Systems of power

Motherboards for consideration of an arcade system

Intel Atom (1.6Ghz)
MSI Industrial IM-945GSE-A Atom Mini-ITX
Jetway NF94-270-LF Atom Mini-ITX

VIA C3
VIA EPIA MII6000EG Fanless Mini-ITX (600Mhz)
VIA EPIA EK8000EG Mini-ITX (800Mhz)

VIA C7
VIA EPIA LT10000EAG Mini-ITX (1Ghz)
VIA EPIA CN10000EG Mini-ITX (1Ghz)
VIA EPIA LN10000EG Mini-ITX (1Ghz)
MSI Industrial CN700G Mini-ITX (1Ghz)
VIA EPIA-M700-10E Mini-ITX (1Ghz)

Monitors for consideration
Samsung 2033SW 20 inch LCD (16:9 widescreen)
Samsung T240HD v24 inch LCD HD monitor

Selected controller
X-Arcade Tankstick

Selected Operating System and software
The computer would be powered by a custom GNU/Linux distribution that has been modified to function exclusively as a gaming system. The base system I am thinking of would be gNewSense but stripped of certain software packages so that it can run as a dedicated gaming system for arcade purposes. Operating Systems such as Tyranno$oft Windows and CrApple Mac OS are not appropriate for the functions needed for the arcade system that I am proposing. They are not the best choice for many reasons. One of which is the tremendous amount of overhead they have. Another is because they are proprietary. Other reasons include the amount of system resource usage, cost, performance, security, and licensing. Something like GNU/Linux would be about the best way to go with a system like I am planning. Software freedom with things such as GNU/Linux are the most effective way to customize software to meet the demands needed to make such an arcade system.

I would want technologies such as OpenGL, Mesa 3D, Gallium3D, X, OpenML, OpenAL, SDL, ALSA, PNG graphics support through libpng, FLAC audio support, Vorbis audio support, Theora video support, C++, PLIB, ClanLib, Allegro, Ika, Pygame, Stratagus, Troll2D, Photon, ORX, and Exult.

I hope that the GNU/Linux operating system will be designed so that it does not need anything more than a 75Mhz 32-bit processor with maybe 16MB of RAM. The whole operating system and the games themselves have to run fluidly on nothing faster than a 500Mhz processor with 256MB of RAM because of hardware systems that I intend to use. One of which I am considering is the 600Mhz VIA C3 processor. I think it is possible to make such a GNU/Linux arcade gaming distribution that would run on such low specs as a 75Mhz 32-bit processor with only 16MB of RAM. This is because I would want a lot of things removed that are in a typical GNU/Linux distributions so that the system can function for the purpose of running only games and games designed for such a system. Damn Small Linux is a GNU/Linux distribution that is able to surf the internet and play music on a Intel 486 processor (around the 50Mhz to 66Mhz speed range) and only 16MB of RAM while being more of a general purpose GNU/Linux software distribution, but these were the minimum system requirements. Damn Small Linux has these requirements because it has a graphical interface in which the user interacts with. I would have a non-graphical command-line interface or a very light graphical interface.

There are even more elaborate general purpose GNU/Linux operating systems such as Elive that mimics the visual appearance of Apple's Mac OS X and yet only requires a 100Mhz 32-bit processor with 64MB of RAM for it's minimum. Since most of my intended game types would be consisting of 2-D sprites, the games themselves should not have high system requirements by today's standards. I think that the operating system and the games would run fluidly on a 600Mhz processor. But I am thinking of still using a 1Ghz processor that is capable of running Quake 3 pretty good even in something like Windows 2000.

Memory
I would have no less than 256MB of RAM as a minimum. But with the memory on the market today I think I would only be able to get 512MB of RAM at the smallest quantity. So I would have no less than 512MB of minimum RAM. I would likely get 1GB of RAM thought so whole entire games and other things can be cached inside of the system RAM for best performance.