I got into this crazy hobby starting back in 2001. That's when I acquired a (dead) Dynamo Solitaire Challenge game and converted it into a MAME cabinet. I put a 19-inch CRT computer monitor in it with a Windows XP PC and I-PAC for the controls interface. I primarily ran MAME32 on it and used its built-in frontend. (Old photos of the cabinet below.)
As years went past and I acquired more and more actual arcade and pinball games, the MAME cabinet got played less and less. Eventually, I loaned it out to a friend so that he and his sons could enjoy it. They kept it until 2015 when they were moving and didn't want the MAME cabinet anymore, so I retrieved it. By that time, the PC had died (capacitor plague on the motherboard). I backed up the original hard drive files (still have them now), scrapped that PC, and pushed the MAME cabinet back into a corner. That's where its been sleeping ever since.
I'd like to dust it off, put a PC in it, and get it back up and running. I'm hoping that the 19-inch monitor, speaker system and other components still work. I might need to swap out the original PS2 I-PAC for a new USB I-PAC.
I have a spare Ryzen 7 2700X Win11 mid-tower PC that I could stick in it. Or, I have a spare mini HP Elitedesk 705 (Ryzen Pro 5 2400GE) that could run Linux or whatever. Or, I have a spare SFF HP Prodesk 400 G5 (I5-8500) that could run Win11 or Linux or whatever.
The unknown to me these days is the software side of getting this back up and running. I haven't followed the emulation scene in 20 years, and I'm not sure where to start in figuring out what software would be appropriate to use. (Or where to even find all the "other files" that you need to have.) I'm looking to do arcade game emulation along with some classic home console emulation.
Cursory searches turn up things like LaunchBox and Batocera... But I haven't had time yet to learn more about them.
Any advice? OS? Software? Frontends?
Recommended resources? Web sites? YouTube videos?
Thank you!