Looking to the Replacement for my Win2K MAME PC

[NoAffinity]

Hi All,

I decided to try to give my MAME PC a small upgrade today, upgrading Win 2000 Pro to XP Pro.  It didn't go well.  Windows XP welcome screen hung, and despite hours in the bootlog, troublehooting, etc, I could not get it working.  So, I restored from a backup of the Win 2000 hard drive, and all is well again.

This, however, has caused me to look at the bigger picture, and the future of my arcade cabinet, as it relates to this aging PC.  In the process, I've come to the realization (and through searching ebay) that if either the motherboard or the video card (Arcade VGA by Ultimarc, AGP version), ever fail, I'm potentially in for a long haul with newer hardware, Windows 7, etc.

So, I'm hoping someone has gone through this or a similar experience, and can give some guidance on what I will be in for.

My current setup:

Standard JAMMA cab, w/ 25' 15khz WG monitor
PC running Windows 2000 Pro
-ECS 865-PE-A motherboard (no longer available, from what I'm seeing)
-Intel P4 2.53 Ghz
-4 x 512MB DDR333
-Ultimarc ArcadeVGA (Radeon 9200, AGP)
-Ultimarc JPAC
-Windows 2000 Pro
-Mamewah front end, on MAME .126

My initial thought is, if I ever want to upgrade, I will probably need a low-end PC, and to spend the money on the latest and greatest ArcadeVGA (PCI-E interface).  I don't expect Mamewah to port over very easily, so probably have to start from scratch with a front end.  I had Mala working with MAME .151 on this same PC, but found the gamelist to be too long and cluttered with too many non-working and "placeholder" games (like all the maygay games).  Any suggestions on what front end works well in the Windows 7 arena, with an Ultimarc JPAC and Ultimarc Arcade VGA (5000, I think it is?)?

[Robbbert]

Just to let you know, that MAME 0.169 is the last version that works on w2k. XP is now the minimum. Also, D3D will not work on old video cards from 2004 or whatever any more. Especially inbuilt Intel ones.

I would have thought your rig would work with XP. Perhaps it chose a wrong driver somewhere.

[megamoze]

When I first built my arcade cabinet, I bought a used Dell desktop for $50.  It didn't even have an AGP slot so I had to get a PCI graphics card.  Not easy to come by.  It ran XP and all felt very primitive to me.  Hyperspin would slow to a crawl constantly and certain games wouldn't run at all.

I recently built a new workstation and used my old one in the arcade machine.  I used my old machine for VFX work, so it's roughly 1000x faster in every way as the old dusty Dell.

The key for me in upgrading my hardware is that my arcade software lives entirely on a separate drive, so I just plug it in a USB port, make sure the drive letter is correct, and I have an instant new arcade machine.

[ark_ader]

Get a Xbox Original at your local thrift store or via craigslist, soft mod it, stick CoinOPS 6 Lite on it.  You can install it on the stock HDD if the DVD is flaky.

I get mine for $10, its self contained with a nice front end.

[ppv]

Attract Mode is a newer FE that is fast, good looking and easy (well easier than Mala, HyperSpin and Atomic Fe anyway). If you have your roms list (with rom file names), I could probably whip up a batch file to convert it to it's game list. I configured mine for Mame in a couple of hours, bur spend a bit of time clean the generated rom list...