Utilising an old Netbook - worth it?

[GSXRMovistar]

Coming the end of my currently project (cocktail inspired cab) and I'm already thinking about what next. I have a kids sized cab in mind but would also like to do something smaller/simpler over the winter such as mini 1 player bar-top.

Looking through my spares/parts I've got an old kids netbook (Zoostorm Fizzbook, Intel Atom 1.6GHz, 1GB RAM) which has been sat around for the past few years doing nothing; would anything simple (subset of Mame, megadrive, SNES) run on this?

Thanks
Andy

[Malenko]

I dont think it'd be worth fussing with. You can get a pretty great i5 based laptop from TK for like $100 shipped

[BadMouth]

Use a MAME build from the time when 1.6Ghz processors were the norm.
You can find romsets for v.38(IIRC) because that's what some of the cell phone builds use.
You're limited to what was emulated at that time, but most of the early 80's classics are there.

I ran version .83 on a 600mhz Celeron for my nephew's cab.  The classics played fine.  It choked when it got to the mid 80's stuff like Contra.
When that died, I upgraded to a 3.?Ghz Pentium that I got for $16 through arrow direct.  (search for the crazy cheap computers thread in the everything else subforum)

[pbj]

If you can get it to boot up into DOS and have sound support, that's plenty of horsepower to push around MAME 36

[GSXRMovistar]

I dont think it'd be worth fussing with. You can get a pretty great i5 based laptop from TK for like $100 shipped

TK??

Whilst I wasn't expecting the Atom to be any sort of power house I honestly thought it would be able to play a fair amount of MAME stuff and the 16 bit consoles (Megadrive/SNES) seeing that my old PCs from 10+ years ago could do this.

[yotsuya]

I dont think it'd be worth fussing with. You can get a pretty great i5 based laptop from TK for like $100 shipped

TK??

Whilst I wasn't expecting the Atom to be any sort of power house I honestly thought it would be able to play a fair amount of MAME stuff and the 16 bit consoles (Megadrive/SNES) seeing that my old PCs from 10+ years ago could do this.

I've used an Atom in builds just fine, as long as it's the classics. Use a very basic front end, though - Hyperspin isn't going to cut it.

[Malenko]

You asked if it was WORTH it, not if it was possible.  For me, it wouldnt be worth it, however it IS possible.  As for TK, I was talking about this thread :
http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php/topic,133968.0.html

/shill 

[DudeRegular]

I used a laptop for in a bartop build. The specs were a little better, but not a huge amount. It was a really old core 2 duo running around 1.8 GHz I think. Running a mame version in the 140 or 150 range but sticking to older roms. Mostly vertical games from before 85 or so.

One thing that was a bit of a pain was powering the laptop on and off. I ended up soldering a couple of wires from an old IDE ribbon to the laptops power switch, then ran those to an arcade button. That involved taking all sorts of panels off the laptop to get the power switch loose to a point where I could even see the solder pads, which were also really small. Also you might have issues with secondary monitors, resolutions, and the good old lid switch. One thing you might have to do is fully remove the laptop screen to solve these issues. Some laptops will work just fine when the laptop is closed based on the windows power options being set. Mine would not power up with the lid closed though despite my soldered on power leads.

Food for thought man. Its certainly possible, just be prepared to do some additional work to get it all the way.

[lamprey]

I dont think it'd be worth fussing with. You can get a pretty great i5 based laptop from TK for like $100 shipped

TK??

Whilst I wasn't expecting the Atom to be any sort of power house I honestly thought it would be able to play a fair amount of MAME stuff and the 16 bit consoles (Megadrive/SNES) seeing that my old PCs from 10+ years ago could do this.

I've used an Atom in builds just fine, as long as it's the classics. Use a very basic front end, though - Hyperspin isn't going to cut it.

I run Hyperspin just fine on my mini/bartop (netbook with Atom processor). Granted you should/need to turn down some of effects for it to be smooth, but no issues here. I forget the version of Mame I'm running, but I think it's the .0136-.0149 area. So, the OP, there is no reason not to use your netbook.

[gonzo90017]

You should be fine running Snes and Genesis. They ran fine on an old 300mhz pc I have stored away.

[Phreakwars]

I say it IS worth it. Hell I remember running MAME on an old 450Mhz AMD K6-III chip with 128 megs of RAM at full speed.. Granted, like others have said... those were all OLD OLD classic games. But still, for what it's worth, the games that it did run back then it ran very well. Something like that though, I'd be looking at old front ends like ArcadeOS or Tim Eckel's Arcade@Home which was ahead of it's time (at the time  ). But then you need to also consider which OS will run on that netbook and has available drivers. Linux will more then likely run on it, XP probably will and probably even has the proper drivers... Ideally, on THAT kind of hardware, myself personally, I'd dust off the old Windows 98 CD.. but make sure I had the drivers first... which could get tricky. If you can get past that hurdle, you can make a pretty rockin little arcade game.

[jtslade]

Use groovy arcade


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[Locke141]

Doing a DOS build does sound like a fun retro challenge, but I'd keep an old net book running what ever OS (probably XP) it has on it and just keep it simple. Finding drivers can be a pain.

You should first ask what games do you want. You may decide you would be happy with a Dedicated NES or just a hand full of 4-way classics. Ether way you net book may do. The thing that seem to get people in trouble is trying to do to much.

[paigeoliver]

Half the people in this thread don't know what they are talking about. You don't need DOS, you certainly don't WANT mame 150. Install a mame between .55 and .78 and it will basically all run full speed aside from 3D and CHD titles (almost all of which require specialty controls and still choke computers with 3x the specs).

My first cabinet had a 300 mhz (later 450 mhz) AMD processor 15 years ago. Everything anyone cared about ran full speed. 15 years ago.

There are kids taking their learners permit right now, who weren't even alive when mame was only awesome enough to basically run all 2D games full speed.

I don't care about blitz or streetfighter 4, so don't bring them up as a rebuttal.

[GSXRMovistar]

Right just a follow up, I installed Windows 10 as it's lighter than Win7 and easier to use than the abomination that is Win8 (wasn't going to entertain XP).

Whilst CPU and memory loads were fine it was immediately obvious that the hard disk, a small 4200rpm zif drive was the bottleneck. I swapped this out for a small SSD and now the machine runs great.

Have installed MAME 0.106 and a number of 16bit emus (SNES/Megadrive) and everything runs well with a high frame rate. Even fired up a few N64 games and they seems okay (however not intending to use those).

So looks like this machine is viable option for my next project.