Low spec mame - single game bootable?

[Chevron]

So i have 2 old laptops IBM thinkpad T22 900mhz 512 ram.
Im looking to use one of these as a stand alone bartop playing only one game. galaxian.


I tried afew things today
For love nor money i could not get tinyxp installed, well it installed but bluescreen with licence error, never in my years in IT i have seen this before.

after that i tried KnoppixMame - Turned out to be alive cd so was not able to install it to HDD

Then i tried Puppy arcade 10
can use this as a live cd then install to HDD if you wanted, This i did.
i installed Puppy Arcade 10 with galaxian as the only rom
it ran, but was a bit slow.
I think this may have been due to the fact that puppy arcade has a new(ish) version of mame installed.
It also has emulators for MANY consoles pre-installed.
I may look into this on a better spec-ed pc.

I know NOTHING about linux so i was unable to install a lower end version of mame to test.

If anyone one knows about installing/compiling early pre 0.36 mamd on linux please link me.
Also if you know linux how can i have it so this one game auto starts on boot up with no GUI.
just boot and straight start game.

So basicelly what im after is a boot straight to game option on OS.

dos os would work if i could get mame with no nag hiscore booy straight to a game.

Has anyone done something similiar or be able to point me in the right direction?

Cheers
Danny

[Thenasty]

if you have DOS soundcard drivers for that old laptop, go for Vantage or Mame version 36final running plain DOS.

[paigeoliver]

Also a 900 mhz processor can use a mame version much newer than 36.

Pretty sure you can just use a bat file than launches mame with the game as soon as windows boots and then shuts down windows when you exit mame.

if you have DOS soundcard drivers for that old laptop, go for Vantage or Mame version 36final running plain DOS.

[Lilwolf]

I think there have been some additions to galaxian since 36, but the only thing I can think of is the starfield generation. 

The blue screen licence is because you probably don't have a license for xp.  I don't know if it was supposed to be hacked, but it might be that you just can't update it and it would have been fine.  But can't you run it for a bit?  If so, test it and see if the performance is enough before going DOS.  you WILL have some issues finding the sound drivers. 

[ark_ader]

.84 is stable and in my opinion a low spec laptop is a P120 with 32mb memory which runs .36 classics like a champ.  A good alternative OS for laptops that cannot use XP is Windows 2000.  You can get it real cheap on ebay.

[Chevron]

I have valid XP licence keys so im not worried about that.
It never gave me an option to input it and it straight BSOD's.

I will try again with different install options to try input my license keys.

I think there have been some additions to galaxian since 36, but the only thing I can think of is the starfield generation. 

The blue screen licence is because you probably don't have a license for xp.  I don't know if it was supposed to be hacked, but it might be that you just can't update it and it would have been fine.  But can't you run it for a bit?  If so, test it and see if the performance is enough before going DOS.  you WILL have some issues finding the sound drivers.