Tim's MAME Machine doing unMAME-like things

[Guardian]

Hey, You should start a counter on here, This is like my 3rd post to your board! I am one of the original members! hehe.
Q1. On your software link I went to take a look at your rc files, etc.. You have some pics below playing MK4 PC Ver, Golden Tee PC Ver, and some kind of Video's. I am assuming that these were from inside XP? You mentioned you were going to XP, I wanted to make sure this was inside of XP background.
Q2. So the only way to do this stuff your doing really is to either use the Ultimarc VGA card, or have XP start and auto load a util to kick it down to 15Hz Vert refresh rate? I was thinking, it may be nice to throw a TV card inside of the PC, so that when not playing, I could use it as a TV. If your playing videos, shouldn't be an issue with TV either right? I keep pulling towards doing an XP machine instead of Dos, because of this, and a few games that are on PC that may be fun on the arcade setup, like Armed and Dangerous.
Thanks for your input again!
G.

[Guardian]

Alright, Member status, now let the counter begin! ;D

[Jonathan Leung]

Guardian,

Well, it's about time you got an account! It keeps up with your status as long as your logged in.

Q1. On your software link I went to take a look at your rc files, etc.. You have some pics below playing MK4 PC Ver, Golden Tee PC Ver, and some kind of Video's. I am assuming that these were from inside XP? You mentioned you were going to XP, I wanted to make sure this was inside of XP background.

Answer to Q1: Well almost, these pictures were taking from our older MAME project when we were using Windows 98 instead of XP. However, pretty much the same principles apply for any version of windows.

Q2. So the only way to do this stuff your doing really is to either use the Ultimarc VGA card, or have XP start and auto load a util to kick it down to 15Hz Vert refresh rate? I was thinking, it may be nice to throw a TV card inside of the PC, so that when not playing, I could use it as a TV. If your playing videos, shouldn't be an issue with TV either right? I keep pulling towards doing an XP machine instead of Dos, because of this, and a few games that are on PC that may be fun on the arcade setup, like Armed and Dangerous.

Answer to Q2: Your right on with your observation in the first line. Throwing a TV card in would be an excellent idea! The reason why I placed the unMAME-like things section was to get people away from the idea that MAME machines just play games when they can do so much more! I would love to hear about your experiences with putting a TV card in a MAME machine, post them when you get it done.