Could you see her and just not gift to her; or could you not find her Steam profile at all though? Because it's the latter situation I'm in.

How do you do that? I tried to buy something as a gift and the only option available was to choose from existing Steam friends. I've got a feeling they've changed how it works.

Latter. Once she bought something it worked fine.

It's a good idea, but PC couch co-op is pretty rare, isn't it?

Have we?

How drunk was I?

I don’t think Steam existed last time you visited

I've succeeded in getting the non-Steam, PC version of OutRun 2006: Coast 2 Coast running on my Steam Deck, along with the Amiga version of Deluxe Galaga.

I'm now working on general emulation -- I've already got PSX and N64 emulation going, just looking at some Amiga emulation now. It seems to work OK, but is quite picky about the Kickstart ROMs it uses it seems.

Mate, that's a 3 hour video

Mate, that's a 3 hour video

I'd probably still watch it.

If it turns out it can run the Plex media player and cast to a TV then it’ll replace the iPad we use on travels too!

Steamdeck owners, which version did you go for? Any 64GBers regretting not going larger?

I went with the 64 , but updated the internal SSD to 1TB

64 with a big SD card is fine , however you *do* need to faff about a bit either creating symlinks to folders on the SD card or not putting a lot of stuff on the SD (and removing it) as the shader caches all stay on the internal card , before I did the symlink stuff I got to the point where there was not enough space on the internal card and I basically had nothing installed to that. After creating the links it was fine.

Upgrading is one thing I'd be a little cautious of , I'd watched lots of videos and knew exactly what to do but I still ended up with a stripped screw on the back (which i just brute forced out) and I picked up a replacement set of screws from Amazon the actual removing / replacing the drive itself was easy (just be careful) , the 1TB + my SD cards means I have plenty of space and lots of stuff installed but as the price of 2TB SSD's keep dropping who knows :-)

Thank you! For £100 more I might plump for the larger model with faster storage. My capacity for techno faff is limited

If you do take your steam deck apart, make sure you take the SD card out first!!

FYI Valve / Steam have just started selling refurbished units so if your not quite sure then thats a cheaper option to start off with (looks like 20% off the price)

https://www.eurogamer.net/valve-is-now- ... to-110-off

Actually while I think about it, I know you can cast from the deck to the TV. Can you do it with a separate controller or do you have to play with the deck itself. I ask because my son has sweaty hands but he wants to play steam games, but I'd rather he didn't use the steamdeck controller (his porous maws have already broken a switch)

We have a spare 512GB Deck that is more or less unused, with case and box, that we’re looking to sell. Not sure on price yet, but if you’re interested let me know

Seperate controller works fine (even just using the deck by itself you can pair and use a different controler to access virtually everything that you could from the buttons on the front)

Brilliant, thank you zaphod

So two other things just on that :

1) You say 'cast to the TV' and just to confirm you can use a USB dock to get HDMI out , or if your monitor / device will use a USB-C cable as an input those work with the steamdeck (although i say USB-C here i think its thunderbolt?) to display on a TV or monitor
I use a Steadeck dock for the main screen but I also have a small USB-C dock that i have for my Macbook and I've used it for connecting the steamdeck up to TV's and monitors without an issue

2) Controllers can be wide and varied as it will take just about anything , when I first got my deck I used a Nintendo Switch wireless controller , I've also used a basic PC wireless gamepad , a Playstation Dualshock and I'm currently using an 8bitdo ultimate which works really well

This is the video that sold me on the 8bitdo :



These are often on offer at Amazon for around £30 - £35 and what I love about it is the docking station part , so its plugged in and charging , however when i lift it out of the cradle it turns itself on and sync's to the Steamdeck instantly so i just pick it up and can move the cursor and control the deck straight away
When I was using the Switch controller I had to re-pair it via the bluetooth settings almost every time which although not a big thing was a pain (also a pain when i put it down and came back i'd often had to re-pair it again before it would give me control again)

I like the look of that controller. And thank you for the additional detail on connecting to the screen, really useful. Thank you!

So a couple of things:

1) thank you Gaz for the steamdeck, it's in brilliant condition and I'm really enjoying it
2) red dead redemption 2 on the train!
3) anyone have any recommendations for places to get ROMs?
4) thanks for the controller recco, @zaphod79. It's really nice, so much so I was hoping it would pair with the switch, but that ain't happening. However, any idea how to map the deck's touchpad click to the pad? I'm struggling and Headlander needs it for me to level up my head.
5) it gets fantastically hot doesn't it? Could cook an egg on the back.