Posted by Bill Lash on 23, 2001 at 5:55 PM:
In Reply to: Any Linux MAME cabs out there? posted by Jason on 22, 2001 at 4:53 PM:
: howdy
: just curious if any of you run linux on your MAME
: cabinet. What do you do for a front end? How does
: the svgalib xmame compare performance-wise to DOS
: MAME?
I've built one that is about 90% complete. I built the cabinet from scratch, and need to add the monitor glass an bezel, the marquee, and mount the speakers. The problem is, any time I go to finish it, I just start playing games.
I am not currently using a front end. I just use the joystick to croll up and down through the history list, and have a button mapped to return. I've got a keyboard hooked up if a game I want to play has scrolled off the history list. I've actually been doing a lot of "xmame random" to discover games I have never heard of before.
I don't use the svgalib code, I am not sure if that is being maintained very well. I use the DGA display mode, which is an extension to X that basically allows direct access to the framebuffer. Many people claim that it is as fast or faster than DOS MAME. I don't know, since I have never used DOS MAME. I seem to get full speed on pretty much any game I try in version 0.36. I haven't tried any of the 0.37 betas yet, because any time I think about it, I go to the cabinet and start playing games. I have a AMD K62-400 with 128 meg of ram, and a Trident 975 AGP video card.
The one place where DOS MAME seems to have an advantage is in front ends for cabinets. All of the xmame front ends that I know of are really meant for a windowed environment. I took a look at the source code for Advanced Menu and ArcadeOS, and they don't look easy to port. I've thought about writing my own, but as soon as I think about it, I go to the cabinet and start playing games.
I know a lot of you are wondering why I would use Linux instead of DOS or Windows. Actually I might try DOS one of these days for the cabinet, just to use some of the neat front ends. Windows, on the other hand, has caused me too much grief during installs in the past. For me, linux just works right out of the box. I know there are a lot of people who can say the same about windows, but I've had tremendously bad luck with it in the past.