I'm looking at getting a cheap oldschool laptop off ebay that I just want to use sega, snes emulators on but what would minimum specs be to run them? Hopefully a pII would do?
16-bit emulators should run fairly well on a P2, but you probably won't be able to use fancy bilinear filters and superscaling effects.
The hardware they require is next to nothing. You can run 16-BIT emulators on a P166 32MB RAM I'd recommend ZSNESW for you Nintendo needs. And Gens+ for you Sega needs. Gens+ is based on Gens, but adds MasterSystem and GameGear support, alongside MegaDrive, MegaCD & 32X
That is, above and beyond the resources your OS requires to run. And you wouldn't be able to emulate many games at full speed on those specs.
It is possible to run 16-BIT emulators on those specs, but the gameplay isn't that smooth. You can't run the games with any screen effects, and the picture needs to be reduced to a small window in order for it to be playable (or a very pixalated full-screen mode)! I'd recommend the old DOS based Genecyst emulator for specs such as a P1. Genecyst used to be the best MegaDrive emulator around, and it's compatibility is STILL awesome. But it's been discontinued for a while now, and as a result it's very out-dated You need the Sega BIOS to play MegaCD and 32X games.
