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(http://www.shockinglydelicious.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/IMG_0541.jpg)

No not that kind, I'm talking about the micro computer.

(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3d/RaspberryPi.jpg)

Yeah that's the one!  I picked up one of these from a guy on Craig's list last weekend. It's the Model B which is a 700mhz CPU and 512 MB of ram. I've been aware of these for the past few years but was never really aware what could be done with them. After I picked this up I googled and found all ki dad of projects. I think I've decided on making an emulation station so my kids can play some old NES  and SNES games.

Does anyone out there have any experience with these?

Place I used to work at the UNIX admin had bought a Raspberry Pi - he brought it in one day to show us some of the things that can be done with it.  I thought of getting one last year when I had some Amazon gift cards to play with.  Maybe if I get some for my B-day in June I'll see about getting one then.

(https://i.imgur.com/SFn12Cu.png)

Didn't really know about this one until someone told me about how you could adapt it to play looped videos [which is great for video art works]

Didn't even think of the emulator functions! That would actually be pretty nifty!

That's awesome!  Is there anything difficult about using the Pi or anything I should be aware of?

Here's the web site: http://www.raspberrypi.org (http://www.raspberrypi.org)

You'll need at least an 8gb SD card in order to hold the operating system.  The one they recommend for new users is their homegrown Raspbian.  The system will also work with Linux distros customized to work with Raspberry Pi.  There is no on-board storage on the system itself, so you'll need external storage.  Also you'll want to look in to a protective case.  You can get those fairly cheaply - I'd go for the transparent case myself.   

And one more thing I just found out is that if you take a flash picture of a Raspberry Pi 2 it can crash the system.  Apparently there's a chip on the board that is sensitive to certain kinds of light flashes.

http://www.technobuffalo.com/2015/02/08/raspberry-pi-2-can-crash-if-you-take-its-picture/ (http://www.technobuffalo.com/2015/02/08/raspberry-pi-2-can-crash-if-you-take-its-picture/)

First thing I'd advise is getting a class 10 SD card, and also not sure what the deal is with the 2nd one yet but overclocking to 1ghz is safe because of their dynamic overclocking thing in raspbi config. In my experience with a model B, they run raspbian and raspBMC very well. and yeah as mentioned unless you particually want to build your own case for whatever reason a transparent prebuilt is probably the way to go, I haven't had any dust get inside it and I've had it like a year.

I have no experience directly, but in the university I work for there are a bit of projects with Pies.

A very interesting one is meant to reduce tractors flipping accidents; maybe you can find something looking for unibz raspberry pi on google.

Thanks for the suggestions guys!  I'm looking forward to messing around with this.

Just ordered one... Sure hope I know what I'm doing...

So far, I've been able to check my email, & that's about it... :lookingup:

The place I used to work at where the UNIX admin brought in the Raspberry PI to show us - they started using the Lenovo M73 (http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/desktops/thinkcentre/m-series-tiny/m73/) as the standard desktop unit about a month before I left.  I'm wondering now how the M73 motherboard would compare size wise to the Raspberry PI.  I imagine the motherboard it's a bit larger than the PI but probably isn't too much larger.  Same with the other M series  (http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/desktops/thinkcentre/m-series-tiny/) machines. 

Ha! That's more than me. I'm sad to say it's still in the box.

the Pi card is 3 & 1/4 inches by 2 & 1/4 inches

Some guy at the library told me about a group called RVA Hacks, but I haven't checked them out yet...

Of course, I already had an xtra USB keyboard & mouse lying around, but considering I had to buy a new video cable, Ethernet cable, & micro SD card, I probably should've invested in one of the more expensive starter kits.

Downloading NOOBS off the website, transferring it to the SD card wasn't too hard.
When I first fired it up, I already had it connected to the web, so all NOOBS did was give me a list of GUI operating systems I could download & install... The rest is like trying to figure out a Windows '95 machine with a few codecs missing...

this thread reminds me I need to reinstall the OS, had to borrow the SD card for another install. If you are just going to just play media try xbmc (kodi) I sometimes want it back, when I last tried it though there were a few bugs involving big network directories and counting lengths (would totally freeze up). Also they main browser just didn't work at all for me, I should give it another go perhaps it's been updated

Well, one thing I did do when I got my home server was to go on eBay for a monitor.  I didn't want to be spending a lot and actually found one there for $34 ($20 + $14 shipping).  So far it's actually working fairly well.  Just thought I'd pass that on in case any of you wanted to get the Pi but didn't have a monitor.

They just came out with the 3 B.