Need help with setting up old laptop for my first Arcade build

[j1345]

Hi,

I'm getting ready to build my first cabinet...the viglix  (but 60" tall and 24" wide)...I've already built 6 paper models to make sure everythings going to fit.

I wanted to get some advice if my old 7 year hold HP laptop has enough juice to power up Mala / Mame ? 

Wanting to show my son games like pac man, elevator action, Rolling thunder, shinobe, street fighter,  possibly mortal combat for myself...

CAn anyone run the above on something old like a 7 year old HP laptop?

Thanks in advance...

[PL1]

If you're planning on playing NFL Blitz, forget it.

If you're planning on playing Mortal Kombat, you should be good once you strip out the bloatware and unnecessary processes like anti-virus.

If you're planning on playing Galaga, you should already be good to go.   

I have MAMEUIFX v0.146 (?) on an ~8-year old Toshiba laptop and it does pretty well IIRC, but I haven't used F11 to check speed/dropped frames on it.   

Install the latest build of MAME and try the newest, most processor intensive game you're likely to play

If it bogs down, try an earlier version of MAME.   


Scott

[JDFan]

What are the specs or model of the laptop ?? -- 7 years ago just like today there are all types of different performance levels so without specifics on what the laptop is there is no way to be able to tell you if it will run those games or not.

[gamer83]

Like scotty said,forget about 3dgames like blitz,and get rid of all the hp garbage thats bundled with it,install tinyXP and playing games like pac man galaga elevator action should be fine,as for games like mortal kombat,maybe the first 2,but 3 might be unplayable.Post up the computer specs.i would use an older build of mame aswell.

[EMDB]

Why don't you just try it. You don't need a cabinet for that...

[keilmillerjr]

Try a low resource linux distro and attract-mode front end. Lit will probably be your best bet at a quick but nice setup on older hardware.