How is Vista for a MAME cabinet?

[Sir Auros]

Best Buy had a pretty decent computer on sale this week for $299, but it has Vista Basic. Pentium 4 3.2gig and a gig of RAM, and I picked up a cheap videocard (Radeon X1050) for output to a TV.

However, I was wondering how popular MAME software and related MAME cabinet software works with Vista thus far. I was also curious about whether or not the system I got is going to slow down much with those kinds of stats.

EDIT - I would actually prefer to return that computer and get the one that's $100 less, but it has a Celeron D and 512megs of RAM. Think that one would be ok for my MAME cabinet? I only bought the more expensive one because I was going to use it as my main computer, but I think I'd rather just stick with my reliable XP box.

[btp2k2]

Negetive Ghost Rider.

I have not had good luck with Vista and MAME. My neighbor had the brilliant idea to build a cabinet (wonder where he came up with that idea...probably all the saw dust flying around my drive way) and went to Frys and bought a pre built computer....it had Vista Basic on it, I loaded him up with MAME...never did get it to work correctly...ended up reformatting and installing XP.

On a side note, I would say Vista isn't going to be good for much of anything right now. I golf with a guy who spent 15 years working on Microsoft's OS team until about a year ago when he saw something the dopey crap Vista would be doing. He quite after 15 years and now works in their Office department. He said Vista is on all the computers at Microsoft and they have at least 3 crashes a week and he won't touch Vista with a stick. Coming from a dude with that kind of credentials, I would say stay away from it

[Sir Auros]

Yeah, that it's an OS in its infancy is why I'm rethinking my plans for making it my primary computer. It would be good for a MAME cabinet if there's a version of MAME that would work and if games would run decently.

[JasonA]

Have you booted up your new vista machine?  I don't know much about Vista, but it does have that deal, where you can launch applications in Windows-XP compatibility mode ....  Worth a try, maybe Mame32 would work with that....

[BobA]

The best bet is to give Microsoft a year or so to get rid of the worst problems and then another year so that all other software can catch up and become stable.  As it is now XP is a great basis for a MAME machine and if you use Tiny XP you get rid of alot of the overhead that XP had. 

[Zero_Hour]

FWIW, Mame32 runs just dandy on Vista for me. I've been running it with no problems since Beta 2, now on Ultimate.

That said, I would not recommend Vista for a dedicated cab. It wants more resources, and I have yet to get it to work very well with standard builds of MAME and a FE (Though I have not spent a lot of time on this yet - Your results may vary).

There are numerous opinions as to which OS is the best base for a MAME cab. I don't really have an opinion on that other than to say Vista is definitely not it.

[Havok]

Yeah, I have Vista on my primary pc, and it runs Mame fine: however, I would go with XP (and did for my cabinet). With the same pc, you have more processing power to dedicate to running programs, instead of using it for the operating system. Plus, there are a lot of great writeups and utilities to get the most out of XP...

[FrizzleFried]

Vista is turning out to be the Windows ME of this decade...wait...Windows ME was this decade...ok...Windows Vista is turning out to be ANOTHER Windows ME of this decade.

[Hawk Daddy]

Vista is to MAME as water is to a computer. Not good for it at all.

Hawk

[PsychoAU]

On a side note, I would say Vista isn't going to be good for much of anything right now. I golf with a guy who spent 15 years working on Microsoft's OS team until about a year ago when he saw something the dopey crap Vista would be doing. He quite after 15 years and now works in their Office department. He said Vista is on all the computers at Microsoft and they have at least 3 crashes a week and he won't touch Vista with a stick. Coming from a dude with that kind of credentials, I would say stay away from it

People said the same thing about XP when it came out.  Any new OS is bound to have problems with existing software and hardware.  While I would also recommend staying away from it, I wouldn't go so far as to compare it with ME like some on here are doing.  Give it a year and it will be solid (after Service Packs are released and whatnot).

[Organic Jerk]

Best Buy had a pretty decent computer on sale this week for $299, but it has Vista Basic. Pentium 4 3.2gig and a gig of RAM, and I picked up a cheap videocard (Radeon X1050) for output to a TV.

However, I was wondering how popular MAME software and related MAME cabinet software works with Vista thus far. I was also curious about whether or not the system I got is going to slow down much with those kinds of stats.

I would stay away from Vista for now, but that computer, from the basics you posted, still seems like a good deal.  There's nothing stopping you from installing XP on that machine and just holding on to Vista until you may want to try it.. (I always like having software available to me)... I mean you could just get the other PC, but at 200 that's not a bad deal...

Especially with the CPS3 revelation recently, and if you plan to play other emulators, that PC sounds like a good contender with a new video card.

I say: Ditch the Vista, Keep the PC.

[AtomSmasher]

I wouldn't use Vista on my arcade machine since you probably want the most stipped down OS you can find for it.

On a similar note, last week I received a copy of Vista and have been running it ever since.  I've heard so many bad things about it, that I figured I wouldn't be using Vista for anything more then to tinker with.  To be on the safe side I installed Vista as a dual boot with XP, so I can switch back and forth between OS's easily, but I have to say I was pleasantly surprised with Vista.  I actually really like it a lot and haven't had to go back to XP at all in the past week.  The only bad thing is in game performance (newer games, not Mame), my fps in some games is almost 1/2 of what it was in XP, which does suck, but should eventually be fixed with driver updates.

[torez]

Vista is turning out to be the Windows ME of this decade...wait...Windows ME was this decade...ok...Windows Vista is turning out to be ANOTHER Windows ME of this decade.

WinME came out in 2000, so it was the last year of previous decade.

Vista is video card hog, so you need a good video card to play pc games or even have all the eye candy.  XP is still the best for gaming, as it's using less resources and has better driver support.  I would recommend waiting until SP1 for Vista comes out (expect beta to be out by November 12).

I tried Vista on 1.13 GHz Dell laptop and it was running fine, but when tried to play dvd movie (with Cyberlink PowerDVD), it would play in window only.  Full screen would basically stall.  Reinstalled XP and movies played without any hickups.

I'm not eager to use this os for another year or two (when more DirectX 10 games start coming out).  There is talk about new os by 2009/2010, so I may skip this altogether and go for what's next.

I've been happy with XP since day one.  It run almost two months at first withou reboot.  As I install XP on many laptops and then have to update, it bothers me to see that the updates at least double the size of XP installation.  Why so much crap???  If you plan on using XP just for Mame, install it with SP-2 and don't do any updates, as they will not affect playability in Mame.

If you have Vista Basic already, I would wait until SP-1 comes out and by an upgrade, so you will save some money and use Vista on your main computer (probably still dual boot).

[NightGod]

Personally, I've been insanely happy with Vista-I'd say it's the most stable-at-release OS I've seen from MS. Other than a couple of issues with video codecs (caused more by the fact that I went 64-bit than anything), it's been awesome for me. Then again, I put it on a brand new system that is more than capable of running it-my Windows Experience index is 5.5, and the slow things are my RAM (which is 4 GB of 800 Mhz) and my CPU (which is a Core 2 Duo Extreme Edition). Both my video card ratings and my HD rating are 5.9. Mind you, that scale is out of a possible 6.

[Santoro]

Personally, I've been insanely happy with Vista-I'd say it's the most stable-at-release OS I've seen from MS. Other than a couple of issues with video codecs (caused more by the fact that I went 64-bit than anything), it's been awesome for me.

Yep me too.  I think most of the Vista naysayers aren't running it, or aren't running it on current hardware.

If I was building a cab, however, I'd stick with XP for reasons already stated.  (There's not much MAME/Vista info out there yet, better performance on old hardware.)

[Organic Jerk]

Well the title of the thread is asking about it for a mame cabinet...

I would imagine that with a cabinet OS, you would want the smallest possible resource footprint (combined with ease of use, and good overall compatibility) so most of it all would go towards the games.  Vista certainly doesn't provide you with the smallest possible footprint.

[Santoro]

I may have been off topic a bit, I was really reponding to "Vista is turning out to be the Windows ME of this decade" sentiment.

[MajorHavoc]

Sorry, but so far, I haven't found a single good use for Vista.  Sadly, the laptop which I purchased at a very attractive price came infected wiith Vista.  My first thought was to upgrade to XP or Win2000 but my son who purchased the same computer tried this only to find no drivers available for the sound card.  Learning from the ill fortunes of others,
I think I'll wait a bit before exorcising my computer of Vista.  I can't imagine it will be long before some enterprising Vista victims develop drivers to allow Vista hardware to interface with a more functional operating system. 

Mike

[XtraSmiley]

I've been using Vista for a few months and it seems to run fine.  No major BSODs yet.  It is a system hog, but really, modern computers can handle it.  Game wise (PC) it does seem to kill them, but for a MAME cab I would say it is fine.

XP is a great choice for all the listed reasons and I may use it when finishing up my MAME only cab next month, but Vista has this font resizing option that XP doesn't have that may make reading text on an arcade monitor easier to do.  The cab will be a MAME cab, but I could surf the web and do a few small things on it, so it is a consideration.

I will test further next month and post.  I want to use the cab to play some older PC games like Worms for example and if they do not run on Vista, that will be a deal breaker as well.

[Santoro]

Sorry, but so far, I haven't found a single good use for Vista.  Sadly, the laptop which I purchased at a very attractive price came infected wiith Vista.  My first thought was to upgrade to XP or Win2000 but my son who purchased the same computer tried this only to find no drivers available for the sound card.  Learning from the ill fortunes of others,
I think I'll wait a bit before exorcising my computer of Vista.  I can't imagine it will be long before some enterprising Vista victims develop drivers to allow Vista hardware to interface with a more functional operating system.

Whatever works for you.  But it sure sounds like you are letting an isolated incident form your entire worldview of Vista.  XP had similar growing pains at the start too.  No one is calling it a virus today.    

[Organic Jerk]

I may have been off topic a bit, I was really reponding to "Vista is turning out to be the Windows ME of this decade" sentiment.

Gotcha.

Well FWIW, I'd give vista awhile before I use it for anything other than testing purposes or to become acquainted for job purposes.  I'm a real resource-headed person, so if something is eating up my PC, I will always want to get rid of it, even if the comp can handle it.  I'd rather give up all the fluff and and pretty looks if it means I can have an OS with a tiny footprint.

I've already been disdainfully surprised when working on a photoshop file with a mutiple hundreds mb's filesize and find out I'm out of working memory.... it's not fun having to restart and not being able to save any of your work due to memory issues..

Game wise (PC) it does seem to kill them, but for a MAME cab I would say it is fine.

Seems like a contradiction in terms, especially when you start to consider possible MAME 3d use down the road...

[Sir Auros]

Well, I've transferred my data to the Vista computer, and that's what I'm posting this message from, so I'll just use my old box for my MAME cabinet.

[cowguy]

You could just format and install xp.

[Sir Auros]

You could just format and install xp.

Yeah, if I'm not pleased with Vista, I may do that. I have the product key on the side of the box, so I imagine I could reinstall later if need be.

[rdowdy95]

Hey man that is a funny picture of Optimus Prime drinking a beer or something.  LOL!

[Scott84]

Just format the HD and use a different OS.