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Minimize Boot time - what is best OS to use?
rchadd:
I am planning on building a new cocktail cab and want to keep boot time to absolute minimum so figure should use DOS to play mame.
I also want ability to play other windows based emulators (Gens, VirtualBoy,epsxe and maybe others)
I have both win98 and win2000 cd's - which should I use? I figure win98 as less bloatware.
I plan to have dos menu to choose dos mame frontend (any suggestions which one?) or choose boot to a windows and auto start frontend which support multiple emulators.
does this sound like a good idea?
any tips on how to get boot time of win98 to absolute minimum?
i will be running windows in 640x480 as will be using ArcadeVGA (not sure if that is relevant!)
any suggestions are welcome!
i have heard it is possible to setup DOS system using CompactFlash - how does boot time compare to using disk? Is it possible to use CF to boot Windows as well?
has anyone used 98lite (http://www.litepc.com/) to reduce boot time? is it good?
Howard_Casto:
Neither.... the fastest boot time can only be achieved with xp and a modern motherboard capable of it's fancy schmancy calls.
98 lite is crap... don't use it
If your system is fairly modern you shouldn't be using dos.... dos(and dos programs) can't handle big amounts of memory or large harddrives well.
98 is very unstable imo... i only use xp now. Why not 2000? 2000 isn't optimized for gaming and backwards compatability, xp is.
hope that helps....
rchadd:
i wasn't planning on buying a copy of XP
Acids:
--- Quote from: rchadd on April 24, 2004, 08:13:27 pm ---i wasn't planning on buying a copy of XP
--- End quote ---
Dos as far as i know is the fastest.
Use fat32 filesystem for the harddrive.
just make sure the hardware is dos compatible ( your biggest problem will be your soundcard )
Im Using Advance Menu and Mame. (Loads Very fast.) and using novcpi will allow access to large amounts of ram.
Minwah:
--- Quote from: rchadd on April 24, 2004, 05:05:17 pm ---I plan to have dos menu to choose dos mame frontend (any suggestions which one?) or choose boot to a windows and auto start frontend which support multiple emulators.
does this sound like a good idea?
--- End quote ---
Good idea, as long as your PC spec is low enough...I mean for MAME's performance in DOS to be greater than in Windows. If MAME works better in Windows then I would just run Win98 and put up with the slower boot time.
After DOS, XP is quickest but you don't have XP anyway...I wouldn't recommend 2k, apart from what Howard said it always seemed pretty slow to boot for me...