Help - my system is horribly sloooowww....and old...

[rdenis]

So I have a Dell Pentium II 450 XPS with 128 MB RAM and a TNT2 16MB PCI video card running Windows XP and I can't even get DK, Joust, Galaga, MS. Pacman, etc. to run at more than 20FPS and my CPU is processing horrible percentages.

I keep reading about people running seemingly less powerful systems than this at full speed and achieving full frame rates so any suggestions would be much appreciated.

[zaphod]

XP on a 450?!?!  With 128MB RAM?!?!  That's a large part of your problem.  I assume you are running MAME32?  If so, get an older version (pre-.60) and you'll see a noticeable difference.   If you plan to play the classics on that machine, you might want to explore other frontends rather than MAME32 (if that IS what you are using).

The OS and memory is what is crushing this poor machine.

[CCM]

I have to agree with zaphod, get XP off of that machine and install Windows 98 SE.  You'll see a big difference.

[zaphod]

Even Win2k would be vastly faster.  I run that on my spare 350 with an older version of MAME32 and have no problems at all.

[maraxle]

FreeDOS!

[Thenasty]

FREE DOS or PLAIN DOS Install (Even 98 DOS only install)
Mame 36 Final

That will run the CLASSICS at full speed.

[Apollo]

I would suggest running Windows command line MAME with a front end like MAMEWAH, also you gotta get more RAM brother, 256Mb for WinXP.
Either that or get yourself a 1.6MHz Duron processor, it's primo for MAME.