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How does this differ from a Mac (or PC)?
- Thread starter applefan289
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how does it compare? Do you mean "can you get these ports on a mac?" or "is this better than a mac?" 
It's really just a curious question. Pictured is an arcade game board used as the "system" that Sega arcade games run on. I see it has a bunch of different ports, and it runs on Linux embedded. Just curious if the same effect could be had on a Mac if it were used in an arcade.
It looks like the back of a desktop PC that has audio and video cards. It's probably actually just a typical PC inside with a few extra hardware things. It's closer to a modern desktop PC than a Mac, but only cause except for MacPros you don't find the addon cards.
Apple Arcade game system is a bit thinner:
http://www.apple.com/ipad
http://www.apple.com/iphone
http://www.apple.com/ipodtouch
http://www.apple.com/ipad
http://www.apple.com/iphone
http://www.apple.com/ipodtouch
You didn't say what it's from, and I can't see any obvious part number that means anything to me on the photo, but you can just look through the Wikipedia list and figure out which board it is:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Sega_arcade_system_boards
The last three generations on that list are all more or less stock PC hardware running either Linux or Windows Embedded, and that photo looks more or less like a stock PC with some custom I/O and dip switches on it. The CPU/GPUs used are comparable desktop parts that you can easily compare to a current or older Mac based on the specs.
I'm going to assume that photo is of a Lindbergh board on account of having four USB ports, VGA+DVI on the graphics card, and being AGP rather than PCIe, in which case it's probably got a 3GHz P4 single core, 1GB of RAM, and a GeForce 6800 with 256MB VRAM running a Linux flavor.
That's a relatively anemic CPU--in most cases slower than even an old Core Duo Mac running at ~2GHz--and a decent but old graphics card--the performance is probably in the ballpark of last year's MBPs or the iMacs from the year before if a random benchmark chart I came up with is to be believed. The GPU is a bit tougher comparison because Apple generally has used mobile GPUs in all but the Mac Pro until recent iMacs.
Phrased differently, it's very, very roughly going to be able to make games look similar to a couple-year-old, higher-end, stock iMac, and the iMac will have a very similar complement of standard I/O ports (USB, DVI, optical audio), although the iMac has a MUCH faster CPU for general purpose computing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Sega_arcade_system_boards
The last three generations on that list are all more or less stock PC hardware running either Linux or Windows Embedded, and that photo looks more or less like a stock PC with some custom I/O and dip switches on it. The CPU/GPUs used are comparable desktop parts that you can easily compare to a current or older Mac based on the specs.
I'm going to assume that photo is of a Lindbergh board on account of having four USB ports, VGA+DVI on the graphics card, and being AGP rather than PCIe, in which case it's probably got a 3GHz P4 single core, 1GB of RAM, and a GeForce 6800 with 256MB VRAM running a Linux flavor.
That's a relatively anemic CPU--in most cases slower than even an old Core Duo Mac running at ~2GHz--and a decent but old graphics card--the performance is probably in the ballpark of last year's MBPs or the iMacs from the year before if a random benchmark chart I came up with is to be believed. The GPU is a bit tougher comparison because Apple generally has used mobile GPUs in all but the Mac Pro until recent iMacs.
Phrased differently, it's very, very roughly going to be able to make games look similar to a couple-year-old, higher-end, stock iMac, and the iMac will have a very similar complement of standard I/O ports (USB, DVI, optical audio), although the iMac has a MUCH faster CPU for general purpose computing.
Wow, you have given great answers to many of my questions, thanks. It's very difficult to retrieve answers to questions as specific and unusual as the ones I ask!
The main reason I have asked these kinds of questions is because I'm very curious and wonder how a regular PC would be different to an arcade board. I sometimes think, "What if you just threw a standard off-the-shelf PC or Mac at Sega - could they produce the same result as the current boards they use?"
I assume I already made this clear, but the answer at this point is "Yes, that's exactly what they've been doing for years." They do have some additional I/O that presumably handles specialized arcade controllers, but for the most part what they're selling is the integration and standardized platform--it "just works" without needing maintenance or setup, and if a game developer writes something to run on it, it will run the same on any cabinet of that generation.