I have a PIII 800 which seems like a suitable donor.
More than enough. The computer I had in my starwars arcade game (at first) was a Pentium 200 MMX, and it did okay. You really shouldn't have much trouble running older games on slow hardware, and you'll probably get decent performance out of some of the newer games from that P3.
Don't really care if XWindows is there or not, i'm happy enough in a console
[snip] I'd go ahead and put X on the thing. Won't hurt.
I can handle hardware side of things easy enough. One of the stipulations though would be the USB controller, is this possible under linux / xmame? I know it's not under MSDOS!
There will be no trouble with getting hardware support. Linux is not DOS, and <flamebait>doesn't suck as much either</flamebait>.
Seriously, though, you really shouldn't have any issues with a USB joystick, sound, or video support, which are really the things you need most.
Monitor will need to be standard res (i think i have a working MTC9000 kicking about), and i don't think i have the luxury of spending £80 for him on an ArcadeVGA. Graphics card in the PC in question in a generic S3 Trio 3D AGP card.
Monitor, fine, though can you maybe put something better than an S3 in there? (ATI RagePro or Matrox G400 come to mind for nice cheap cards)
Will need to operate in full screen, hopefully booting to a menu such as dmame.
There's lots of good front-ends, and most of the people that wrote them lurk here on the list. Fullscreen shouldn't be an issue, just grab some of the modelines out of the docs.
If i've missed anything important please do let me know...
Install linux. Install a frontend and xmame. Set up some scripts to have it jump into the frontend and modify any configuration files. It's pretty straightforward.
Oh, i have install media for Mandrake 8, 9, 9.2 or 10.
I'd [generally] recommend sticking with newer versions of the same distro, as they'll be more up-to-date, but I can't speak for Mandrake. My main MAME machine runs Slackware 9.1.
Advice hugely appreciated as this is the first time i've attempted a linux based cab setup.
General advice:
Don't be afraid to screw things up so you can learn something. You can always wipe it and install again. Keep backups of stuff you do that you DO like.
PS: Before any bright spark mentions it, i have original PCBs for SW, ROTJ, the conversion kit for ESB along with several hundred other PCBs, so roms are not an issue :O) I just can't lay my hands on a working ampliphone color XY monitor for the cab right now!
You ran into the same problem I did.
Anyhow, good luck to you. Brendan
http://clickass.org/~tgz/swgame3.jpg
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