Just got an older PC, what should I do with it?

[the3eyedblindman]

My dad just bought a new computer to replace his 1998 compaq presario, I was thinkin about building a dedicated pacman cab with it...Any other ideas of what I should do with it? Other cabs to consider besides pacman?

[OSCAR]

Might consider a Vantage-based cab.  In my spare(?) time, I'm putting together a cabinet w/ a pc of about the same vintage, and it runs perfectly and looks beautiful with an arcade monitor.  Very simple setup running pure DOS, ArcadeOS, and Vantage; besides being able to run many vertical classics at 100% with an old 233MHz pc.  BTW, I'm using an ATI RageII video card to output directly to an arcade monitor using a J-PAC for the encoder.

[the3eyedblindman]

Since Im almost finished with the "4 player mame cab", and I aquired this pc, I was thinking about just putting the pacman rom in there, and making a dedicated pac man cab, and wiring up a coindoor..(would have a mug of quarters of course, wouldnt charge..) I already have the one cab that plays "everygame", so I thought the dedicated pac would be nice, if any other rom it would be games that just use a 4 way stick and  no action buttons. The cab would be a complete replica, no changes anywhere. I was just wondering if pacman was a good choice, anyone think any other cabs would be better, or have other ideas for this pc?

[Daniel270]

If you're gonna do a Pac cab, why not have all the Pac's available for it?  Use MameWAH and have a Pac themed layout....

[the3eyedblindman]

Interesting.... these are the ideas im looking for.

[OSCAR]

Since Im almost finished with the "4 player mame cab", and I aquired this pc, I was thinking about just putting the pacman rom in there, and making a dedicated pac man cab, and wiring up a coindoor..(would have a mug of quarters of course, wouldnt charge..) I already have the one cab that plays "everygame", so I thought the dedicated pac would be nice, if any other rom it would be games that just use a 4 way stick and  no action buttons. The cab would be a complete replica, no changes anywhere. I was just wondering if pacman was a good choice, anyone think any other cabs would be better, or have other ideas for this pc?

Certainly the Pac's are worth considering... But there's also Ladybug & Frogger if you don't want to add an extra button.  If you add that 'Fire' button, then you also get Space Invaders, Galaxian, Galaga, the DK's, Bombjack, Pengo....  All doable with Vantage and will work great w/ an old PC.

 

[the3eyedblindman]

Is that all of them Oscar? Does anyone have a complete list of older games that use a 4 way joystick and 1 fire button?

[the3eyedblindman]

Maybe Ill do a pac cab that plays classic games, even if it means adding three buttons or whatever, I believe there was a thread earlier with a list of all the best classic games, does anyone have it?

[the3eyedblindman]

I have done some thinking, and honestly, if I do this, I will only have it play pacman. My mame cab plays all mame games, and has a ball top 4 way, so this one doesnt need to play every game again. I will probably just leave it turned on with pacman running to make it seem like a real pacman, and wire up a  coindoor. Then possibly in the future I may get a real pacman board.

[daywane]

i am going through the same thing.
i am building a MS PAC cab.
Personally I wanted to put PAC Mame in it.
wife put her foot down. cant blame her, I have taken one hole bed room and have 7 cabs. I guess she can have 1 of them.
think about PAC Mame bunches of games and no extra buttons
( my ms PAC has a extra button allready in it even)
my plans are to use vantage on floppy and boot into MS PAC, I also plan on having a second floppy to sneak in for galaga

[JoyMonkey]

Here's something I've been playing around with lately (Daywane already knows about it). It's a bootable floppy image that runs Vantage and GameLauncher (kind-of). Right now here's what it does:
Creates a ramdisk X
Unzips Vantage to X
Unzips GameLauncher to X
Copies any rom zips you've got in the roms folder to X
Copies any samples over to X
Runs MsPacMan (if you've got the rom)
Runs GameLauncher, then craps out.

I can't get GameLauncher to run anything. I've been trying a bunch of different stuff, but no dice.
Here's the floppy image:
http://www.joymonkey.com/misc/vantage-floppy2.exe
(no roms are included with this, you need to put compatible Vantage roms into the roms folder- you've got about 210kb for roms).

Give it a whurl if you get a chance and see what you think. I'd love to know what the problem with GameLauncher is.  Sound should work if you've got a standard old ISA soudblaster. It doesn't touch your C drive, so it's safe to run on any machine.

Edit: This disk would be great for those really old PCs out there, even the ones with no hard drive. I reckon it would run on a 486 with 8mb of RAM. If GameLauncher would work, that is.

[the3eyedblindman]

We'll see, this is still in the early stages of planning. Anyone have any good links to the pacman artwork? Detailed plans? PAcMame seems like a good sollution, we'll see. Any other comments are thoughts are welcome. Thanks, Doug.

[Crazy Cooter]

Go to Jakobuds site www.jakobud.com for the cabinet, and the art library http://www.localarcade.com/arcade_art for the art.

[RayB]

Stop everything! Forget pacman.

What you want is MOONWALKER.

[the3eyedblindman]

HaHa, the original moonwalker sideart  and CPO would be impossible to find, Ive looked online. A Pacman would be relatively cheap and easy to do though.. My debate is this, another debate I have is..Mrs. Pacman or Pacman?

[tommy]

Whats the specs of that pc.

[the3eyedblindman]

Not sure of the specs, Id have to go look, its a compac presario from around 1998, will post specs later. Anyhow, What do you guys think, a Ms. PAc Cab or a Pacman?

[tommy]

If its a decent enough computer you can run many games why only run 2 or 3.

Only a true mspac is worth keeping as 1.

[missioncontrol]

make a super pac-man cab.....

[the3eyedblindman]

Specs-compaq presario, amd k6 2 processor, 512 kb cache, 4 mb graphics memory, a floppy drive, and a cd rom drive. You guys dont understand though, even if it can play almost all games in mame, I dont want it too...I have a cabinet for mame, it plays all mame games, has the 4 player control panel, ect. I already have that, I dont need 2 of them. I was never planning on building another cabinet, I just got a free computer, so If anything, I want a dedicated machine now..Just looking for comments on what to build. A Pacman would be good, a ms pac would be good..a Moonwalker would be great if I could find the artwork somewhere...Just looking for opinions on what cab to build with this computer.

[AlexC]

I say a Tempest or Centipede.

[the3eyedblindman]

I dont know alot of classic arcade games, I'm only 16, so if I go with a classic, it will be a pac or a ms pac, dont know which one though, I dont know...this is tough stuff. There are probably other cabinets I would build, but the Pacs artwork are so easy to find and obtain.

[elvis]

Might consider a Vantage-based cab.

I think this is the best idea so far.  Vantage + AracadeOS gives you a multi emu for the following games:

http://www.mameworld.net/pc2jamma/vantage.html

And runs on next to nothing (a 486DX/4 100 is overkill for most games).  It's the perfect setup for old hardware.

[the3eyedblindman]

using vantage, what is the most amount of fire buttons you would need? Because if I wanted to do a mrs. pac cab I could have start and button 1 being the same button possibly, do any of them use more than one fire button?

[JoyMonkey]

using vantage, what is the most amount of fire buttons you would need? Because if I wanted to do a mrs. pac cab I could have start and button 1 being the same button possibly, do any of them use more than one fire button?

Here's a list of all supported games and their controls:
http://mame.joymonkey.com/vantage.html

[elvis]

According to that list, everything I see with 3 buttons is a new/WIP game in 1.12 (bar gunsmoke).

Seems that everything in 1.11 is 2 buttons or less.  That's easy keyboard-hack territory if you don't want to shell out for a keyboard encoder.

Damn... now I know what to do with that old P200 I've got stashed away!