Main > Main Forum
Best os for a mame only cab
gazz292:
i'm slowly sorting out making my first mame cab, only been waiting 9 years to do it, still havent bought any joysticks or buttons yet, but i do have the cab now (golden tee) and am currently playing with the computer side of things.
Figured i'd use an arcade vga grafix card just to keep things simple (using the cabs 15/25Hz monitor) i believe the latest avga cards can do dual sync monitors, so maybe able to display med res games properly on this monitor too (hantarex polo 2, auto switching between syncs)
i'll be using usb i-pacs and opti-pacs, so need something usb inputs are accepted easily,
So i was thinking i'd want the absolute minimum OS on the machine, it will only ever run mame, i have a real jukebox, so wont be adding things like that to the cab, no interest in running any other emulators than mame.
What's the bare minimum i need and how do i go about doing it.
i'm rubbish with command line type systems, used to windowz, but would consider a linux os if it'll be the best.
i just dont want loads of things running in the background that i dont need to run mame,
my goal is a fast start up time, straight into the game selection screen, so far i have only used mame32/mameUi, tho i guess it's time i learnt about a front end and all that,
oh yeah, i'm using the same machine that i used to play mame on a few years ago, only differance is the OS, used to be XP, and is now Vista, and back then i was using an older version of mame32, now got the latest version,
but before i could play stun runner fine, cant recal the fps, but it was high, sound smooth etc,
now it's got a really low fps, and sound it echoing and jerky, is this likely to be due to vista or the newer mame version needing more processing power or something?
Gatt:
The Ubuntu version of Linux with the SDLMame port would probably be the best fit for your skill and wants.
Your only other options are XP or Win7 IMO.
Your lag is probably due to both. Vista has much higher memory requirments, and is probably eating most of your available memory just for the OS(There's more to it with Vista, but that's going to take a hefty discussion on caching to explain). Mame also evolves over time, it's goal is to run the harder stuff fastest so the older stuff tends to have a little slow down over time, which isn't noticeable if you're doing regular upgrades, but is if you're using hardware that was already having a hard time with game X.
My advice:
Build your cab, install Ubuntu, run with SDLMame for now. You can always upgrade the computer down the line, and let's be honest, you'll likely want to do so to take advantage of newer games. So, IMO, your primary concern is getting the cab built and the controls settled(You're going to end up wanting more than what you go with down the road, again, this *is* addictive :) ). After all, a top-of-the-line computer without controls or a cab doesn't do much, but a finished cab with a older computer plays all the classics just fine until you're ready to look into a new computer.
HaRuMaN:
I built a simple MAME machine using Win 98SE and an older version of MAME (like 0.6x or something), and it ran just fine.
angryred:
I run MAME v112, Visual Pinball 8, Daphne and multiple console emulators on a Windows 2000 machine. Win2k's nice and stable, and IIRC, it's the last version of Windows where you could install on as many machines as you wanted from just one disk. I use Win2k on my media PC/projector setup, too-- all it does is play movies.
Benevolance:
I use Win2k on my mame and media machines for those exact same reasons. I'm running the latest version of mame and I haven't noticed any problems.
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
Go to full version