WHAT! A 486??!!

[bcard74]

Good, I got you to look ...

I am now thinking of building a bartop mini-cabinet that will tide me over until I get all the $$ together for my main project.

I can get a 486-66 with a monitor for 25 bucks, so I thought I may give it a try.

Question is, if I run one of the oldest versions of Mame, strictly out of DOS 6.22, do you think I will be OK with the classics?  IE - Pac-Man, Dig Dug, Galaga ...

I have tried a bunch of different places and it seems that people in the "old" days could get decent results on 486 machines as long as they stuck with the very early 80s games.

Comments?  Much appreciated!

[rampy]

I used to run sparcade and retrocade on a 486/dx2 66 with 16megs of ram: FWIW.

I think I also used nesticle too, but that might been the cyrix P+150 (really a 120mhz machine)

so yeah for classics there are emu's out there that would be happy on a 486, not sure how well mame would chug on one of those, but maybe an older version playing only older games...

Good luck,

rampy

[bcard74]

I used to run sparcade and retrocade on a 486/dx2 66 with 16megs of ram: FWIW.

I think I also used nesticle too, but that might been the cyrix P+150 (really a 120mhz machine)

so yeah for classics there are emu's out there that would be happy on a 486, not sure how well mame would chug on one of those, but maybe an older version playing only older games...

Good luck,

rampy

Thanks for the reply.  Looking around it seems Vantage may be an option, runs everything a lot faster than Mame on slower machines and is ROM-based.

May have to go pick up the old 486 and have a go.  Will let you all know my exciting results.  

[Lilwolf]

btw, look at pricewatch.  You might find some better computers for cheap.

486 you might get vintage to run, hive is great, and very very old versions of mame.

but for an additional 10 - 20 bucks you can probably get a 400+mhz machine.

[bcard74]

Good point.  I did find a P100 w/ 16 MB RAM, 1 GB HD for 19.95.  Problem with that is with shipping to Canada it would be at least 35 bucks, then with exchange it would be 55 bucks, and then there would be customs fees on top of that.

I am not sure what model 486 these two for 25 bucks are, but if they are DX2/4 66+ I may give it a try.  Thanks a lot for your input, if I lived in the US I would do it that way for sure.

[Lilwolf]

isn't the motherboard size going to be the most important part?  If you can fit an baby ATX motherboard, you should be find for a ton of others... but finding old 486s are going to have the same size problems (if not more).  They are just different form factor (preATX was thinner and long, while ATX's are wider and narrow.

I personally wouldn't buy anything that slow unless it was free... Why?  You will spend WAY more then 20 bucks on the whole system.  And it would suck if you couldn't upgrade it when you want it without rebuilding.

I would start with the motherboard form factor you want to build too... then go from there.  If money really is the issue, then you might not want to go with a bartop since you will only be saving 10% of the whole price to make it completely unupgradeable.

also, there are two more problems.

1) power supplies.  They are usually big.  Finding one that will fit might be an issue...

2) monitor.  knowing how much space behind it, even on a 12 or 14" might be to big to add much behind it.

you might consider looking at old crappy notebooks.  You might find a used 400mhz one for 300 or 400 that would work great... and you can always get another one to replace it later when they come down in price... or you can afford a nice one.