Posted by StephenH on 8, 2001 at 6:49 PM:
In Reply to: MAME System posted by Jason on 8, 2001 at 6:27 PM:
That depends on what you are comfortable with, what hardware (monitor, sound card, joysticks, etc) you have, how much RAM you have, and weither the system will be used for any other purpose (word processing, database, online, etc), and which games you want to play in MAME.
Many people use Windows based OSes (95, 98, ME) with MAME32. This configuration works with most hardware. This is easy to use as well as good hardware compatibilty.
Other people use a Windows OS with DOS MAME, and this configuration has better game performance, and works better with Arcade Monitors, but it is incompatible with some PCI sound cards, and many USB device inputs. It is also more difficult to set up. A front-end is recommended for this configuration, to give a menu of games to select from.
Some people go full out DOS and use the ArcadeOS frontend. This frontend allows use of real arcade compents quite easily, and allows display on a real arcade monitor (since most are limited in resolution).
AdvanceMAME (advancemame.arcadeheaven.com) is recommended for people using TVs or Arcade Monitors. It is difficult to setup, but works well.
Some people have had good luck using other OSes (Mac OS, BeOS, OS/2, Linux, etc) for MAME. If you are comfortable using one of these OSes, and the hardware you plan to use is supported, you could try this approach. The only drawback, is that they are not updated as much as normal MAME is.
: Hey everyone, I just went out and got a 1.2GH Tbird + MB and am ready to build my MAME System.
: Anyone here know of a good place to start? Any recommendations as to what OS I use?
: Any advice would be helpful!!