Building a "new" emulation/indie game PC this morning.

[fuctfuct]

That is a great setup. Very nice! I have plans to build small form factor bartop arcade cabinets around small motherboards with integrated CRTs. Unfortunately, time and my brother's bad luck have claimed all of my small motherboards I was playing with - they got transplanted into his towers as his hand-me-down motherboards and CPUs died. I blame the cats.
The Retroarch CRT output is based off the work from CRT Emudriver and works well from my tests. I have a couple of instances of the full Retroarch in quarantined folders with preconfigured .ini files for specific emulations. I strongly dislike its interface to the point that I invoke it from command line only. It is capable for sure. I just really dislike it.
I really enjoy River City Girls - the devs did a great job of capturing Kunio and giving it a cool facelift. My niece and I are having a great time playing through the campaign, tho it's in small bursts over some months now.

If you're running Retroarch, and wish to interface a 15khz SD CRT screen, I think it's a lot simpler that it used to be. The RGB output off the VGA port of the old GPUs I run can be wired through a transcoder into any CRT capable of component. The games all run perfectly with similar if not cycle-accurate output as they did in the arcade or other RGB setup.

I used to run a separate portable Retroarch folder for each system. Until I got used to the UI. I feel ya there

I'm down to a single 27in CRT now. It has some problems. Slight high pitch noise and some geometry issues. I think I might grab a few 13in TVs soon just to keep for the future.

I sailed the seas to acquire River City Girls last night. Played for a couple hours. Added to my Steam wishlist.

Do you use a frontend? I've tried them all, but don't like any of them. Launch Box comes close .. But not enough for me to buy it. So I just run plain Windows and a K400+ :/

[Anapan]

IMO, a 27" Sony FD Trinitron gets the ideal 240P image. PVMs and HD CRTs are too sharp an image. Smaller SD CRTs are okay, but lack some definition, and larger SD CRTs lose too much definition for play up-close, not to mention the weight and size. Unfortunately, repair of a consumer CRT is kind of difficult compared to recycling and replacement IMO. The noise can come from several places and all of the repair and replacement options are hard to source, at least, here in Canada they are.
Heh, The Bay's still stocked after all these years.

I dislike all of the frontends I tried for various reasons - most are too flashy, and have too many problems when being shown through the hacked drivers on SD resolutions.
I've settled on the original Win32 EmulationStation - I also dislike it, but I have been able to make it work for my needs. It's the one I started with years ago - incidentally the same one used (heavily modified) for all of the Linux and Raspberry Pi distributions of Retroarch. Despite it being abandoned on the Windows platform for many years, I've discovered workarounds for all the shortcomings I've had with it. At least it does a great job of listing all the roms or games in a folder in a simple and straightforward way. Text only, and graphics with scraping databases is still workable. Customization is easy enough. Some external utilities were required to make some games or emulators launch in 240P properly, other were required post-game exit for returning to the frontend. The ability to launch emulators or batch files with command-line passthrough of parameters is great despite (or because of?) no GUI for these options is necessary. All are easily edited .INI files.

PM me if you wish to browse the filesystem backup to see how I've set my OS up for frontend use through only controller (through a keyboard encoder) launch of everything.

[fuctfuct]

IMO, a 27" Sony FD Trinitron gets the ideal 240P image. PVMs and HD CRTs are too sharp an image. Smaller SD CRTs are okay, but lack some definition, and larger SD CRTs lose too much definition for play up-close, not to mention the weight and size. Unfortunately, repair of a consumer CRT is kind of difficult compared to recycling and replacement IMO. The noise can come from several places and all of the repair and replacement options are hard to source, at least, here in Canada they are.
Heh, The Bay's still stocked after all these years.

I mostly agree. I do not like the look of PVM style displays. It doesn't look right. I also very much prefer curved screens over "flat." I love the look of cheap 20in CRTS..

(View in original size)


My other fave is the 14inch Toshiba with component. Even if it is "flat." Haven't seen one of those locally for years :/

I will likely try to fix and recap this 27in CRT at some point. Every time my father comes over and sees it he asks why I don't recycle it lol.

I dislike all of the frontends I tried for various reasons - most are too flashy, and have too many problems when being shown through the hacked drivers on SD resolutions.
I've settled on the original Win32 EmulationStation - I also dislike it, but I have been able to make it work for my needs. It's the one I started with years ago - incidentally the same one used (heavily modified) for all of the Linux and Raspberry Pi distributions of Retroarch. Despite it being abandoned on the Windows platform for many years, I've discovered workarounds for all the shortcomings I've had with it. At least it does a great job of listing all the roms or games in a folder in a simple and straightforward way. Text only, and graphics with scraping databases is still workable. Customization is easy enough. Some external utilities were required to make some games or emulators launch in 240P properly, other were required post-game exit for returning to the frontend. The ability to launch emulators or batch files with command-line passthrough of parameters is great despite (or because of?) no GUI for these options is necessary. All are easily edited .INI files.

PM me if you wish to browse the filesystem backup to see how I've set my OS up for frontend use through only controller (through a keyboard encoder) launch of everything.

I've tried EmulationStation on PC a few times. Good on you for getting it working. Took me a while to get even basic shit working on it, lol. I like LaunchBox with a simple theme, but it is SLOOOOOOOOW, among a few other things.

Have you considered a Mister FPGA? Seems like it would be perfect for you. I think I'm gonna buy one this week to mess about with. But I'm not sure i can live without RetroArch's CRT filters.