OS for Emu

[fitterhans]

I am am working on a media pc for my tv, and got an older pIII/800MHz with ~192mb ram, 16mb video card (old stuff, I know). So I xp installed and running well, but my emulation is rather laggy, especially with snes in znes. I was considering installing puppy linux since I know it's a small distro and maybe won't use as many of my limited resources for the OS itself. Anyone try installing a smaller linux distro to get more out of an older machine?

[dudex77]

damn small xp is fine too. I really think you need a newer video card though in order to run anything properly you need at least 64 megs.

[fitterhans]

Maybe I'll just concentrate on upgrading. I have some other video card cards, but sadly this machine lacks an agp slot and all my spare cards are agp. My media box may have to wait;) Thanks for sharing your thoughts!

[racketboy]

SNES shouldn't need THAT much power.
I used to run Genesis and SNES all the time on 233Mhz - 500Mhz machines all the time....
And a video card won't do squat for SNES. It's gonna be pure CPU.

Do you have much else installed/running on it?

[Abras]

I would definitely suggest a lightweight linux distro for best results, but I hope you have at least some experience with Linux if you go this route. These kinds of distros are certainly not the most user friendly, so you'll definitely have to "get you hands dirty" (completely metaphorical of course).

[fitterhans]

This machine is a fresh install of XP, so nothing else is running. I do have some linux experience (have a few dual boot installs under my belt and my gateway/router is a clarkconnect box). Any suggestions on making znes and kega fusion run better on older hardware?

[Zandengoff]

if you are willing to take a features hit tracking down a copy of windows fundamentals is well worth it. Made my PIII 700 about twice as fast. Using that on my TV to process video!

[fitterhans]

Thanks for all your suggestions. I was able to get xp running better by following this guide:

http://stevestechguide.com/ultimate-win ... eak-guide/

I also realized I had copied my emu installation folders from my main machine, meaning the configurations were set for a higher end box. Like racketboy mentioned, I remember geting these emulators to play on much older machines than this. After playing with different resolutions and following some FAQ guides, I was able to get this system running well. I may try linux emu at another time. The only thing I ran into was that I wanted to use a joystick to replace my keyboard/mouse and so I tried JoyEmu, but within the emulator it still acts as the mouse, interfering with game play. Thanks for your suggestions!

[ImportBoy]

See if you can get more RAM if anything first. I'm guessing it uses SD-RAM? Try bumping yourself up to 512MB if you can.