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Which way to go...win or dos?
murb:
I hope to be contemplating your initial question soon.
I would be interested to know if you have tried any of the stripped down/repackaged WinXP installs floating around. Some of them say they will work on a 266 processor with 128ram.
RayB:
Rick,
I use DOS mame. For a system like yours, you need to stick to an older version of MAME (better performance).
My system is Win98se DOS mode, 256mb RAM, 1 ghz cpu. I use 0.78 for all games except vector. For Vector games I use 0.55 (otherwise I can't get full frame rate!). GameLauncher lets you define which emulator to use for each menu of games, so I defined a menu of just the vectors, and it's configured for 0.55. The other menus are configured for 0.78.
I'd say 128 mb is plenty for your specs. Adding RAM won't do anything but waste your money. MAME is all about CPU horsepower. If you want to dump money into your cab, spend it on a faster CPU/mobo.
As for a trackball, you'll need a mouse driver.
JLR2000:
When I created my dedicated Pole Position MAME cab I used an old PIII 233 running dos (just running PP and and old version of mame)
I found this site extremely helpful....
http://www.mameworld.net/dosmame/
Take some time to read thru it, I didn't use everything but it was helpful. I used an old ISA soundcard and found it easier to configure, the PCI soundcards at the time (a few years ago) seemed more complicated. If you do a google search on "dos mouse support" you'll find what you need to get a ps2 mouse recognized (provided you run it at boot time).
Good Luck.
gonzo90017:
Hey murb. If you have a Windows XP cd lying around you can make a stripped down version yourself. http://www.nliteos.com/nlite.html It's very easy. I got my windows xp cd down to 125mb. It runs alot faster than a full install. Anyways. I have similiar specs. P2 400 128mb. I tried both the 125mb version of xp, and windows 98 se. I found about a 20% increase in performance using windows98 with FastMame v71. For capcom games I plan on using the windows version of Raine. It runs them at 60fps! Now the only thing I need to figure out is how to get it to load without the gui in Mamewah. And like RayB said 128mb is more than enough for your setup. If you're old enough to remember most computers shipped with 64mb of ram running Windows 98.
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