Getting the best out of an old laptop.

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puzzl

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I have a trusty little hp omnibook 900. It has a pentium 3 processor that clocks in at around 420 mhz, 192 Megabytes of memory, and somewhere from two to four megs of video memory. When it comes to Word 2000 and winamp 2.95, this thing is a beast, and its my main homework machine. As such, i need breaks from homework every now and then, which brings up my question.

I want to know, what emulators will work well on this system? VBA, for one, works, but very slowly. Should i look for older versions of emulators or something specifically for older systems?
Specifically, I'm thinking anything pre-N64 and playstation, such as the Genesis, SNES, Gameboy/color, NES, neogeo(stretch?), and the like.

Input greatly appreciated.
 
I've got an older version of ZSnes that runs pretty much perfect on my 486DX-100. As far as any NES emus are concerned, the only thing that dinosaur can run is Nesticle.
Yeah, okay, you may laugh now.
 
> As far as any NES emus are concerned, the only thing that dinosaur can run is Nesticle.

loopyNES runs very well on old machines and is far more accurate than Nesticle. I used it regularly on a 120 MHz Pentium laptop. Or are you referring to your own machine as the dinosaur? Because I think the original poster's machine would even run FCEU well.
 
> Specifically, I'm thinking anything pre-N64 and playstation,
> such as the Genesis, SNES, Gameboy/color, NES,
> neogeo(stretch?), and the like.

Hmm...I know someone is going to kill me for saying this, but NeoRageX would probably be your best bet for NeoGeo...don't know if it would run at full speed, but it would be more likely to do so than MAME would I think.

As for Genesis, you could try something like Genecyst.
 
> I've got an older version of ZSnes that runs pretty much
> perfect on my 486DX-100. As far as any NES emus are
> concerned, the only thing that dinosaur can run is Nesticle.
>
> Yeah, okay, you may laugh now.
>


You gotta be playing without sound, right? Even on my old laptop which has a Celeron 300, Zsnes for Windows runs kinda slow. Haven't tried the DOS version yet. I hardly use the thing anyway.
 
> Hmm...I know someone is going to kill me for saying this,
> but NeoRageX would probably be your best bet for
> NeoGeo...don't know if it would run at full speed, but it
> would be more likely to do so than MAME would I think.

> As for Genesis, you could try something like Genecyst.

Wow, i can't believe i'd forgotten all about NeoRageX. I used to run that on my old box, and it was pretty speedy. I'll check it out. Also, i was looking around, and in addition to Genecyst, I found an emulator called Kega, which seems like it would also run well on older hardware. Any thoughts on that one? I'll probably end up geting it anyway and testing it.
 
>I found an emulator called Kega, which
> seems like it would also run well on older hardware. Any
> thoughts on that one? I'll probably end up geting it anyway
> and testing it.

Ah yeah...that's an old version of Steve Snake's emulator (went from Kega, to Kega Lazarus, to Kega Fusion if I remember right). You'd probably do well by that...been quite awhile since I've used it though, so I'm not totally sure, heh.
 
> Hmm...I know someone is going to kill me for saying this,
> but NeoRageX would probably be your best bet for
> NeoGeo...don't know if it would run at full speed, but it
> would be more likely to do so than MAME would I think.

Hey, on older machines it runs great. Good luck getting ROMs for it, though, as any NeoGeo emulators that are still being updated now use the same sets as MAME, so that'll make things a bit difficult for finding them for NeoRageX.
 
> Hey, on older machines it runs great. Good luck getting
> ROMs for it, though, as any NeoGeo emulators that are still
> being updated now use the same sets as MAME, so that'll make
> things a bit difficult for finding them for NeoRageX.

I knew you'd have something to say about this emulator. <img src=smilies/magbiggrin.gif>
 
> I have a trusty little hp omnibook 900. It has a pentium 3
> processor that clocks in at around 420 mhz, 192 Megabytes
> of memory, and somewhere from two to four megs of video
> memory.

That's very similar to my main machine up until the end of 2000, so my guesses would be the following:

NeoRageX - Should run at full speed except on the very last games made. I think I recally anything after KOF2000 being a little jerky.

ZSNES - Full speed for SNES, no problem.

Gens Plus - Best choice for a Genesis emulator. I think it's faster overall than Kega Fusion.

Anex86 - PC-98 emulator, the mouse will be jerky, but keyboard should be fine.

M88 - PC-88 emulator, full speed, no problem.

Magic Engine - No question, best emulator hands down, it ran full-speed on a damn P90 so it should have no problems on your system.

WinX68kHighSpeed - The best for X68000 emulation on an older platform. Sadly, it hasn't been updated in a long time.

Bleem! - Heh if you want ANYTHING post-SNES that will emulate on your setup, this is probably the only choice.
 
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I have a trusty little hp omnibook 900. It has a pentium 3 processor that clocks in at around 420 mhz, 192 Megabytes of memory, and somewhere from two to four megs of video memory.

<hr></blockquote>

My old computer was a piece of shit and ran everything I tried at full speed with sound except for VisualBoyAdvance. I needed to turn up the frameskip on VBA to make it playable, but it wasn't that bad. For comparison:

Processor: Intel Celeron (I don't remember the mhz, I'll have to check later, it was probably lower than yours)
RAM: 64MB

No video RAM to speak of, but it still ran Half-Life at full speed (Where have these games gone? The ones that could run on just about any new machine when they were released?)

I was running Windows 98 at the time, but I recently (Actually more like a year ago now) bought more RAM (256 MB), installed XP, and gave it to my mother. Been running great ever since, but she doesn't really play with emulators since I got her a GBA.
 
Yeah, I've got NeoRageX, and it runs wonderfully. I've got kega fusion and it runs decently, but it could use a tiny bit more speed, so i'll look into Gens Plus, and the rest of those you suggested. <img src=smilies/thumb.gif>
 
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