Gone Batty

Sorry I haven't posted in a while, folks. It's been too hot to do ANYTHING lately, but thanks to the approaching monsoon season, we're supposed to get a break from the brutal weather. Now that my eyes aren't bubbling in their sockets like so much cheese in a fondue pot, I can talk about my latest project. I'm piecing together an entertainment system from junk I've pieced together from various sources. You know, stuff like a five dollar PC from a yard sale, an excess monitor given to me as a Christmas gift, a controller I snagged from Goodwill for a few bucks, and... er, an overpriced flash drive from Staples that cost more than all those other things put together. Yes yes, I could have bought one from Amazon for a fraction of the price, but that would have taken several days to arrive. When they were handing out patience, I couldn't stand to wait in line for it.

Anyway. This is the system as it currently stands; a beater PC running Batocera from the extortionately priced flash drive. (No, I'm not letting that go.) I've actually tried the drive on two computers... it runs better on that i5-powered Fujitsu laptop I mentioned in a previous post, even adding themed borders around the games. Regrettably, the Fooj just isn't powerful enough to handle Dreamcast games... they'll run smoothly for a few seconds, freeze for a second, then briefly resume, only to repeat the process. 

The beater desktop with the Core 2 Duo processor won't touch them at all... after you click on the appropriate icon, the system jumps in, then quickly jumps out. It's almost as if it sized up the task, shook its head, and stormed away, muttering a "screw this" under its breath.

One thing both the computers do is randomly freeze for a second or two in menus, usually after scrolling down for a while. It obviously can't be the fault of the hardware... what are the chances two completely different computers would react in the same way? The blame has to fall on either the obscenely overpriced flash drive (see, I told you I wasn't letting this go) or Batocera itself. I couldn't tell you for sure, since I've never used this software before. It looks just like Recalbox, but for all I know it could be vastly different under the hood, and could be vastly more demanding.

Once I get the problem with the random freezes squared away, I'd like to see if I can get that desktop running more demanding games. It's got a PCI-e slot, but it's also got a cramped case that doesn't leave much room for expansion. The video card I bought previously wouldn't fit, just barely squeezing into the case but failing to meet the max headroom of the bracket slot in the back. I'll have to purchase a low-profile video card in the future, but what if the card won't work with this computer, or Batocera? Even if it does play nice, what if the card I purchase still isn't powerful enough to bring Dreamcast games to life? There are just too many variables, and not enough information online to properly anticipate and address them.

Why am I putting myself through this torment, anyway? Somehow I doubt it's worth the Herculean effort just to play Dolphin Blue, a Metal Slug wannabee with pastel porpoises in place of the usual pint-sized tanks. Stupid Sega/Sammy... you could save me a whole lot of time and aggravation if you'd just port the damn game to the Switch. Even Namco wised up and gave Americans Drill Land eventually.