The NEW Build Your Own Arcade Controls
Main => Software Forum => Topic started by: mike boss on January 04, 2018, 09:57:26 am
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Long & short of it, I picked up some Remote Power Switches from Costco over the holiday season for $10.
Sweet 3 pack on sale from $18 ! Each outlet allows you to plug in two devices. So I plugged in my Mario Bros & Popeye into one switch. The other is for my DK and DK JR. Two of the 4 cabinets are PC based running MAME + MALA.
I've changed the BIOS to boot from power loss. Everything is working great....except my one MALA PC. I constantly get loss of focus. I've tried all the fixes I've read about and none work.
In the end I've decided to update the set up and go with a new (used) PC.
I found this PC online, small footprint I can toss right into the cabinet. Possibly using a KVM switch and going between PC's. My question, I've always used XP when setting up machines. This PC has Windows 10. Any drawbacks in using Windows 10 ? Are all Windows created equal ? Any advice would be great. Should I format the PC and just add XP ?
The cabinet is set up to play vertical games with a 4 way joystick. So this will be a pretty baisic set up. No emulators or anything fancy. Just MAME and MaLa as the front end with vertical games that require no more than 1 button. (as the control panel is a DK JR control panel)
ASROCK ION 330HT
https://www.kijiji.ca/v-desktop-computers/oshawa-durham-region/asrock-ion-330ht-computer/1323187109?enableSearchNavigationFlag=true (https://www.kijiji.ca/v-desktop-computers/oshawa-durham-region/asrock-ion-330ht-computer/1323187109?enableSearchNavigationFlag=true)
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Windows 10 is a FAR better choice than XP, like 100x better.
You should consider Linux before even thinking about XP these days.
Putting XP on anything semi-recent will only cause the machine to struggle because when XP was released a lot of tech was very different to today, a good example is SSD drives, XP really doesn't know how to make proper use of them and will more likely end up killing them more quickly as it simply treats them like any other mechanical drive.
At this point anybody developing software, including emulators, have to take special steps if they want it to even run on XP, not to mention the 64-bit version of XP is so bad it often ends up slower than the 32-bit version, so you're throwing a good 20-30% of your performance away right there by not being able to use a proper 64-bit operating system.
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Thank you.
I appreciate the info. I'll leave the PC as is.
I have an existing build of MAME (with the ROM set) that I plan on using.
For MaLa I'll use the newest build.
Thanks again
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If starting from scratch I would say go Windows 7 and disable updates. Plus keep that sucker off the internet.