Choosing an OS and a frontend

[Dougmeister]

(There must be a FAQ for this, please point me to it - thx)

Acquired an empty cabinet (upright).
Have a P200 MMX, 128 MB RAM, 4 GB HD, currently running Win '98.

Have been a Mame32 player for years, not very knowledgable of frontends or alternative ports.

How can I determine what Operating System / frontend combination to use?  

It's kind of confusing with so many to choose from (MameWah, Gamelauncher, Kymaera, ArcadeOS, Fraggals Boot CD, etc.)

The only "extras" that I can think of are that it should support cheats and allow the screen to be turned sideways (if I ever find a way to mount my monitor so that it can be turned horiz/vert depending on the game).

Thanks.

Oh, and mainly concerned with games from the 80's.

[spystyle]

I really like FastMame coupled with gamelauncher
http://www.geoshock.com/
http://www.dribin.org/dave/game_launcher/

Give it a try, it's groovy and can rotate too :)

Craig

[Dougmeister]

Thanks.  I'll give it a look.

1) Does it support cheats?
2) How do you "exit" the games?

Wasn't sure whether to post this here or in the main forum...

Do all/most DOS-based front-ends allow for this?

Do all/most front-ends require an extra button to end the game, go back to the menu (i.e, the ESC button)?

[Muttley]

With a P200 and only 128MB of memory you'd probably be best off with using DOS or Linux.

Not sure what the best frontend is for DOS, but a friend of mine swears by ArcadeOS (if you go the DOS route).

Muttley

[Lilwolf]

Pick your emulators you want.  Your running slow enough... you will want to look at other emulators.

Try and check the speed of mame in your favorite games.   Download old versions of mame (v36 and v57 these where right before some major changes in speed in mame).  See what you can / cant play.

you MIGHT (haven't tried them recently) get good results for CPS1 / 2 / ect with others.

You may find that you get more with windows + mame + other emulators then dos + mame.

BUT... I'm guessing you will want to go with DOS and mame.  You will get another 1000 games running full speed between the DOS and optimized windows install...

I'm guessing of course on the numbers..  

[Howard_Casto]

My suggestion......  

Do you have 200 bucks?  Tigerdirect.com has some "like new"  imb 550 mhz pentium 3 pcs on their site for 100 bucks.  The memory slots *should* be compatable with the 128mb you already have.  The extra 100 bucks is allocated for the fact that these systems have awful graphics cards and you might need an arcade vga.  If not you could get away much cheaper.  

These systems aren't new, but they have usb, agp, ect.... in other words, they are a lot better than what you have and you could probably run windows mame with it.  

[Dougmeister]

Do you have 200 bucks?

Not really

I need to make this work "as is"... I may be able to squeeze out some cash for a new video card (w/ tv out in case we get a new tv and I get to vandalize the old one), but that's about it.

I can probably upgrade later, but not now.

[seibu]

TBH, for games form the '80s, what you have is fine.

The main problem with DOS is that it doesn't make the most of newer hardware, but since you don't have newer hardware, DOS would be fine.

Linux would be even better. I got maybe 30% faster than WinXP or 98 on my lowly P3 800 using a 2.6 Kernel compiled with optimisation for my hardware.

I would also reccommend a proper arcade monitor or SCART TV. You'll save a lot of CPU not having to run fake scanlines and stretching, and AdvanceMAME under Linux has the best support for video modes and refresh rates. I was tearing my hair out trying to run Pacland without tearing or broken parallax under XP. Perfect first time under AdvanceMAME, even without hacking the refresh to 60Hz.