The G4 1.4 Mini isn't that bad though. I've got a G4 running at 1.2Ghz and you can do quite a bit of mean retrogaming on such a device. But be sure to check out the emulators available at www.emuscene.com tons of good retrogaming possibilities for the MacMini G4.
Here's a small article I wrote on Retrogaming on OSX 10.4 on AA somewhere in the summer.
Since then 've revisited quite a few of the emulators I discussed earlier in on various intel macintoshes ranging from a +- 1.4Ghz Intel machine with Ati 3D accelerated graphics to a +- 2.8Ghz Intel machine with Ati 3D accelerated graphics. Just to see if those new Mac's are up to the challenge (two Powerbooks, a macmini core solo and mini core duo)
Richard Bannister's emulators just run fine as most of them are both intel/ppc binaries. As for the emulators that only have PPC based binaries, quite a few of the sub-16 bit system- emulators running in PPC code are running at decent speeds on 1.4-2.8Ghz Intels. But that does change when I tried running MacMAME. This emulator only seems to be provided in PPC binary format. The version I've tried is 1.03u2 with the Aqua interface. On the low-end Intels MacMAME runs ok in the 8-bit arcade machine-modes. Running MacMAME on the high end Intel 8-bit arcade machine-modes run fine but with the 16-bit arcade machine-modes (like NeoGeo) MacMAME just isn't able to provide a satisfying game experience. The sound is good but the frame-rate is varying. A completely different experience is to be had when you run the same binary on a G4 at 1.2Ghz also with 3D Ati accelerated GFX card - on that machine the PPC MacMAME performs very good and smooth on most arcade machines being emulated.
For now I say that a PPC based Macintosh will provide you the most solid Arcade Emulation experience. But with Richard Bannister emulators there is no real difference on what OSX platform you are as both platforms provide a very comparable experience.
I am curious as to why no one has created a native Intel binary, as the Rosetta emulation layer on intel OSX does provide a huge bottleneck. I am off searching for an Intel OSX MacMAME binary....
Some links to sites disussing the MacMAME-PPC-only dilemma:
Ars Technica users discussing the subject
Oh and a little surfing
there it is, the promise of an Intel MacMAME binary
And yes, there now are good intel binaries of a very up to date SDL-Based Mame. Of course PPC binaries are also available.
Anyways, your G4 Macmini is quite good for Mame and other retrogaming stuff. My G4 based system can even run the Halo Demo. Quake 1, 2 and Doom 3 is playable thanks to the AGP Ati 6800Pro graphics card. The mini's built in one probably won't be able to handle doom3 or halo but for the rest it's quite nice.
Virtual PC works quite nice on my G4, it's quite close to a PentiumIII at 600Mhz in performance on the G4. So you could even use some of your old Windows apps on it.
Cheers, Mark
But I think this is perfect for my school, and I'm really starting to hate Microsoft.
