667mhz Celeron, 128mb Ram.....Good for Anything?

[BadMouth]

A friend of mine gave me an old computer today.  I had my hopes up that it would be something halfway decent, but it turns out to be a 667mhz(IIRC, it was 600 something) Celeron with 128mb of ram.  It has XP Pro on it, so I'm sure that is using up plenty of resources.
The hard drive screams like a banshee (a slow moving banshee), but I have a few small drives laying around. 

I'm wondering if this thing is worth trying to install an older version of MAME on.

I have some old 0.37b7 Roms that run on my 300mhz phone with a little skipping in sound.
I don't really want to sink any money into it, but I might spring for one 4-way joystick and a couple buttons if it will run a few early 80's classics.

[BobA]

Good for classic 80s games. Replace the HD if it sounds that bad.

[Ginsu Victim]

Run the DOS version of MAME 0.37b7 and use the roms you have.

[shfifty]

my first set up ran on a PIII 667 @ 750 mhz, also 128 mb ram. I ran arcadeOS and dos mame, it ran all the old stuff, even most neo geo and cps2 stuff.

It should easily run 80's stuff, give it a shot

[EightBySix]

Run the DOS version of MAME 0.37b7 and use the roms you have.

+1. It will fly with dos. Maybe bung a CF card with hdd adaptor in it. My old rig boots up to mame in around 4s 

[Smeghead]

[DeLuSioNal29]

I running a MAME vertical cab with classics on it using a Pentium II in Windows 98se.  It runs great with an older version of DOS MAME (.85).

D

[gonzo90017]

It's more then enough. I have and old 400mhz Celeron that I run Mame 37b16 on it. And it runs most of the stuff just fine.

[Malenko]

install tiny XP and an OLD build of MAME , great for the classics. Im sure you could snag some RAM for next to nothing. 128 isnt all that great and youcould quadruple that for like $30. I'd be proactive about changing the hard drive, especially if you have some sitting around.

[BadMouth]

MAME .37b7 + my roms weigh in at 100mb  

I have some old ddr sticks laying around somewhere, but I'm not sure if any of them were bigger than 64mb.
I really don't want to sink any money into this. 
My regular setup is modern and runs everything I want it to.
The main reason that I'm bothering with this is to have a seperate system with a 4-way joystick.

Also have a spare Compact Flash to IDE adapter, but would have to buy a card.  
It would probably be the right choice for a bartop.  Less space, less heat.
But I will probably use a 10gb hd that is sitting around and I have no other use for.

I'm a novice and haven't worked with DOS since I was a kid.  I have picked up a few command lines from working with these emulators.
After doing some research,  I'm leaning toward finding a copy of windows 95, so I can set up my folder structure, etc in windows, then change it to boot to dos.

I have plenty of t-molding, wood, etc.  
All I should have to buy is a joystick, 1P button & keyboard encoder (or attempt to hack the keyboard that came with this computer).
I'm going to go ahead and set up the software before I spend any money.
Not sure when I'll actually get around to building it.  I have a driving cab that I want to redo the control panel and front end for first.

[Smeghead]

You probably drive a Prius too   

[BadMouth]

You probably drive a Prius too   

 

Nah, too utilitarian (and too cheap) for that.

I considered punching a hole in each side of a case, running some poly rope throught it and posting pics of my new "anchor", but decided it wasn't worth the time.

[shfifty]

MAME .37b7 + my roms weigh in at 100mb  

I have some old ddr sticks laying around somewhere, but I'm not sure if any of them were bigger than 64mb.
I really don't want to sink any money into this. 
My regular setup is modern and runs everything I want it to.
The main reason that I'm bothering with this is to have a seperate system with a 4-way joystick.

Also have a spare Compact Flash to IDE adapter, but would have to buy a card.  
It would probably be the right choice for a bartop.  Less space, less heat.
But I will probably use a 10gb hd that is sitting around and I have no other use for.

I'm a novice and haven't worked with DOS since I was a kid.  I have picked up a few command lines from working with these emulators.
After doing some research,  I'm leaning toward finding a copy of windows 95, so I can set up my folder structure, etc in windows, then change it to boot to dos.

I have plenty of t-molding, wood, etc.  
All I should have to buy is a joystick, 1P button & keyboard encoder (or attempt to hack the keyboard that came with this computer).
I'm going to go ahead and set up the software before I spend any money.
Not sure when I'll actually get around to building it.  I have a driving cab that I want to redo the control panel and front end for first.

Windows 98SE is probably the best for dos set ups, it has the latest version of dos (7.1). Some older versions of dos included with windows 95 have hard drive partition limits, so you dont want that.  Ive got a dos boot up into advmenu, but do all my admin type stuff in windows 98. It works pretty good

[ark_ader]

Why not try something different.

http://scottjarvis.com/page105.htm


Should be enough to run a few games. 

[WhereEaglesDare]

Very intriguing thread, I went out and grabbed an old Windows 95 PC and I may do the same thing.  What can I do for a Control Encoder when there isnt a PS2 port or USB Ports?  Can you do it over serial?

What frontends are recommended for DOSMAME?

[BadMouth]

Update for anyone who is interested (or just has time to kill):

The old hard drive I had turned out to already have DOS 6 on it...thought I had it made.
Relearned enough about DOS to get DOSMAME 0.37b7 on there.... Had an issue with a missing file, tracked it down.
Now it launches and asks what type of sound card to use.  
I enter 0 for no sound to play it safe.
The lights on the monitor go off & come back on as if it's lost the signal.
Then I just have a black screen.  
It doesn't respond to any key presses.
My shot in the dark guess is a video driver issue.

Anyone using FreeDos?  (or is that a bigger can of worms for a novice like me?)

Setting the project aside for now.  
(New parts for my driving cab should be in this week.    I'll post pics in the Project Announcements forum next week)

[WhereEaglesDare]

Oh yea, didnt think about that, how are we going to drivers for DOS for anything anymore?!  You may need to contact the card manufacturer if they are still in business, unfortunately they probably aren't.

[RandyT]

Update for anyone who is interested (or just has time to kill):

The old hard drive I had turned out to already have DOS 6 on it...thought I had it made.
Relearned enough about DOS to get DOSMAME 0.37b7 on there.... Had an issue with a missing file, tracked it down.
Now it launches and asks what type of sound card to use.  
I enter 0 for no sound to play it safe.
The lights on the monitor go off & come back on as if it's lost the signal.
Then I just have a black screen.  

Check the default output mode of the software.  When the lights go out on the monitor, that's probably telling you that the scan frequency is out of range for the monitor.  It may be trying to feed arcade resolutions, and your monitor is not going to be happy with those if it's VGA.

And a computer from that era should handle VESA compatible graphics modes, so the whole driver thing shouldn't be a problem, unless it's a very obscure chipset.

RandyT

[WhereEaglesDare]

Working on it.

Going to install Windows 98 SE

Unofficial Service Pack 2.1a
http://exuberant.ms11.net/98sesp.html

DirectX 8.1b for Windows 98
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=f70a3d7c-feac-4d9a-a803-278021061fec&displaylang=en

Once I get that set up, I can then benchtest different MAMEs.  Im gonna try 037

[Thenasty]

check your MAME.CFG
It might have defaulted to MONITOR=ARCADE  ( along that line)

[BadMouth]

Found this old link and it helped my understanding a bit:
http://dystopia.org/games/mame/usage.txt

vesa1 & vesa2b worked, but the game shows up small in the center of the screen.
I tried to change the resolution and it would just freeze up until I changed:
TWEAK = yes
Then it let me change the resolution and stretch it, but it still has a 3/4" border all the way around regardless of how high I take the resolution.
I'll continue to mess around with the settings and see what happens.

I doubt the sound is going to be as easy of a fix.
The mobo has AC'97 audio, but mame only gives me these options for audio:

0. Silence
1. Sound blaster
3. Pro audio expectrum
4. Ultramax sound
5. Ultra sound
6. Windows sound sistem
7. Ensoniq sound scape

I tried them all.  Mame fails to launch with all but 0.Silence

I googled DOS drivers for Intel 82801AA AC'97, but haven't come up with any DOS drivers yet.
I did find VIA AC'97 DOS drivers, so I may try those.  

[RandyT]

I'm not sure about that chipset, but most sound cards meant to work in DOS would ship with a bare minimum basic SoundBlaster emulation / compatibility driver.  This would need to be loaded in CONFIG.SYS, IIRC.  It probably won't work otherwise.

[BadMouth]

It's onboard sound on a dell mobo.
I couldn't find any options in the bios for legacy support.

I'm done with it for tonight.
 

[shfifty]

its soo damn hard trying to get onboard sound to work in dos. I spent hours trying to get that to work once, it made me soo angry i just ended up buying a sound blaster 16 PCI for like $3 and got that working in 5 minutes

[WhereEaglesDare]

MAMEWAH will work in Windows 98.  Im trying to remember, (mind it's been 8 years) if you are in DOS, since windows ran ontop of DOS you can run windows based soaftware in DOS and it will load that software through DOS and it will open in a Windows Environment, right?  So you could just use Autoexec.bat and get it to just start straight to MAMEWah?

[_Iz-]

vesa1 & vesa2b worked, but the game shows up small in the center of the screen.
I tried to change the resolution and it would just freeze up until I changed:
TWEAK = yes
Then it let me change the resolution and stretch it, but it still has a 3/4" border all the way around regardless of how high I take the resolution.
I'll continue to mess around with the settings and see what happens.

Use the controls on the monitor to stretch out the picture.

[Thenasty]

I doubt the sound is going to be as easy of a fix.
The mobo has AC'97 audio, but mame only gives me these options for audio:
I googled DOS drivers for Intel 82801AA AC'97, but haven't come up with any DOS drivers yet.
I did find VIA AC'97 DOS drivers, so I may try those.  

Try Advmame, it has a built in AC97 drivers. It will take care of the screen also.
It may take some time/reading etc ... to get it up and running.
The last version of Advmame is .106.