arl16

Ah hah! OK, yes, I certainly can take my keyboard over there, no problem. I assume one of those cards on the left hand side of the pictures has keyboard/mouse inputs on the back of it - I can't tell from the picture, but it stands to reason. Then it should be pretty self-explanatory from there. Great! I actually also have an external USB DVD drive, but I don't see any USB ports on that motherboard - I'm guessing it doesn't have one. No big deal to go pick up a cheap drive though. Good stuff. I'll let you know how it goes when I can get over to his place and we're both available to work on this. I think I'm more excited to try it than him - the quest to get it working is more exciting than actually playing the games to me! Thanks!

Wow guys - thanks for all of the tips. I think I got it. My only concern is getting in to set the BIOS, as he doesn't even have a keyboard connected here - it's all in the cabinet, so I'll have to somehow figure out how it translates to his joystick/buttons. I guess we'll start it up, and just start pressing all the buttons while it boots and hope it gets into the BIOS setup screen. Any ideas? Thanks again...

Will - Thanks for the quick followup. That sounds like a great idea, but I had a concern with it. (Forgive me, I barely know enough about the inside of computers to be dangerous), but installing the CDRom will require more than just plugging it in, will it not? Can we put a brand new CDRom Drive and a brand new hard drive in at the same time? I believe the hard drive that is in the cabinet now just has DOS and boots directly to AdvanceMenu, so I wouldn't know how to install the CD drive prior to putting the new hard drive in. Can you steer me in the right direction? Thanks again... PS I don't know if it will help at all, but I got some pictures of the inside of the cabinet so you can see what's going on.

I am trying to update a friend's machine which is currently running AdvanceMenu. He wants me to help him add more emulators, and in looking into it, stumbled upon GameEx. He bought a new hard drive and gave it to me to put everything on, as he doesn't have a desktop/broadband internet connection. Also, his cabinet/motherboard does not have any CD or DVD drive, and is not connected to the internet or any network. I posted a little while ago and basically heard people saying either it would be very difficult or maybe even impossible for me to install the OS using my computer (and then the emulators/front end), and then put that hard drive in his cabinet. Has anyone ever done this? (Install an OS on one computer and put it in another)? Is it defintiely impossible? If so, is it impossible for him to install anything new on his cabinet? Would he essentially have to buy a new computer with a CD drive so everything can be installed right in the cabinet? Any other ideas? Thanks in advance...

It's not networked, so it won't be receiving any updates, and XP can't be installed over a network. So I will be doing it here, and then giving him the drive to plug into the cabinet. I'll have to give him a call and see if he can look at the motherboard in the cabinet and hopefully it will say on the components themselves what the CPU speed and RAM is? Otherwise, I don't know how to find out. If I just install everything and then just hook up the hard drive to his cabinet, can I see how it works, bring it back here and tweak it to make it better, or will it require starting from scratch?

Hmmm... that's making me a little nervous. I think what I'm going to do is install XP on the new, bigger drive (40 or 60... whatever) as a master drive, then just copy the files from the 6 gig over to it. But I was planning on doing that on my computer here. When you said install it directly on to his cabinet machine, I don't know how or if I can, because I think it's just a motherboard inside his cabinet. There's no tower and I'm pretty sure there's no CD or DVD drives inside of it or anything. (I'll have to check with him - I haven't looked inside of it in over a year - he just brought me the hard drive at work). So assuming there's not, is it going to be a problem installing XP on his hard drive here on my computer? I have no idea what the specs on his computer are - processor speed, etc. Will that matter? Will it cause a problem? All I know is that it worked with Omnicade (until it crashed). Thanks

That makes sense, I guess I just didn't think it through, because right now everything is on the 6 gig, but w/ no OS. But for that matter, why don't I just install XP, GameEx, NET Framework on the 40 gig, and then transfer all of the games on the 6 gig over to the 40. How much more space does he need for games?! I guess if he wants to add more emulators/games, it could take some space, but maybe I'll just tell him to grab a 60 gig - probably only a couple bucks more anyway. How big are the drives people typically use, and are they putting every game w/ every emulator on them? Thing is, I don't know that there is a place in the cabinet currently set up to put another drive. Probably wouldn't be that hard to mount it in there somehow, but why bother. He's not going to use this for the Jukebox, DVDs, Karaoke, pictures, internet, or anything like that - just the games. (He's got the thing in the kitchen of his townhouse! Thanks for the tips!

OK, this might be a stupid question as well, but can I install an OS (i.e. XP) on a slave drive? Or do I have to take out my master drive and make it the master drive before installing. And then, once XP is installed, can that drive even be made a slave drive so that I can transfer all of the files (about 5 gigs worth of Roms) over to it? I'm just trying to figure out logistically the best way to do this.

OK, good stuff. I'll probably tell him to just go buy a 40 gig drive or something - they're pretty cheap. That should give me plenty of room to get it all set up. Thanks again for your help!

OK - so should I just go ahead and delete all of these files? Also, is there a way to just do a smaller OS install than a full blown XP install? Seems like a little bit of overkill. It's only a 6 gig HD, and that's going to take, what, 1.5 gigs? Just thinking out loud...

Wow - thanks for the quick reply! That makes sense - I couldn't understand how it would work otherwise. Well, it must have had some sort of OS on it before it went sour, but I don't know what these files are - (other than that they are system files). These are the files that were on the drive when it was setup with Omnicade: COMMAND.COM CONFIG.SYS DETECTCD.BAT DRVSPACE.BIN I686.OMN IO.SYS LOGO.SYS MSDOS.SYS Is everything there that I need? Is there anything else I need to do with them? I found Instant Sheller, and the warning that I better know what I'm doing (I don't), I'll be using it at my own risk and can ruin everything. So I'm copying everything over to my C drive as I type. Is Instant Sheller really that hard and dangerous? Thanks again, and sorry for my ignorance...

Hello all - newbie here. I am trying to help a friend of mine who bought a completed cabinet that was set up with Omnicade. He ran into some problems, and doesn't even own a desktop, so I offered to try to figure it out. That's when I stumbled upon GameEX. I got everything setup and working as my slave drive on my desktop. My question is, what do I have to put on that drive to make it work as a stand-alone drive in his cabinet? I'm guessing it's probably easy to get that drive to boot directly to GameEx, I just know enough about computers to be dangerous to myself I searched everywhere, and couldn't find any step-by-step instructions for dopes like me. Any tips would be greatly appreciated... Thanks in advance!!