PCp idea

[arfink]

Tell me if you think this idea would work well or not:

I would like to build a handheld PC type thingee. I want to use a PSOne screen and a nano-ITX mobo (the kind with headers instead of regular connectors) And have RGB arcade input to the screen. This unit would be used exclusivly for MAME and I would probably use ArcadeOS. I would also be using 98Lite or maybe just plain DOS. My question is this:

What (If any) are the drawbacks of using a flash drive instead of a hard drive, and what sort of battery should I use for powering the unit? I was thiking it would be neat to have no battery in the unit and make it really small and light, and then connect the battery up with a plug outside the unit, or you could hook up a wall adaptor instead of the battery. Then the batteries can be as big as you want, because you don't have to hold 'em in your hands. So, youre in the car, and you can hold the unit, and the wire for the battery goes down to, say, the floor or seat next to you, where the battery is sitting.

[vskid]

What (If any) are the drawbacks of using a flash drive instead of a hard drive

Flash drives would use less power, but I think there is something about them having a limited amount of rewrites. And the flash drives would cost more.

[madc0w]

And obviously less compasity. I would not recommend a flash drive for arcade games, as they are fairly large files for the amount you would want for a PCP.

[Nucklez]

Hard drives are much cheaper now! You might be able to get a Laptop hard drive for much cheaper than a flash card. Laptop drives are very small, and there are adapters available to connect them to regular IDE cables. I'm not sure if the SATA drives are small enough for laptops yet, but those drives are FAST! The cables are small too, so it would help out a lot with a portable.

I've been tossing this same idea around as well. I have built a Bartop Arcade cabinet, and it runs WinXP with the Mamewah frontend. The newer versions of MAME are now 15gig, so a flash card is definitely out of the question.

[arfink]

Well, I don't intend to have a complete Mame collection, probably some classics and some of the neo geo games that I like, nothing amazing (or as amazingly illegal as owning every single copyrighted video game ever made). However, do laptop drives consume a lot of power or make lots of heat? If so I may be compelled to use a flash drive of some sort. Lastly, I want to build this with the heat sink sticking out the back a bit- could I short anything from touching the heat sink? I would use a Mini ITX Epia NL mobo, so burning myself is not a possibility, but I do want to maximize airflow without having to change the heatsink/fan setup. This is because it's so small, and I don't know how to work with aluminum to make a new heatsink. And no, I will not do anything with water cooling, because I want to at least try and make this handheld, not some huge laptop type thing.

Also, anyone got any ideas for how input devices should be setup? I was thinking that the unit could be set up in one of two ways. The first way would have an integrated USB sidewinder gamepad so its like a handheld gameing rig, or I could use one of those really tiny USB keyboards. Then I could have a seriously tiny laptop for taking notes in class, and I could hook up some more complex devices to it later if I wanted to (EG, the gamepad, a VGA display, big speakers, a CD drive, etc.) But then it would be less of a videogame playing thing and more of a laptop thing.

What do you think?