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A Teacher in a search for answers
GGKoul:
I have a 1 gig AMD with 512 ram and it runs 90% of the games with no hassle. So you shouldn't have an issues with your P3.
You should get cheapie sound card. As the onboard one does take up processing power.
SnowsDream:
LOL no no I'm no english teacher, but I'm not writing a term paper here, so blah =p No I'm a teacher through this program. However I am thinking of getting my license and am in school.
sorry about the sepc listing, the P3 is 500mhz. Ram was just of a 133hz variety.
Thanks for all your input so far. Yea my kids are K-5th grade so a variety of ages. so no fighting games =( I wanted to do controler setup with 2 8ways and 6 buttons each incase I ever take this thing to the 6th grade program where I can do more games. And the track ball for various other arcade favorites. As for the hack your own gear that sounds really intresting how many of you have experimented with that? I got tons of old keyboards and mouses lyin' around. However all of the mouses are the ones with out the roller ball on the top just regular push around types (sorry don't know specific name for each one)
I'll check out the links you've sent me and get back to ya. thanks again and peace!
tmasman:
These hacks typically take a fare amount of soldering... Not usually something you'd have K-5 kids doing...
If you were going to use a mouse hack to drive an arcade trackball, it'd need to be one of the very common older ones with the ball below that moves some rollers inside (I'll almost garantee it's the kind you have). You can find the guides to hack one yourself, or as mentioned above Oscar has a pre-hacked one for $12. You'll still need to get the arcade trackball though... This is just the device to connect it to the PC.
a keyboard hack isn't too hard, but does take some time & soldering skills. It's also not a good solution if you want a 2 player setup. My suggestion:Go with the IPAC for the joysticks & buttons.
Controls (joys, buttons, trackball) Look around eBay... Deals go by all the time. www.therealbobroberts.com is also a great resource for parts. Ultimarc.com has a pretty inexpensive trackball for $35...
I've got some old 2 1/4" trackballs, but I need to open them up & clean them up before they'd be ready for use... Keep your eye on the Buy/Sell/Trade forum for deals.
Apollo:
I suggest you build a bar top type cab with your PC plus 19"-21" PC monitor depending on what you can find. 2 joysticks with 2 buttons each and a Keywhiz. Not quite sure how you are going to explain to the kids the concept of "borrowing" ROM's, that will be an interesting talk. I guess you could go to StarROMs. If you do it this way they will learn a lot ( woodworking, circuits, software etc ) it will cost you very little and it will probably get one or two of them in to building a full size cab themselves someday.
sWampy:
You might want to take a trip around your town's arcades and arcade distributors. A lot of times you can find old cabinets that are in pretty bad shape for $25-100 with working monitors and coin doors in them. If you are lucky, you might even find a jamma cabinet where you can just get an ulitmarc j-pac and save even more bucks.
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