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Choosing an OS and a frontend
Howard_Casto:
My suggestion......
Do you have 200 bucks? Tigerdirect.com has some "like new" imb 550 mhz pentium 3 pcs on their site for 100 bucks. The memory slots *should* be compatable with the 128mb you already have. The extra 100 bucks is allocated for the fact that these systems have awful graphics cards and you might need an arcade vga. If not you could get away much cheaper.
These systems aren't new, but they have usb, agp, ect.... in other words, they are a lot better than what you have and you could probably run windows mame with it.
Dougmeister:
--- Quote ---Do you have 200 bucks?
--- End quote ---
Not really :)
I need to make this work "as is"... I may be able to squeeze out some cash for a new video card (w/ tv out in case we get a new tv and I get to vandalize the old one), but that's about it.
I can probably upgrade later, but not now.
seibu:
TBH, for games form the '80s, what you have is fine.
The main problem with DOS is that it doesn't make the most of newer hardware, but since you don't have newer hardware, DOS would be fine.
Linux would be even better. I got maybe 30% faster than WinXP or 98 on my lowly P3 800 using a 2.6 Kernel compiled with optimisation for my hardware.
I would also reccommend a proper arcade monitor or SCART TV. You'll save a lot of CPU not having to run fake scanlines and stretching, and AdvanceMAME under Linux has the best support for video modes and refresh rates. I was tearing my hair out trying to run Pacland without tearing or broken parallax under XP. Perfect first time under AdvanceMAME, even without hacking the refresh to 60Hz.