Stargmaes MB-PC4 any good?

[Radmaggot]

Are these Stargames MB-PC4 machines any good? One boots up ok but get EGM error - device disabled. They seem to boot just like a PC so wondering if it is easy to swap out the Compact flash cards for MAME version or something else to enable standalone play.

[Heihachi_73]

Given that PC4 is most likely using a Celeron from a decade ago, the latest versions of MAME would most likely run quite slow for games this side of 1993 (during the 0.180 release they changed the video card requirements, so for Pentium 4/Celeron systems you simply force OpenGL mode to keep later versions of MAME happy). I would have much higher hopes for the PC4 running arcade games over a Raspberry Pi doing the same. Bonus points if you can get a photo of the Stargames machine running the Aristocrat MK5 games inside MAME.

In an odd twist, MAME could probably emulate the PC4 itself these days, given BIOS/video card dumps, flash cards and whatever else is required.

[Radmaggot]

Thank you. So are these not really worth messing around with? Shame because everything else looks to work ok. Dual LCD screens CF memory cards with software and all nice decals and flashing lights not sure if I should just turf them out now.

[Heihachi_73]

Just wondering, is it complaining about comms or does it have other errors? It sounds just like when QCOM goes down and makes you wait forever for it to reconnect (or in this case, not able to connect at all because it isn't linked up to an external device e.g. the computer in the "back room" of the gaming venue). If it's only the comms, chances are the machine is perfectly fine and is just waiting for the nonexistent device to talk to it.

[Radmaggot]

Yeah i think thats the case but I dont know if there is a way around it.

[Heihachi_73]

The only way around it would be to see if a NSW game would work in there, although I don't know if Stargames/Shuffle Master (SHFL) did anything to the machines themselves to make them not work elsewhere.

WMS also made a few games on that platform, although they are probably better known for their PC3 games over PC4.

[Radmaggot]

Thank you. Might just stick them back out in the shed until more info becomes available for them.

[SS308]

Will need hard meters and Comms pcb with nsw software