Turning a 15 years old laptop into a children proof retrogaming station

jmholla · on Sept 18, 2023

> To achieve a more children-proof environment, I decided to run Retroarch directly from a TTY, without a graphical server.

I'd love to read more about getting that up.

tetris11 · on Sept 19, 2023

It could be rendering directly to the framebuffer (e.g. `mpv playthisfromtty.mp4`).

Or they mean they used pure X (e.g. `startx`) and added a decent v-sync compositor such as picom.

solene · on Sept 25, 2023

it's directly using the framebuffer without X or Wayland involved. This is possible because of the SDL backend

solene · on Sept 25, 2023

You would like to see more specific instructions for the setup?

karmakaze · on Sept 18, 2023

This is fantastic and should be on the list of "Things to do with an old laptop."

solene · on Sept 25, 2023

Thanks!

jagraff · on Sept 18, 2023

Would love to see a video of the laptop booting and running a game

solene · on Sept 25, 2023

It's a poor quality recording, but here it is https://perso.pw/solene/pc.mp4

hnarayanan · on Sept 19, 2023

Or at least a photo.

solene · on Sept 25, 2023

It's a poor quality recording, but here it is https://perso.pw/solene/pc.mp4

rolph · on Sept 18, 2023

arcade machine parts are tough stuff, if you need a physically durable setup.

they seem to cost 3-6$ usd each,

deafpolygon · on Sept 19, 2023

I would want to use Wayland, though, for the Vsync and other things. I seem to have a better experience with emulation that way.

Is there a way to boot something like Retroarch directly via Wayland using wlroots or something?