Jump to content
Due to a large amount of spamers, accounts will now have to be approved by the Admins so please be patient. ×
IGNORED

Adding of games to a cocktail machine


Recommended Posts

Gday there,

I have a Cocktail style machine that features about 150 games. I know very little about the workings, however I would like to add a bunch more but am having no joy tracking down anyone who can help. Not sure of too much with the internals of the beast, other than i think its some sort of MAME (?) setup. It has computer type stuff on inside and when you turn it on flicks through one screen of computer jargon, then an image of a 3d winking pac-man, then loads up a scrolling menu feature with the header "Arcade Magic (Cocktail)" where you can select game from list to play. I would love to know if there is a way to add/subtract games from the list, add additional games (via cd-rom, software upgrade,other??) and where i can find/buy games and see whats out there.

Any help at all would be awesome!!!!

Thanks,

Chris

Link to comment
Share on other sites

the first thing you need to find is what Frontend software it is running, this can be done by maybe posting a pic of your first menu screen or by connecting a keyboard and pushing Ctrl Alt Del and open task manager and see whats running and post a pic of that. Different frontends have diffeent ways to add or delete games etc.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 4 weeks later...
the first thing you need to find is what Frontend software it is running, this can be done by maybe posting a pic of your first menu screen or by connecting a keyboard and pushing Ctrl Alt Del and open task manager and see whats running and post a pic of that. Different frontends have diffeent ways to add or delete games etc.

 

why? if its mame on a pc he should be able hook up a keyboard. just hit the 'windows' button and find the mame folder. then just add/subtract roms from the roms folder...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

why? if its mame on a pc he should be able hook up a keyboard. just hit the 'windows' button and find the mame folder. then just add/subtract roms from the roms folder...

 

It doesn't run windows.

 

I can help this guy out as it sounds like one of the machines that I've built. But it looks like he/she was a one post wonder.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 8 years later...

Hello, I just picked up an Arcade Machine with similar issues to this thread that was posted back in 2009.....it is a small tabletop machine with a Pentium 2 inside & what looks like a 256m compact flash card. It boots up and says Arcade Magic on the top of the screen with (Cocktail) in brackets. When you pick a game and launch it doesn't seem to do anything except come up with Abort, Retry Fail option, which leads me to believe that the CF card maybe broken, but it is booting into it, so weird.

 

Wondering if you could help at all??

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hello, I just picked up an Arcade Machine with similar issues to this thread that was posted back in 2009.....it is a small tabletop machine with a Pentium 2 inside & what looks like a 256m compact flash card. It boots up and says Arcade Magic on the top of the screen with (Cocktail) in brackets. When you pick a game and launch it doesn't seem to do anything except come up with Abort, Retry Fail option, which leads me to believe that the CF card maybe broken, but it is booting into it, so weird.

 

Wondering if you could help at all??

 

take it to a computer guy its likely just had a battery failure on the motherboard and forgotten it doesnt need a keyboard or what its hdd settings are.

 

short term plug a keyboard in might help.

 

remember it thinks its a computer not an arcade machine trouble shoot it as a pc

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Appreciate the feedback, however the main battery is working fine, no HDD it is a Compact Flash card that plugs into a IDE port on the motherboard. Boots up fine but when game selection is on, just comes up Abort, Retry or Fail.....that is all. When you exit to DOS you can look at the contents of the flash but when you go to look in the ARCMAGIC folder them MAME it does the same thing.....very weird. I pulled out the Compact Flash card to put into a reader on my main PC but can't get it to even recognise.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Administrators

Definitely sounds like the cf card is toast. I'm unfamiliar with these systems, all the ones I might build use a proper HDD but you'd need a new CF card and then at the very least the roms to match the version of Mame it's using. First question to ask is does it use a HDD as well?

 

Brad

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I have never seen a CF style system before.....I was hoping to extract the data off the card, but alas as I said it is not working in my flash reader. I am very familiar with other boards etc, was hoping to just get this working as is......without having to spend any extra $$'s on it.....
Link to comment
Share on other sites

That mobo is definitely way past it's time, chuck a P4 or later PC in it with a 20+ gig HD and run Mame with Mala frontend if you must have the ability to add games.

You could also run an Raspberry Pi but I know nothing about setting those up.

Otherwise just put a 60in1 or other multi board as previously mentioned.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I know it would be easy to put in a PI or something else, but was wanting to keep it original. Does anyone have any files etc that could help me recreate this?? In the DOS DIR I can see GLAUNCH......which has a MAME folder in it. A CRYSTAL folder which has a mix amp sound card set up + a few auto exe files etc. Was hoping to get this one back up as is, it is a cute little unit :)
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'd suggest if you want to keet it 'original' then do some research and take the time to learn how to ser it up/fix it yourself.

You'll be hard pressed to find someone who has the exact files you need, it will more so be a case of you having to trawl the internet for hours finding the right info and files to get it back up and running.

Glaunch is a front end called Game Launcher which was the first front end I used back in 2005.

Good luck.

Edited by Kaizen
Link to comment
Share on other sites

My appologies to everyone if I came across demanding anything. I had spent some time already trawling to get it working again. It is old but was hoping to keep it all the same. I will redo it and make it better, was hoping that someone may have had some knowledge as to what was being used.

Once again if I offended I am very sorry. Cheers

Link to comment
Share on other sites

My appologies to everyone if I came across demanding anything. I had spent some time already trawling to get it working again. It is old but was hoping to keep it all the same. I will redo it and make it better, was hoping that someone may have had some knowledge as to what was being used.

Once again if I offended I am very sorry. Cheers

 

I don't think anyone was "offended" - just trying to explain that you will really be wasting your time trying to fix this when it was always, at best, a copy of a copy anyway.

 

A multi-in-1 for $100 will do the same job (or better) and you will be up and running in minutes.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Administrators

I'll just add that CF Cards are notoriously unreliable and flakey. You will be doing yourself a massive favour by replacing the unit in there with something infinitely more reliable.

 

Brad

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'm 99.99% certain that this is one of RetroGame's cabinets, as I'm not aware of anyone else ever doing a PC based cocktail cab using a CF Card.

 

To be fair, at the time his setup was the duck's guts and although there may be more reliable and economical solutions available now, there certainly wasn't back then!!! He used very specific PCs that had onboard sound that required no drivers, which meant he was able to use an extremely stripped out OS and run the GameLauncher frontend. The whole thing was actually quite ingenious.

 

His main reasoning for using a CF Card instead of an old HDD was, that should problems ever occur, it would be a simple matter of posting out a replacement CF Card with instructions on how to swap them over, then the customer would be back up and running with a minimum of fuss. The only thing they'd lose is their high scores.

 

I sold a few of his cabs, but not the later ones with the CF Card as he did those pretty much exclusively for what was Child Amusements (now Pinball Spare Parts Australia) who sold heaps of them!

 

To the OP, I'm happy to track down Iain (RetroGame) and see whether we can get an image file for you. That way you could drop it onto an old IDE HDD, or maybe even get a replacement CF Card from him, to get you back up and running. It's all well and good to suggest that you swap over the "something more reliable", which is being translated here as a non-PC based solution, however there is likely to be a fair amount of cost and re-work involved in that to convert it over to something that may not necessarily be that much better.

 

Let me know if you'd like me to contact Iain for you.

 

Cheers, Chris

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...