Hey guys,
I'm looking into building a classic gaming console, and I'd like to make it as cheap as possible, but to have the following on the MB:
* 3 USB ports (2 for controllers and one for keyboard)
* can boot from memory card (or some sort of easily removeable flash memory (I want to do that vs. hard drive because the goal is to be able to possibly have different cards for different emulators/boot OS's, potentially)
* no controller(s) needed for hard drive/floppy drive/CD
* either needs onboard video and audio capable of output to TV (A/V, S-Video, HDMI, etc.) and audio (phono) out or has 1-2 card slots of some sort (PCI, AGP, PCI express, etc.) for those purposes (and suggestions on cheap cards much appreciated!)
* x86 CPU support (preferably supports a CPU that is very cheap)
* memory requirements relatively small (not going to be running much on it)
I have seen micro-form factor stuff like gumstix and other various small-form factor PCs, but I was hoping to find something that was very cheap (aim is <$150 for the whole system, so MB would need to be pretty cheap) that just had the necessities above.
Any ideas/direction? Sorry if this sounds nuts.
I'm looking into building a classic gaming console, and I'd like to make it as cheap as possible, but to have the following on the MB:
* 3 USB ports (2 for controllers and one for keyboard)
* can boot from memory card (or some sort of easily removeable flash memory (I want to do that vs. hard drive because the goal is to be able to possibly have different cards for different emulators/boot OS's, potentially)
* no controller(s) needed for hard drive/floppy drive/CD
* either needs onboard video and audio capable of output to TV (A/V, S-Video, HDMI, etc.) and audio (phono) out or has 1-2 card slots of some sort (PCI, AGP, PCI express, etc.) for those purposes (and suggestions on cheap cards much appreciated!)
* x86 CPU support (preferably supports a CPU that is very cheap)
* memory requirements relatively small (not going to be running much on it)
I have seen micro-form factor stuff like gumstix and other various small-form factor PCs, but I was hoping to find something that was very cheap (aim is <$150 for the whole system, so MB would need to be pretty cheap) that just had the necessities above.
Any ideas/direction? Sorry if this sounds nuts.