I'm back! And need some advice.

[Justin]

OK guys, after several months, I'm back with a vengeance!

Some of you know me...  I'm the guy who programmed the Mac version of the I-PAC Utility.   Also, the owner of the 'Black Box' controller (http://www.control-click.com/blackbox)

Anyhow, I'm starting to put some plans together to build  my first cab.  I am starting from the inside out, so the guts go first.  Some Questions for the pros:

(please consider I am on a tight budget here, and don't need all the extra fancy stuff, so having said that...)

1) I will be using a PC mobo for this.  Cheaper and faster than Macs, period.  So, will the KT266A chipset work fine?  Any special considerations with onboard audio chip?  I only want std stereo, no biggie.  Looking at the MSI KT266A, to be specific.
Actually, if anyone can recommend a real basic (yet new) mobo, that would be great.  I mean, the KT266A has so many extras that I don't need in a cab. 4-6 PCI slots?  no way!

2) CPU?  leaning towards AMD XP 1800+.  This fast enough to play most of the games?

3) Video card.  Big debate here.  I want something that will look good on a standard TV monitor (which is what I think I will be using, unless someone can convince me otherwise).  I definitely want a card that can do Overscan (so it fills the screen), has TV out (S-Video?), and can do fast hardware stretching without taking a noticeable speed hit.  Is ATI the way to go?  

4) Is ArcadeOS still the preferred frontend?  I don't even know if I should be using DOS mame or MAME32 for this.  Which one is faster I wonder?  (Sorry, quite new to the Windows MAME)

I did a lot of searching through the board, but frankly I got conflicting information
Hope someone out there can steer me in the right direction.

thanks so much for your valuable input guys.  Most appreciated.

[2slk]

Justin,

 I think for your purpose, KT266A will do just fine and MSI generally produces fairly decent boards. You mentioned that you were getting conflicting information but I suspect the negative stuff may come from tweakers who try to get the absolute best performance benchmarks from their hardware vs others. When you start tweaking around with the BIOS, there are a lot of factors that can affect operating stability (CAS latency time vs. the type of memory you are using, etc.). I will agree that MSI boards and KT266A may not be the best candidate for twaeking/overclocking but if you are running a default setup like you plan, there shouldn't be any problem.

 AMD XP 1800+ is definitely fast enough. Make sure that you have sufficient cooling. XP's run pretty hot.

 As for video, I'm a big fan of ATI. They do it all so you can be confident that it will work out OK if you do go with them.  

 I don't use a front-end but form what I gather ArcadeOS is pretty much the leader.

 GOOD LUCK!