It's been a loooong time and I need a refresher!

[gurnie]

Hello everyone.  it's good to be back.

So we've made a decision in our household - get the darn arcade running or get rid of the arcade.  So I'm way back at square one on getting this going since it has been so long since i had worked on this project.

I have a 3GHZ single core processor system, 1 GB ram, 80GB space, with windows XP. Jeez this seems like such an ancient machine compared to my new system.

I wanted to know what version of mame / roms /ect should i be running.  I can't seem to find my discs that I had that had all of my roms, so maybe I need to get a whole new set...  But I didn't know what version of mame i should get dependent on my computer specs. 

i also don't know what games need CAD files.  Is there a list of CAD games, because depending what's on the list, I may not want the CAD games... or maybe the CAD games won't even run on an old system like this.

i'm also looking for a nice idiot proof front end.  Something I just install and when windows/the computer starts it loads up MAME and hopefully is linked to other emulators as well (snes,nes, sega, ect).

I tried googling this information and felt so overwhelmed and out of the loop.  I appreciate your help!

[newmanfamilyvlogs]

CHD, not CAD.

Do you have any plans of replacing the computer? That will heavily influence what version of mame you should shoot for.

80gigs can evaporate pretty quickly when you factor in such front-end niceties such as video previews. How flashy do you want your front end?

[gurnie]

i think for now i want to stay with this computer (3GHZ, p4, 1 gig of ram).  I don't mind upgrading the hard drive or ram, but not really interested in building a new system

i did fint the hyperspin front end, seems good.

and i do have the mame .81 DVD/cd discs, so i was thinking of starting there

[wizkid32]

Well, CHDs are files that contain external info. not found in the ROMs.  They can be rather hard to find, as many (if not all) ROMs don't include them.

[newmanfamilyvlogs]

i think for now i want to stay with this computer (3GHZ, p4, 1 gig of ram).  I don't mind upgrading the hard drive or ram, but not really interested in building a new system

i did fint the hyperspin front end, seems good.

and i do have the mame .81 DVD/cd discs, so i was thinking of starting there

Hyperspin is my front end of choice, but you'll likely have to dial the settings back some to get it to run smoothly. It will still look great though.

[gurnie]

Maybe you are able to help me... I installed mame0144b but when i run the hyperspin program I can't get the program to even find the roms I have installed on the computer (even when changing the directory settings in the hyperspinHQ program).  maybe because the roms are too old (version .83)

i'll be honest, the only thing i ever got to work is mame32, i never understood the Source Code Packages and getting the exe to work right. 

[Drnick]

have you also told mame to look in the right location for roms.  mine did the same, check mame outside of hyperspin and see if it loads up roms.