After putting way too much effort into the EPIA 5000, I've decided to give up and try a different hardware approach. I happened to find an old Dell P4 in the dumpster at my apartment building. It uses RamBus RDRAM and only has 512MB. Upgrading RamBus RAM to 1GB costs somewheres around $1000. I'd have tossed it myself!
Digging through the AdvanceMAME documents, I saw several comments about video and sound card compatibility. While AdvanceCD and AdvanceMAME for Linux work quite well with the video and sound hardware in the EPIA 5000, I just happen to already have a Matrox G400 sitting idle in a box. I bought this card originally because it was _THE_ card for multiple monitors in Xfree86 (pre-2.0). But since I've been mired in Windows for the part part of the last decade, the card's gone unappreciated. Fortunately I didn't through it away! It turns out that the Matrox G400 is also _THE_ card for AdvanceMAME. According to the docs, it'll even drive a 15Khz arcade monitor like the ArcadeVGA adapter.
I could stick the Matrox G400 into the EPIA 5000. It does have one PCI slot. But I'm also fighting sound card issues. The EPIA 5000 has DOS support but for some reason, it's not working on mine. So I jumped on eBay and ordered a true-blue SoundBlaster PCI128 card that is well-supported in all flavors of AdvanceMAME and MAME in general.
Assuming there's room in the cocktail cabinet, I'll be sticking the entire Dell into the box with the Matrox G400 and SoundBlaster. Since I'm putting more hardware in there than I originally intended, I may add a jukebox function.
2 comments:
I'm curious why you ended up ditching the 500mhz VIA board. I myself am trying to convert my MK2 cabinet into a MAME cabinet using the 600mhz VIA board (probably same model as yours, just newer).
You mentioned using an additional sound card and video card. Was this because neither were properly supported by AdvanceMAME?
I'd appreciate more information on why you decided against the VIA board.
Thanks!
I need to make an updated post with the completed system.
My 500Mhz VIA board worked great with AdvanceMAME in Linux booting off AdvanceCD. I couldn't get the sound to work under DOS.
I switched mainly because I also needed a machine to run as a print server - which runs 24/7. The 500Mhz VIA uses very little electricity. So I used a machine I dug out of a dumpster. It also allowed me to use an ISA Sound Blaster and get the sound working perfectly in DOS.
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