no hard drive, putting everything on CD or DVD rom

[smashtv]

hello, i am a newbie so i dont know if this has been brought up before. but i was thinking of putting everything(operating system, mame,roms) on a boot-up cd-rom or dvd-rom instead using a hard drive. has anyone tried this??

steve

[JoyMonkey]

Yes, have a look at AdvanceCD.

[Lilwolf]

You also have some issues of not being able to save any settings / hs / ect.

Is this for a dedicated machine?  If so, really take some time and look for a cheap 10gig harddrive.  They go for next to nothing these days... and will hold every rom that you will need (assuming you don't have a $500 machine and trying to save 30 bucks on a drive.)

there really is tons of problems with cds... and you better home all the settings don't change..

[cholin]

IMO, thats an awesome idea, although in the end, you do not save anything at all.  What I would say, it will cost you more though, is that to do something like that, you need a 1 GIG USB drive.  There are hacks to make it run as a master drive, as a friend told me.  If you know someone in India, theyre around $5 US but around here, CHA CHING.  You then use the USB drive as your HD, and you save a ton of room.  Drill a square space in the front, mount a USB port, TADA, you pop in a little USB drive (which is like the key to turning on your system) and you show off