re-re-do. The curse of unreliable hardware.

[Kayden]

Many years ago, I built my cabinet on an AMD 939 PC running XP.
Fastforward years and moving and it just kinda stopped working and I never found the time to fix it.
Last year, I rebuilt it. The old PC was dead, but I was able to pull the drives and get most of the roms and config and apps for the controls, lights, and all that.
Naturally over the years, a lot of the apps had changed or died. It didn't flash the button and say the function anymore, but the games played and things lit up and I had it running on Windows 10.
For like 2 weeks.

I don't know if another drive died or PSU died or what... but it's another year into just sitting there and I want to make it work and stay that way. What do you guys find makes a config more reliable or at least easier to backup and redeploy?

I would assume Pi systems are far weaker than desktop PCs. As I recall, MAME also now uses GPUs?

[Vocalitus]

I upgraded my 939 Athlon 3000 to a FX 6350 with an Nvidia 950 and guess what?  The Mame games I had worked exactly the same.

Now I have i7 4770 with integrated graphics and they play exactly the same but cost $80 refurbished. (thanks newegg)

Get a free PC from a recycler and your  original XP install discs and backup your drive and carry on. 

Do not connect it to the internet and your arcade gaming can carry one for another 15 years.