The Perfect MAME Brain....?!?

[mr.Curmudgeon]

Hello Gamers,

Long story short...during the dot-com boom, I worked for a company developing a set-top box, home-audio thing-a-ma-jig and I acquired a prototype (reference) box to use for UI development (in a purely graphic arts capacity)....XX million dollars later, they went bust and I've had this dusty machine sitting around ever since.

I've been saving money to build a cabinet, but in the meantime I want to have something hooked up to my 36" Sony Wega, so I thought this might be the PERFECT little 2U machine to have placed in the home theatre rack next to the TV....trouble is the box ran on embedded WinCE and I haven't a clue how to get the thing running a more 'mame-friendly' OS (ie:win98/2000)

Here's some specs on the machine:
RealMagic STB 2000 (SigmaDesigns)
(link: http://www.tradwell.com.tw/STB2000.htm) - specs
(link: http://www.gordoncross.com/mpeg_sigmadesigns_stb2000.htm - Pic, More Specs
(link: http://www.sigmadesigns.com/) - development firm
(link: http://www.realmagic.com/ - drivers, chipset, etc.

Here's the part that is most interesting:
"A special-purpose VGA chip, the IGS Technologies CyberPro 5050 Media Processor, handles output to standard television sets. With its trilinear interpolated, anti-aliased TV output, the text and graphics of web pages are displayed on TV sets with a display quality that rivals VGA displays"

This thing was SPECIALLY designed to run on a TV, it's small (ie: about the size of a VCR) and it's got all the AV-outs I could want...
I'm thinking I could throw MAME on the HD, get an OS to recognize the hardware and build an arcade control panel..then sit-back and drool all over the couch....

Trouble is, I'm completely clueless on how to get the d*mn thing to run a regular OS, and since there's no support (as it's basically a bootleg reference product), it continues to remain a paper-weight. I actually had win2000 running on it, but no sound and certainly not in any decent resolution, since everything is embedded and win2K doesn't recognize any of it.

Will one (or several) of you beautiful Mame minds point me to some info, or offer me suggestions on what I might do to use this machine and finally enjoy some classic gaming on the big screen?!  

If it's not possible, I'd like to at least throw it out, so it stops staring me in the face!  

Thanks in advance,
mr.Curmudgeon

[android]

My best guess is to look for drivers that are based on the same chipsets in your embedded PC. If you are lucky, then you can simply select the right driver by hand, as of course win2000 won't be able to do it on its own. My next step would then be to load Linux. These guys have drivers for anything on the face of earth and see if it works. And finally, if you think it's just too much trouble, I'll be glad to take it :-)

-- android
spaceduel@yahoo.com

[mr.Curmudgeon]

hehe... I'll definitely look into those suggestions, thanks!

I've begun looking for drivers, but it is a fairly daunting task
since this thing seems slightly outdated by their later models and I
haven't been able to find driver listings for it.

But, based on your interest in the system itself, would you say it's going to be worth it? or are their PC add-in cards that can do most of this stuff now anyhow?

Here's hoping I can get a supportive tech, who'll just point me to the correct download.  

[isugoat]

well it has an award bios and regular computer parts so it shouldn't be too hard to get it runnin something else.
NOTE:  you better make sure there are Win98 drivers for that vid card...that looks like it'd be the only problem component.
1.  when the computer starts, press DEL or F2 to get into bios (whichever it says to press at the bottom of the screen)
2.  in the bios, set first boot to CDROM or ATAPI CD
3.  put in a win98 CD (i say win98 because it says on one of those websites that that machine was made to use win98 and the fact that win98 is a decent OS for MAME)
4.  select the menu option from the bottom that says "Save & Quit"...usually F10.
5.  now when the machine boots up it should go to a win98 menu (you may have to press enter if there is a screen that says "Press a key to boot from cd"
6.  you want to get to a command prompt with CD support, so select that option.
7.  when you get to a command prompt, type "D:" and hit enter
8.  now i forget the exact name of the folder on the CD but i think it is aptly named "Win98" so type "cd win98" if that doesn't work, type dir and look at the listings, one of them should say "Win-something"...find a folder liek that then type "cd "Win-something" with "Win-something" being the name of the folder.
9.  now type "format c:" and the hard drive will format.  after it gets done formatting, it'll ask you to enter a volume name so just type in whatever you want the hard drive to be called ("Sally", "Billy" anything)
10.  once that is all done, restart the computer and get back to the win98 menu.  one of them should say "Setup Win98" or "Install Win98" or something to that effect.  select that one and then you should get instructions from the comp the rest of the way.

[mr.Curmudgeon]

This board rocks...you ladies/gentlemen are a great community!
I'm going to wipe win2000 and go with win98, here's the latest...

(link:http://www.sigmadesigns.com/dcforum/DCForumID9/3.html)

So you are SPOT ON with your suggestions...I'll post an update as soon as I get something up and running...

thanks again,
mrC

[SNAAAKE]

You wanna try installing win XP.

XP automatically installs everything for you(driver and all).

Same way isugoat mentioned(I was kinda surprised that you didnt already know to boot from cd then install new OS )

[mr.Curmudgeon]

  Well I did know about booting from a CD (There's no floppy-drive on this thing anyhow), it's the win98 angle that is the issue, also, I wasn't aware of driver-support in the Linux community...

So all that stuff was very helpful. Plus it's just nice to know whether or not it is even worth pursuing based on the system specs...I'm not really sure what this thing can do performance-wise....

As for your suggestion, it doesn't look like they developed a driver for this chipset in winXP, I thought about running it but then I found this post in their developers forum...so it looks like a "no go".

-mrC

[android]

Here's hoping I can get a supportive tech, who'll just point me to the correct download.  

Here you go:

http://www.tvia.com/product_services/software/cyberpro_2000.htm

Video companies usually use the same core for all their video chips and the older drivers work with the newer chips. So give it a try and see if it works. Probably a long shot, but worth a try.

Merry Christmas.  

[mr.Curmudgeon]

Here's the latest:
Didn't work. The CyberPro2000 drivers noted that the chip is different and the install locked-up win98. Thanks for pointing them out though, it was definitely worth the shot.

I am now in the process of tracking down drivers for the "IGS CyberPro 50xx display driver for Windows 98 with VPE support" preferably model 5050, since that has sound drivers as well.

I have been able to locate one other person that seems to be in the same boat (Here)...I've got an e-mail out to them as well as TVIA (formerly IGS) asking for 5050 drivers...I doubt I'll have any luck since they REALLY don't want to support a reference design and I'm far from being an OEM. Here's a run-down of the various processor models: (link)

I'll try to post a review of the TV-Output if I can ever get this thing running...