I don't know where to start!

[Smedrick]

Alright...here's the deal.  I've got an old IBM Craptiva lying around and I figured I'd try to make an aracde cabinet with it.  My goal is to find the cheapest way to do this.  After some investigating, I determined the best way for me to do the controls was to use a gamepad hack.  So I bought a Gravis 4-player adapter with gamepads for $5 on eBay (seemed like a sweet deal).  And I'm going to order some buttons and sticks (for two players) from Happs as soon as I see the controllers and figure pout how many buttons I can manage.

Here's where my question comes in...  Is it possible for me do set up a multi-emulator cabinet using ONLY the gamepads as input?  I downloaded a bunch of emulators and front-ends the other day, but I'm afraid I'm just a little overwhelmed by all the options.  If need be, I can always install a keyboard drawer or a trackball, but I would like to not have to rely on it.  I'm lookin' for either Win 98 or DOS solutions (DOS being optimal since my Craptiva is fairly slow).

Thanks!

[DAmnb]

Finding a frontend and emulators that are as forgiving as Mame when it comes to remapping keys is not going to be easy. What you could do is run a stripped version of Win98 and use a program called joytokey, it lets you configure keypresses via you joysticks, that should sort out most of your problems.

[papaschtroumpf]

How do you "strip down" Win98?

[Smedrick]

Thanks, DAmnb.  I'm downloading right now.  I'll let everyone know how my setup fairs once I get everything running.

papaschtroumpf, I think he's referring to running the frontend (ArcadeOS or the like) as the shell, instead of Explorer.  It prevents all the unneccessary Windows stuff from running and gives the frontend all the resources.

[Nailz]

Actually, I believe he's referring to 98lite, a program that takes all the unnecessary crap out of Win98 so that it is running at a bare minimum of what it needs, so it's stripped down and very fast.  I use it on my cab, boot ups are amazingly quick and it works great.

[paigeoliver]

I hope you didn't buy Gravis Gamepad pros. They do not hack correctly. They ghost and block if you hack the D-Pad.