Very old PC

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.games.mame (More info?)

Hey there.

My little cousin has a very old PC but would still like to play MAME. Now,
MAME32 is too slow on his machine but he is too young to know how to work a
version in dos mode. So is there a nice, simple frontend for an old, slow
machine?

Thanks all

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.games.mame (More info?)

"Mother Farquhar" <fake@ddress.com> wrote in news:mJDhe.10572$he1.2433
@newsfe6-gui.ntli.net:

> Hey there.
>
> My little cousin has a very old PC but would still like to play MAME. Now,
> MAME32 is too slow on his machine but he is too young to know how to work a
> version in dos mode. So is there a nice, simple frontend for an old, slow
> machine?

The front-end really has little bearing on performance in the end, IMHO.
You'd be better off trying something like Vantage, a wholly different
emulator that emulates only a comparatively small set of arcade ROMs but
requires far less of the computer hardware.

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.games.mame (More info?)

Mother Farquhar wrote:
> Hey there.
>
> My little cousin has a very old PC but would still like to play MAME. Now,
> MAME32 is too slow on his machine but he is too young to know how to work a
> version in dos mode. So is there a nice, simple frontend for an old, slow
> machine?
>
> Thanks all
>
>

How old is the machine?
I had a similar experience and this is what I found: I had a Pentium
133 MHz with 128M RAM, if I recall correctly. I loaded DOS and vantage
on the thing and arcadeos. I also needed to get some DOS protected mode
modules and copy them into both the arcadeos and vantage dirs. Then I
was up and running. Galaga, Donkey Kong, Mr. Do, Pacman all worked
quite nicely. I remember noticing that Galaga ran at 60 frames per
second. Then I loaded mame on to the same box. Galaga ran at 2 frames
per second. Ugh.

So, once I had it all working I dumped the machine and have moved up to
a Pentium II. Why, you ask? Vantage just didn't have enough games for
me. It didn't have such classics as Asteroids or Centipede. Sad.

My ultimate goal is to play Raiden -- a sincere addition from college,
but I have already determined that Pentium II, though great for many
mame-based games, won't run that at a reasonable speed either.

John

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.games.mame (More info?)

"Mother Farquhar" <fake@ddress.com> wrote in message
news:mJDhe.10572$he1.2433@newsfe6-gui.ntli.net...
> Hey there.
>
> My little cousin has a very old PC but would still like to play MAME. Now,
> MAME32 is too slow on his machine but he is too young to know how to work
a
> version in dos mode. So is there a nice, simple frontend for an old, slow
> machine?
>
> Thanks all
>
>

Make windows your frontend! Use either DOS or Windows and setup various
Icons on the desktop:

Mame frogger
Mame Tetrisa

etc
etc

Doesn't take long.......

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.games.mame (More info?)

I have a simular problem, not that old a PC but I still would rather do
it in DOS if it is possible. Ive tried a few of the frontends and to
be honest, they almost all try to be too clever in my opinion, well,
too clever for me that might be...
But I found a program called PCMENU at this url...
http://home.att.net/~short.stop/freesoft/menu.htm#progexec
Which seems very easy to use so I will be spending all of tommorow
night messing about with that, and freedos, and dmame.
It appears that the config file for it is very easy to set up.
With line such as...
Game Name One
c:\mame
dmame game_name_one
Game Name Two
c:\mame
dmame game_name_two
And then it build a menu only showing you the two lines, not the
indented stuff. I hope it works as if it does we could be onto a nice
little "make your own frontend" winner here.
I will let you know how it goes.

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.games.mame (More info?)

Do you have a MicroCenter in your state?? They usually have some factory
refurbs on hand. I'm pretty
sure you could pick up an AMD Athlon or Celeron based machine for under
$700. Those machines usually
have below-par video on-board. However that can be bypassed by inserting a
new card of your choice into
the empty AGP slot. ATI Raedon with 128MB of VRAM should be fine and
shouldn't be more than $60.

Regards,
Bill "The Colonel" N.
Long Island - New York.

"Mother Farquhar" <fake@ddress.com> wrote in message
news:mJDhe.10572$he1.2433@newsfe6-gui.ntli.net...
> Hey there.
>
> My little cousin has a very old PC but would still like to play MAME. Now,
> MAME32 is too slow on his machine but he is too young to know how to work
> a
> version in dos mode. So is there a nice, simple frontend for an old, slow
> machine?
>
> Thanks all
>
>

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.games.mame (More info?)

geez for $760 you aint that far from getting a dell