PC Mame Drive Dead -options??

[dombutler]

A few weeks ago I bought a arcade cabinet with a mame pc in it, although it was working I think the drive has died, when I tried to back the drive up.

The drive is registered in the bios(kind of), but no longer spins up. I had spent the last week trying to back this drive up, but the pc refused to boot from usb and when windows xp loaded, it was in kiosk mode and I was unable to access anything. I didn't have any computer that could read a ide drive, so I bought a sata converter. Well trying to image the drive took hours and the drive would disconnct after about 3 or 4 hours. In the end I bought another motherboard that had both sata and ide connections and after getting that up and running, it turns out that the drive no longer spins up, no matter what I do.

The drive had reported good with crystaldiskinfo, the only thing I can think of is the crappy sata/ide interface somehow fried something, or it was just bad luck and the drive has died.

So what are my options for getting this mame cab up and running again? It had a 40gb drive with mamewah (about 30gb image), now I have a core duo pc, but don't know what frontends would be good with an older lower powered pc. Is it possible to get a fully built image?

Cheers,

Dom.

dombutler2022-04-30 12:11:39

 

[chunksin]

I built a Windows 7 image that uses Attract Mode and groovymame, just add your own roms. You can set it to read only mode so it will protect the Windows installation too.

http://www.ukvac.com/forum/read-only-windows-7_topic366332_page1.html

http://www.ukvac.com/forum/topic367196.html

 

[cools]

GroovyArcade is ace.

 

[dombutler]

Thanks, i'll take a look at both options.

I just had a quick look and they both are good choices, I guess i'm going to try them both and see which one I like best! I am putting in a crt cga monitor, so hopefully it will look more original.

Cheers,

Dom.