Visual Pinball and Mame Cabinet sharing the same computer?

[tommyinajar]

I was trying to plan the cost for a Mame cabinet and a VP cab. I know Mame can use less than a P3 and play all the classics great, but can't do  almost any CHD's, while VP needs a pretty good computer setup. Since for me they would be next to one another, has anyone used the same computer for both (maybe not at-the-same-time), or am I still hung over from last night and just overlooking an obvious flaw in my diabolical plan. 

[matsadona]

That would be feasible with an ordinary KVM switch. Running one at the time then that is...

[Le Chuck]

Just spitballin but if you set up multiple monitors in windows and run MALA or Hyperspin from one then you should be able to run your pin software on the second (and third depending on setup).  Your computer would need to be beefy as all hell to accomodate both at the same time but if you're installing a workhorse you could just do a monitor splitter and forgo a KVM.  Do you have 8 gigs of RAM laying around? 

[menace]

I'm running my 3 screen vpinball on a P4 3.8 with 4 gigs of ram--slow to load but the tables are ok--I am upgrading to an i5 i think though just to speed up load times..  I don't see any reason you couldn't share them other than I don't know how you would set up your front ends    The general consensus is that vpinball runs better with xp but its doable with win7 as well to take advantage of more ram..

[Grimoz]

Ive got all my emulators and Visual Pinball running on my Hyperspin Cab. Its only running a single core P4 3.2ghz with a Geforce 8600GT and it works fine.

[tommyinajar]

  Do you have 8 gigs of RAM laying around? 

More-
I build a few pc's for people every year learned my lesson with DDR & DDR2 I am hoarding every stick of DDR3 Ram with/without a rebate deal I can find.
Think I've got about 72 Gig's in all.  

I'm not up-to-date on VP yet, does it work best with xp or xp64?

[menace]

I believe it is xp that people claim works better--since many are doing it with win7 though I doubt its going to be big differences in performance--but I have no direct experience...