Media server / Emulator box

[Iron Z]

Hi guys

Quick question. I have a lovely new projector in the living room that throws movies (ahh the joys of a Divx compatible DVD player!) and PS2 games up on the wall in glorious big-o-vision.

however, being an enterprising chap, and having lots and lots of bits of old PCs lying around, it seems to make sense to build a media server box that is linked into the wireless network that can also play emulators. (is "emulator" a bad word in the retro forum?)

building the box is no problem - ive got an 800mhz Celeron and mobo lying around, and a Geforce 1 DDR which was fine playing old CPS2 games on emulators and i can pick up a big harddrive to keep the movies and mp3s on. An old TV card ive got knocking around will let me watch TV on the big screen too, which is handy.

The software setup is a bit trickie though - we were planning to use a fast-boot linux variant, but do people code decent emulators for Linux?

An alternative i remember reading of but know next to nothing about is a version of MAME that is bootable...am i imagining this?

the "boring" option is just to have a very clean minimal install of WinXP and keep apps loaded at setup to an absolute minimum...

any tips on how to proceed with this?

[kernow]

you could use a livecd or minimal install that booted into mame

I did it once with a hacked slackware distrobution that booted straight into an X session with mame running.

theres a ****eload of emus available too, and distributions / livecd's targeted towards being a media box too.

geeXbox
mythTV
the linux console project

theres loads .. some allow you to use the box as a PVR too (like a tivo)

[Iron Z]

sounds perfect...hadnt thought of TiVO! thats a briliant idea!

what is the linux console project??

finally, i notice AdvanceMAME can do arcade-perfect resolutions. Since this box will be running through a projector (sony vpl es2) do i need to take anything into consideration? the projector say it will run up to SVGA, but should i try and run original arcade monitor res?

[kernow]

http://linuxconsole.sourceforge.net/

http://freshmeat.net/projects/ost-box/

http://freshmeat.net/projects/vdr/

http://freshmeat.net/projects/geexbox/

http://freshmeat.net/projects/knoppmyth/

http://freshmeat.net/projects/dashpc/

theres literally hundreds, or you could DIY!

[kernow]

advmame does a pretty hot job of roms on TV , it auto scales etc and centers.

coupled with advmenu its great, although both require all the mame artwork and a hella lot of config tweaking to get looking nice.

its worth it in the end though

I copped out in the end and got myself a modded xbox the linux console I once had is now my firewall/dns/dhcp/httpd/ftpd/NAT box

its fun though, I recommend getting something like mythTV as its better and less pain than doing it yourself, I used slackware for the base OS.

sounds perfect...hadnt thought of TiVO! thats a briliant idea!

what is the linux console project??

finally, i notice AdvanceMAME can do arcade-perfect resolutions. Since this box will be running through a projector (sony vpl es2) do i need to take anything into consideration? the projector say it will run up to SVGA, but should i try and run original arcade monitor res?

[Iron Z]

checked out MythTV - it looks perfect...and the feature set is incredible!

they talk about using Fedora / Debian but i was thinking of using Gentoo and compiling it properly for the exact box im running to get the best "horsepower" out of it (only choice of lowly 1.2 or 1.8ghz athlons in the box of bits, with a GF1 DDR or a GF4 MX 64MB)...

[kernow]

you could, but really thats good kit for any linux distro, pvr or not

I use slackware because its nice and simple, easy to install, easy to use, and is fast as hell already

its up to you though, hmm I might checkout mythtv again hehe

good luck!

[Leon Retro]

checked out MythTV - it looks perfect...and the feature set is incredible!

they talk about using Fedora / Debian but i was thinking of using Gentoo and compiling it properly for the exact box im running to get the best "horsepower" out of it (only choice of lowly 1.2 or 1.8ghz athlons in the box of bits, with a GF1 DDR or a GF4 MX 64MB)...

I used to have an Athlon 2000 with GF4MX, and it ran every emulator perfectly. The lastest emulation of Model2 etc.. don't work very well, but anything N64 and before works a treat!

Obviously there will be differences between the motherboards, ram etc.. But the actual graphics card is decent enough!

[Iron Z]

3D Arcade emulation is arse anyway, its all done with CPU, is slow as balls and full of glitches.

its a shame the makers have to be so "pure" about it - a HLE / hacked version to take advantage of the huge horsepower in todays video cards would be fantastic for System 22, Model 2 etc.

i think these people forget that while MAME was still struggling to perfectly emulate Mappy, NeoRageX and UltraHLE were doing dirty hacked emulation running full speed and opened the doors to the emu scene today.