@maschine Looks great. My only issue is having only two USB ports. If you're only emulating NES and want a replica system for the full experience, great. But I'd prefer to have a good looking case and still be able to use more than two USB ports, so that's tough.

I definitely appreciate the SSD feature though; I had to build a case using an aluminum PCB enclosure to have a case that fits everything and my SSD, then I had to wire and script the safe shutdown button and fan myself. It works and looks great, but not having to Dremel holes would have been nice. A good looking all in one solution is amazing, and I wish there were more cases with all the features like this case.

zerojay

I just bought this case and yes, you can run it with the OS on the SD card or you can run it off the SSD. In fact, you can even run without an SD card at all whatsoever and just boot directly off the SSD with some work if you really desired as I just did.

simpleethat

@OldSchool I had the same feelings about the USB ports. Although I never really use more than one player I like having the option. There is always the option of using a USB hub to increase the number of ports when that feature is needed. This would actually be fairly accurate considering the history of consoles and four players. While NES, SNES, Genesis, and PSX all had four player capable games they required additional hardware for this. I really wonder the frequency that other users are in need of four player simultaneous capability with Retropie.

I thought about getting one of these cases when I saw the announcement--the NES holds a special place in my heart because it was my first console. I have several other Retroflag cases and have been pleased with all of them. I think they make great cases and are very fairly priced. But I've decided to go another route for my Pi4 build (for now).

@maschine to answer your question about booting from SSD: According to what I could find form the Raspberry Pi Foundation USB boot is currently in beta (I thought I saw an announcement that it was out of beta but I might be misremembering) but a quick google search seemed to bring up several solutions. You can checkout the foundation's page (with additional relevant links) here. There's even a link for a fix if you end up corrupting the boot EEPROM. I wish I could help you more with this part but it's not something I plan on playing around with any time soon. I feel like for emulation a sufficiently fast SD card is all you'll really need.

EDIT: typos... dammit

maschine

@simpleethat Thank you. Yet, Irefrain from flashing my pi with early beta eeprom files. I will just wait for a stable built.

zerojay

@maschine said in Awesome new NESPi4 case:

@simpleethat Thank you. Yet, Irefrain from flashing my pi with early beta eeprom files. I will just wait for a stable built.

They are out of beta, I got them from the stable branch.

simpleethat

@zerojay I thought I had seen that somewhere but couldn't find it. Thanks for the clarification.