Turning an old laptop into a portable retro games console.

Now that we have our old office Dell laptop up and running it's time to transform it into something new. As a stand alone machine it’s not great at gaming but it would be the ultimate retro gaming machine.

System Spec Before:
- CPU: Intel Core i3 350M (2C/4T @ 2.26GHz)
- RAM: 2GB DDR3 (2x 1GB)
- SSD: None

System Spec After:
- CPU: Intel Core i5 540M (2C/4T @ 3.05GHz)
- RAM: 8GB DDR3 (2x 4GB)
- SSD: Silicon Power 512GB SSD

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[aaldrich]

this is really good. so many old laptops people probably have in a cupboard somewhere doing nothing, they could give to their kid and emulate a crazy array of consoles.

[Steven-jncw]

Hey TechLabUK, I absolutely love watching content like this, upgrading old equipement etc. Thank you!

[sxsoutcast]

Nice to use this old laptop instead of throwing it away. Nice change of pace on your channel.

[Revivify]

Great to see new life breathed into the old Dell laptop. Loving the custom splash screen

[iceberg]

could u tell me what immulator you are using thanks

[agemoth]

I got my Lenovo laptop refurbished off ebay, it has a SSD drive, and i just go online and play any retro games i want with online emulators. i just bought an old Atari stick joystick with 9 pin connector, and a 9 pin to usb converter that i hope will enable me to use it when playing, as i LOATHE having to use the keyboard to play, and i also LOATHE non- stick type controllers!

[NeMsYk]

I'm a huge fan of Dell Latitude laptops. Long lasting and easy to repair/upgrade. I still have an Latitude D810 running with Debian 32bit as an mp3 player and radio streamer in my basement.

[SpaceTheCake]

nice video. I got myself a free HP Elitebook 8440p with an i5 520m. I upgraded it with 8 GB of Ram, an 256 GB Kingston SSD and a new battery. For the operation system I chose Zorin OS lite, which works like a charm. I also installed Recalbox to an SD card and I can play from GB, over N64 to PS1.

[Anarchisted]

Yeah, but I just took my old acer aspire I got in 2013, put windows 10 on an SSD, installed retroarch, use it as an all in one entertainment center. With an old HDD it'd be super slow, but with the SSD it's much better. Using windows 10 I was able to get a sound equalizer that significantly boosts the audio, even louder than my smart TV if you can believe it. Plus with its 512MB GPU I can play tons of old games even with a 120 GB SSD, which is more than enough. I can do YouTube in 1080P, but I never go past 480.

[TrexCharlieX]

I have the same setup using Kodi, launchbox, and steam added to Kodi like plugins. Great system u have tho

[neilscragg]

Hi, can this be done on a laptop, in a way that it will have split use, normal laptop use and games console? Thanks

[hman]

Where can I download all of the MAME games?

[tommyclarke]

You managed to get winders 10 running?

[meekdook]

What software are you using to see hardware stats when playing?

[Ashtongodbout]

I'm using a gateway ID49C09H laptop I picked up for $20 with Windows 10 and running older games on it like Fallout 4 and the Kerbal space program. My system specs are the Intel Pentium p6200 with 6GB ddr3 ram and a 750GB hard drive. Now it doesn't run great but I have used a Kingston canvas select plus 64GB micro sdxc card for use with ready boost I picked a dual pack up for $10 and it seems to be running better in games and basic use. It's not a bad laptop for a $30 investment. It has x4 USB ports, HDMI/VGA output, mic and headphones input and a DVD-super multi DL Drive which makes it great for buying old computer games at next to nothing. But I mainly just use it for on-the-go when I'm not at my dedicated desktop.

[CaptainHalodude]

Good video - couple of points to consider a couple of points:

Towards the end you demonstrated importing game files into the system. I would also add that BIOS files are needed for some systems, or else there may be viewers coming in with the understanding they can just nab some roms off of the internet and Bob's your uncle. Which in fact it isn't always the case.

Also worth mentioning the need to connect to a scraping service to parse in those lovely game box art- when importing in game ROMs and updating the game lists it doesn't immediately show game box art or in-game preview footage - you need to query for this data separately. Instead you just get a generic icon showing the label of the game.

[drewbert]

What if I also need it to function as a home theater? LibreElec is great, but isn't for gaming. RetroPie would be perfect but will not run on a laptop.

[ProceuTech]

6:48 It's weird seeing PGA on an Intel CPU lol

[wycko]

i got a laptop with i7 3632QM GT635M 8gb of ram dual channel it is a lenovo g780 will that laptop be able to run like ps2 emulator, wii u, ps 1?

[HoseiHogiat]

heloo TechLabUK.. im your subscriber, i want buy HD Game Stick Lite 4K.

My laptop with :
Prtocessor :Intel(R) Pentium(R) Gold 7505 @ 2.00GHz 2.00 GHz
Edition: Windows 11 Home

can i use HD game stick plug and play in my laptop?
My laptop has HDMI port, but i dont know wheter HDMI input or HDMI ouput

thanks