Hardware

For some reason I had no spare computers on hand when I went to work on this, which is odd for me.  I did track down this free PC off of Freecycle:

* Pentium 3 550mhz

* 256mb RAM

* 20gb HD

and stuck in

* ATI Rage with Composite TV-Out

* Generic PCI Sound Card

* Cheap no-brand PC speakers

Not much for MAME.  I wanted a recent version to support more ROMs better, which made the system requirements extra tight.  Probably a bad choice on my part.  Total outlay $0 for the computer, though, so that's a big plus.

UPDATE: I got a slightly better computer off Freecycle.  Here's what I have now:

* AMD Athlon 800mhz

* 384mb RAM

* 20gb HD

* (on-board sound)

* ATI Rage with Composite TV-Out

* Cheap no-brand PC speakers

It's not a huge boost - provides about a 25% framerate increase in games.  The biggest benefit is actually in Armor Attack, which used to run at 30fps and caused blinking text / objects to be invisible.  Now that it runs at 40fps instead, it's playable.

I most likely won't upgrade the computer again unless this one dies.  It's too much effort to get in, swap boards, and reinstall DOS.  Instead, I'll be cutting games from the frontend that don't run well enough.