So over the weekend I got bored and decided to waste some time playing old console games on my computer. I soon became uncomfortable sitting at my desk and pondered a more portable solution. As luck would have it I had purchased an EEEPC a couple of years ago and once the novelty wore off it has received virtually no use. So a project was born.
I wanted an ultra portable gaming system that had enough horsepower to handle those old school console games that I had grew up with and here is what it took to make it happen.
Here is a complete list of the hardware that I used:
I started off with an EEEPC 4G Surf, a very low power netbook which I had already previously upgraded from 512 MB of RAM to 2 GB (I would highly recommend this upgrade if you have an older netbook). The first thing that I did was to install Windows XP on the device. I chose XP mostly because I was already familiar with the emulation software for that operating system, I had a spare copy laying around, and I knew that my gamepad was compatible with it.
Installing XP was nearly a straight forward process. There was however one slight hang up that could cause you some problems. I initially tried to install Windows XP off of a disk that did not contain Service Pack 2 it repeatedly gave me a Blue Screen of Death. After a few minutes googling, reading a couple of forums, and a trip to get an XP disk with SP2, then the installation went through without a hitch.
Once I had a functioning install of Windows XP it was just a matter of filling an SD card with the emulation software and games that I wanted and configuring my Logitech Gamepad. XP installed the Gamepad automatically and the emulation software would actually run from the SD card itself.
I can honestly say that it has already gotten a fair amount of use and when I have kids I will definitely have something like this handy for those long rode trips.
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