These days I'm usually pretty good about not wasting money but occasionally I mess up. This is a bit complicated.
I have never been a heavy duty gamer. In my whole life, I think I probably bought around 100 games. That might sound like a lot, but spread over more than 10 years, that was maybe 10 games per year at the high end. Since around the Playstation 2 era, I have been almost completely away from it. In fact, around 2010ish I started playing bridge, and on the computer the only game I played for years was Freecell. The point is, I am mentally far away from arcade or game machines.
On the other hand, I have been into computers and programming. I was a part of the Linux community and kept tabs on the Android development community for a while. I do not have time to do programming, but I know about some projects that are far enough along that I know of programs that I might be able to use.
I am planning on buying a new computer in the next year, but that does not rule out a separate "special project". So where do all these threads intersect? I stumbled onto the some new toy/hobby small/portable game devices. A couple of years ago, Neo Geo brought out a "mini" free-standing game console with a 3.5" screen. Shortly after, there were some similar machines brought out by Chinese companies. I won't try to justify some fairly clear copyright problems on those machines. To me that kind of usage is irrelevant. What I found out is that some of them should be usable as light-weight Linux computers. I think that I could use something like that to do some useful stuff, if I can piece it together. Part of the attraction is the price -- under $100 US.
Unfortunately, since I am not a part of the gaming community, it was hard for me to research it properly. The problem is that there are a number of small companies making these things. Now, for 3rd party development, it is hard to tell which one will have a community grow around it. This is important because there can be two or three very similar devices, and a development community till take off around one and the rest will be ignored. Anyway, I ordered one, and it is being shipped. But in the mean time, I poked around. After about a week I finally figured out where the development community is growing. Yup, I got it wrong. The box I bought (the "Ragebee A7") is being ignored. The hardware is about the same as the two popular machines ("JXD Q70" and "Aiwo G1000"). In fact, if I find a basic Linux installation for it, most of the programs should be directly runnable.
What would I be able to do with it? I should be able to do light video editing, including bulk re-coding. I might be able to turn it into a small video streaming switch like a two channel version of an "Atem Mini". It looks powerful enough to handle 1080p.
It does not take a big development community to do this much. But you need the "right" people involved. As I say, I found the "right" people, but they centered on the JXD and Aiwo boxes. My Ragebee didn't find a community. So it will probably end up without development.
If I want to throw more good money towards this, then the only thing I can think of is to gut the box and stick a "Raspberry Pi" single board development kit into it. The R. Pi 4 has a good processor and one of the biggest and most prolific development communities around. But that will be another $100 US range, and some hardware hacking. I really do not want to do that. So, net result is "big red and white door stop."
