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Building a mame pc. any suggestions on spec???

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    Building a mame pc. any suggestions on spec???

    I'm thinking of building a cheapish mame pc for the astro cab that i am getting. I'm just wondering what sort of spec people would recommend, to run most games at a decent speed.

    Any suggestions??

    #2
    Sorry, not got an answer to your question, but one of my own

    I assume the astro cab has an RGB monitor, how would you you wire up the PC to it?

    Geezer

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      #3
      Geezer: Thats the easy peasy bit :P


      Plug into PC, Plug into Jamma slot, and your done.

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        #4
        Might as well try and pick up something second hand. Some people suggest P4's but in reality most MAME games will run full speed on a 800mhz with 128mb ram and no 3d card.

        The new STV Titan games will probably be very processor intensive but they may take another year or two to be emulated properly.

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          #5
          Sorry to derail the thread!

          Essentially, I'd like a MAME box for use with my TV. So I'd need to combine some elements of the J-PAC video circuitry with some elements of supergun circuitry to get the correct SCART output.

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            #6
            Well my spec is:

            Duron 850
            Obviosuly the faster the better, but this cuts the mustard with most games, slowdown shows up with the later 90's games and the hevy duty stuff.

            256MB RAM
            128MB should be enough, I just had more available.

            10GB HD
            All the MAMe v0.80 roms excluding the harddrive images is about 7GB at the moment. If you want to put the full whack on, you will need about 22GB.

            ATI Rage Pro
            I had this card luckily, which gave me 15hz output in DOS. Perfect for the JPac. Not sure what you will need fot the SuperGun.

            Soundblaster or compatable
            Makes DOS mame easy, if you are going down the windows avenue - any card will be fine.


            If you are after the TV setup, wouldn't an XBox be easier?

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              #7
              i use my old P4 1.8ghz 784mb ram pc in my mame cab. It probably is overpowered for many of the games, but it seems good for most never stuff (well besides the hard drive games, run a bit slow).

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                #8
                Glad to see sensible responses - some of these threads on other boards are quite scary, with people saying you need the latest tech

                I have a 600mhz processor with 128 meg of ram, and 1.5 gig hard drive in the setup I'm building. More than enough for what I want on it, I get solid frame rates on all the classic stuff.

                I'm not sure if my hardware would play the CPS games, or the Neo Geo stuff, but then I'm just using it for pacman and the like with a 3 button vertical setup

                Mame is now emulating a lot of newer 3D hardware, but as has been said above, these are at least a year away from solid emulation, and you'll likely need a processor 5Ghz or over to really get these up to speed. Most of the older stuff runs fine on much a much lower spec. I wouldn't even bother with a 3D card just get a board with something generic built in.

                So unless you've got money burning a hole in your pocket I'd suggest putting together something using whatever hardware you have lying around the house - if not look on the uk advert computers forums and pickup some second hand stuff real cheap

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                  #9
                  Madjock, when you say ATI Rage Pro, are you talking of the one that can be found often on eBay for under 5 quid?

                  Hopefully I can build a box for under ?100 by using bits I''ve got lying about and buying second hand parts

                  What do you guys mean by Harddrive images, what are they for?

                  I had an Xbox, but it wasn't doing the job properly for tate games

                  Geezer

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                    #10
                    Yeah you can use a ati radeon 7000 and this will give you 15 khz.

                    Comment


                      #11
                      Originally posted by Geezer
                      Madjock, when you say ATI Rage Pro, are you talking of the one that can be found often on eBay for under 5 quid?

                      Hopefully I can build a box for under ?100 by using bits I''ve got lying about and buying second hand parts

                      What do you guys mean by Harddrive images, what are they for?

                      I had an Xbox, but it wasn't doing the job properly for tate games

                      Geezer
                      Yeah thats them, old PCI based cards from 5 years ago or so. I think most of the ATI range wok at 15khz (though don't quote me on this).

                      The most expensive thing I had to buy (apart from the cabinet) was the J-Pac, and that was worth the cash.

                      Harddrive images are used in games like Killer Instinct, Area 51, Carnival of Evil etc. They use a lot of FMV and this is spooled from a harddrive in the machine. Therefore with MAME you need the standard rom files as normal (copied from the PCB) and then the harddrive image - which comes in a .chd file. These vary between 100MB and 1.5GB dependant on game, I think theres about 25 of them or so.

                      I don't have any on my Arcade PC as most of the games are lightgun based and therefore rather poor with the stick.

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                        #12
                        i used to play cps1 and neo games fine on my old k6-2/300.
                        back then though cps2 games had just come out and cps2 emulation was in its infancy so either the cpu couldnt cut it or the emulation wasn't optimized. used to use neorageX in widows but preferred DOS for things like ZSNES and KGEN98.

                        oh the memories

                        i've got a mobo+via c3 800 that i'm planning on using as a router until my broadband isp sorts out ethernet capability but once it does i may convert the pc to stream media or, more fun, turn it into a mame thingy like you lot

                        i've already built 2 arcade joysticks for my xbox so i could always just rewire them to work with the pc (got two old 15-pin sidewinder pads that just lie there - perfect for dos emus as almost all supported sidewinder natively).

                        As for the complete mame rom sets, i guess the choice is yours but i doubt you'll be playing the hard drive games much (maybe a bit of killer instinct, but area 51 etc...). if yo uwanted you could stick the most played games on your hdd then stick the few you don't usually play onto a cd or two (cd drives are dirt cheap now) and run them like this...

                        just a thought

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                          #13
                          i've already built 2 arcade joysticks for my xbox so i could always just rewire them to work with the pc
                          Why bother? Getting PCs to recognise multiple Gameport joysticks is a nightmare, and an XBox to USB converter is under a tenner (its just a lead; no electronics needed as the connector is just a different shape with slightly different pinouts).

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                            #14
                            Originally posted by mid
                            i've already built 2 arcade joysticks for my xbox so i could always just rewire them to work with the pc
                            Why bother? Getting PCs to recognise multiple Gameport joysticks is a nightmare, and an XBox to USB converter is under a tenner (its just a lead; no electronics needed as the connector is just a different shape with slightly different pinouts).
                            i don't know how you figured that one out...

                            sidewinders are/were fully digital so you'd basically just daisychain one into the back of the other and get up to 4 working at the same time with all the buttons. the only drawback was that they wouldn't function as regular sticks and so you'd need the game/emu to specifically support sidewinders. Which, as I stated, most did (e.g. mame, kgen98, genecyst, zsnes, callus, etc etc)

                            the point i was making was if you're running a low-spec pc for emulation, it'll be faster and smoother running in pure DOS where usb isnt supported

                            besides how are you going to pull off those funky resolutions within windows? it'd stretch the screen and stuff to fit 320x240 etc wouldnt it?

                            oh and yeah the usb converters are just that - i just made two myself but again you'd need the drivers which doesn't help in dos...

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                              #15
                              On the subject of MAME are there any decent listings sites now, since mame.dk and mamedb.org went I can't seem to find a one stop place that lists new additions to each version and complete lists.

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