Desktop Retro Arcade Machine

Around two weeks ago me and my friend was assigned by one of my courses to make something using a beagle bone. Due to this my friend thought it would be fun to try to make to some sort of arcade machine that could be placed on a desk.

Step 1: The Build

To start use the screws to attach the button plate, back plate and one of the two side plates together. It can be helpful to start the screws before trying to attach the two plates together.

Next slide the screen between the button plate and back plate until it fits into the slot in the side plate.

Then screw in the other side plate. A small or ratcheting screwdriver will be required for one of the screws.

Next connect the screens ribbon cable to the video card that came with it. I would recommend covering the back of the card with electrical tape to keep it from shorting before using the double sided tape to attach it to the back of the screen.

Then screw in the buttons and joystick into the front and right panels of the shell. In my case I had to use a Dremel to open up some of the holes in the plates so the buttons would fit, but depending on what type of arcade buttons you buy that may not be necessary.

Next wire all the buttons to the controller board that came with them, and use the double sided tape to attach the controller board to the inside of the back panel of the shell.

Then use the HDMI cable to connect the video card to the beagle bone, and use the the USB A to USB B cable to connect the controller board to the beagle bone.

Finally attach bottom panel using screws with rubber feet.

Part 2: Software

In order to install Retroarch and related software do the following steps:

1. Flash the BB-AI 64's EMMC with the latest Debian image with a desktop environment using a micro SD card. For the current image as of writing, see [1]

2. Open a terminal, and install the following programs and their dependencies using "sudo apt install": retroarch and libretro-* You may want to also consider using a snap, ppa, flatpak, or building from source, as the debian package is quite outdated, and has several broken features, such as missing icons and not being able to download content from the internet.

3. after installing retroarch and the libretro dependencies, you will want to pick out and download an emulation core from the Github repository linked here: [2] For aracde emulation, we recommend MAME2003Plus, but you can choose any other emulators that you may like.

4. Open Retroarch (either by using the GUI or typing "retroarch" into the terminal, and find where to place the core by navigating to "Settings->Path Options->Core Directory. Unzip the ".so" emulator core file that you downloaded, and place it in that directory.

5. To make RetroArch automatically run on startup you can use debian's autostart function. For help click on the link below

https://faq.urveboard.com/books/operating-systems-os/page/debian-11-autostart

6. Now you are ready to add your own ROMS and load them in retroarch - we will not be providing a source for these, however MAME2003+ ROMsets can easily be found with a quick google search. You will want to find a non-merged romset to keep things simple. Loading the ROMs is as simple as placing the files in a directory of your choice, and using "Load Content" in RetroArch to navigate to where they are stored and load them.