Thanks to a very generous teacher at an educational institute (cheers Trevor), I now have a Raspberry Pi (model B) for testing. I’ve been interested in this project: Porting LinuxMCE MD to Raspbian, and hopefully will contribute when I have time to test/compile.
To check the CPU/GPU speed, I tried installing Quake3. Had to compile from source code to fix library errors, and about an hour later, I had some Y2K era gaming fun. The FPS are a little laggy, but still enjoyable.
Next tried an XMBC distro XBian. Initial play back was smooth, but then decayed and the audio was out of sync for movie clips. Audio visualizations weren’t accurate using HDMI (analog may be different). Which is a pitty because my original XBox played them fine. The main difference is the higher resolution GUI and digital audio out.
UPDATE 21-8-12
Thought of a good use for it; To replace the PC I have in my MAME cabinet (from my old site Haxordbox.com). I have found a few places on the internet that have MAME running on a Pi. There’s reports of possible speed issues on games that have high graphics requirements.
UPADATE 24-8-12
Played a few basic games – 1942/43, Wonder Boy, etc.. Results look good using AdvMAME from a console, from an x11 Environment, not so much.
Compiled AdvMenu and AdvMAME for the Raspberry Pi, here is the source with compiled binaries: AdvMenu, AdvMAME. You just have to unzip the file and do a “make install” from within the created directory – after that it’s just like setting them up normally. I did how ever have issues with installing AdvMenu, so I just copied the binary to /usr/bin. I have included the source as well just in-case you need to recompile it. I’m not sure if there was any additional libraries required because I installed them on an SD-Card that’s already got other software on it. **End of Disclaimer ** 🙂 AdvMenu provides a good, basic menu to shuffle through a list of games. Again – Simpler games run better than games that are more graphics intensive. I had also read that this may change in a future release where hardware rendering is being developed (link pending).
By changing the clock speed, you do get better results, although like PC overclocking there will be a cost… “Fizzle, POP!”
References:
- wiki.linuxmce.org/index.php/Porting_Raspbian
- www.raspberrypi.org
- www.xbian.org
- blog.sheasilverman.com/2012/06/raspberry-pi-and-mame-part-2/
- 1337technophile.blogspot.com.au/2012/03/compiling-xmame-106-on-rasberry-pi.html
Cheers.
I had compiled my own advmenu and I was getting a static noise when I ran it. So I tried yours and I am still getting it. Using HDMI. Any idea how I can get rid of it?
Not sure do you get the same using the RCA video out? I do have noise on 1 of my TV’s when using HDMI’s but VGA works OK. Does your Pi emit static on your display when using any other GUI’s or audio programs? Do you have your audio levels on the TV and Pi set too high? – Just guessing at this point
Cheers