Home Page Forums Archives MacMAME .58 in OS 9.2 or .103 in OS X

Hello-

I have a cabinet with a G4 400, Rage 128 AGP, 768 megs of RAM, running OS 9.2. I have been running MAME .58 for a looooong time and have been very happy with the performance on older games and the way games run with the ATI video plugin.

A few things are making me ponder making a switch:
-I recently was given an AGP Radeon 9000 64 meg video card.
-I'm really getting sick of OS 9. It was kinda fun to keep it going but my troubleshoot skill set in 9 has gone to poop. I'd like to make my cabinet a music server and other stuff that require OS X to be decent.
-I know I can update my ROM set without too much trouble.

My question for those of you running .103 is will my old G4 run older games decently with the Radeon 9000 card using the Open GL Tempest? The biggest resource hog game I play is Streetfighter II.
If the G4 400 is going to be the weak link in my upgrade to OSX, how fast of a processor upgrade should I be looking into knowing I'm trying to do this on the cheep?

I figured I'd ask here before going through the trouble of updating ROMs, swapping hardware, and installing OSX to try it.

Thanks in advance.

If you want to keep your old G4 400 MHZ running, I'd first suggest a visit to the Sonnet web site , and at least think about a processor upgrade (a 1.0 GHz Encore/ST will run about $200.00).

It sounds like you have plenty of RAM, so that won't be an issue.

Before upgrading to OS X, make sure that your OS 9 is updated to 9.2.2, and all the other updates via Software Update have been done (especially any Firmware Updates)

I currently run a similar configuration, and I have very few complaints...

I think there's a few reasons to keep using OS 9. MacMAME .58 is generally faster with vector games and some other games like Space Harrier.

I had the same issue as you, and updated my G4 400 with a 1Ghz Gigadesigns upgrade. They allow overclocking so I overclocked it to 1.1Ghz. I couldn't be happier.

http://www.gigadesigns.com/

There is no way I would pay $200 to upgrade to 1 GHz G4 (unsupported config which you will always have to jack with) when I can buy a 1.25 GHz MacMini for $499 and get new Tiger, iLife, plus a warranty. My opinion is to sell the G4 for $250 or something and get a mini.

(The refurb 1.25 GHz MacMini is $379 at the store.apple.com, no airport or bluetooth though)

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.58 is faster, but .103 has better graphics and sound emulation in Space Harrier (and a lot of other games - Asteroids, Phoenix, Galaga to name 3 I think people have heard of. Contrary to occasional belief, we don't make it slower for no reason ;-)

I figured out with a bit of soldering (removing one of the IDE- PATA busses) a quicksilver or Digital audio 733 or 867 g4 onto my sawtooth mobo. I have a PCI PATA card so this isn't a big deal. With the good video card, will I be able to play NEO geo games and Street fighter II?

Thanks in advance.