Mini PC appears to be defective

hintysen

Hi, I can't think of a time I was more frequently and deeply disappointed in a product than the Polycade Mini PC I recently purchased. I'm at the point of considering a request to return it.
First, the thing shipped without a power brick. Then, I was pointed toward an Amazon purchase for a power brick that would work. Unfortunately, the tip was the wrong size and would not fit. They sent me a new one, but it had the same "won't fit" problem. Finally, they ordered me a correct one. This should have been a warning.
I've spent the last 11 days trying to get AGS to start up. I was able to upload some MAME, N64, SNES and Genesis roms to it, using their instructions. Since then it simply sits, grinding and grinding for hours, on the "Searching for Games" screen. Often it locks up, so I have to restart -- and it goes right back to the "Scanning For Games" screen.
I've tried to go into Windows settings to see if I can fix the problem. It seems like a keyboard or mouse press takes 3 to 10 seconds to register. Very frustrating when you consider how much I paid for this thing. It's got a good processor and adequate memory, but it just GRINDS like a 286. It's got to be the overhead imposed on the system by AGS.
Once I got it to actually open up. It was excruciating to move between games - press a key, wait five seconds, see that it moved down three spots instead of one, press the other key, wait five seconds... So I went to the Settings (after considerable effort) and saw that the options were displaying in a way where they didn't fit on my screen. Couldn't see how to make them fit until I quit AGS and changed my display properties. Then, a restart of AGS and ... "Scanning for Games" for 90 minutes. I could not set a filter because two of the columns were off the screen still. Every single thing I try to do to straighten this system out winds up blowing up in my face.
I can't imagine wanting to keep or use my Polycade system. Sorry to whomever did it, but the software seems really poorly designed, focusing on bells and whistles and skipping over the basic runability of the software. If I can't get this straightened out in a couple of days, I'm going another route. INCREDIBLE letdown.

Sp00ner

I sympathize with you. My Polycade Sente with AGS works mostly fine. One thing you might want to look at is the number of games in your library. Anything over 500 will start bogging down the system. If you have a lot more than 500 games and don't want to delete down to 500, try filtering to one category at a time. I was told the Polycade team are working to allow for more than 500 games to be loaded with ease of integration.

admin

@hintysen Sp00ner is correct, you'll want to keep your game count below 500 titles or AGS will never load. This is being actively worked on and will be corrected in a future update.

What resolution are you running at?

hintysen

I'm trying to figure out why I paid triple for this vs. my old Pandora's Box that ran 3,000 games without a hiccup. I'm going to put it in a drawer and wait for the updates. All that glitters is not golden.

Sp00ner

hintysen I'm sorry you are having such trouble with your Polycade MiniPC. Though I could harp on some niggles with it, I'm overall very happy with the system. I appreciate that they are continually working to improve the experience and product line.

My absolute top wishlist item is for the company to get away from Windows and go full Linux. Number two is probably having a way to delete games directly from the Library screen. And of course, have fluid support for well over 500 games.

Anyway, maybe we can help solve your issue?

Try deleting the games.json file in the C:\Users\%username%\AppData\Roaming\Polycade AGS\ directory. Then relaunch your AGS software. And if you insist on 500+ games loaded, and they are appearing in your Library, try filtering down to one category at a time (Arcade, NES, TG-16, etc.).