Best setup for a dedicated Cocktail emulating Ms. Pac-Man

[bigtimes]

I've got a wonderful little cocktail cabinet that has no monitor, and a ruined Ms. Pac-Man board. I'd like to drop in one of the several PCs I have laying around and a TV, and make it work again though the magic of MAME.

What would be the best setup?

So far I've been experimenting with AdvanceCD to just boot from the CD rom, but it dosn't support television out, so I picked up a VGA to TV converter, then Ms. Pac-Man was out of the range of the converter, and didn't display properly.

Basically, what I need is one of the following:

1. I can't figure how to set the video modes when I boot from the CD. I'd like it to set the video modes and boot directly into Ms. Pac-Man. I've figured out the advancemame.rc file so it boots vertically, and it's in cocktail mode, but I can't get the video modes to work at all.

OR

2. Some other frontend/boodloading solution that will boot directly to Ms. Pac-Man and work with a television.

Thanks!

[bigtimes]

Comon, guys. Nobody has any experience in AdvanceCD?

[davieboynj]

advanceCD is probably overkill for what you want to do, and (from what i've seen) tends to have some instabilities with many graphics cards.  If you just want to run that one game, I would dig up dos 6.x and an old version of dos mame 36 or 37 (depending on who you ask), and drop it on:

a) a compact flash card and use a compact flash to ide adapter
b) a usb stick and use a motherboard that can boot from it
c) burn the necessary files to a dos boot cd (nero and most other burning programs have a good mode for this)

[bigtimes]

Where would I find these things?

[SithMaster]

the compact flash can be found at almost any computer store like best buy.
the adaptor is available on ebay.

i think the ide adaptor is the better choice since it takes up less space and uses less power.  it also loads like a hard drive.

[StephenH]

It might be best to consider running in pure DOS (or Linux) and add it to your autoexec.bat or Linux Startup script, with the command line for running MAME or AdvanceMAME in the start.   You could easily boot from CD or Flash memory real easily, and not even need a hard disk (unless you wanted to save high scores or something) and have it boot directly to Ms. Pac Man.

[Lilwolf]

btw, why would you want a CD based PC to run it?  Harddrives are dirt cheap at the sizes you probably would be fine with... And CD's will have dust issues in the long run.

Get a cheap harddrive (100-250mg drive will probably do).  Go with advanced mame if you want special video setups... or just windows to work well and don't let mame change the resolution and you will have good output. 

And if you want quiet, you could consider getting a sold state drive setup... but it will cost a bit more... and be a lot slower.

[davieboynj]

Where would I find these things?

http://www.dealsonic.com/sysdidetocof.html

If your disk space needs are limited, i would recommend against a hard drive.  If it's an old cheap HD chances are its only one good surge or bump from failing.  Solid state is really a nice way to go if you need < 1 GB.  Get a fast compact flash card if the price is right, you'll thank yourself later.