My low end emulation machine

[morcar]

Since starting this little project I have been keeping a log using MS Office and wanted to share it with you so here goes.


12/25/2011
I have always been into emulation and the whole thing of playing the old games in the comfort of your home. When I was around 5 (1980) I was bought a ZX80 and I quickly picked up the BASIC and wrote games. Of course the games were very basic but it didn’t stop me from thinking I was doing something worthwhile. From then on I have always been hooked on computers or consoles and the games you can either make yourself or can just buy and play.

Today I don’t play a lot of new games even though I have a PC that could handle it with ease and I don’t like to clutter up the PC with all the older titles. Why don’t I play new games ?

Well I don’t like how they feel and the games don’t offer any challenge with so many save points and some games you can’t even die no matter how hard you try. Plus most of them look the same with the same greys and browns and its very unfriendly looking. Games should be bright, colourful and fun to play no matter what age you are.

Good news was a few months back I was at a local fund raising fate and I saw a PC being sold for 5 pounds.

I didn’t care about the specs I just knew whatever it was I could upgrade it to the max on the mainboard and it should help me in some way or another.
So I bought the machine took it home and it wasn’t a bad little machine but it did need upgrading so off I went on Ebay to get the parts which wasn’t too high for my liking.

My plan is to turn this low end PC into a emulation gaming machine with easy frontend and a host of games from the machines I love so much.

Here are the specs for the machine I have

ASRock K7VM2 mATx mainboard

AMD Athlon xp2000 1.50Ghz

2GB 333MHz DDR2 Ram

80GB Ide Hard Drive (I also have a spare 160Gb SATA drive here which I need to get an adaptor for then I can add it to the machine)planet

Radeon x1650 Pro 256Mb AGP card

Soundblaster Live! 5.1 PCI card

DVD-Rom Drive (this can be used to load in any CD/DVD based games)
Wireless mouse and keyboard plus I have a Xbox 360 wired controller so every emulator can use the controller to the full. Like with the Playstation 1 I can now use the analog sticks like a real PS1 or I can remap the controller so if I play a racing game the accelerate and brake can be analog but on the triggers. It gives me a lot of options of controlling the games.

So far I have been testing the machine out on different operating systems from Windows, Linux and even DOS and so far I have to admit Windows XP seems to be the best of the bunch for this project.

I intend to hack Windows XP so that all the welcome screens and such do not show that its windows in the background. This may or may not be possible I do not know but it will be interesting to find out.

Currently I have the system in the old case but as luck would have it the mainboard is mATX which means once I am done sorting it all out I will buy a nice small case to fit everything in. It should look very nice once finished.

All the parts I bought are all installed and Windows XP is installed and updated. I am currently messing with Xbox Media Centre as the frontend as I used to like using it on my classic Xbox. Finding anything I want with this app is so easy and it’s not far from your finger tips or pointer as it were.

I do need to understand in configuring the app even more to get what I want but the amount of skins there are with this app is amazing and it deserves to have a shot at being on this machine.

12/26/2011
Well I have scrapped the idea of using XBMC because it’s just too much of a hassle. I have now opted for Star Dock and I have made my background along with adding some of the games into the docking station.

12/27/2011
Just when I think I got it all going I get a major hardware problem and this is all down to the graphics card. I was playing some Street Fighter Alpha 2 and the picture went nuts on me. Sp I looked inside and I touched the graphics cards and found it was very very hot. After a lot of looking and then opening it up I noticed the made GPU is fried. Gutted is not the word.

OK, I think we need a bit of an update as a lot as gone on.

I think I have fixed the graphics card by cleaning and adding a new blob of thermal paste. It’s all working, but as I have found out on the net this card does not have any sensors. I found this out after trying over 15 different programs to get the readings for the temperature.

I will run it all day today with games and see how it goes. Also I will post some screen shots of what I have sometime very soon.

 

[robinsonb5]

Well it sounds like a great project, but when you said "low end PC" I was expecting maybe a PII-300MHz!

Should serve you well, anyway - shouldn't be much emulation-wise it can't handle!

(If you find a few MAME games run a bit slowly, it might be worth trying to track down an old version of MAME - 0.37 or so. In later versions relatively high-res games like Paperboy needed significantly more horsepower. I forget the exact reason, but it might have been removal of direct support for 256-colour displays, which then had to be emulated in 16- or 24-bit.)

 

[morcar]

I have a P2 333mzh here but i have to get all the parts for it. At the moment I am missing the psu, hard drive, pci gfx card and a sound card so i got a fair bit to go.

On this system I want the saturn emu to work SSF but i cant see it running to well but we will see.

 

[Retrograde]

Sounds fun!

I haven't experimented with the late 90s/early 00 consoles emulation-wise, but you might lack performance for those, would be interesting if you tested.

Personally I've found a not-too-old laptop (if you have one around or can budget one) to be pretty smooth for living room emu action, plenty of horsepower to run virtually all 8- and 16-bit platforms, some 32 (including MAME, good point though on not going too high on the version), and with VGA and HDMI out you're good to go with most modern TVs.

--

One day I intend to build a dedicated HTPC and Emu machine with all the frills, question is if shoudl combine it with also being my new fileserver, goes against the idea of "small" though. So many options out there!

 

[morcar]

Currently I have the follow on the hard drive

Amiga
Amstrad CPC
Atari 2600
Atari ST
Commodore 64
Final Burn Alpha (Capcom/Neogeo)
Gameboy Advance/Mono/Colour
Sega Mega Drive/32X/Mega CD
MAME (Arcade, but no CHD games)
Master System
Game Gear
Nintendo 64
Nintendo Entertainment System
PC Engine with PC CD Engine support
Playstation 1 (I have a lot of discs here so no need to iso them at the moment to save space)
Sam Coupe
Sharp x68000
Super Nintendo
ZX Spectrum

Most have the full rom set so I have loads of games to pick from.

Ps1 and N64 runs like a dream and I tried SSF and it wont run so thats out although as i only ever played Sega Rally Championship on it I will install the PC version and add it on the dock.

 

[morcar]

A lot has gone on since i last posted so where do i start ??

Well I added more roms to the collections for all the emulators making them complete sets.

Got it all sorted out and .... the boys wanted it lol

So i backed it all the work i did then handed the pc over to them and I aint heard any arguing or seen any fighting...result.

I now have an Intel Atom dual core to mess about with and I have done the same but I found on that SSF the Sega Saturn emulator runs without any problems.

I still got to do some pics and such for this thread so maybe tonight or tomorrow.

 

[robinsonb5]

I now have an Intel Atom dual core to mess about with and I have done the same but I found on that SSF the Sega Saturn emulator runs without any problems.

Nice! I'm a big fan of the dual core Atom boards

 

[AmiNeo]

I run emulation (mostly miggy, SNES and Megadrive) on my Atom Dual core netbook. Its amazing for it

 

[Powerpie5000]

I run emulation (mostly miggy, SNES and Megadrive) on my Atom Dual core netbook. Its amazing for it

My netbook is not so amazing, but it still manages to emulate old systems... It's got a 1.6Ghz Via C7-M CPU with 1GB DDR2 RAM. The weakest part of my netbook is probably the GPU which is a 64mb Via/S3G Unichrome Pro II :dry:

How much faster would a 1.6Ghz Atom netbook be with Intel GMA graphics?

 

[Amigafanboi]

I have a P2 333mzh here but i have to get all the parts for it. At the moment I am missing the psu, hard drive, pci gfx card and a sound card so i got a fair bit to go.

On this system I want the saturn emu to work SSF but i cant see it running to well but we will see.

I've got a Hercules Prophet 64mb PCI sat doing nothing.

Yours for postage if you want it...be great for that spec machine.

 

[cosmicfrog]

always wondered how those Via cpus feel and work in the real world, last VIA cpu I had was for socket7 and was around 200Mhz and I bet a lot has changed since then

you gota do them pics some time morcar

 

[Powerpie5000]

always wondered how those Via cpus feel and work in the real world, last VIA cpu I had was for socket7 and was around 200Mhz and I bet a lot has changed since then

They are still slow compared to the competition... My 1.6Ghz netbook struggles to run Youtube videos :roll:

 

[Justin]

here is a useful thread

https://www.amibay.com/showthread.php?t=4439

 

[AmiNeo]

I run emulation (mostly miggy, SNES and Megadrive) on my Atom Dual core netbook. Its amazing for it

My netbook is not so amazing, but it still manages to emulate old systems... It's got a 1.6Ghz Via C7-M CPU with 1GB DDR2 RAM. The weakest part of my netbook is probably the GPU which is a 64mb Via/S3G Unichrome Pro II :dry:

How much faster would a 1.6Ghz Atom netbook be with Intel GMA graphics?

Just realised I never responded to this, almost a year late, but here goes, lol.

I've found the atom graphics (the one on-chip on the dual core n550 at least) to be roughly comparable to a mid range P4 running a GForce 6500/6600GT in terms of overall capability. It can run PS1 and Amiga emulators without straining provided its not on power savings mode. Most PC games pre 2004/5 run okay on it in low resolutions too. It's also fine with youtube provided you don't go over 720p.