Sliver X

No, it has no video hardware. Atoms are usually paired with Intel GPUs or nVidia IONs (The latter for mine). Furthermore, it doesn't even have the hardware to handle Out of Order Execution which is why it's so slow given its relatively decent clock rate. Even overclocked to 2GHz from 1.6GHz, an Atom 330 is too weak to decode .h264/etc in realtime. Fortunately the ION GPU supports OpenCL/CUDA and can be used to accomplish this.

Yeah, GameEx runs really well itself and while running PC games/emulators on my Atom machine, which is basically bottom of the barrel performance for modern hardware: It's pretty much like a multi-core Pentium III with things like SSE3/x64 support.

Try changing this line in mednafen.cfg (Or mednafen-09x.cfg depending on the version): video.driver opengl To: video.driver sdl It sounds like you may have buggy OpenGL drivers. I know the Intel 945 GPU I ran Mednafen on years ago had terrible ones that required me to use the sdl graphics engine... It had similar issues with the window decorations showing and not displaying the input dialogue/etc.

If size is the primary concern, you may want to consider ripping the games to ISO+MP3. Mount each into a virtual CD drive: The copy of Virtual CloneDrive included with GameEx will work fine. Proceed to rip it to CUE/ISO/WAV with TurboRip, then encode the WAV files into MP3 at whatever settings you want. I like using BonkEnc myself. Slap the ISO and MP3s into a folder named for the game: Lather, rinse, repeat. When done, set up an emulator entry for Kega Fusion, using a ROM type of *.iso. You can further shrink things by applying NTFS compression to the ISO images (Pointless to do so on the MP3s): The 29 SCD games I have on my MPC only occupy 3.17GB doing all this. Note that you can do something similar for Turbo CD games with Mednafen, which supports ISO+Ogg rips. These also involve some slight editing of the CUE sheets, but nothing major.

I would create a custom batch file for Kega Fusion, setting it up as an External Application called Run Sega CD Game or somesuch. Since you're using actual disks, you don't need a list to launch things from in the menu. I use a similar system for Blu-Ray/DVD playback on my machine. Like... SegaCD.bat @REM Substitute Z: with the letter of the physical drive. Put this batch in the same folder as Kega Fusion! @REM - If there's no disk in the drive, go back to GameEx... @IF NOT EXIST Z:\NUL EXIT @REM Call SCD emulator and have it autoboot into SCD mode. @%~dp0Fusion.exe -scd @REM - Quit! EXIT You will also, of course, need to set up the BIOS ROMs and point Fusion to your CD drive. Gens can't autoboot a SCD disk to my knowledge (A Linux fork of it, GensGS can though) : You'd have to use something like AutoIT to automate GUI usage to pull it off.

No, don't mind at all.

Giga Drive v1.2 Theme Version: 4 Resolution: Giga_Drive_HD looks good at any 16:9 resolution (16:10 also looks ok). Giga_Drive_SD is for 4:3 displays. This is the custom theme I made for my HTPC, "Giga Drive". It's probably slightly rough under some people's configs as I don't use a few of GameEx's features. The TrueType fonts under the "Fonts" folders also need to be installed for things to look as intended... Download Theme (13MB 7zip Archive)

I updated this: It no longer requires editing the batch (Used the %~dp0 variable instead). It supports CloneCD, Bin/Cue and ISO dumps (So have GameEx scan for *.bin, *.img and *.iso in your PSX folder/folders). Same link as before. I didn't find it to be, no. Several games seemed to have issues when running from either Daemon Tools or Virtual Clone drive, particularly with CD-DA audio... despite setting the OS up to stream CD-DA from the virtual drive digitally. I also use Mooby's compression options which saved me a ton of space VS NTFS compression.

Yeah, I ran into this problem a while back as well. I typically use an ancient version of SoundForge (5, to be exact) to mix all the music I write/play, and NOTHING I edited in it would work with GameEx: Bit-rate was correct, etc. Audacity edited files work fine, however, so I make all my theme sounds with it now. It seems that whatever library GameEx uses for PCM playback is very picky about how the WAV files are formatted.

No, this isn't necessary at all. What you want is the CD-R Mooby 2.8 plugin for ePSXe (You can find it here), which can directly load ISOs off your HDD. It can also do things like BZip compress them, but I'm not going to go into that here, So far as using it in conjunction with GameEx, I found it easiest to simply point GameEx at a batch file I made that sets Mooby's Autorun registry entry and also will create memory cards on demand as well as set up a single card to be used between multi-disc games. You can download the batch along with a few auxillary files it needs to work here. Extract it all into your ePSXe directory and have GameEx point to ePSXe.bat as the emulator executable. This is the actual batch file: CHANGE THE PART IN BOLD TO THE FULL PATH WHERE ePSXe RESIDES!!!! Please let me know if you have any issues. I had to edit this to make it non-specific to my HTPC, but I've tested it and all seems fine. If it isn't for you, I'll see what's wrong and update this.

It's the version of XP I've used the most, I should say: I've ran XP Professional x64 and Windows Fundamentals for Legacy PCs for stints in the past, and actually tried both of those on this machine.

It's just what I've always used.

I was initially planning it but I don't really watch TV (I haven't had cable for... five years now?). The few shows I do watch I typically torrent.

I finally got my media PC completely setup and functional to my liking not too long ago. Here's a demonstration I put up on my Youtube channel: Part 1 Part 2 Note that I did a couple of things regarding polish after this: You no longer see the CMD windows or JoyToKey pop up for a millisecond and everything does nice little fade in-out effects thanks to AlphaXP. I also switched Winlogon.exe for Minlogon.exe and made GameEx get called earlier in the boot process, so it gets to GameEx about 9 seconds faster currently.

*edit* Sorry, I didn't catch the part about them working outside GameEx when I replied.

I figure I may as well post what emulators I run on my HTPC in this thread... Mednafen supports a ton of systems, as you can see, and its lack of a GUI doesn't really matter when using it with a frontend like GameEx. I actually just point GameEx to this single batch file which handles all my decompression, memory card/JoyToKey config swapping, etc. So far as aspect ratios and such, I have an "emulator" setup up that just points to a bunch of batch files I made. They change the resolution/refresh rate, but also decompress emulator config files (And PC game configs) over my emu folder to match whatever resolution is selected. Example.

I have a very minimal XP Pro SP3 install on my HTPC that I prepared with nLite. It's easy to break WiFi, Printers, Bluetooth, etc if you don't know what you're doing (The Compatability check list is your friend, here!): I removed hardware support for anything but what was in the machine it was going on, integrating my drivers as well. I ended up with a complete OS install that takes about 700MB of HDD space and boots from POST to GamEX in about 30 seconds... As far as things GameEx itself needs to run, the primary dependencies you SHOULD NOT remove are COM+, DirectX, DTC, Jet Database Engine, MDAC and MSMQ... You can practically rip everything else out, install .NET and DirectX 9.0c after OS installation and GameEx will be OK. Any other applications you may run, however, are another matter! I highly recommend reading up on what you'll see listed in nLite so as to gain an understanding of what all the Windows components are and how they interoperate together. For example, since gaming is a primary concern for you, including emulators that use your 3D hardware, you want to leave OpenGL support in. Gamepad support too. Etc... You also don't want to remove OOBE unless you have a VLK version of Windows (So called "Corporate Editions"): Otherwise you won't be able to activate it and it will die after 30 days.

Not really sure how usable my themes are to other people, as I utilize them in a very specific way (Resolution agnostic v3 themes, no custom emulator backgrounds, no graphics for the toolbar, etc), but here's what I've done lately that I consider usable: http://sliverx.arc-nova.org/files/Thematic.7z (21MB) There's five themes: You need to run "Doppler.bat" in the MEDIA subfolders to generate the BG images for things like the Jukebox and such; this is for the sake of a smaller file size.

It turns out GameEx is just picky about WAV files... Anything I edited in Sound Forge was just silent, but using Audacity allowed the ones I made to work. And thank you for the link to that codec pack: I installed the Vista version (Since my MPC runs XP Pro x86) and I've been running the Jukebox + going through video files loading previews for over an hour now without a crash. This is something The Combined Community Codec Pack, KazaaLite Codec Pack and FFDShow failed to do! *edit* The last theme I did. Now with ripped SFX from American McGee's Alice.

Magic Engine has never supported mounting ISOs directly: You would have to rig it to mount the ISO into a virtual drive then boot from that. Ootake and Mednafen are far, far superior emulators for the PCE/PCE-CD anyway, and both are free.

I've been using GameEx for about 15 months now, and have run into several things that have not gone away after the numerous releases done in that time frame: Things I can't get around one way or another like a few of the other problems I've encountered. Is the the best place to mention them? I don't know, but I figured it couldn't hurt. Video Previews: I love this function, but don't use it anymore due to some kind of conflict it has with the Jukebox function. If I'm playing music, GameEx will load approximately 15 or so video previews and then start displaying nothing. Not only that, but video playback itself just drops to a black screen from this point forward until GameEx is killed and restarted (Using GameEx's built in player, of course). It happens using any codec pack I've tried (Including the recommended FFDShow package on GameEx's site) under Windows XP, XP Professional x64, Windows 2000, Windows 7 Ultimate x86 and Windows 7 Ultimate x64. Some kind of memory leak in bass.dll? It is a mystery. Themes: I edit my own themes. A lot. I've hit a snag that's quite annoying, however: I can't seem to get *any* custom WAV files to play. They're just silent. I've tried every bit rate/sampling rate I can think of to no avail.

My media PC has been steadily evolving in the year since I originally constructed it last summer. It now has a dual core Atom 330 (Overclocked to 2GHz) and uses Dualshock 3s instead of Dualshock 2s. Both sound and video are carried via HDMI as well. So far as the software side of things goes, I got around to adding a lot of functionality: It can copy DVDs to either the HDD for later playback or to a blank 4.3GB DVD (Takes about 20 minutes for rip/compression/burning per disc). It can also take any AVI on the machine and convert/burn it to a standard DVD compatible disc. I'm also using BBLean as Windows' shell, which aside from allowing easy elimination of a task bar allows me to bind executable commands to key combinations: Holding L3 and hitting the PS button, for example, kills and respawns GameEX (Win+K). Holding L3+R3 and hitting the PS button runs a batch file that drops the system into an NTSC friendly resolution and restarts GameEX: This is great if I take it to somebody's house and their TV doesn't support 1080 (Or whatever I left the resolution at). I made a bad quality video demonstrating what the machine is like, now.

I purchased a GameEx key last June and have been working on getting it set up the way I've wanted on and off since then. I'm basically done, but have run into a handful of issues I was hoping to get some help with. The really big thing is when using an external player (I like GameEx's built in player but it chokes on files it shouldn't), choosing Play All or Play Randomly creates a truly bad set of circumstances. You can exit the external player, but the next entry in the queue is served right up afterwards, ad nauseum. The only way to break the cycle is to kill GameEx itself. This leads to a question: Is it possible to disable "Play All", "Play Randomly" and also the "Change View" entry? I hack ROMs so I'll break open the executable and figure out a way to do this if need be (Should it not be doable via GameEx's config, which it's looking like so far). Basically, other than these issues I'm extremely happy with GameEx and what I've been able to accomplish with it on my mini ITX home-made console/Blu-Ray+DVD player. It was well worth the $25!

The machine I use GameEx with isn't a cabinet, rather a console type system... Specifications: CPU: Intel Atom N230 (Ovclocked to 1.8GHz, Hyperthreading) GPU: nVidia ION (GeForce 9400M, DVI/HDMI/DSUB-Out) Audio: Onboard 7.1 sound with S/PDIF (Optical and Coaxial) + 1/8" stereo out, line-in/mic-in. Motherboard: Zotac ION (Mini ITX, 3 SATA ports (Capable of RAID 0 and RAID 1), 1xeSATA, 10xUSB, 1xFireWire, external 90W laptop-style power supply) RAM: 2GB DDR2-800MHz, Dual Channel Optical: Lite-On BD-ROM/DVD+RW (SATA) HDD: 1TB Samsung EcoGreen (5200RPM, 16MB Cache, SATAII) Network: Gb Ethernet jack + 56Mb 802.11G USB WiFi NIC Case: "Super Case" MI-100, Mini ITX OS: Windows Fundamentals for Legacy PCs. BBLean also replaces Explorer as the shell. My primary concerns were small size and low power usage. The Zotac board utilizing the Atom was perfect for this. Even under full load the machine pulls around 45W, and idles around 23W. Since it's always on this is great for my power bill! The ION GPU also allows full speed HD playback, which the Atom cannot pull off, and is roughly as powerful as a GeForce 7600GT for 3D applications. The entire interface is controlled via a Playstation 2 controller. Holding the left analog stick and pressing certain buttons will do things like Alt+F4, Alt+Tab, etc. The right analog stick allows control of the mouse cursor while the D-pad navigates GameEx's menus or other things. I pulled all this off with JoyToKey, which has separate configs for things like the PC games (It can run games up to about 2005 great), GameEx itself, PowerDVD, NexusFile V, etc. I have the media paths set to every drive letter possible, so if you plug in something like a USB drive it'll pop up under the menus. I also ended up making an elaborate system of batch files to do some interesting things, such as changing all my emulator configs and the display to either 800x600, 1280x720 or 1920x1080, ripping DVDs with DVDDecrypter, web browsing and a full blown file manager with OSK. I also coded a program in AutoIT that will restart GameEX if it crashes. The machine also acts as a NAS of sorts: There are several writable shares and a lot of readable ones that people can stream through whatever LAN I have it hooked up to. And here's a few pictures of how I've got it set up: The main menu. I have a bunch of MAME, console and handheld systems set up (With a sizable amount of screenshots for GameEx to use), some PC games that are playable with a gamepad alone (Such as Silent Hill 2 - 4, even mouse games like Sanitarium and Septerra Core). "Play Optical Disc" is a batch file that uses IF NOT EXIST Z:\NUL EXIT to check if a disc is in the drive (Cancelling if not) and if so loads PowerDVD for playback. I don't use GameEx's internal player for optical media because I need Blu-Ray support. Browsing the web. The OSK is provided by a program called TouchIt Keyboard. It's toggled on and off via the Start button on the controller. The file manager. Square is Enter, Triangle brings up a context menu for rename/deletion/etc, Dpad navigates, L2/R2 are Page Up/Page Down, etc. It's still kind of WIP: I want to add PVR capabilities to it and I'd also like to do things such as make the DVD/CD rip process also burn back to discs. But I'm pretty happy with it, except the fact that at the rate I'm adding media to it I'll have to install a bigger HDD sooner than I'd like!

I've been using GameEx (Registered user) for about two months now and have run into a couple of issues with the Jukebox... The Start/Stop Jukebox function is really flaky: It takes up to five presses sometimes to register a start/stop, no matter what key I assign it to. Selecting "Visualize" clears the playlist of everything but the playing track once you exit the visualization. Note that I don't use static playlists, instead generating the shuffling them whenever GameEx is restarted. I also use no WMP functionality.