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Worth switching to a Coinops Xbox?
ark_ader:
While I love playing with CoinOPS, it is a complete PINTA to get a controller hacked, unless you have a X-Arcade sitting around, or like soldering. I picked up two ITX Celeron 1.5 for £20 and they run everything at full speed, add a £5 PSU and you have a great starter for small or large projects. I use TinyXP or MicroXP and link it to the Network Server. As long as you are not connected to the web it is a great arcade cabinet OS.
CoinOPS 5 does take a while to download, and I wouldn't bother if you have version 4. I know I have about 25 games I play regularly, so a lite installation would work out great on a stock hard drive. The DVD version works great too and has all the console cores.
Reading on the console forum about the capacitors leaking on the Xbox PSU is another reason to go the PC route. Besides I would go the P4/Celeron 1.5 route than an old P3, and I am sure you get a free old PC on craigslist or freecycle.
Don't get me wrong. I think what BP has done with CoinOPS is a fantastic achievement, but without a cheap encoder product, (hint hint) the the limited capacity of the processor/memory, the PC option is the easiest. ;D
Cynicaster:
--- Quote from: rCadeGaming on December 02, 2012, 05:34:32 pm ---Yeah, XP can be made pretty rock solid. Once everything's set up, you can leave it as is.
You know you can turn off auto-updates right? Do you even need it connected to the net? Cutting that off can simplify things.
--- End quote ---
Stupidly, when I first set up my cabinet, I had a USB wi-fi adapter plugged into it so I could access the internet. A few months later, I had a problem similar to what the OP is describing--games just wouldn't load.
Then, I bought the cheapo used PC I mentioned earlier, kept it isolated from the internet, and it has run like a dream since without any issues or degradation in performance.
I think the moral of the story is to keep the setup of your MAME PC as simple as you can bear. There really is absolutely no reason why an arcade machine needs to connect to the internet, other than to have its owner say, "hey look, my arcade cabinet connects to the internet!" The complications it brings are just not worth it--use your other computers for the internet.
I know it's nice and convenient to be able to download stuff right to your cabinet (new ROM's, emulators, etc.) but there are other ways to handle such things that don't expose you to risk. The most obvious is to transfer stuff to the MAME PC with USB drives and the like. That's probably sufficient for most people--after all, how often do you really need to do such things?--but I have more of a lazy man's solution implemented at my house. I happened to have a spare wireless router kicking around, so I used it to set up a second wireless network. This second network is not connected to the internet--it's just a "floating" router that broadcasts a second SSID into my home. Essentially, it works like a wired LAN; I use this network to transfer data wirelessly to and from my MAME PC using my main home computer. Easy-peasy, and the best part is, my MAME PC stays free of cyber-clap.