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Tiger-Heli:

--- Quote from: TopCat on April 28, 2004, 03:12:49 am ---Is this your way of contributing to this Thread ?
With sarcasm and assumptions ?
Only most people seem to offer help and advice.
As I don't play Pac-man I forgot it was vertical but Im sure this didn't make much difference to the question so I assume you could'nt answer it and therefore prefered to state the obvious (unless you thought you were quite clever knowing Pac-man was vertical)
for your two contributions so far
"THANKS FOR NOTHING"
--- Quote from: Tiger-Heli on April 27, 2004, 05:22:46 pm ---
--- Quote from: TopCat on April 27, 2004, 04:34:02 pm ---out of curiosity and to build my knowlege is there a similar programme to Vantage for horizontal games like Pac-man ?

--- End quote ---
Errrm, Vantage supports Pac-Man, and Pac-Man isn't a horizontal game  . . .   ???

--- End quote ---

--- End quote ---
After the "THANKS FOR NOTHING" comment, I'm not sure why I'm still responding to this thread, but I am.

I wasn't being sarcastic - to recap -

YOU asked how to play GALAXIAN on the cab with minimal software.

PEALE recommended Vantage - a good program for slower computers, but I don't know if you are dealing with a slower computer or not.  I have run Vantage, but preferred to just use an older build of MAME, even when I used a Pentium 200.

I gave you some advice on setting up batch files to do what you initially asked.

I accidentally skipped over your post where you thanked Peale for the advice on Vantage and said it worked well, I did read the post where you said you were pretty much only interested in Galaxians (vertical), Phoenix (vertical???) and 1941 and 1943 (vertical).
 
Then YOU asked about a program like Vantage to play horizontal games like PacMan.

Since the initial thread was about playing only Galaxian this could be taken two ways -

Hey, I like PacMan too - how can I play it with this setup,

or

What program could be used to play horizontal games on a slower computer.  (Had I seen that you liked Peale's Vantage suggestion, I might have assumed you were heading more this way).

I suppose I could have thought out my answer, but I thought by pointing out the obvious, if you were looking to add Pac-Man, you would have your answer.  If you were asking about horizontal games, you would post back with "my bad - this is what I meant"  (which you sortof did.)

Basically, I would just get a 200-600 Mhz processor (or better) and run an older version of MAME.  Otherwise, look at what game you want to add, look at http://caesar.logiqx.com/ and see what emulators it lists, and look at maybe Raine, Rage, Nebula, Final Burn, etc. depending on the game.
TopCat:
Firstly I may have been a bit quick to jump - sorry

I appreciate any advice given

My hope is to have about 4 or 5 dedicated machines for personal use in me basement. As these machines are now very expensive I either intend to buy old battered cabinets or to build new ones. To save on cost I intend to use an old 486 with a small hardrive and as little software as possible. For my vertical games Vantage is perfect but there maybe one or two horizontal games I would eventually like. So I was just wondering if there was a small similar programme designed for the old horizontal games.

Thanks for the link I will check it out

SirPeale:
Okay, we're all playing nicely, right? Okay.  Let's get back on topic.

As for your question about a horizontal emulator for older games, there are a lot of emulators out there, but Mame .36 final is likely your best bet.  I'm using it on a Pentium 2 233 right now, and can play Robotron 2084, Defender, Moon Patrol, Tetris, SideArms at full frame.
Tiger-Heli:

--- Quote from: TopCat on April 28, 2004, 07:43:22 am ---Firstly I may have been a bit quick to jump - sorry

I appreciate any advice given

My hope is to have about 4 or 5 dedicated machines for personal use in me basement. As these machines are now very expensive I either intend to buy old battered cabinets or to build new ones. To save on cost I intend to use an old 486 with a small hardrive and as little software as possible. For my vertical games Vantage is perfect but there maybe one or two horizontal games I would eventually like. So I was just wondering if there was a small similar programme designed for the old horizontal games.

Thanks for the link I will check it out

--- End quote ---
I never used a 486 for emulation.  HIVE was also designed for slower computers, but I didn't especially like it when I used the Pentium 200.

As Peale and Minwah said, an older MAME is probably your best bet.  I would go R36B12 or previous (which is earlier than R36, BTW) to get ahead of alpha blending, which really slowed down BattleZone and Asteroids Deluxe.

With my old Pentium 200, I could run most of the classics, although games like afterburner would be around Frameskip 6 or 7, but still playable.

In the U.S., there is very little price difference between a used 486 and used Pentium 200.  (like probably $75 instead of $60), and not much price increase to go to a Duron 600-800 which would even play some of the newer games really well.

Let me throw some other options out there as well - Take them or leave them -

You could probably get by with two cabinets - One for vertical games and one for horizontal games.  Since you wouldn't have to buy three more cabs, monitors, etc., you could put more money into the PC's.  (I realize this might mean swappable control panels which you could avoid with dedicated machines.).

or -

I don't know all the in's and out's of this - but - it should be possible to have 4 or 5 cabinets, have a really good PC (XP 2500 or so) in one of them running MAME, and have minimal hardware in the other cabs acting as terminals on a network.

FWIW.
Santoro:

--- Quote from: Tiger-Heli on April 28, 2004, 11:10:10 am ---I don't know all the in's and out's of this - but - it should be possible to have 4 or 5 cabinets, have a really good PC (XP 2500 or so) in one of them running MAME, and have minimal hardware in the other cabs acting as terminals on a network.
--- End quote ---

Then you would have a true MameFrame environment.  (insert wacky clown horn here)
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