Sega Saturn and Maybe Dreamcast Emulation

Laptops are so much cheaper than they used to be these days. My old 2Ghz Dell Inspiron has fallen apart gradually (broken headphone jack, blue screens of death, dropped it and broke plastic that holds the screen upright, the cord connecting the screen to the inside of the computer is broken somewhere so the thing has to be plugged into a monitor. and now the keyboard is having weird typing issues.

I say it's time to just upgrade. Now this computer was pretty good. It could emulate Nintendo 64 games like the Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time alright, but Nintendo DS, Sega Saturn, Atari Jaguar and of course Sega Dreamcast emulation were no good. They were all running at very slow speeds.

Since my main focus of using computers for gaming is emulation, I'm trying to find the cheapest sleek-looking laptop I can with an HD screen and HD graphics capabilities, but is powerful enough to run these harder to use emulators at full speed. All the computers I see in local stores are 64 bit with Windows 7.

The RAM is either 3GB or 4GB but It doesn't say how many GHz the processors are. I believe the Atari Jaguar emulator "Jagulator" requires at least a 3.2GHz processor to run at the correct speed and the same was for the Saturn Emulator SSF.

If I can order a laptop online for under $700 that might be the way to go.

I am just wondering if anyone on here knows of a link to where I could buy a laptop that suits my needs. I have had Dell and eMachines computers break on me so I am also unsure if they are trustworthy manufacturers or if I just had bad luck.

I would get a Mac but they can't run most of the emulators and games so I'm thinking Windows 7 is my best bet. Not many developers make emulators for Linux.

 

Hmm but isn't a 2GHz processor incapable of running programs that require a 3.2GHz processor? My old one was 2GHz and I need something more powerful.

 

Thanks for the information, it really helps as I have more video gaming and audio knowledge than I do computer knowledge.

On my old laptop I tried that one emulator they have for Playstation 2 just to see if it would boot games, and it started to boot up Sonic Mega Collection but it was so slow it was moving frame by frame. I doubt it, but does anyone know if computers these days are already able to run emulators of powerful systems like that? It has been six years since this technology was new.

I'm not really looking to emulate PS2 as games are quite common and the 60GB PS3 does a good job of backing up Memory Card data, but it is still interesting to know whether they have pulled it off or not. Whenever it does happen, PS2 savestates would be awesome.

The reason I'm looking at laptops instead of desktops is that now I realize they make docking stations that allow you to plug in multiple USB accessories and things like sound cards for audio recording that normally can only be used easily on a desktop. When I don't have a portable computer anymore, the idea of a laptop sounds so much better than a desktop because then I can actually take my gaming with me like I used to.

I also think it would be great to start recording my gameplay footage directly on my computer for "Let's Play" videos and/or reviews instead of making low quality clips off the real systems with VHS being transferred to my Sony DVD recorder. I have so much video editing to do for the band projects as well.

 

I went to Best Buy and bought a Toshiba Satellite A505. I tried Saturn emulation and it was working much better. I was running off a real game disc and the emulator was on a USB hard drive so I'm sure the slight lag that happened occasionally was just from those two factors combined. I have a lot to do, organizing my hard drives between computers and such.

I'm ready to make my deteriorating ex laptop into my limewire & torrenting guinea pig where it can risk getting all the ETDs (electronically transmitted diseases) it wants.

The only consequence of buying my new laptop is that I will have to start looking for work, but hey it's about time I get back on track.

 

I tried to download nullDC but it said it was missing some files. I need a good source that includes the DC bios. after that I can turn my own games into ISOs or download one from emuparadise.

Oh and expect me to start making YTPs for youtube. I have a DVD ripping program and come up with cheesy 1-liners all the time. I already have plans to use Vegeta for something other than "Over 9000!" as well as Dasher Inoba from Ehrgeiz.

 

Yeah this computer seems to run Saturn games at full speed except in small instances. It doesn't seem to like Yabause for Sonic 3D Blast as that runs very slow, but SSF is doing every game I tried on it so far at full speed in window mode. The only thing about SSF is that you have to play from a game disc, not a rom image. With ImgBurn you can take the cue/bin files from the internet and turn them back into a playable burned disc that will run on this emulator.

Seeing that, I sure wish I had a modded Saturn instead of a pure one. In Japan there were so many games not released in the USA & Europe. Still my main reason for emulating Saturn is to have save files on the RPGs that will never disappear on me like the battery in the Saturn does after enough years of use.

Now for Dreamcast - I had Sonic Adventure 1 running on one of the Dreamcast emus on my old laptop actually. But all of the 3D models had no textures and the game ran as slow as a slug. I have yet to try it on my new laptop.