Emulation and physical media playback

[Fudoh]

so, basically what Seedi tried and Polymega might achieve one day.

Retroarch for Windows and Linux supports physical CD playback for Sega CD, PC Engine, Playstation and Saturn. Works well in general (at least from Retroarch's side), but Windows 10 and today's drives might be causing a problem. When I use a (vintage) external CD drive on a low-spec Win 10 machine ($99 Nuc) I get flawless results, but I try using a modern external DVD writer, red book audio becomes choppy as hell. From frequent audio breakups with one drive to permanent stutter (even in gameplay) with another drive.

I find the general idea charming. It would be great to see the same for the Pi versions of Retroarch, but for now the team seems to limit it to Windows and Linux. That's alright. From a performance perspectiv a June Canyon NUC performs very well (good enough for anything up to 16-bit plus Playstation) and adding an external $20 disc drive seems like a ultra nice solution to enable physical disc playback.

Has anybody tried this?

(I'd try the Libretro boards of course, but my old login doesn't work, no email is sent on a password-restore request and no confirmations are sent for new registrations either - - go figure...)

[ldeveraux]

so, basically what Seedi tried and Polymega might achieve one day.

Retroarch for Windows and Linux supports physical CD playback for Sega CD, PC Engine, Playstation and Saturn. Works well in general (at least from Retroarch's side), but Windows 10 and today's drives might be causing a problem. When I use a (vintage) external CD drive on a low-spec Win 10 machine ($99 Nuc) I get flawless results, but I try using a modern external DVD writer, red book audio becomes choppy as hell. From frequent audio breakups with one drive to permanent stutter (even in gameplay) with another drive.

I find the general idea charming. It would be great to see the same for the Pi versions of Retroarch, but for now the team seems to limit it to Windows and Linux. That's alright. From a performance perspectiv a June Canyon NUC performs very well (good enough for anything up to 16-bit plus Playstation) and adding an external $20 disc drive seems like a ultra nice solution to enable physical disc playback.

Has anybody tried this?

(I'd try the Libretro boards of course, but my old login doesn't work, no email is sent on a password-restore request and no confirmations are sent for new registrations either - - go figure...)

I didn't know that was available now. Is it only for pc, or would it work on something like RetroPie?

[Fudoh]

it's available in Retroarch, which is the basic core of all those distributions, but as far as I know, it's not yet enabled on anything but Windows or Linux yet.

You can though create a boot medium for any windows machine to easily try this without installing anything or having to run an OS underneath it.

Just beware: Lakka (which is Retroarch's "basic linux" is quite from being intuitive and it can be a little frustrating compared to Retropie or Recalbox).

[Fudoh]

The external drives that perform very well are powered externally. Although the newer drives are rather slim low-power drives (one's a slot-in, the other one with a notebook style tray), I'll try one of those dreaded USB-Y cables for more power delivery to the drive. Just can't find any around here, so I'll have to wait for some to come in.

Has anybody tried Saturn emulation through Retroarch ? I'd be interested to learn which exact processor is necessary to run these at 60fps. When looking the current NUCs: 100 EUR = Celeron J4005, 220 EUR = 2-core i3, 300 EUR = quad i5. A tiny Ryzen3 machine is something like 260 EUR (zotac C621), but the processor has only half the power of the i5 NUC.

[BONKERS]

The external drives that perform very well are powered externally. Although the newer drives are rather slim low-power drives (one's a slot-in, the other one with a notebook style tray), I'll try one of those dreaded USB-Y cables for more power delivery to the drive. Just can't find any around here, so I'll have to wait for some to come in.

Has anybody tried Saturn emulation through Retroarch ? I'd be interested to learn which exact processor is necessary to run these at 60fps. When looking the current NUCs: 100 EUR = Celeron J4005, 220 EUR = 2-core i3, 300 EUR = quad i5. A tiny Ryzen3 machine is something like 260 EUR (zotac C621), but the processor has only half the power of the i5 NUC.

It'd be nice if more devices like the Retrode were available affordably. It'd be great to be able to use real carts with an adapter with emulation too more accessibly.

I have an R5 2600x in my main PC and it seems to run Beetle Saturn with some frame delay without major issues. Though I haven't tried many games.
I'd have to imagine one of the current 3rd gen Ryzen 3 chips would do great. (Especially if you use SSF or Yabause)

[Fudoh]

It'd be nice if more devices like the Retrode were available affordably. It'd be great to be able to use real carts with an adapter with emulation too more accessibly.

I'm really wondering why nobody was written a driver for the Retrofreak cartridge module. It's modular anyway (separate case from the actual emu box with its ARM core) and has all the major cartridge connectors on it for a quite reasonable price.

I have an R5 2600x in my main PC and it seems to run Beetle Saturn with some frame delay without major issues.

haha, ok, but then again the 2600x is a 95W desktop CPU with twice the power of a 300 EUR NUC. Not what I was looking for to do some emu experiments. I was trying to recreate the smallest possible setup to mimic what the Polymega does.