DOS

[theclassicalgod]

For a few years now.. i've been thinking about making a fullout arcade cab(or restoring an old used one). I saw an episode here recently with the bartop cab that was made.

I'm going to make the computer completely dedicated to this function and figure that running windows(or even linux had crossed my mind) would take a bit of time to get up and running every single time, especially seeing as this thing is going to be made out of scrap pc parts and not to savy in the speed/power area.

I decided I wanted to go with DOS since I found there are a few front-ends out there that support it. I haven't used DOS in at least 5 years and that was running through windows.

enough babble.. on to the question..

Is there a way to run just straight up pure DOS from the boot still?

[jool]

Of course you can run only DOS, any Windows 9x installation is running on top of it and you can stop it from starting Windows. I just don't think that's something you really want to do. You would get all the classic problems with having enough free memory and detecting/configuring hardware. An easier solution would just be to run regular Windows with some fullscreen interface to whatever you want to run or one of those nice linux distros running mame.

[cooper]

Let's start with this: http://www.freedos.org/

With that out of the way, let's talk Linux for a second. Linux _can_ be made to boot really fast. Just do a thorough culling of the init scripts and installed packages and such. Do a minimal Debian install, then apt-get whatever package mame is in and you're pretty much good to go. Compile a custom kernel that only supports the bits you really need. You should be up and running in less than 30 seconds from power-on.

For added speed, try getting a machine that you can put a Linux BIOS on. Those things don't come with all that legacy initialization crap that most BIOSes still carry.

[metatron]

I love building full size MAME cabinets/systems. If you are going to build something that is coin operated and has all the extras, your best bet is Debian, as it will run well on any piece of shit system you have laying around and there are a lot of people designing and coding cool MAME add-ons.

If you’re going with as basic unit and you want as little work as you can get away with, go with Windows 2000 or Server 2003.

http://www.retroblast.com/

http://arcadecontrols.com/arcade.htm

http://xgaming.com/arcade_bundle.shtml

KeyWiz Max 1.5

http://www.ultimarc.com/ipac1.html

http://www.slikstik.com/

http://www.retrothing.com/2006/07/zvg_vector_grap.html

http://www.happcontrols.com/

[theclassicalgod]

I love building full size MAME cabinets/systems. If you are going to build something that is coin operated and has all the extras, your best bet is Debian, as it will run well on any piece of shit system you have laying around and there are a lot of people designing and coding cool MAME add-ons.

Yeah. I'm probably going to go coin-op just to amke it seem a lot more realistic. Add a button or two for freeplay somewhere on the control panel or inside the coin door.

I have a Knoppix DVD that I recently got ahold of, but its a direct boot off the disk. I'm not too farmiliar with compiling anything for lunix. I rarely use it. I am a quick learner, but its just a matter of finding the recources to learn the basic things needed to do this.(most i've done was javascript, HTML, Actionscript, and C++.. only one of which a real programming language)

I understand what's being said, just haven't got a clue on how to go about doing it.

@metatron - any help you might be able to give me on building the actual cabinet in a better way would be great. I found one or two sites with the plans they used to make theirs but I dont really see how they are put together compairing to the pictures they had during the process of building. I got one from http://users.adelphia.net/~seanhat/arcade/ .