need advice on mame version for older PC

[severdhed]

hey guys, i've been tossing around the idea of a bartop for a while.  i have a few 17" LCD monitors sitting around collecting dust.  i ran across an old laptop the other day that has a shattered screen.  it wasn't worth putting any money into to replace the screen, but i figured it may be suitable for running mame.

it is a pentium 3, 800mhz, with 128mb of ram.  yeah, i know that sucks.  i may have some more ram lying around that could go into it, i'm not sure.  I'm currently running mame 124, which i have a feeling is way too new for this old of a PC.  the laptop currently has no OS installed..i figured with those specs, win98 is probably my best option.  any opinions? I know i could run dos mame, which would boot really fast, however it has been a long time since i did anything with dos, and i don't know if i could get the audio working. 

i'm not looking to run mk3 or anything like that...mainly classic vertical games with a single 4way stick and 1 or 2 buttons....mainly Donkey Kong, Pacman, etc.  There are so many versions of mame out there, i'm just not sure which one to use.   also, i understand that roms for one version of mame wont always work with another.  is there a way to convert the .124 roms that i have to run in a much older version?  i look to only around 20 to 25 games, so it shouldnt be that bad if i have to manually do each one.

any suggestions?

is it worth even doing this?  i have enough pieces lying around to put together a much better PC, but i figured if the laptop was enough, it would take up much less space internally.

[MaximRecoil]

Between v.55 and v.61 and maybe a bit newer would run fine on that machine.

The easiest way to determine a suitable version of MAME for a PC is to find out when the PC's specs were current (middle of the road), and then find a version of MAME from about that same time frame. In the case of an 800 mHz PIII, that's about '00 or '01. Version .55 came out in mid '01, and .61 came out in mid '02.

I ran .58 on a 733 mHz Celeron with 64 MB of RAM and Windows Me in early '02, and I could run games up to about Mortal Kombat II without any problems (MK3 would run but with noticeable slowdown).   

[angryred]

I was recommended MAME v112 as a good, stable, older build. IIRC, it was the last build before the way sound was handled was changed-- Running the newest MAME, I got sound stuttering on older games. Older games run perfectly on v112, and the only ones I really have problems with are the 3D games like Tekken and the Namcos.  I can run Virtua Fighter, though.

Now, I'm running my MAME machine on a 1.8gHz with a gig of RAM, so I can't vouch for how it will run on your system.  But I can say that I also ran MAME v084 for quite some time on a system with similar specs as yours, long before I built my machine.  I would add more RAM to that, though, if you have it lying around like you said.

[Beretta]

i would try out the highest mame you can get them running smoothly on so you'll have the largest selection of games..

for the games that dont run 100% start back tracking older versions of mame on a game by game basis.

i have to agree .55 is a favorite of mine, however since i discovered fastmame which started out at .56 that has become my new favorite "base" version..'
with fastmame .56 i bet you could run mortal kombat 100% on that p3 although you dont want to.

if you need a copy i can post a copy, which btw im looking for other versions of fast mame if any one has some, the authors site no longer has any traces of fastmame.

the only thing about going back this far is it does'nt support direct 3d, and stretching really blurs the image.. i believe .68 included direct 3d, with filtering off is pretty sharp stretched.

[Ginsu Victim]

I ran .84 great on a 700mhz.

[severdhed]

thanks guys...i tried 112, but it just couldn't handle donkey kong...so I went back to .84b, and so far so good.

i am using the same roms from my cabinet which runs .124...i have only tried donkey kong, pacman, and digdug so far, but they seem to run just fine.  i seem to have a bit of a black border around teh screen though, so i have to figure that out.  there are no "video options" on the tab menu anymore

[Ginsu Victim]

Hmmm, .84 had "video options"

[severdhed]

i just downloaded .084 from mamedev.org.  when i run pacman for instance, and hit the TAB key, i get the normal menu, but this is what it has:

Input (general)
INput (this game)
Dip Switches
Bookkeeping info
Game information
game history
reset game
return to game


normally, there would be Video Options there, but it is not

[Ginsu Victim]

Strange, because I recall having it and could've swore mine was an official build. Who knows, though. Don't listen to me, I guess. I could be COMPLETELY wrong. It's been a while since I used it.
 

[daywane]

My 1st real PC was a 700 mhz P3 celleron HP Pavilion. (windows ME)
I had 64 meg mem. I bumped it to 256meg.
Wal Mart $800.00 (Xmas Special)
Mame 56 final was the Mame at the time.
I say try that one
once I beefed up the memory all games played.
  I only bought it to EMU the Atari 8 bit)
I found Mame looking for Atari EMU's 

[Turnarcades]

I've spent many hours and posted many threads on working with older PC's and MAME versions. Your best bet will be anything from the pre-rebuild era (0.106 backwards); this was the big graphics re-write and after this point your mobo/graphics card has to be D3D capable and the system demands went up massively. My personal recommendation is to play it safe with a 0.9x version as some subtle changes were made the closer you get to 0.106 that may also cause performance issues. I personally like 0.100 for a P3 system as it is the perfect compromise between latest version/performance/pre-core changes. In my opinion in terms of supported games, not much following the 0.90 mark is even worth it anyway and risking 'breaking' a few classics as what happened after 0.106 isn't worth it for the addition of a handful of full-speed, average quality games.