preparing my host, which way to go?

[Sorex]

Hello,

I ripped appart my host so it's ready to be mounted in my cab.

Now I was wondering how you guys/girls have set it up.

Are you all using DOS for quickbooting? (with a ArcageVGA installed as 15KHz doesn't work there?)

or

a stripped down Win98 (doesn't support 15KHz I guess?)

or

a stripped down WinXP with 15KHz ?


and how fast does it boot and what's the size on the disk (currently only having a 20Gb spare HD which is more than enough for most classics) ?
read somewhere that you can have a 9Mb win98 but as it (win98) doesn't support 15KHz it's not an option or am I wrong here?
(maybe it's just my Xentor that's not supported on it, need to verify that)

[Turnarcades]

I don't think boot speeds are too much of an issue these days. Not only do you have the OS boot delay, but the bios of your motherboard will influence the boot time. Everyone seems to accept the boot time as part and parcel of a MAME cab, so whatever you choose just do all the bios/OS software mods you can to get to your frontend that little bit faster if it bothers you. If seemless booting is an issue, be sure to set your front-end as the boot shell and turn off any bios displays if you can.

I opt for XP due to it's compromise of ease of use and tuneability, as those RAM-sapping services can all be turned off anyway using regedit, plus USB updating is so much easier due to theplug and play drivers which 98 doesn't have. You can also wipe the boot screens easily or swap them for MAME-based alternatives.