Raspberry Pi - I assume emulation is possible but not sure how to do it; please help

Note: Please move this to a more appropriate section. I'm not all that familiar with this place and apparently chose poorly; my apologies.

So my nephew and I are looking at getting a Raspberry Pi. He's 9 and not yet a programmer; I'm 34 and a hobbyist programmer. We've both used lots of emulation before (I love retro games) and I'm looking forward to the possibility of getting the Pi to run little ROM collections... and maybe even get a hex editor and start hacking 'em - and teaching my nephew to hack as well.

As I understand the Raspberry Pi: $30 computer, minimalist operating system called Raspbian (free software Linux thing), I'll have to get the hardware separately (monitor, keyboard, trackball), and we'll get a USB hub for plugging in multiple things. And you swap out entire operating systems by switching SD cards, so it's kind of like going back to the days when you had to use floppy disks to boot up.

I've never used Linux; I grew up using DOS and am used to Windows. So I've got some questions about how this will all work out. Especially, I want a head's-up about any compatibility issues I might not be aware of, and any extra things I'm going to have to mess with to get it all working. So these questions are for anyone who knows the Raspberry Pi, and/or anyone who knows Linux (particularly Debian):

Software-wise:

I assume it's possible to load up an SD card with an operating system, an emulator or three, and a bunch of ROMs. Is this difficult? The files themselves are tiny (at least, ROMs are tiny and I think emulators aren't huge... actually, I'm expecting Linux emulators to be smaller than Windows ones), so I don't anticipate any problems putting a bunch on one SD card. I assume at some point we'll have a small library of SD cards, including one with my nephew's favorite ROMs (and everything necessary to run them), another with mine, and a third with educational games, etc. I'd say each ROM card would also have Minecraft, but I'm not sure how much space the world save files will take, so Minecraft might need its own cards.

Secondly, the ability to hack ROMs. I assume I'll be able to stick a hex editor and maybe one of those ROM graphics viewers on there too. Suggestions for specific software choices? I have a little experience with hacking but not a lot; mostly I've messed with the text different characters say, or the names of items etc. I'm going to be careful because, as I understand it, it's possible to make the kind of mistake that has a ROM go outside its boundaries and start messing up files or even the operating system itself, but I figure this would be easy to recover by just re-ghosting (hope I'm using that term correctly) the SD card. Since ideally the hacking stuff would be on a separate SD card (rather than on the same card as our regular playable ROM collections), there won't be any lost save files.

And lastly, I assume I'll be putting programs etc. on the SD card using my Windows computer, then giving the cards to the Pi, rather than using the Pi to download and install programs directly, even though it has ethernet. Any wrong thinking here?

Hardware-wise:

I assume it's possible to hook up one or more controllers (NES, SNES, or Genesis) through the USB hub. I've never hooked up controllers to my computer (except for one guitar controller); is there anything special about the Raspberry Pi that would make this difficult or troublesome?

I... guess that's it with the questions. Anything else you can advise me with regards to the Raspberry Pi? Thanks for the help!

Well this is the first time I've heard about this hardware (looks pretty cool) but as far as I can understand from the wikipedia article, it's just a regular computer, albeit an underpowered one. It says there that both linux and android have been ported to this system, so yes I guess you can just use regular linux or android emulators.

I don't know much about rom hacking but it should be possible with linux.

I think it'll be ok to use Windows to put the OS and the roms there and then run them. It depends on how the system works, you'll learn that stuff once you've actually bought it. :)

About controllers, they should work with linux but depending on the controller you might have to go through some difficulties to install the required drivers for them to function.

There are some regular linux users on this forum who can probably answer this question better than me (I rarely use linux), but you've posted this in the wrong section so they probably won't see it. Ask an administrator to move your post to this section.

Yes, I'd like that. I edited my original post to ask for it.

When you say "seems like a regular computer"... well, I know it's capable of running a version of Minecraft specifically made for it, so its graphics handling is at least that good. But I'm a little spooked after seeing my niece's laptop that can barely get online or do anything useful because the resources it commands are so limited. I guess I'm not sure where the Raspberry Pi falls on the continuum from "computer I'm used to" to "useless like my niece's laptop." From the description, it's a lot better than my niece's laptop, but this wouldn't be the first time I've picked up a system only to find out later that it's not capable of doing what I bought it for.

It's nothing new but it's not mainstream by far

It can be used as a good learning tool but I am unaware of it's true capabilities but windows is not one, the chip set used is closer to mobile console systems or mobile phones than actual PC logic, but you can find that out by reading up on it fully (I have not myself)

Linux itself is by far better than Windows and your nieces laptop is probably is not as bad as you think if you installed Linux on that instead of Windows, then again Windows is user friendly but if it's that bad and you are comfortable enough with linux to pass on how to use it then linux would make that laptop run a lot smoother

I like the user friendly nature of Windows myself but I'm not stupid either I know how unstable Windows is and has almost always been and I know it is very heavy on resources

Linux is the other way round, it's not a gui based user friendly but it is stable and it is minimalist in it's use of resources

The ikle hardware you have may just please you :), not 100% sure where to find all the latest Linux based emulators but zophar's Domain is a good start www.zophar.net

Those can also be used as part of a learning process they tend to have source releases as well as compiled releases

You will tend to find that some roms are a lot bigger than others, emulators should be rather small, the problem I have is that linux based emulators are still based upon PC hardware so I wouldn't know if they will work on that little kit you got yourself

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Zorlon

the problem I have is that linux based emulators are still based upon PC hardware so I wouldn't know if they will work on that little kit you got yourself

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He can get the open source ones and compile them for his hardware I think.

Hey I personally haven't got a pi but my housemate has been working with them over the past year so I can give a little insight.

Just a heads up, you might of heard but with the setup of the Pi, the operating system does not come with a GUI by default, you normally need to install one like Gnome or KDE through the terminal. But I imagine there is a vast amount of youtube videos out there to help with this.

As you might know the raspbian operating system is a flavour of Debian, meaning most of the software created for debian *should* be able to run on the pi. I believe some emulators such as zsnes have '.deb' files which are the debian version of a windows installer (easy to use!). You could possibly download these files on windows, move onto sd card then install while on the pi.

But with putting large amounts of additional software onto the device, I would highly recommend purchasing and using an ethernet cable with the Pi, Being connected to the internet allows for you to download software through the linux terminal or a software/package manager.

The advantages of this is that say for example you do the above method of moving a '.deb' installing onto the pi from windows you might find the '.deb' program requiring additional libraries or software which it needs to install. (In linux most programs dont come pre-built (i.e. .exe) and require extra libraries to be compiled). But the biggest advantage is once you have a graphical software manager installed then the massive software repositories are at your disposal :)

Overall I think with a little bit of research (youtube :) ) on your part on learning how to use the linux terminal/shell scripts and the application installer command ('apt-get') you should be able to get setup fairly easily with quite a few emulators. For the roms you could simply copy and paste them from windows or download them directly from the pi website browser.

With the SD cards you might find investing about £16 on amazon will get you a 32gb sandisk allowing for tonnes of retro games :) and less effort for switching about (or setting up multiple ones!). Alternatively you might wanna look into a USB port adapter to get more ports and use a regular usb drive.

Doubt minecraft worlds would exceed 100mb each unless you try to run to the edge of the world.

Concerning the hardware bit, I recently managed to get a wireless xbox controller working on linux (using the official wireless adapter) so I would imagine for other devices such as NES/SNES you will probably need to do a bit of digging on google for programs made by other hobbyists to enable them. But this does normally require you to compile the software yourself. If you have done a little programming then I would recommend taking a look at MakeFiles, which many many people tend to use for compiling on linux.

Hope that helps! sadly dont know anything on hacking roms :P

Thank you for your advice. I do expect to have to do a certain amount of learning via YouTube and various tutorials, and I'm not too bad at self-learning, so I don't anticipate too steep a learning curve.

The Pi (or, as my brother recently pointed out, competitors like the Cotton Candy) is becoming a better solution every time I return to it. Today it's because the nephews and nieces are over, clamoring for games, and the SNES part of our Retro Duo is broken. I tried to hook up an old SNES but don't have the cords, so I started to look up repairing the Retro Duo (can't find a place that does it) or buying a used SNES, and honestly, if I'm going to pay that much for the hardware then why not get something more versatile? The kids'd be able to play the good old games like Super Metroid, and then program some of their own without headaches like homebrew cartridges, and we adults might actually get our computer back when they're over here :)

The only problem I could see you having with emulators is that a lot of the emulators for linux are spotty at best; some don't have joypad support at all, others don't even have a gui to work with, and still others aren't necessarily available by default in debians software repositories. It'll likely be more time consuming getting all of the ones you want set up and working correctly, at least compared to windows, as you generally can't just download and run a simple executable as you can in windows.

Just a heads up, and something to consider if/when you do decide to embark on your first journey into linux land.