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Main => Main Forum => Topic started by: jcterzin on February 23, 2010, 03:07:52 am

Title: need a quick frontend for old pc
Post by: jcterzin on February 23, 2010, 03:07:52 am

what's a good frontend that will run just a few games on a crappy old celeron processor with less than 256 ram? Im trying to run mame in windows 2000. tried mala, and the roms run about half speed. If you know of one, could you also please post where i can hopefully find directions on installing it.

Title: Re: need a quick frontend for old pc
Post by: Blanka on February 23, 2010, 04:03:40 am

How much is 1Gb? 10$? I would spend that at least. Then even a light XP install should run great.

Title: Re: need a quick frontend for old pc
Post by: TOK on February 23, 2010, 05:26:57 am

The front end doesn't run the games, MAME does, so it's not going to make any difference.
Depending on the age/era of the CPU, your best bet is probably to revert to an older version of MAME. .37 and .65 and .99 are good reference points for old hardware.

Title: Re: need a quick frontend for old pc
Post by: ark_ader on February 23, 2010, 08:04:53 am

Arcade front ends on a celeron with 256mb...

Try this. (http://scottjarvis.com/page105.htm)

It will run in memory and provide you with the necessary software - now at version 7.

Very fast too.  :applaud:

Title: Re: need a quick frontend for old pc
Post by: Havok on February 23, 2010, 10:51:06 am

Quote from: TOK on February 23, 2010, 05:26:57 am

The front end doesn't run the games, MAME does, so it's not going to make any difference.
Depending on the age/era of the CPU, your best bet is probably to revert to an older version of MAME. .37 and .65 and .99 are good reference points for old hardware.

+1 on that - most like the issue is you're trying to use a current version of Mame, hence the slowdown. Grab an older version and see if the problem clears up:

http://mamedev.org/oldrel.html (http://mamedev.org/oldrel.html)

Title: Re: need a quick frontend for old pc
Post by: jcterzin on February 23, 2010, 06:09:22 pm

thanks guys. ill try that for sure. Mala is far easier to set up than anything else ive tried so i really REALLY hope that it works. ill let y'all know.

Title: Re: need a quick frontend for old pc
Post by: javeryh on February 23, 2010, 06:15:38 pm

Gamelauncher was great back in the day...

Title: Re: need a quick frontend for old pc
Post by: Havok on February 23, 2010, 06:44:25 pm

Make sure to give AtomicFE a try - it works great on old and new hardware. Plus, with the new 2.0 config you can download everything preconfigured, just copy the rom files into a directory and you're playing. Click my sig to check it out...

Title: Re: need a quick frontend for old pc
Post by: DeLuSioNal29 on February 23, 2010, 08:16:49 pm

I have a Pentium II running Game Launcher and MAME 0.36.  But you could probably get away with MAME 0.87, which I've also run on a Pentium II 400mhz machine.

See it in action here:
Green Invader Vertical Arcade V.1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VuVGNjg76pY#ws)

Nice and smooth.

DeLuSioNaL29

Title: Re: need a quick frontend for old pc
Post by: bkenobi on February 23, 2010, 09:30:34 pm

Couldn't you recompile MAME 0.36 to remove the nag screen?  It may not be the same process as the current versions since the code has been redone, but there's no reason you couldn't find a way.

Title: Re: need a quick frontend for old pc
Post by: DeLuSioNal29 on February 23, 2010, 10:17:48 pm

Quote from: bkenobi on February 23, 2010, 09:30:34 pm

Couldn't you recompile MAME 0.36 to remove the nag screen?  It may not be the same process as the current versions since the code has been redone, but there's no reason you couldn't find a way.

Man, if someone could figure that out I'm all ears.  I had no trouble hacking my .119 version, so I'm not new to the process.

D