Help with new cabinet... WOL question, is XP 64 wort it? more...

[Donkbaca]

Hi, I have a couple of questions:

1)  Love the idea of a one button power up/power down solution.  I am currently set up to have everything power up and automatically shut down from the PC power button, but I am thinking of having a "no button" power solution.  I know you can set up your bios to Wake On LAN, whereby a packet is sent to your mobo to start up.  My question is, how do you remotely shutdown?  Anybody currently do this?  I think it would be kind of neat to be able to power up and shut down from my iphone, and not have to worry about kids and other guests turning the cabinet off.

2) Here is my hardware/software setup:  Pentium 4 3.0 ghz; 1.5mb of Ram, ati radeon 9600, 200gb of hard drive space.  I am thinking about maybe moving to a 64 bit operating system, is it worth it?

[Smeghead]

You could hide the power button or have the TV (if you are using a tv) as the controlling power and then you could use a remote maybe?

The wake on LAN would probably work though, although a power button on top would stop the kids turning it off

[jimmy2x2x]

2) 1.5mb of ram??

XP X64 gives a decent performance boost on lower end systems such as yours, I would recommend it as your best choice for that system.
Makes sure you use a 64 bit build of mame, and spend some time disabling services if you want to get better boot speeds/performance out of it.
http://www.blackviper.com/WinXPx64/servicecfg.htm

[Donkbaca]

haha 1.5gb of ram. 

Re: power button - yeah, I already have a smart strip and have my power management configured to shut down on the press of the power button, but I am just wondering if I even NEED a power button.  Might be kind of cool to have a cabinet with no buttons on it except for controls.  Wondering if anyone has gone the WOL route and if they can let me know how to remotely shut everything down safely.

re: XP 64 - What kind of boosts would I get?  What would play better?  I am just wondering if someone can point me to something that would show the benefits of 32 bit vs 64 bit MAME

Thanks for your help!

[newmanfamilyvlogs]

Only the very last of the P4s were capable of 64bit, so you might want to double check that it's compatible:

http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/105

[Donkbaca]

I am pretty sure mine is compatible, but if its not I can get a 3.2ghz that is off ebay for 20 bucks or less.  I am just wondering if its worth the trouble to upgrade to 64 bit mame?  Is there anything that will be more playable?  I don't care if there are percentage gains on things that don't run properly.

[jimmy2x2x]

Its an impossible question to answer as every system is different, and different versions of mame have different performance.

How does anyone but you know what games almost run acceptably on your system?

[Donkbaca]

True everyone is different, but I am sure that a lot of folks have switched from 32 bit mame to 64 bit mame and I just want to know if it makes a real difference, are there games that were not playable before that are playable now?  I am just asking what people's experiences are and if they would recommend going to 64 bit, before I go through the hassle of migrating from 32 to 64

[releasedtruth]

I don't believe you're going to gain much with a P4 going to 64. At least not enough to make many games more playable. Especially if you're making the switch for the gains.

[Donkbaca]

Exactly what I wanted hear! 

Now all I need to do is figure out how to power up/power down.  Like I mentioned earlier, I am planning on trying a WOL to power up, but not sure how to remotely power down.  Suggestions?

[JustMichael]

I am curious why a WOL?  I know when I am updating the roms on my cabinet, I can use the remote desktop to have cabinet run the Task Manager.  I then click "Shut Down" then down to "Turn Off".

[Donkbaca]

Just kicking around some ideas.  The initial plan was one button start-up, with the computer the main on a smart strip to power the marquee, monitor, etc.  Then shell straight to my FE (Game Ex).  For shutdown, I was going to use a one button shutdown, whereby a press of the power button shuts down windows and turns off the computer through XP power management, which would in turn shut down the strip and turn everything else off.

The problem is that this requires me to migrate my power switch to my button, which isn't a problem except for the fact that I am using an IBM PC, and it uses that stupid proprietary 8 pin LED Power connector, and so my power switch has 4 wires instead of the normal two ( and no two of the wires aren't for a LED, four wires are wired to the microswitch.  Since the momentary switch I was going to use only has 2 connectors (standard arcade button), and I haven't found any really good articles about how to wire my 4 wire switch to a 2 wire one, and since I don't want to go to the hassle of ordering another LED power assembly in case I mess the one I have up, I started thinking, do I even NEED a power switch?

My mobo supports Wake On Lan.  There are also iPhone apps that allow you to utilize WOL.  So I started thinking, how cool would it be to have NO power switch and then be able to start my cabinet remotely with my phone?  Then my cab would be pretty sweet.  2 joysticks, 7 buttons per joystick,  P1 and P2 start buttons and 2 admin buttons to navigate through my FE.  Then I would have NO other buttons on it, nothing for people to screw around with, a nice clean look.  Sort of the anti-franken panel/machine.  My panel will have LEDS which will illuminate only the buttons needed for the particular game being played.  Nice, simple, user friendly, hard for guests to snoop around and screw things up.

So I have all that figured out up to the point of turning the machine off.  I could always have shutdown be an option from the front end, but I don't want to do that because I don't want guests randomly shutting down the machine.  If I could do it remotely, that would be totally sweet.

The other thing I am trying to figure out is how to store my light guns so they aren't hanging out all over my cab  I am thinking I may have to have a drawer to pull them out of.  I am going with wireless x-box 360 pads to do console emu. 

The goal like I said is to have a nice, clean, straightforward Cab.

Any help on remote shutdown would be most appreciated!

[newmanfamilyvlogs]

Why not auto-poweroff after X minutes of inactivity?

[Donkbaca]

hmmm... maybe, but it would have be a long time.  How do you set up a power off after inactivity, is it in power management?

[newmanfamilyvlogs]

Ah well I was thinking 'standby' mode rather than full off. That's how I've always had mine configured. That way it wakes up in a few seconds and is ready to go.

Standby should be low enough current that to a smart strip it's the same as 'off'.

[Donkbaca]

Hmmm, that's a pretty good idea, you can modulate the smart strip to make more or less sensitive to the master device.  The computer itself though will still stay on though....I want to turn the whole sucker off when not in use.  I am green like that

[Digital Vandal]

A computer in standby mode will often use less electric than switching it on and off.

[newmanfamilyvlogs]

http://www.thegeoexchange.org/standby-mode-power-consumption/index.htm



Green is great and all, but sometimes it's diminishing returns.

[Digital Vandal]

http://www.thegeoexchange.org/standby-mode-power-consumption/index.htm



Green is great and all, but sometimes it's diminishing returns.

That's not including initial switch on and post costs which will be higher than standard usage.

[newmanfamilyvlogs]

Well that was from some dude's actual day to day usage as measured by a Kill-a-watt, so I'm pretty sure it's a rather real-world scenario numbers.

[Digital Vandal]

Well that was from some dude's actual day to day usage as measured by a Kill-a-watt, so I'm pretty sure it's a rather real-world scenario numbers.

True. I was trying to enforce your point by adding extra information.

[Donkbaca]

Yeah, but I am not going to use my cab 6 hours a day and it depends on what computer you are using, P4's run hot and use a lot of power.  Even in this example standby uses twice as much power as off.

Its not so much about cost, its about conservation, we are kinda hippyish like that.

Just curious though, is leaving it in sleep all the time and never turning it off bad for the machine?