Could a Chromebook work as a retrogaming station?

[kremiso]

it's all in the title

i was wondering if a cheap Chromebook could work as retrogaming machine

if yes, how far do you think would it go?
PS2 perhaps?

[alexh]

Has to be an Intel based Chromebook. Has to have a BIOS capable of booting from USB.

Look up https://batocera.org/

Chromebooks tend to be extremely underpowered and some have custom chipsets/BIOS making it difficult to run anything other than ChromeOS.

There is a retroarch for ChromeOS but I am led to believe the experience depends on the Chromebook HW.

Dolphin just about runs Wii but N64 emulation is ok. Never had a PS2 at the time so I don't tend to play PCSX2

[dreamkatcha]

I got one just for watching YouTube while I workout. It struggles to do that smoothly so I dread to think how painful emulation would be. Save yourself the headache and get a real computer.

[Anubis]

Other option is to use RecalBox.

https://www.recalbox.com/

It works great on RPi400 and I've seen some videos made on those less than 300 bucks mini PCs.

[gimbal]

YES.

If you use it as a thin client for a gaming machine in the cloud. The Chromebook is perfect for such a task. But I wonder if the required software to do so would even run on it.

[khph_re]

Make sure it's a newer one that supports Android - then you can use the Android emulators, these tend to support Linux as well.

There are a few ex school ones floating about on Wowcher/Groupon that support neither.

I actually pickup up one of these, a Dell 3120, it supported neither Linux or Android, but some kind soul had written windows drivers for the whole thing - so £40 and a bit of tinkering got me a little machine for emulation/old GOG games.

[kremiso]

thanks all for the honest replies
i'm just pondering all the different opportunities to an expensive new PC

it would be a 100% browsing and retrogaming machine

about Chromebook, i have asked here cause online seems popping out a lot of pages that just stink, saying ie now you can run also this emulator, but no test running results

do you know a good place to read about external tv connection, and controllers compatibility?

[Anubis]

ETA Prime had multiple videos with different hardware configurations, from single board computers, minis, and even chrome books.

[ Show youtube player ]

[khph_re]

Originally Posted by kremiso

do you know a good place to read about external tv connection, and controllers compatibility?

TV out will be on a model by model Basis, Controller support is patchy.

Have you considered an Android box?

Mine is six years old, and manages all 8 and 16 bit Emulation, and Playstation1 is full speed. Dreamcast and and PSP are a bit slow, but playable with frame skip. It has bluetooth and connects to my Xbox1 pad just fine. It also runs GeForce Now
PC game streaming service.

A modern box would kick the crap out of mine in terms of CPU and GPU performance, and I'm pretty sure it could do PS2. The Nvidia Shield is probably the fastest.

Another cheap solution: If you own an old phone with TV out, permanently connect it to your TV and use Bluetooth controllers.

[Pyromania]

I’ve got a Chronebook. What’s the best way to make it an Amiga?

[khph_re]

Originally Posted by Pyromania

I’ve got a Chronebook. What’s the best way to make it an Amiga?

Is it a more modern Chromebook that supports Linux and Android?

[Anubis]

Not sure about chromebook, but I did try amilator on one of old laptops, and that did work great. It turned laptop into Amiga, boot right into WB and could play games, even use save states.

[tommywiz]

There are just so many ways to emulate nowadays it makes my head hurt!