luddite Posted February 13, 2010 Share Posted February 13, 2010 OMG - I thought this day would never come. My PC powers up when the power is turned on. BIOS/WinXP starts up with scrambled screen.(can you turn this off? no big deal) Powerstrip starts and screen miraculously appears. Mala then starts fullscreen and in focus(after turning off all notifications). I can move categories/game lists with a left right J1 action. I can play a game and give credits with a finger flick of the coin thing inside the cab.(I have to open the door for this). Play game. Sound via new USB powered laptop speakers to save another power plug. Exit Game via pressing the P1 and P2 buttons simultaneously. Exit Mala and Shutdown winXP via pressing the P1 and P2 buttons simultaneously then accept via P1. Turn single power switch off at wall for cab and PC(Cab has a plug that another plug can plug into). All done.:D Thanks to all who helped me - i thanked most in the individual threads. But big kudos go to the helpful and patient @lien_Zed and brad. Thanks guys. Also a HUGE thanks goes to the Aussiearcade forum members and owners in general. I am super appreciative to you. (cab is in my avatar). Cheers.:D:D:D:D:D:D Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lien_Zed Posted February 13, 2010 Share Posted February 13, 2010 good stuff, we need some pix of it all now im glad u got it all sorted out in the end remember, we are all here to help/hinder/laugh at each other to get our projects done :cool: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
giova_sf_fan Posted February 13, 2010 Share Posted February 13, 2010 Yeah build or completed pics plz...looks similar to my cab...i'd be intested in a build log if u kept one....from a fellow melbourneian.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
luddite Posted February 13, 2010 Author Share Posted February 13, 2010 pics attached - the PC is behind the cab - it actually has a keyboard, mouse and lcd monitor attached. The PC is connected via a j-pac through the USB. Yeah build or completed pics plz...looks similar to my cab...i'd be intested in a build log if u kept one....from a fellow melbourneian.... a build log? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lien_Zed Posted February 13, 2010 Share Posted February 13, 2010 a build log? a documented account of the build steps or what u did for the entire process, perferably with lots of pics Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Taverner Posted February 13, 2010 Share Posted February 13, 2010 Congrats mate, I love the old wood laminate lowboys :). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Administrators Brad Posted February 13, 2010 Administrators Share Posted February 13, 2010 Well done and I'm glad you've got it all going =) Cheers, Brad Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Auspanties79 Posted February 13, 2010 Share Posted February 13, 2010 well done on the final completion of the cab.. Patience is a virtue and you cant rush perfection they say.. congrats and great end result. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
luddite Posted February 14, 2010 Author Share Posted February 14, 2010 a documented account of the build steps or what u did for the entire process, perferably with lots of pics I will document it tonight. Regarding the build - well I actually bought the lowboy when I got my first job out of uni that paid well (a online producer(project manager for web stuff) at telstra) in 93' and it came working with street fighter II World warrior and raiden 2. They both worked (still work) and to swap them i would simply switch the jamma and turn the monitor the right way - hor for sf and vert for raiden. So all i really did for this conversion was buy a j-pac and hook it to the jamma the config the PC. It was easy in hindsight. Congrats mate, I love the old wood laminate lowboys :). Very suave hey ;-) well done on the final completion of the cab.. Patience is a virtue and you cant rush perfection they say.. congrats and great end result. /me nods Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
luddite Posted February 14, 2010 Author Share Posted February 14, 2010 Build Log 0. The Cab Make a cab or buy one. I purchased a fully funtioning lowboy for $500. I simply disconnected the jamma connector from the PCB's and my mame project cab was on its way. 1. MAME ROMS Roms/snaps/marquee/etc were obtained via the very kind Jeff_Kennett through Get M.A.M.E. DVD's 2. J-PAC I bought a J-Pac and plugged it in. Originally I had issues but soon stopped using the keyboard passthrough and all was resolved. I now only have the USB plugged into the J-Pac and the keyboard goes directly into the PC ps/2 port. 3. Video Card Windows XP SP3 was installed on the computer with a geforce mx 440 card so when i plug in the arcade monitor i get nothing but scrambled graphics that are split into 2 identical column. This is no good. This card was ripped out a old box and was found(web search) to support 15khz arcade interlaced. Its interface would not allow this to work out of the box so i had to install powerstrip. BUT... Now here is what i suggest before you alter any video setting: Hook your PC up to the network(mine was wifi) and give it a static IP and set your router to bind that IP to its mac address. Next setup a tightvnc server on the Mame box and setup a tightvnc veiwer on a laptop or other networked machine you have handy. Confirm that you can login remotely to your mame box and that the connection is saved for easy reference. (you can then just double click it to open the mame box.). Now you are ready to turn on powerstrip remotely. 4. Powerstrip You will be running powerstrip at 640x480i - and powerstrip indeed has a setting for that so go into custom resolutions and set it. If you are lucky the arcade screen will change to a nice and clean desktop(and will make a whistling noise as it does so). That means that your 15khz arcade monitor is now perfect. I was not so lucky and had to tweak via tightvnc the frequency. I moved it to 15.97khz and it worked perfectly. Save this settings. Then make your powerstrip start with windows. 5. Choose a frontend - MALA I downloaded mala after trying heaps and mala picked up my roms and snaps perfectly. It also had a option to remove the splash screen and this was very appealing to me.. I had 7993 games in a single list and none- worked. So I had 2 issues - mame resolution and category creation. 6. Categories This was easy - but took a while - get romlister then follow its instructions. I created separate categorie mala lists for 8way joystick, 6 buttons or less with working and no clones selected. Opened up mala again and it now has categories. I right clicked mala and changed the navigation slightly to enable letter increments via Joystick 2 up down. Then tested and was good to go. I dont like that so changed it to allow J2 to change categories and select like J1 does. Why be greedy and control everything from J1 i thought. Note: I also used avrestool to merge catver into a single mame.xml - this basically assigns categories to games and I think romlister liked this alot. 7. Mame Download a mame.exe (dont use mame32 as it seems to auto guess alot of things for you and you really dont want that as some games work and some dont. You want consistancy so use mame.exe - i used the one that came with my roms. I dont think this matters but you are free to choose any version. Put it at C: or D: root. and open up your mame.ini and modify it to know your rom directory and snaps etc. Open up a command prompt and go to your mame directory (For me it was D:/Mame/ then run a game like Street Fighter "mame sf". If you are lucky it will work. I was not so lucky. The screens were all misconfigured and blurry. So I then downloaded M.A.M.E. Resolution Tool v3.2 and ran this against mame.exe. It created 7993 brand new ini files. I moved them into the ini directory and modified mame.ini accordingly. Open up a command prompt and run a game like street fighter "mame sf". If you are lucky it will work. I was not so lucky as some worked and some didnt. I edited a ini (sf.ini) until it worked. In my case I had to delete everything and only add a single line "resolution0 640x480@60" Now I know this is stupid - as my monitor is running at 15khz - but it works - it also works with @0 which is weird. I think it actually just gets ignored. Dunno. So i had one game working and only had to edit 7,992 more ini files. I used Ultraedit for this. > Search > Replace in files > and filled out the changes and selected the Regular Expressions: ultraedit tick box. See my attached for the actual settings. Then hit Replace All and about a minute later all files were modified. (I did all this in tightvnc also). Open up a command prompt and run a game like street fighter "mame sf". If you are lucky it will work. I was lucky - then i tried others and they worked also. I was happy but not ecstatic. 8. Windows start up. I went into the BIOS of the windows machine(I had to hook a normal monitor back up temporarily) and set the power setting to power up when system regains power. If you cant do that the thread shows how to wire up a power button. My PC could power up on power loss so no need there. 9. MALA Startup/shutdown. I had to also follow this thread to have mala open on windows start and be in focus. I changed the mala options to allow shutdown of windows on exit. This works about 50% of the time. 10. Screen saver. Set up mala screensaver to go blank after a minute of inactivity. 11. Sound I bought a $80 pair of usb powered laptop speaker andplugged them into the PC. Now when i want to power on the Cab i flick one switch and the PC instantly boots and the cab turns on. That is all and now I have a working mame cab. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Super Moderator Foot Posted February 18, 2010 Super Moderator Share Posted February 18, 2010 Thanks for the write up :023: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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