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I thought of an idea. A self-contained MAME control panel
shmokes:
I suggested this before, but with a Shuttle nForce2 board instead of a mini-itx board. These boards are only 7"x7" so they are plenty small for just about any two-player control panel. They also have decent onboard video (GeForce 4 family), superb onboard sound, TV-Out, and can accept processors at least as fast as an Athlon XP 3000+. Granted, you don't need that kind of power for Mame, but you can also, of course just pop in an Athlon XP 1800+ which is a great, inexpensive chip that will play everything full speed and still give you decent framerates in Windows games. Those boards, by the way, also have onboard ethernet, firewire, usb 2.0 and have 1 each of AGP and PCI.
GSXRMovistar:
I actually did something like this a few weeks back, it was BBQ and beers at a mates place and a few of the guys suggested I brought my CP along for a few games.
To save hassle of hooking it up to my mates PC and having to bring Mame softwate/ games with me I just loaded up my laptop (IBM T23) stuffed it into the CP housing and connected the iPAC and OptiPAC.
All I had then was a single S-Video cable coming out that I plugged in my mates TV in the living room.
Worked a charm, whilst the laptop isn
IG-88:
--- Quote from: shmokes on May 21, 2003, 01:11:32 am --- but with a Shuttle nForce2 board
--- End quote ---
Hey shmokes, (or anyone else) do you kow where to purchase one of these boards? I can't seem to find any without having to buy a whole barebones kit. Or could you give me a more detailed descripition of the board itself so I could look it up?
IIOIOOIOO:
Start at pricewatch to find the bare board.
Start at AnandTech to find reviews.
shmokes:
Here it is from Shuttle's website:
http://us.shuttle.com/specs_access.asp?pro_id=197
They don't make it super easy to find. You have to click "buy" at the top of the page, then "consumer store", then scroll down on the left in the category section to "xpc motherboards" and choose the FN41.
It's $200, so it's not the cheapest motherboard, but considering that it comes with a superb sound solution, good video/networking and an impressive feature set, in such a small package, it's really not a bad price IMO.
Also, if it is like most other products, you'll get a better price if you find it from a reseller rather than buying it direct from the manufacturer (I've never understood that...it's extremely counterintuitive).
edit: Wow...I've searched around and it doesn't seem like ANY resellers sell the board alone without the case and everything. You might have some luck, though, by emailing a couple of them. I've always been impressed with www.newegg.com and www.thenerds.net. I wouldn't be surprised if you could find someone else who would quote you a price on the mainboard alone, hopefully cheaper than you could get it direct from Shuttle.