Once again the PC running the classicade has died, this time it’s probably just overheating due to a dodgy fan as it does power on but then shuts down after a couple of minutes. So this time I decided to go another way. Firstly I bought a new usb to joystick controller board ready for the next phase.
When it arrived I removed the joystick panel and took it to the lab (my wife still knows it as our bedroom) and connected the board to the controls. Then mounted the board on the underside ofvthe panel and tested on a Raspberry Pi. It worked perfectly, and that was when I decided that a Raspberry Pi was the way forward.
As I already had a Pi 2 I decided to setup a new SD card with Retropie and try that, after a little setting up it was all looking good on my tv. I mounted the Raspberry Pi on the board too and then looked for a solution for connecting it to the old PC monitor in the Classicade. I found a HDMI to VGA adaptor on Amazon, ordered it and waited.
The adaptor came and was plugged in, the monitor just displayed a green fuzzy line in the middle of the screen. I tried the Pi output settings hoping for a cure, but nothing would persuade the monitor to display a picture. Having given up on that I was lucky enough to spot a HDMI tv in the local ads for just £10, pick it up and put it in the case. Perfect.
So now the screen just needs to be hidden, or at least the gap around it does. Other than that there is just a few setups to work out to get some other systems working, but so far Megadrive, Master System, Arcade systems, Atari 2600 and a few others are working very nicely and Retropie is great as the front end.
