Turn An Old Cheap PC Into An Emulation Dream Machine!
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 25 มิ.ย. 2024
- In this video, I show you how to turn an old office PC or Laptop into an emulation powerhouse using Batocera! This can for very cheap and easily using an old office PC from Lenovo, Dell or HP but I recommend using at least a 3rd gen intel i5 or better.
THIS VIDEO IS FOR EDUCATIONAL AND DEVELOPMENT PURPOSES ONLY!
This video covers it all from installing the Batocera to Adding Games, Setting up controllers, Changing themes, confining a controller for the DOlphin emulator, and More. So if you are interested in playing your favorite retro games like PS2, Dreamcast, Gamecube, SNES, Sega Saturn, Neogeo, Sega mega drive, and many many more then this tutorial is for you!
Download Batocera Here: batocera.org/
Download Etcher here: www.balena.io/etcher/
Learn More and Get Help here: wiki.batocera.org/
Optiplex 3050 Mini: ebay.us/9NrTEQ
Dell i5 Desktop: ebay.us/gVJYth
HP i5 PC: ebay.us/FEHL0U
Lenovo i5 Desktop: ebay.us/eQaBzZ
USB to SATA Adapter: amzn.to/3i99mYh
SSD: amzn.to/3elIhA1
500GB Mechanical Drive: amzn.to/3emSVqa
USB Drive: amzn.to/2VA5Ka8
Wireless Controllers”cheaper on other sites”: amzn.to/3i9GwXJ
Wired controller: amzn.to/3kjzt1j
Follow Me On Twitter: / theetaprime
Follow Me On Instagram: / etaprime
00:00-Intro
00:30-Overview
01:40-Items Needed
03:47-Batocera Installation
06:45-Transfer Games
07:54-PC Setup
08:38-Bios Setup
09:55-First Boot
10:25-Controller Set-Up
11:05-Adding Games
14:32-Adding Box Art / Scraping Art Work
16:35-Adding & Changing Batocera Theme
18:27-Configure Dolphin Emulator Controller
21:07-CHanging Default Emulators / Batocer Redream
Equipment I Use:
Screen Capture Device: amzn.to/2STpX4C
Tool Kit: amzn.to/2M6l9WS
Soldering Station: amzn.to/2FtdVeu
Camera: amzn.to/2M6KFLB
Tripod: amzn.to/2CmdYVY
Raspberry Pi 4: amzn.to/3cCrvKb
Flirc Case: amzn.to/2OBQTXz
DISCLAIMER: This video and description contains affiliate links, which means that if you click on one of the product links, I’ll receive a small commission at no extra cost to you!
This video and Channel and Video are for viewers 14 years older and up. This video is not made for viewers under the age of 14.
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ETAPRIME
12520 Capital Blvd Ste 401 Number 108
Wake Forest, NC 27587 US
THIS VIDEO IS FOR EDUCATIONAL AND DEVELOPMENT PURPOSES ONLY!
#etaprime #Batocera DISCLAIMER: Under section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for “fair use” for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, education, and research. No Games Or Applications Are Included Or Added On Or To Any Device In This Video - เกม
I got sober a few years ago and video games became my favorite hobby. I'm loving learning all this types of stuff and one of my kids helped me rig my vita up a while back. I'd love to get into doing this on old pcs and making handhelds.
Batocera is a great choice for retro emulation.
Even up to ps3,depending on your PC hardware ofcourse.
Be prepared to spend a lot of time setting up a build the way you like it though 😁
But hey, thats half the fun ☺️👍
Me to dude got sober about 6 months ago and video games keep me sane
I'm still trying to decide between video games and the bottle.
@@Sh4rtL0rd pick the games
@@jjayala 🤔
I absolutely love this video, not just because it was quite educational when it came to creating your own emulator machine, but how much you went into the little tricks that might help a first time user setting it up. plus easy to follow instructions. Now just gotta find myself the proper console i want to use.
When i discovered your channel i saw your first batocera guide and since that day I havent been so happy playing old school games on my potato PC, you are an absolute legend Sir.
Many good PC games released in 2000-2010 that could be played on igpu. Mostly shooters, though. Many console ports, too like Onimusha, Metal Gear Solid 2, Silent Hill 2, etc.
@@main_tak_becus6689 Uhm, thats a good point, thanks for sharing this, I like PC games too, I am not an emulational freak tbh, I love good old PC games too, but sadly i am reliying on a very low end pc hardware, with a core 2 duo, 4 gigs of ram and a crappy nvidia gpu card, I am limited. and I love 80s/90s console games, including MAME (Arcade) games
@@nux3960 great. Many indie games also run on old hardware. I like Metroidvania indie games, but I sold my gaming PC 6 months ago because of financial issue and got a PS2 Slim. I completed more games on PS2 in 6 months than on my gaming PC for 4 years lol (I played arpg, wrpg, jrpg on PC so a game could last hundred of hours while on PS2 I play action adventure games which mostly can be finished in 12 hours or less). Nothing wrong with limited hardware, dude. Just enjoy it!
For classic PC games can check out GOG. I bought a lot of the old school games like King's Quest series, Might & Magic series, the old Dungeon & Dragons RPGs, Hexen, Heretic etc.
Can I just say I really enjoy and appreciate all your videos. I often wonder how you dont tire of doing them, but appreciate that you keep churning them out. I LOVE that you dont waffle on about non related stuff and your videos are ALWAYS on subject and packed with lots of info.
Seeing this recent video makes me want to try Batocera again. I think as good as the Pi4 is, a cheap i5 or i7 already comes ready for action. Size doesn't matter when moulting in a cabinet. Actually it doesnt even really matter when under a TV either.
Thank YOU !!!
Woohoo..now my old pc will no longer be a coffee table...
doing the Lord's work - rescuing old PCs from e-waste centers :-)
@@TheSulross Or in his case, from coffee stains lol :D
Or, you could have a coffee table that plays GameCube games!
@@OtioseFanatic and then make a coffee table book about coffee table gaming pc's :)
Unless you make a coffee table cocktail cab... then is can still be a coffee table and a gaming rig.
To get boxart for Marvel vs. Capcom, you need to rename the file to: Marvel vs. Capcom 2 (USA)
Yeah, no-intro/redump naming conventions tend to work best.
I’ve been slowly getting in to emulating games and I gotta say this is so far is the best video I’ve come across
Thanks great video. Finally someone did a step by step that makes it easier. A lot of videos skip over some steps or information.
I recently built a pc with a 4th gen i5 I had laying around and install batocera on it. As I thought, this video has actually helped me with some useful tips I didn't know about, thank you c:
Anything else I recommend batocera nation channel
@@anikitwoeight7623 good one, thanks c:
Do you play any PS3 or XB360 titles on your machine?
@@trevorromney3589 No chance. Not with a 4th gen.
@@trevorromney3589 i think a build with i3 8th gen could play them. Very cheap cpu, much better vga chip than i5 4th gen and DDR4 instead DDR3. And the price difference is too low. Also maximize graphic card's memory from bios could help for that
One thing that's cool is if you choose redream and you've bought the full version, you can place the redream key in the configuration folder. Once you play a game after selecting redream, the config folder will show up (it won't until you've opened a game with redream). Then you'll have the ability to have more save States and higher resolution.
Not even a gamer but enjoy these kind of videos as am fascinated about subject of emulating retro computers and game consoles to the point of being viable for play to contemporary gamers - and is a bit amusing that the x86-64-bit PCs used to run the emulation software are themselves on the verge of slipping into retro status :-)
Thanks for the update. I first got into Batocera watching the original setup video 2 years ago!
Also good to know if you can't get into the bios a lot of the oem pre-built pcs have a little jumper pin that you either remove or move over to the other pin beside it and it will remove the lock on the bios.
@Jessi very true but if the bios lock is still on you won't be able to change any settings.
Thanks for taking the time to explain the entire process. Can't be easy making these long videos. I'm going to get the USB adapter to flash a spare SSD to swap in and out of my 3050 since it is so easy to do. 1 win 10 ssd and 1 batocera SSD.
You are a wholesome and passionate man talking about setting up an emulator station. In all your videos, you do it for your audience and for yourself. I notice that you really enjoy showing us what you like or what you discover. You are like a lil' kid talking about your fav toy car. Love your videos, man! Keep going on! Hope you are doing good after being sick!
Lol, you sounded like a fortune teller.
@@acejon2162 LMAO hahaha now that I read it again, bullseye, lol
As always, great stuff! I'll definitely use one of these for my arcade builds
Smart!
Pro tip: If you have a separate PC, use a USB stick to write Ventoy onto it, _then_ fetch an image for basically any Arch derivative that will work for you. Provided the target computer doesn't have Windows already, you can use that to fetch from the AUR *balena-etcher* and then use _that_ with your PC to flash Batocera onto your larget machine's internal media.
You then a) do absolutely nothing with your main PC except download games, b) have a spare OS on hand via Ventoy to boot into and c) don't need to spend the extra dosh on a USB to SATA adapter.
This should be the standard practice anymore. So much better
@@oplefirem There are _still_ people who insist Ventoy is useless tat. I think it's useless waiting for a rolling release distro to finish downloading expressly to waste more time flashing it again.
@@bluephreakr This is my exact issue, I have one drive with most images I need. No reflashing
So let's see which PCs ETA is going to guarantee being sold out 😁. Love the work you put in, keep up the great work!
This is an update to the first video i watched on this channel. You change my gaming life with it, I appreciate it man. Thank you.
Lol, me too. My first ETA video was the Batocera setup video 2 years back. Second one was the T95 Max Android Box which I immediately bought after watching the video.
This is amazing and super helpful, thank you so much for creating this tutorial!!
Awesome Video.. Thanks ! 🙌
Great video! I realized I had a completely empty hard drive installed in my old computer, which is hooked up to the TV in the living room for watching stuff online.
Now my old PC is multi-functional, I can either boot it up as a Windows PC or as the Batocera gaming station. It only took about an hour to get it set up to play NES and SNES games, had a blast last night with my girlfriend revisiting games from childhood.
Hii I just wanted to ask you a question do you need a another pc to set up batocera ? . One more question if you set up batocera can you still use windows ?
I too am curious how this is working out. I'm thinking of getting an extra SSD for my main gaming pc and setting it up to run batocera. Can you add roms to the batocera drive while booted into the windows drive? Or do you still need to copy via a usb? What does your boot up process look like? How do you select which drive to boot? Do you have to enter the bios each time you want to switch?
@@user-ps7lc9om9x a bootable batocera, yes - you can still use windows on that PC. You just have to choose the boot device when starting up your system.
There are videos about bootable batocera
If I ever come across an older PC that I can use specifically for this: I'm there! Looks like the best possible way to experience retro games on a modern OS.
Dude, thank you so much! I've been wanting to set this up. Great video. 😎👍
Batocera is awesome! Been using it on my Odroid N2+ for about a year now. Love everything about it.
does it autoupdate ?
Yes, auto update option is in settings.
@@umersalman1 Yep, just updated to the latest stable the other day
Ha! And I was just getting bored for the Weekend.
Thank you very much, Mr. Prime!
Great video! Convinced me to finally prepare my own retro machine :-)
My hero.... U revived my childhood bro.. Thaaanks
Wow I have never heard of Batocera before. This is so dope
Its great if you have a spare PC and want a standalone emulation box.
It’s basically Retropie for a PC.
It's a nice OS and easy to set up and use.
Yeah same. It's great so far. It couldn't scrape any art for Mega Drive Tetris, but it's really easy to use for someone like me who's never really done this before
Also check Batocera Nation on YT and it is a few others that usually Batocera exclusively
I did this while ago on my stock iMac 8,1 20 inch it runs PSP quite well
I did it because of the other video eta did before
what are the specs?
My wii and game cube worka well
I have a late 2009 Mac Mini i may do this with - Any tips ?
I might try this on my iMac 5,1. But I doubt it will work very well
Absolute legend!!! Mate you got no idea how much your video has helped me, thankyou!!! 🙏
Awesome! Did'nt know about this. Thank you so much ETA 😀
I do find transfering the games via FTP to be the quickest method, since my LAN is fast and the HD's speed becomes the bottleneck instead of the of the much lower USB but to each their own. That's the beauty of DIY, there's not a single right answer.
Running this on the upcoming Steam Deck would be amazing. I honestly can’t wait for more info on it to come out.
Yep! I preordered the 256GB, it'll be running Batocera :)
isnt there a windows all in one program like batocera? Like retroarch? What would be the use of using batocera standalone ?
Or are you planning on dual booting ?
Steam deck doesn't come with Windows so you have to pay for it separately.
@@umersalman1 I plan on installing Batocera on a SD, it's an all in one which uses Linux and RetroArch on the backend
Yes same! The closer it gets the more excited I am to see it :D I can’t wait to see more videos on it and really see what it is capable of! Every time a game comes out, like Cris Tales, I’m like ooh you could play this on the steam deck!
Awesome, as always, thanks, ETA Prime!
So very easy to follow, thank you so much for taking the time.
I plan to do this on my Steam Deck and dock it into my arcade cab
I think of something like that. But I need a real small pc. Actually I am happy with a raspberry pi 3 but I dream of some more demanding arcade titles. But the pi3 did all until know. But I don't use games which are not really arcade titles besides very old games.
Do you have any specific information on why 3rd gen Intel CPUs work best? Was there a specific feature that was introduced in 3rd gen?
Hey thanks for the content. Always plenty of videos and great quality advice👍
Gracias amigo, por tomarte el tiempo y explicar tan detalladamente 😎👍 10/10
Nuevo suscriptor!
Saludos desde Colombia 🇨🇴
As a wise man once said, anything can be a famiclone if you try hard enough
This would go well with the steam deck
Nah you can just enter desktop mode and install emulators but you can always do that for better ui
Yes it would / will.
@@ChariPower Or you can simply install EmulationStation, which is the UI. It's also available on the AUR.
Dude, this video was so helpful! Thanks, man.
Great tutorial, exactly what I was looking for, thanks for this!
I built an arcade cab with an old Dell... I probably wouldn't do a Dell again, kind of a headache with all their proprietary weirdness.
Old Dell systems are the worst. My friend did the same thing and ended up having to source a couple systems for extra parts.
Dont worry, you are not alone. That experience with dell hardwares was pain
i hope u get the steamdeck early sample for review sometime later😉
Thank you so much man! I am 37. Wanted to create nostalgy gaming machine. Good video!!!
Awesome. I was hoping you would make this video
Bro really leaked his ip 💀
Hi, is my laptop sufficient?
Specs:
Acer 4740g
i5 430M (gen2)
8GB Ram DDR3 (upgrade from 4GB to 8GB)
480GB SSD
NVIDIA GT310m
You should be able to run systems all the way up to Wii.
Fantastic review my man!
Two thumbs up!
Great complete video man, all people need to get up and running!
Hmm the info about setting up a controller for standalone emulators is wrong.. you need to set IT up in EmulationStation then they work automatic in all emulators. This is the purpuse of Batocera out of the box. Also you are wrong about changing the graphics :(, you can do this (for every standalone emulator and even per RA core) via EmulationStation (via advanced emu conf). This is also implemented by the devs, and I know IT took a lot of work! Kind of disappointed by this.
Ive always wondered what Batocera means.. turns out to be an ugly bug lol
I took a sff dell optiplex 9010 and cleaned it up very nicely. It now has an i7-3770, 16gb ddr3, and a gtx 1650 low profile. It plays todays modern games at respectable settings at 1080p 60fps. I installed windows 11 on it and I use it at my parents place since it doesn't take up a lot of space and I won't have to drive all the way home when my buddies hit me up to play games. It was a great investment.
Thank you for this video. I've just turned my old pc in to a retro games console for my nephew.
Hard to get these at a decent price. Everytime I go to Ebay, they are $200. :(
Ya I would look around, eBay isn’t the place to get them. A lot of schools have old PCs they don’t need.
Try them all. I got a 8th gen i5 8500t 6 core mini pc , 8gb ddr4 ram for 200. Just a freak listing. That was ebay.
check your university surplus store (if your university have them)
There is one on craigslist in Virginia under $150
Try *Craigslist or *offer up or even better *Facebook marketplace. Got myself a optiplex from Facebook marketplace for 160 usd. only reason I even opened an account
my favourite single board computer is raspberry pi 4 8GB ❤️.
But I did not have enough money to buy it. 😭😭
Man, I'm not an IT technician and this looks extremely hard to do but it was an awesome video to watch !!!! Epic tutorial you just made !!!! You know if I can do this on an old laptop gaming pc ?
This is so cool. Thank you for introducing this to me.
He packed 10 videos into one video. He is great.
I'm using this as a guide to help me use my old pc parts so i don't have to look at them collecting dust. I'm pretty excited to play some old games on my living room tv as opposed to my PC monitors!
This is awesome! Thank you! That's a reborn of my old laptop 😃
ETAPRIME I love your videos on emulation and system builds.
Eta prime is the freedom fighter of emulation. Ur videos are awesome.
Always great content! FYI make sure you set power saver to disabled. It makes my NUC8i3 run 100% better.
i tried this on my ryzen 5 3400g and works amazing :) thanks for this video
I have an old mini pc as an HTPC and Retrogaming device on my TV. I set it up to connect to games on my NAS and it works great. I run a minimal install of Arch on it cause it has so many packages besides Retroarch so I can play other games as well.
Very informative video. Thank you so much!
This was excellent. Thank you!
Thanks for this. Gonna try it soon!
You recorded this at 7 am! insane dedication to the channel
Awesome tutorial. Bookmarking this.
After setting up BATOCERA myself, it was played satisfactorily with Intel's 1st generation i7 870 and Nvidia GT 730. Even if it wasn't an SSD, a high-capacity ROM pack (2TB) could be played without problems as long as you endured the tedious initial loading.
Excellent video thank you just gotta decide what pc to get now 👍
Thank you so much sir, you really know what we need 😀
I noticed your video from 2018 had the older PCs priced at $15-$30. Oh how times have changed!
Very good voice and explanation.
Great, setting up controls for the stand alone emulators was very helpful. Greetings
Strange, my Logitech gamepad is auto configured for all the emulators when I plug it in, don't even need to do anything.
This is pretty awesome. Thoughts on using this inside a DIY arcade cabinet to make it seem like an actual arcade?
Also, does Botocera play nice with joysticks, GameCube controllers or N64 controllers via USB adapter?
Im gonna save this for later :) cant wait till i have what i need to start this
The Optiplex 5050s are plentiful, cheap AND they also have an M.2 SSD slot (SATA).. I believe some of the newer one's will support NVME. The bonus is they have built in wireless + wired, multiple front and rear facing USB-As, DUAL HDMI + DP outputs, they are just a dream to use for this purpose and they'e tiny. (they also have active cooling so you don't have to worry about fans, etc.)
Great info, clear and concise, just what I was looking for as I've just got this from eBay UK £50. With dvd drive add-on and 12 month warranty.
Lenovo ThinkCentre M93P USFF Intel Core i5-4570T 2.9GHz 8GB RAM 500GB HDD Win10
Great video! Thank you.
Amazing powerful mini PC
I have the mini PC and it's very powerful when it comes to emulation ✌️
Added to my favorites for later use someday.
1000% trying this on an old laptop before i but a single card pc or used office pc. Should be able to do the older consoles. Fingers crossed 🤞
I'm using old core 2 quad dell optiplex mini i got for less than $30 and it works well in Batocera, since most games i played are from NES, SNES, GENESIS, PS1 and N64 + some old arcade shooter (MAME) era that didn't really require a powerful CPU.
Damn Batocera has come a long way since I last looked at it. They are definitely giving Retropie a run for their money, if not surpassing them outright.
very cool tutorial! thanks
Got one of those Lenovos with an i5 Haswell and a GT1030. Can play everything @1080p (with varying amount of anti-aliasing) up to Dreamcast, GameCube and PS2 at full speed.
It's a good guide, very useful.
Wow! Amazing🤩
Awesome video. Thanks!
If you flashed batocera on your ssd , u can restart windows from that drive by selecting it in boot menu, and copy our games inside batocera . it will see your other drives and u can just copy them.
when ur done just take out and put it in your other system.
I recently put batocera on a flashdrive and did it this way..works perfectly
0:56 it's because Ivy Bridge pretty much across the board used, at the least, HD4000 graphics, i rebuilt a busted laptop running a i7 3537U in it into a sorta NUC i use for capture in OBS as it can do Intel QSV for its codec, as well as it would play stuff even like Firewatch on low 800x600 on 4gb system ram. This also means a minimum of OpenGL 4.3, but more realistically running Vulkan.
I love your channel. Subbed.
Hi I am new to your channel and I have found many many videos extremely helpful. Forgive me if this is something that you have already covered but is Batocera the Emulation OS you recommend? I am looking to build an emulation PC for my parents and while they are good with technology they need something that's easy to navigate, easy to use, and has a decent to good GUI.
I thought this video was great and I have a Micro PC I already upgraded to 16GB of ram and a 480GB SSD so im planning on gearing it towards them. I also dont want to trudge through downloading all the games they want from NES-Gamecube but will suffer through it lol
I can’t wait to see this on the Steam Deck! Gonna be an incredible emulation machine! 😌 I can’t wait
No need to wait for deck, Aya Neo already can do it.
@@acejon2162 Oh yeah I heard about that but I'll wait for the Steam Deck :) appreciate it though!
No problem, ETA actually had quite a number of videos on it if you're interested.
@@acejon2162 Oh, awesome thanks!! I'm new to the channel :) saw Steam Deck videos pop up on TH-cam and here I am lol
Second Live for my Intel NUK (Celeron) and PS3-Controller.
Thank You!