(Image not owned by me) I was wondering, with all these new projects and ideas I see online about people building new types of devices using a Framework mainboard, and one where you can put a Framework laptop logic board into a very slim 3D printed PC Case instead of in a Laptop, I was wondering, has anyone tried using one of these in an Arcade Machine cabinet, preferably a Bartop or Compact Case, and ran MAME on it? How was your experience, and is it really a better, more powerful alternative to a Raspberry Pi?
Think the reasons they are used in arcade machines is they are cheap, and pretty good performance for for price. They are available in large quantities which leads nicely into it, you only have to build out one package as the hardware is always the same and predictable. There is no reason you couldn’t throw a mini pc or any other x86 machine in one but it would add to the cost and you’d be stuck doing a lot more DIY for the software setup.
Not sure if a framework mainboard is the most cost effective solution but if you had an old one laying around or got one on the cheap there is no reason with some tinkering you couldn’t get it work. Depending on the CPU and iGPU it could handle more systems. I’m not sure what the compatibility with the entire MAME library is on the Raspberry Pi is, but I would suspect it is very high already so I don’t know if you’d get any better MAME performance out of it if that was your only target.
That would be a very expensive mame build, and overpowered.
I think it’s a good choice if you want to emulate the more modern console systems and if you have an old one lying around that you replaced, but want something more compact like a bartop cabinet.
Depends, you still need a decent gaming rig to do PS3 emulation. A notebook CPU an iGPU isn’t going to do well for that. But there are a couple of retro systems that the older Pis struggled with, Not sure about the new ones. I know some PS2 and PSP games had issues in the past, and sometimes dreamcast. Ironically I use my steamdeck for most of my emulation on duties, but sadly it can’t handle xbox well. Might be better now, I haven’t tried in a while to see if the newer emulators do better on the steamdeck.