How to startup to GameEx?

[arl16]

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!!

[lingpanda]

  arl16 said:

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!!

I'm not exactly sure what you want. Create a shortcut to gameex. Then put that in the startup folder?

[Michael]

  arl16 said:

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!!

you will need a form of windows 98 or xp and use instant sheller to make gameex boot up instead of explorer. You cant make gameex boot with no os

[arl16]

  Michael said:

you will need a form of windows 98 or xp and use instant sheller to make gameex boot up instead of explorer. You cant make gameex boot with no os

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...

[Michael]

  arl16 said:

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...

i would make a fresh install of windows and put gameex in the startup folder and make sure it all works fine and get a good setup before using instant sheller,

[arl16]

  Michael said:

i would make a fresh install of windows and put gameex in the startup folder and make sure it all works fine and get a good setup before using instant sheller,

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...

[Michael]

  arl16 said:

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...

the other option is windows 98/ME if i remeber right there only couple 100mb installs

Altough I have never tried gameex on anything other than win xp so im not sure if there are any issues far as i know gameex will works though. probly best askin Tom about this.

xp would probly be better but realy depends on the pc spec, you would need the best part of the 6gb hdd for windows xp

Also if you only have the 1 hard drive you wouldnt have much room for games

[arl16]

  Michael said:

the other option is windows 98/ME if i remeber right there only couple 100mb installs

Altough I have never tried gameex on anything other than win xp so im not sure if there are any issues far as i know gameex will works though. probly best askin Tom about this.

xp would probly be better but realy depends on the pc spec, you would need the best part of the 6gb hdd for windows xp

Also if you only have the 1 hard drive you wouldnt have much room for games

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!

[lingpanda]

  arl16 said:

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!

http://tomspeirs.com/gameex/Shell.htm

[arl16]

  Michael said:

the other option is windows 98/ME if i remeber right there only couple 100mb installs

Altough I have never tried gameex on anything other than win xp so im not sure if there are any issues far as i know gameex will works though. probly best askin Tom about this.

xp would probly be better but realy depends on the pc spec, you would need the best part of the 6gb hdd for windows xp

Also if you only have the 1 hard drive you wouldnt have much room for games

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.

[emphatic]

  arl16 said:

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.

If you have the EXACT same specs on the computer you're using to install, and the one where your slave drive will end up, it "could" work. But generally, I think it's better if you can install it directly onto his cabinet machine.

Emph

[Adultery]

OS on a slave drive is trouble from the gate. Why don't you...

Install the OS on that 6 GB HD you mentioned, and install the ROMs and EMUs on the 40 gig? Nothing bad about having 2 drives...

6 gigs should be more than enough for XP w/ SP2 and GameEx. Not to mention the NET framework you'll need to install.

Installing XP on a slave drive (or even a seperate partition for that matter) is a hell of a lot mre complex then you're gonna want to get yourself in to.

[arl16]

  Adultery said:

OS on a slave drive is trouble from the gate. Why don't you...

Install the OS on that 6 GB HD you mentioned, and install the ROMs and EMUs on the 40 gig? Nothing bad about having 2 drives...

6 gigs should be more than enough for XP w/ SP2 and GameEx. Not to mention the NET framework you'll need to install.

Installing XP on a slave drive (or even a seperate partition for that matter) is a hell of a lot mre complex then you're gonna want to get yourself in to.

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!

[arl16]

  emphatic said:

If you have the EXACT same specs on the computer you're using to install, and the one where your slave drive will end up, it "could" work. But generally, I think it's better if you can install it directly onto his cabinet machine.

Emph

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

[Adultery]

First things first:

Assuming his cab is networked so it can recieve updates and go online, you can install XP over a network.

As far as HD space, I have a thorough collection. I use external drives to keep things together and so I can remove them if I need to.

Complete space is already pushing 160gb for 24 or 25 emulators (soon to increase since I'm working on Tandy CoCo, Vectrex, Commodore and Apple IIE) but I have very complete sets which include many 'duplicates'. Your friend can get TOSEC sets and save the HD space.

Also to be noted: The MOBO specs will be important yes. Always good to know your CPU speed and RAM.

[arl16]

  Adultery said:

First things first:

Assuming his cab is networked so it can recieve updates and go online, you can install XP over a network.

As far as HD space, I have a thorough collection. I use external drives to keep things together and so I can remove them if I need to.

Complete space is already pushing 160gb for 24 or 25 emulators (soon to increase since I'm working on Tandy CoCo, Vectrex, Commodore and Apple IIE) but I have very complete sets which include many 'duplicates'. Your friend can get TOSEC sets and save the HD space.

Also to be noted: The MOBO specs will be important yes. Always good to know your CPU speed and RAM.

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?

[lingpanda]

  arl16 said:

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?

I don't think you can install xp on a hd that has different specs then the machine that it is going in. Wouldn't work for me.

[Michael]

  lingpanda said:

I don't think you can install xp on a hd that has different specs then the machine that it is going in. Wouldn't work for me.

you cant install xp on a pc and use the hd in another pc

only way you might get away with it is if the pc have identical hardware same model mobo still i wouldnt want to try it