Help needed reviving MAME console built in 2007

[y2k600f4]

Hello everyone, been a number of years since my MAME build !! I was hoping to get back into the hobby (had to relearn what I did years ago)

Built 2007
Mala v1.05 front end
MAME 0.116 with 0.116u2 ROMS
GGG GPWIZ49
Using Set49mode and joy2key
PC: Pentium PIIII 800MHz 512MB RAM with ATI RAGE 128GL AGP video running Windows 98
I never was happy with the performance of most of the games including older games (video was slow on a majority of games-unplayable and sound was choppy on most); I was running a too new bloated version of MAME at that time and should have been running 0.55 if I recall but never did install that version.
Well I wanted to get this thing running again and after putting in a new CPU battery I installed the latest version of Mala (1.74) and got rid of the joy2key (no longer needed do to the support of the newer version of MaLa) ….appears everything is running as it was a few years ago.
That brings me to wanting to get this thing running so I can play a majority of the games in video and sound that is playable. I want to reuse the cabinet, controls, monitor etc and upgrade MAME to the latest with the associated ROMs so my question is what are suggestions on the PC, operating system etc I should be looking for ? Thanks in advance. Hopefully I can get this thing revived and be able to play more of the classics.

[DietCoke]

Check:  http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php/topic,19049.0.html

[Hoopz]

Are  you going to buy a new PC or get a used one?  Do you want to play classics or newish games on it?

[y2k600f4]

Thanks for the replies.

Looks like I need to do some reading !!

Going to look for a used PC and just want to play pure MAME games (classics). I think I read that a Pentium P4 ~3GHz (before dual core) running XP (or W7) would be sufficient. I may first try and find MAME 0.55 on my current PC and see how that works for the interim.

[cw]

get an older build of mame... i have ones that run great on a p100

[y2k600f4]

get an older build of mame... i have ones that run great on a p100

I read that version 0.102 should be the last version to use before some major architectural changes were made to the code that required increased processor speed (please correct me if I am wrong). I am going to give that a try today along with clrmamepro to convert my ROMS from 0.116 to this older version. Thanks.

[PL1]

run MAME v.106
There were major changes at v.107 that made it more demanding.

Scott

[Hoopz]

Mamedevs changed both the audio and video side of Mame in different releases after .100.  I go with .94 because Golden Tee works and I had an old P4 initially.

For games that you want to play that aren't in whatever version you end up with, you CAN easily install different versions of Mame and point the other version(s) of Mame at a few different roms.  Your FE can be setup with different versions of Mame pretty easily to make it seamless for the user to find and launch different roms.

[paigeoliver]

With that CPU you should be running mame .55. And you should absolutely not be trying to run the latest version of anything. Run some archaic frontend that hasn't updated in a decade. You don't need some bad coding hogging all your CPU cycles behind the scenes while mame runs (and the cycles of an 800 mhz P3 are indeed incidental as far as todays software is concerned. I do believe my 8 core 4 ghz CPU just turned 2 years old.

[y2k600f4]

All thanks for that info and suggestions. I will try a couple different versions of MAME starting with the oldest suggestions; right now I have not successfully converted any ROMs with clrmamepro 

[paigeoliver]

All thanks for that info and suggestions. I will try a couple different versions of MAME starting with the oldest suggestions; right now I have not successfully converted any ROMs with clrmamepro 

There is a mame .78 torrent that usually has a few people serving it. That is close enough. The torrents for the pi versions will have stupid old rom versions as well since the pi code is based off 1999 era code.

[Hoopz]

Here's a tutorial.  Its a couple of years old so if clrmamepro has changed a lot since then, it may not be accurate.  I used it to rebuild a set a couple of years ago.

http://www.cphsolutions.f2s.com/guides/cmprotutorial.htm