Tablet inside classic console shell for emulation

[PreZZ]

Hi i now people have put mini itx computers inside nes shells and i wanted to do it. But then i thought, why not put a tablet inside?? blackberry playbooks are going for 118$ (32gb and strong enough for emulation + hdmi output) and cheap android tablet for 79$ (hipstreet aurora). As anybody done this or am i a genius?! It would be great to know if its possible to boot a frontend GUI on startup and how to solder the power to a console power button... I would like to do this on my model 1 Genesis!!!! HD (hdmi) classic gaming inside an old case, just like a moded xbox1 but with the true hardware and controllers! Also they sell generic (retrobit)classic controllers like nes and sega with usb and are dirt cheap, so i guess all we would have to do is take one apart and put it inside a genuine nes/sega controller and maybe put a usb multiplier inside the console for 2 controllers... so what do you guys think? Any advice from pro moders would be apreciated thanks.

[Steve W]

The Playbook is a far better tablet than the Android one, I've got both and I've pretty much given up on the Android tablet whereas I use the Playbook every day. A far better device all around. And $118 is a total steal, considering the 16GB Wi-Fi only model I have was around $199 originally.

[PreZZ]

They are 118$ this week at walmart anniversary sale in montreal...

[NayusDante]

You're better off getting something like this, which can run a real operating system. Add some cheap RAM, an HDD, and a wireless USB gamepad. You'll have better luck finding a good software frontend for that than you will for a tablet. In the end, a PC-based solution is going to be less hacky than a tablet.

[PreZZ]

Thats a really good price, but i thought fitting a tablet inside an old genesis would be a lot easier, and at an affordable price too! I hope somebody will do a frontend for these tablets for emulation, that would be awesome! you could fit it inside ANY console with hdmi outputs !

[kedawa]

Using a tablet makes no sense at all.
You're just paying for proprietary software and lots of unnecessary hardware that's going to get trashed when you gut it for the parts you're going to use.

You can get a Raspberry Pi board for less than $50 including shipping, or much more powerful boards for a little bit more.
These boards are built for use in hobby projects and have plenty of software support. Via even has a $50 x86 board coming out soon that can run Windows XP.

[NayusDante]

Raspberry Pi might be a bit underpowered for an emu box. Keep in mind that it's ARM and not x86, so software availability and performance is an issue. Same with a lot of the Android boards.

You might want to look at ITX boards based on the Llano/Atom platforms. Here's one for under $100. I like the AMD APUs because of graphics performance, but I'm sure you can find Intel options that would be good as well. These are designed for low-power, cool systems in small cases, but still have enough processing capabilities for HTPC tasks. You'd have to pick your own power supply, but that might be better considering your target enclosure. Like the bookshelf barebones, you do need to add RAM and HDD. Just don't buy Foxconn, that stuff never lasts.