Quick Mame question

davin72

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Since there are so many games I want to play and so little money I was thinking about finally breaking down and putting a mame machine together. My question is....would I have any trouble running it from a laptop and getting everything hooked up right. I plan on using it in my Street Fighter machine and thought about a laptop just to help save on space. Are there any of you that are using a laptop instead of a tower.

Davin
 
Since there are so many games I want to play and so little money I was thinking about finally breaking down and putting a mame machine together. My question is....would I have any trouble running it from a laptop and getting everything hooked up right. I plan on using it in my Street Fighter machine and thought about a laptop just to help save on space. Are there any of you that are using a laptop instead of a tower.

Davin


As long as you can output the video to some kind of monitor you shouldn't have any problems.

I have done it with no issues ...

Steve
MM
 
I just want to do it for space reasons plus the ease of wi-fi on it plus you can pick up one cheap on CL.
 
It's a great idea for sure. Buying one with a broken screen ='s cheap.
The only downfall of this - If you want to play anything like gauntlet and NFL Blitz it won't happen. Those games need a desktop over clocked to ~3.4ghz.

Otherwise any of the WAY old school games will work flawlessly on a laptop. And having wireless to update your roms and MAME is also a bonus.
 
Im fine not having those but what about KI 1 or 2. I use to have a mame setup in a candy cab, that i regret selling now, but i didnt do the setup on it. I would want those on there.
 
I think the last time I played KI was on a 2.66 and it worked fine. Don't know about anything lower though. Great games BTW
 
The only foreseeable problem I can think of would be... The video card in that laptop better be pretty decent. Meaning, not super el-cheapo, and also not necessarily a high-end card.

If it's not, you're stuck using that crappy card, no way to upgrade it.
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The only foreseeable problem I can think of would be... The video card in that laptop better be pretty decent. Meaning, not super el-cheapo, and also not necessarily a high-end card.

If it's not, you're stuck using that crappy card, no way to upgrade it.
z0tdntknw.gif

Considering MAME is CPU reliant not "currently" GPU I think he'll be fine.
 
Video cards mean virtually nothing to MAME. I benched a half dozen cards and the only significant difference I saw was an on-board solution and that was because it used on-board system memory. All other video cards were withing 2-3% of each other from a $30 cheap-o card to a decently high end $200+ card.
 
KI is a beast to get working right in mame. I had it working great on my first mame machine but couldnt get it running on my last two which had computers twice as fast and loaded with ram. I have yet to see KI2 run smoothly in mame. I finally said to hell with it and bought dedicated versions of both.
 
Video cards mean virtually nothing to MAME. I benched a half dozen cards and the only significant difference I saw was an on-board solution and that was because it used on-board system memory. All other video cards were withing 2-3% of each other from a $30 cheap-o card to a decently high end $200+ card.

I know we argued this point in another thread before (I think right after I joined here) but I have personal experience with a machine that had a normal card in it (S3 Virgo) and mame played like absolute shit in it. Even games like Donkey Kong and Pac-Man. I threw a cheapo 3D card in it, an MX-3000 or something like that, and it was like a completely different beast. Nothing else had changed, it just made everything run smooth and perfect. That card did something. Period. Maybe the old card was broken, who knows.

Might have been the version of mame I was running, too. I'm just saying, I saw it transform the machine...
 
Why would you use a used laptop when you can buy a used desktop with better performance cheaper?

As far as space. You don't need the case of the desktop. Think of the cab itself as the case. This gives you many more mounting options.

I think it woud be a pain to pull the laptop out every time you needed to fire it up or do updates.
 
I'm currently finishing up a MAME cab and my advice is to just get a cheap mobo/cpu and use that.

I picked up a used P4 2.8 Ghz. mobo/cpu with 256 megs of RAM for $32 at a local used PC store.

If you have the original 15khz CRT, then simply use soft15k to get 15khz. out to it from windows or run AdvanceMAME in a pure dos enviroment.

Down the road if you feel the need you can buy an ArcadeVGA or make one depending on how much time you want to put into it vs. saving money.

My current setup, I got the cab with CRT for $40, another $32 for the mobo/cpu and $8 for the Radeon 9200 which I flashed to make an ArcadeVGA. I bought 3 8-way sticks for $20 and another $20 in buttons. I think the most expensive component I purchased was my J-PAC and you can do some work to avoid that cost, such as hacking a keyboard encoder or PC joysticks/gamepads.

If I were to use a laptop, I think i'd probably strip the guts out of it and remove the LCD, just run it on video out and accept the limitations of the hardware. Even at that, I'd only go that route as a temp solution until I could put some heavier hardware in the cab.
 
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I know we argued this point in another thread before (I think right after I joined here) but I have personal experience with a machine that had a normal card in it (S3 Virgo) and mame played like absolute shit in it. Even games like Donkey Kong and Pac-Man. I threw a cheapo 3D card in it, an MX-3000 or something like that, and it was like a completely different beast. Nothing else had changed, it just made everything run smooth and perfect. That card did something. Period. Maybe the old card was broken, who knows.

Might have been the version of mame I was running, too. I'm just saying, I saw it transform the machine...

I am not sure how old an S3 Virgo is... so let me rephrase... any video card made this century will work fine...

;)

EDIT: I think you mean the S3 VIRGE... not Virgo... and it came out in 1995 for christ sakes!

Hahaha...

:D
 
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I am not sure how old an S3 Virgo is... so let me rephrase... any video card made this century will work fine...

;)

EDIT: I think you mean the S3 VIRGE... not Virgo... and it came out in 1995 for christ sakes!

Hahaha...

:D

Yeah, that's pretty much it. And I meant Virge. Dang, it's been forever. It was a crap-ass card. But upgrading the card did help... :rolleyes:

So as long as you start with a mediocre card, you're good to go. But some laptops have some really bad cards, and, well, you're stuck if they do.
 
Thanks for the input guys. I also have to admit I have no idea what im doing with Mame. I did have the candy cab set up with mame for awhile but I bought it that way so I never really learned how to set it up. Been doing a lot of reading and I think I can set it up its just trying to figure out what I need to do computer wise now. Im not the most computer savy guy around.

Davin
 
If you have the original 15khz CRT, then simply use soft15k to get 15khz. out to it from windows or run AdvanceMAME in a pure dos enviroment.

Down the road if you feel the need you can buy an ArcadeVGA or make one depending on how much time you want to put into it vs. saving money.

I have a question. I am trying to get MAME setup on a Neo-Geo cabinet w/ a 15hz CRT. I have purchased two pci video cards cheap from eBay that are supposed to ork with Soft15k.

I can get one card to display 320x240 and the other to display 640x480 but both cards cause the screen to "split" when running anything other than those resolutions. For example, on the 640x480 card I can see Maximus Arcade but as soon as I load Fusion (genesis emu) it splits the screen. No matter what I do I can't get MAME to show me anything, it just blacks out and crashes.

I have soft15k "running" but I am not sure it is doing anything, and when I use soft15k's "uninstall" button I still have the same results.

I am about to throw my hate in the ring and buy an AGP ArcadeVga an a AGP motherboard and start all over.
 
Why would you use a used laptop when you can buy a used desktop with better performance cheaper?

As far as space. You don't need the case of the desktop. Think of the cab itself as the case. This gives you many more mounting options.

I think it woud be a pain to pull the laptop out every time you needed to fire it up or do updates.

I agree with this. You can get a desktop for cheap (or nothing) that will run MAME fine.
My last projects have been first gen P4 desktops from family or friends that upgraded or my wifes work.

If you can get a 2ghz P4 desktop with 512 meg of RAM, you can run MAME .99 and about 90% of the games out there (including all of the Golden Age) perfectly. Even most of the newer non-CHD stuff will be fine.

This is a great idea for a project. As much as I love the notion of dedicated stuff, MAME got me back into the hobby and would be the last machine to go on the way back out. You cannot beat the flexibility if you're limited on space or just want to play some of the old games for fun.

Good luck!
 
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