getting back into arcade gaming (at last) and need some advice

[Sorex]

Hello,

I got here about 4 years ago to realize a dream I had when I was a kid and when the pacman's & donkey kong's started to appear here in Belgium (82 or so).

Unfortunatly after finishing the cabinet in a rush the time lacked to enjoy it

BUT

since I am unemployed at the moment I have enough time left thus last friday I wasted 2.5 hours to get it moved from my house to the garden cabine 40 meters furter and I had to bridge several heights up to 40cm with 2 planks to roll it over,
man that was hell! even with the monitor and pc pcb's removed it weighted 100+ kilo I guess and I was all alone. 

there are some slight damages at the back from pulling it through the doors (milimeter work) but it could've been worse.

for the actual status...

I reinstalled the pc pcb stuff and screwed my jammASD in place so the wooden board under the monitor is nicely filled now
(pcb & power supply was at the bottom/"floor" before but it was misery to stick a usb disk in as you couldn't see a thing or you couldn't reach the ports)

now before I will plug it in to have some retro fun I want to be sure about some things.

1. the cab was in my porch which is walls with just plastic on top of it, in the winter it's about as cold as outside but it was still dry.

Can the hardware deal with that cold , moist?


2. i had some issues with resolutions, is the perfect res for a 28" Polo2 still something like 320x240? 640x400 was a lot of interlacing flicker I remember


3. I used mame32 with that build-in front end, is there something better that show a lists + screenshots/changin background or something but that is running at those lower resolutions?

stuff like atomicCFE look great but they seem to go way beyond 320x240


4. I installed MicroXP or miniXP on it back then, it works fine but aren't there other ways to quickly boot some dos/linux frontend that supports 320x240/15Hz (and my jammASD)

[TOK]

Storing a machine in cold weather is usually not a problem (sometimes painted marquee's will flake from it).
Turning monitors on in the winter is definitely a problem... As they warm up condensation forms.

[Sorex]

Indeed, I turned it on a few minutes ago and got some pretty picture.

not 100% perfect but I just did a quick turn on the pots so that it didn't scroll/roll, so that needs to be investigated later.

only the speaker give some slight buzz sound when the pc is turned on, might be that cheap on board soundcard.