AGP Motherboard and CPU maybe

[bscottberg]

I have a Dell 1GHz with 386MB of PC133 that is now mine to play with
since we have purchased a new main computer for the family. For what I
want to use it for (emulating old arcade games), I need an AGP port or
PCI express for the video card that I need to display on my arcade
monitor. Since it currently doesn't have either I want to look into
swapping out the mother board.

fitting into my old case doesn't matter because I will likely mount it
inside the arcade cabinet itself.

So question #1 is what do I need to know to tell if my components will
work on a new mother board. i.e. if the mother board lists pentium 4
and PC5300 is that backword compatible to my slower components? Do
different mother boards require different power supplies, fans etc?
what else do need to know?

The next thing is that for MAME software (the arcade emulation software
I want to run) it is recommended that a 1GHz is the minimum speed.
Once I know which mother board I need to use, how can I tell how fast
of a processor I can upgrade to?

Any help is appreciated, include links to resources.

Thanks

 

[Mike T.]

I have a Dell 1GHz with 386MB of PC133 that is now mine to play with
since we have purchased a new main computer for the family. For what I
want to use it for (emulating old arcade games), I need an AGP port or
PCI express for the video card that I need to display on my arcade
monitor. Since it currently doesn't have either I want to look into
swapping out the mother board.

fitting into my old case doesn't matter because I will likely mount it
inside the arcade cabinet itself.

So question #1 is what do I need to know to tell if my components will
work on a new mother board. i.e. if the mother board lists pentium 4
and PC5300 is that backword compatible to my slower components? Do
different mother boards require different power supplies, fans etc?
what else do need to know?

The next thing is that for MAME software (the arcade emulation software
I want to run) it is recommended that a 1GHz is the minimum speed.
Once I know which mother board I need to use, how can I tell how fast
of a processor I can upgrade to?

Any help is appreciated, include links to resources.

Thanks

Short, correct answer: Toss out the dell and start over

Longer explanation: There is nothing currently attached to that dell
mainboard that will be any use at all in a new system, even if that new
system is a frankenstein-ish creation shoe-horned into some kind of arcade
cabinet. If you can't use all the components of the dell system as-is, you
need to toss everything out and start over. -Dave

 

[Paul]

Short, correct answer: Toss out the dell and start over

Longer explanation: There is nothing currently attached to that dell
mainboard that will be any use at all in a new system, even if that new
system is a frankenstein-ish creation shoe-horned into some kind of arcade
cabinet. If you can't use all the components of the dell system as-is, you
need to toss everything out and start over. -Dave

Maybe you could keep the hard drive and the CDROM
Otherwise, it would be difficult to find a more modern motherboard that
can use the PC133 SDRAM, and give you a performance boost. I have a motherboard,
an Asus P4B that takes a S478 Pentium 4 and uses SDRAM, but it was a bad deal
even when the motherboard was new.

The Dell power supply might be proprietary. Dell had a short interval
(couple years?) where they used some non-standard power supplies. Comparing
wiring harness color to an ATX pinout listed on the Internet, may help identify
the potentially destructive Dell supplies. (Note that a lot of modern motherboards
use the ATX12V 2x2 square power connector, which may be missing from the
Dell supply.)

So the scrap value is limited.

I think you could try playing with it, as is. If MAME only needs
some version of DirectX, maybe you can still play the less demanding
games. If there aren't a lot of hardware specifics in the setup
of MAME, perhaps it won't be that difficult to switch over to your
new higher-powered setup later. You could use the Dell for testing
purposes first.

Paul