Franken-linus' N64 :: Postmortem :: Part 1

As long time readers will know, these days I have a ritual that I picked back up from the middle-school years of playing console games after school (and work, now). I missed out on a lot of the hits of the N64/PS1 era, and wanted to recreate that special feeling of siting by the TV away from the laptop with some new games from the best era of gaming.

(Mind, there's nothing wrong with emulating/playing via keyboard ... but you're stuck to a laptop screen, and it's not quite that childhood sensation before work laptops were a thing.)  Until now. :D 

Behold, the rig that contains of:

• an old PS3 USB controller that connects to ...
• a System76 Ubuntu laptop with Mupen64Plus running [ $definitely_a_legally_acquired_game ], also connected to ...
• a HDMI/AVI converter that's tethered to...
• a VCR with AVI input from the 00's (because that's how we roll, if it ain't broke, don't fix it) which hooks up to ...
• the flatscreen TV we only replaced the CRT gigamonster with because a family member wanted more real estate for sports (which is a choice i regret tbh because i hate smart tv's, but that's a story for another day)

Work in progress of the rig!

the how: 

( Read more... )

preview of part two: 

(1) fixing the savestates bug I've been procrastinating on
(2) testing on Majora's Mask to confirm durability of emulation (so it's truly for leisure and not just a tech flex)
(3) AVI/HDMI connection and chaining it all together physically
(4) the moment of truth ...

[ PART 2 LINK PLACEHOLDER ]