Compatibility

Cole_48

I need help, I wanted to help one of my friends who is not so DIY tech savvy with a retropie handheld. he was me to keep the costs as low as possible. When planning i ran into a huge roadblock, the pi zero shortages. the next single board on the line in terms of price was the CHIP, but i don't know of it can run retropie. It is otherwise perfect for the scale of this project because it has some build in memory and the person who i am giving it too won't need that much space. so is it compatible?

BuZz

It can't. The cheapest/smallest board to run RetroPie on is the Raspberry Pi Zero.

Cole_48

thank you for the help. time to search ebay for the next cheapest pi then

herb_fargus

@Cole_48 eBay is not a place to find a cheap pi zero. I would just wait a bit til they are back in stock as they are ramping up production now that the pi3 is released

Cole_48

I dis not mean the pi zero but thank you for the advice. I found a pi 2 bundles with a screen for only $10 more so figured that would be my best bet seeing as it was the right size for my project

senkun

@Cole_48

You'd be disappointed with those bundled screens if you're thinking of running a retropie handheld with those.

Cole_48

@senkun even if I don't run anything More powerful than SNES or Gameboy? This project is ment to run NES, SNES and Gameboy games

senkun

@Cole_48 said in Compatibility:

@senkun even if I don't run anything More powerful than SNES or Gameboy? This project is ment to run NES, SNES and Gameboy games

whichever flavour of Pi that you get is more than powerful enough to run NES, SNES, GB at full speeds, it will be the display that's usually bundled with these that will bottleneck. You'll be getting junk like kedei 3.5" screens (or clones of clones) that do 5 fps on a good day. You could get a RPi B+ and get a better screen separately. If you want small gpio/spi screens I'd stick to 3.2" or smaller (320x240) for perky framerates.

You really don't want those bundled screens for retropie gaming:

la-luva

So what kind of (gpio) screen under 3.5" inches is fast enough for gaming with retropie?
Could somone post a link to screens they know is fast enough for retropie?
Would love to have this kind of screen in my Gameboy DMG mod, now i have a 3.5" with composite in and picture quality is playable but could have been better.

Meneer Jansen

If you want a cheap handheld w/ classic games for your travels, buy a bluetooth controller like this one from DealExtreme and run classic emulators. My cheap ass mobile even runs some PSP games at reasonable frame rates.

alt text

I used to have a Dingoo for this but I lost it and they are no longer manufactured. Also, a 2nd hand PSP might be cheaper. Good luck. :-)

la-luva

I really want a Raspberry with retropie in an DMG case.
Im sure there are tft screens that will do the job.