With bluetooth capability wiimotes work like a wiimote... though I am not sure there's a "complete package" for wiimote as wiimote on a windows PC, most activity targetted linux and android and is 10 years or so "old news". What I mean by that is, probably real easy to use Dpad and buttons, a touch more involved to get the acceleration sensors going, and a separate thing again for the IR sensor/camera. However, protocols are known for all, just don't know if there's an all in one windows driver.

Alternatively, there was a kind of wiimote game knockoff, I am having a hard time dredging up the name, that had remotes that you could use with windows but control was a lot less smooth than a wiimote. Anyway, they were in the discount stores and on flea markets anywhere from $10 to $150 for the same thing "wireless game system" or something, they do still turn up from time to time.

Ages since a family member was into dolphin but think it got to be smooth for the version that was current 10 years plus ago on about 1.5ghz of Athlon XP so anything faster than that should be good.

Discussion I've seen about CRT emulation I thought was more at RTX card end of spectrum rather than not very recent desktop gpus.

Seems like there are good deals on the t740 series SFF pc right now, maybe because they are not supported under windows 11. They have an embedded ryzen 1756b cpu with vega 8 graphics. Looks pretty close to the 2200G, which was a capable processor. Looks like it might be able to do wii games. I’ll post some pictures when all the stuff comes in.

https://www.anandtech.com/show/12425/marrying … -2400g-review/7

I got one of these: https://www.microcenter.com/support/623130/at … raspberry-pi-3b

The HP t740 arrived in decent shape w/ 8GB ram & power supply. It is a little too big to fit in the Atari ultimate arcade. Probably a little too hot as well.

I put an 500GB NVME in the y740 that already had a Windows 11 installed on it. I asked for a reset, and windows 11 installed OK, even though the CPU is not supported. I just need to reactivate it at some point.

AMD's automatic driver installer doesn't recognize the Vega 8 on the 1756b CPU, but I have a 2021 driver installed on it support Vulkan, so maybe I'm good to go.

When plugged into my Sony 4k TV, it's only letting me do up to 1080p.

I set up dolphin emulation for some game cube games and it's doing OK with Vulkan, Vsync on , 4x MSAA, and bilinear filtering.

There's a 5-10 frame stutter every couple minutes.

I'll have to get some wii games to try out.

That's odd timing for a stutter on what one would assume is a decently fast system. Maybe it's some crapware checking for updates in a rude manner ???

Have you considered running something a bit lighter (instead of Windows 11)?

I have a potato laptop (AMD E350) and the normal editions of Windows 10/11 are borderline unusable because of background process (Windows updates, virus scanning, etc). No amount of RAM or SSD will make up for the crappy CPU. There are alternative editions of Windows 10/11 (some are hacks, some are official) which are significantly lighter. Linux tends to be lighter still if works for your intended use case.

Maybe Batocera?

bZbZbZ wrote on 2024-08-19, 20:30:

Have you considered running something a bit lighter (instead of Windows 11)?

I have a potato laptop (AMD E350) and the normal editions of Windows 10/11 are borderline unusable because of background process (Windows updates, virus scanning, etc). No amount of RAM or SSD will make up for the crappy CPU. There are alternative editions of Windows 10/11 (some are hacks, some are official) which are significantly lighter. Linux tends to be lighter still if works for your intended use case.

Maybe Batocera?

I hear what you are saying. A lower overhead OS will be better for real time applications, like console emulation.

This is the user benchmark that I took last weekend: https://www.userbenchmark.com/UserRun/68430167

It's got some CPU power and the 3d graphics are not embarrassing.

I'll get a chance to get back to this project next week end. Wife has asked me to focus on selling some of the retro boxes in my basement and I've got a little time before my son finishes the Zelda game he's playing on the Switch emulated N64.

I'd look into windows embedded since you're more familiar with Windows.
You can build a more or less custom install with the absolute bare minimum of services and drivers that you need to run.
I believe it's essentially the base for the many "lite" versions out there.

Also worth noting you can set shell=whatever.exe in the registry if you want.

myne wrote on 2024-08-25, 04:57:

Also worth noting you can set shell=whatever.exe in the registry if you want.

That sounds pretty cool. I'll have to check it out.

Started playing some games. The Atari Retro Arcade works pretty well, but configuring the joystick settings for each MAME rom can be a pain. I'm sure I'll get better at it.
My game cube isos play great in Vulkan mode under **edit** Windows 11 ** . Still get the occasional hitch.
Got a switch joycon to link via blue tooth and it sort of works OK in Wii games, but get performance isn't ideal. There's some definitely choppiness.

Two outstanding issues.
1) Sometimes the fan stops responding until the CPU temp hits 100c, then it runs on high for 20 seconds to get the temp down to 80c, but then stops and the temp climbs right back up again, and the cycle repeats until I reboot. I have the latest BIOS on the system.

2) I have a pretty fast 500GB HP NVME in the T740, but the IP performance is very very slow. My result is circled below.

I suspect that the IO issues and the game cube stutter might be related.

Any bios options for the fan?

Look into "partition alignment". Could be the issue.
Basically the partitions on ssds should be aligned with the block/cluster size of the ssd/partition.

Ssds are usually broken into 4kb blocks.
Partitions usually set their cluster size to 4kb.
This doesn't mean some unaware formatting tool doesn't set them as overlapping.
Eg the first sector could be 1kb of block A and 3kb of block b.

Look into those partition tools. I dunno if partition magic still exists or is aware, but that was one bank in the day.

For the fans, I suggest checking out Fan Control. Yes it's an additional program that needs to run in the background, which isn't great philosophically... but the software is so damn good that I install it on basically any desktop I have that runs Windows 10+. Even on computers where the BIOS fan settings are adequate, this software allows far better fine tuning (want your case fan speed to increase in several stages, as a combined function of multiple temperature readouts?) that I feel it's worth the overhead.

Personally I don't trust anything userbenchmark says. Have you tried running CrystalDiskMark? A good SSD should yield a result roughly like this:

The Random Read 4K Q1T1 result should be more than 30 for a decent SSD, and less than 1 for a hard drive.

Dolphin Emulator will stutter from time to time, as a result of shader compilation. This has gotten better over the years (and as you continue to play the game the stutter will naturally decrease), but it's still imperfect. I'm not saying there's definitely nothing wrong with your SSD, I'm just identifying another potential cause of stutter while emulating Gamecube / Wii / Switch /etc.

bZbZbZ wrote on 2024-08-27, 04:14:

Personally I don't trust anything userbenchmark says. Have you tried running CrystalDiskMark? A good SSD should yield a result […]
Show full quote

Personally I don't trust anything userbenchmark says. Have you tried running CrystalDiskMark? A good SSD should yield a result roughly like this:

The Random Read 4K Q1T1 result should be more than 30 for a decent SSD, and less than 1 for a hard drive.

Dolphin Emulator will stutter from time to time, as a result of shader compilation. This has gotten better over the years (and as you continue to play the game the stutter will naturally decrease), but it's still imperfect. I'm not saying there's definitely nothing wrong with your SSD, I'm just identifying another potential cause of stutter while emulating Gamecube / Wii / Switch /etc.

Thanks for the info about shader compellation. That makes sense

And do I want to do storage benchmarks? I live for storage benchmarks!!!

So yeah. Extremely disappointing. Something is wrong with the storage. My youngest son has the same SSD on a Ryzen system with a B350 chipset and it's 5x - 10x higher. There were two M2 slots inside the T740. One is msata and the other NVME. I'm pretty sure I got it in the right one. Seems unlikely that it would even work in the wrong one.

The T740 device itself is a little wonky over all. It powers itself on all the time. Calling the BIOS bare bones is an insult to bare bones. I feel like I slipped Windows 11 on a system that isn't really supported for Windows 11. I'm not completely disappointed. I mean, it's stable. Stable is important. But I'm not really loving it either. I've got a friend who's daughter needs a computer. It might get donated.

Someone is selling these at impossible cheap prices on ebay right now: https://www.anandtech.com/show/21416/acemagic … h-sff-pc-review

I'm temped to take the risk.

douglar wrote on 2024-08-26, 23:59:

My game cube isos play great in Vulkan mode under DOS.

Under DOS? That doesn't sound right.

Related, it's hard to believe Dolphin still suffers lag due to shader compilation instead of using a single shader for the fixed-function GPU (the old "ubershader" method). The GX GPU more-or-less implements opengl 1.0 which graphics drivers have implemented as a pre-compiled shader ever since opengl 2.0 has been a thing.

jmarsh wrote on 2024-08-27, 12:43:

douglar wrote on 2024-08-26, 23:59:

My game cube isos play great in Vulkan mode under DOS.

Under DOS? That doesn't sound right.

Sorry, I meant Windows 11. I'll fix the original post

douglar wrote on 2024-08-27, 12:16:

Something is wrong with the storage.

Again, check the partition alignment

https://www.thomas-krenn.com/en/wiki/Partitio … led_explanation

myne wrote on 2024-08-28, 11:16:

douglar wrote on 2024-08-27, 12:16:

Something is wrong with the storage.

Again, check the partition alignment

https://www.thomas-krenn.com/en/wiki/Partitio … led_explanation

Partition alignment was a good suggestion. I checked and that was not it. I'm out of the habit of checking for that since I started using Windows 7 / Server 2008, but boy was it important back when I was making SQL 2000 builds on local SCSI arrays. I miss the predictability of physical storage sometimes. While it is perfectly possible to build a VM with SAN storage that performs very well, the VM/SAN architecture has been giving me storage latency headaches for 15 years now.

Anyway, the problem went away. Hard to track down the source of the issue once it ain't there no more. I'll blame onedrive for now. Time to start disabling unnecessary services.

The read scores are passable. The write scores look low, but then Toms review saw something similar. Write speed isn't such a concern for this build. Time to move along.

The first problem problem I'm looking at now is "joystick shift". Anyway to insure the Joystick order under Windows ? I set up my controllers in Mame for the Atari Fight Stick and it is nice. Joy1 = player 1, Joy 2 = player 2. The buttons and the joysticks work much better than those cheapo controllers I used to use with the Raspberry PI 3. The problem is when my son leaves his pro controller plugged in after playing game cube games, I'll come back and all of the joy sticks have shifted. What Was Joy 1 is now joy 2, etc. The answer so far has been to unplug the controller and restart. Maybe there's a better way?

The second is optimizing the dolphin display. I'm using native resolution with MSAAx4 and bilinear filtering. Performs decently most of the time. Looks a little blurry though. My son is OK with that. I tried 3x resolution. Looked great, but there was a notable performance hit and the music pitch dropped by 1/2 an octave, so I guess I don't have quite enough power to do that. Does anyone else use dolphin for game cube emulation? What video settings to you use?

p.s. Looks like the seller offering ACEMAGIC F2A 125H SFF PC's at prices too good to be true was an offer that was too good to be true. Filing for a refund today and I'll be sticking with the HP t740 for a while.

I wanted to get the system running at 4K resolution so that I consider doing CRT effects since the HP thin client supported 4k.

Turned into a 3 hour time vacuum.

1) The DisplayPort to HDMI adapter I had didn't support 4K so I ordered a cable. Learned that finding a DisplayPort to HDMI cable that can do 4K >= 60 Hz isn't exactly straightforward and the price is > $20.
2) Once I got the new cable, I was not getting a picture. I learned that not only does 4k require that you use certain HDMI ports on my Sony TV, it also requires going into the TV setup and enabling 4K support on the port. I also learned about eARC, but that's not so relevant to what I was doing.
3) Once I got the the TV configured, I was still not getting a picture. Bummer. Played around a bit and was able to get a picture back with the old cable, and when I connected the new to the 4k port the TV at the same time, I could select 4K resolution, but I was still not getting a picture on the new cable and when I select 4K on the old cable, it wouldn't generate a picture.
4) After trying a bunch of different combinations, if I put the old cable in computer display port 1 and the new cable in display port 4, I could get a picture on each port, but if I disconnected the old cable, I got no picture
5) I reconnected the old cable, got a picture back on both cables, and then set port 4 to be the primary display adapter and then disabled the monitor on port 1 and it held together after a reboot and then I was able to remove the old cable and everything is working.

Yikes, what a pain. Did not see that coming!

Must have been some strange parameters with the driver on port 1.

Honestly, I can't see the point of all that given you'll be working with resolutions up to 640, but you do you, I guess

3rd from bottom line in first post might give you a clue

I still have not figured out why it keeps powering on at 11pm every night on a fresh Windows 11 install. I tried going into local group policy and setting the windows update power management, but no effeect.