Dedicated game console PC?

[bicostp]

My school was getting rid of an old PC, and I seized the opportunity and snatched it up. It's pretty old,but I think it could be used as a dedicated game system if a minimal, dedicated OS was installed.

Specs:
-166 mhz Pentium MMX
-about 50 MB RAM (DIMMS, mind you )
-2 GB HD (but I plan on upgrading it to a 12 gb)
-Windows 95 original (pre-IE)
-Turbo button
-SoundBlaster 16 card (or compatible) with game port
-Mobo that has no connectors sticking out the back but rather uses ribbon cable connected to to PCI paceplates with the ports on them.
-No PS/2 connectors
-CD-ROM and floppy drives

Now obviously it would need some major software upgrades to be functional for, say, FCE Ultra or some Windows games, but I just plan on starting from scratch for both the software and the OS. I would like to try and dual-boot it between the Linux Kernel (like this thing could run Gnome or KDE well ) and DOS (saves system resources compared to Windows), so I can run opensorce games and DOS games, or at least run one or the other.

So, if I want to install Linux on it, can anyone recommend any minimal distros (I've got DSL already, I'm looking for another extremely minimal one), should I build the system from scratch (lots of head work, but possible I guess), or should I just run DOS only?


^Here's a diagram of where I am now. The dark grey box in between the computer and the TV is the PC-TV bridge, which runs at 640x480 and can output both Svideo and composite. The rather strange looking thing near the bottom left is a joystick controller.

All I need it to do is display a menu system, which letsyou select what system and game you want to play.

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks!

EDIT: I try to run my DSL disc on it, and the boot splash screen comes up, but it takes forever at the "Booting the Kernel" stage. (I'm running the text screen at 25 lines by 80columns because that's all it lets me use). The disc drive is a 56x aftermarket. Should I replace it with a another disc drive to see if that makes a difference?

EDIT 2: I know about that AdvanceMAME CD, but I have no clue how to burn it! How do you do that?

[marshallh]

-about 50 MB RAM (DIMMS, mind you )
-2 GB HD (but I plan on upgrading it to a 12 gb)

Did you mean SIMMs? DIMMS are what we use today. I'd guess that PC has 72-pin SIMMS.

If you upgrade the hard drive, there's a 99% chance only 8GB will be recognized. Make sure you use FAT32 when you format it, or you'll only get 2gb of usable space. (Use Win95 OSR2 or Win98 for that.)

[Reaperman@home]

of course a larger drive can be partitioned to get the space out of it--fat32 would be an extremely poor choice for a dos machine, afterall.

[marshallh]

Erm.. so you're saying FAT16 is superior to Fat32. I just don't get it.
The version of DOS that ships wth Win95 OSR2 works fine with FAT32. You can even get DOSLFN http://www.geocities.com/jadoxa/doslfn/ so you can see your long filenames in it.

[Jeff]

You should go stronger - I did one of these with a 450mhz PII and it wasn't that great. I'm gonna prolly do a PIII. You should do the same.

[marshallh]

Hm bic.. you could download a bunch of games off Home of the Underdogs and use a batch file as a menu. You could even make a cabinet for it (Name it "DOS Oldies" or something like that )

[bicostp]

Well I do have a 400mhz P2 box, but it's in use as a Linux web box.

I think I need to tinker with the RAM some more, it only recognizes 8 MB! (there's a few cards in there. I KNOW there's more physical RAM in there!)

Yeah I could just load it up with DOS games but I was hoping to have a MAME dedicated box for use on the TV that would be ready to go right after it passes all the BIOS tests.

[Radon199]

I know Mame won't run well on a 90 Mhz PC running DOS (I know ive tryed). Space invaders ran great... Street fighter 1 tho ran horibly. Yours is 76 mhz more than mine was so it might work, how well tho I can not say...

[marshallh]

Just one word of advice on the memory: All the SIMMS have to go in pairs. For example if you had four SIMM slots, then you could have two 16MB sticks and two 8MB sticks for about 48MB of ram.

How are you going to connect it to your tv? Are you going to get a video card with TV-out?

[Radon199]

He has a VGA to TV box. Or atleast thats what he says.

[bicostp]

Yup I have an L*TV Portable PC-TV bridge, which can handle up to 640x480 res

I've got the memory figured out, and it's back up to 48 megs, instead of 8 megs. It has 4 SIMM slots (i was misstaken with the memory earlier).

It came with 8-8-16-16, I had replaced one chip so I had 8-8-16-32. I putit back into its original configuration so it's working properly again. I even got it to run z26 and Hover! (listening to the Ghostbusters theme on the PC speaker is funny! ) It can run Hover at full detail at full frame rate, so I'm not too worried about running things like Pac Man and Mario Brothers. Later games like Metal Slug, sadly, will probably be too advanced for it. (I think it may be possible for this thing to run Genesis/SNES era games too...)

The reason I want a custom-tailored system is to free up as much of the computer's resources as possible.

[Unidentified Assilant]

I have TV-Out on my computer... I just don't have a TV...

apart from that, my computer upstairs is my home console PC... i want to put a dual-boot on it, but my brother said no for some reason...

[madc0w]

you can get cheapo cards that have S-Video out, saw one for $50 at circuit city today.

[soundwave]

S-video is pretty standard on video cards these days.

[Reploid Ayla]

DOS games only

if i had a PC dedicated to only DOS games, id have it hooked to my tv and ready to go at all times.

Id have:
Doom 1 (ultimate), 2, Final
Duke Nukem 1, 2, and mf'n 3D
Rise of the Triad
Blood
Wolfenstein 3D not to mention Spear of Destiny
Hugo's House of Horrors Trilogy
NiteMare 3D
Decent
Blake Stone
Kings Quest (6 only)
Quake
Dark Forces
Hexen
Heretic


dear lord it would be amazing