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

Conversion of arcade to mame


Recommended Posts

Guy's,

 

I am having a few problems and am not sure what to do.

 

1. I was going to use a jpac originally but now am putting a seven button configuration which means I need to create a new harness for the new cp so I thought I might be better using a ipac instead or is there something better?

 

2. Arcade monitor, what the hell do I do to hook this up some say I need to buy an "arcade vga" card others say I can run any video card and do it through software, can I just od it through software to save on dollars or am I just losing performance.

 

3. Computer, I was looking at getting a pentium 4 1.6 gig with 256meg of ram will this run games like mortal kombat 3 o.k. ? or what ram and processor do I use.

 

4. Software, if I use a dos based program will it reconise all the version 1.09 roms? and will it run better than a windows enviroment.

 

5. I want to be able to run all the software once setup by using the buttons and joysticks only, I don't want to wreck the classic look of the cabinet by adding trackballs.

 

6. This is a picture of my control panel layout I am looking at using. It has been set up so that I can play 4 button neo geo games or 6 button capcom games, any thoughts on the design is it going to be to squeezy? thought about adding admin buttons to the top of the cabinet out of site (pause, esc etc)

 

thoughts please pulled my machine apart and having withdrawal symptons from not playing

26 CONTROLS FOR CABINET.pdf

Link to comment
Share on other sites

just another note the rectangle on the control panels was going to be a removable section so I can change the button using a utilup clips so I can add another joystick for games like smash tv etc. or a spinner etc. was going to use twist lock similar to what you find on race cars in the corners to mount them
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Ok I may be able to answer at least one of your questions.

With an IPAC you can indeed control and select different games utilising a front-end. Preference is entirely yours. With an IPAC you can map different combinations of buttons to do different things. Alternatively wire some function buttons somewhere else on your cabinet (Ie top, front - hard to know without seeing the machine you are referring to) For pause Esc etc etc

 

Hope this helps a bit.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

With a JPAC you can use up to 8 buttons, so you can have start button +8 buttons for each player. The jpac will also do your video if you cabinet is JAMMA wired. You run a chord from your vga out on your pc to the JPAC and it feeds the monitor the graphics at the right HZ via the jamma connection(there is a jumper setting on the JPAC for 15, 25, 31khz).

 

You didn't mention wether your cab was jamma or not but i'm asuming it is. With the buttons, the jamma on the cabinet will work with 3(or 4 depending on how your jamma has been wired) buttons. The extra buttons have wire in ports on the actuall JPAC to wire them into it, exactly like you wire up an ipac anyways.

 

http://www.ultimarc.com/images/jpachi.jpg

 

That's the jpac image.

 

I just recently set mine up with a JPAC and it works sweet, all of the buttons on the jpac are mapable to keys on your keyboard and you can change the mappings etc with the software that comes with it.

 

Hope this helps a bit

 

For what you are asking the JPAC sounds like what you want, you can use the IPAC and the arcadevga card but essentially the JPAC is those two things in one.

 

 

Someone else here will be able to help you more though..

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yes my cabinet is Jamma, it currently has 3 buttons with the option for the forth. I bought it with Tekken kind of difficult to play without the 4th button.

 

anyway here is some pics of the cabinet you will see how the stripped control panel looks the one and two player buttons were under the joysticks as standard. it also has a rotable monitor in it with tinted glass.

 

So are you saying that I don't need a arcade vga card just the jpac card to run the pc to the arcade monitor?

 

P.S. The admin buttons like pause, etc were going to go on the top of the cabinet above the marquee so you won't really see them.

 

This cabinet is a stereo cabinet as well so I am not sure how the sound works on it if it is jamma?

1843133665_IMG_0630(Small).JPG.a8f79d249a26dda005e0df8b0352cb4a.JPG

712371142_IMG_0631(Small).JPG.9aa86547bbf5161f015fed8a11483f80.JPG

1851785904_IMG_0632(Small).JPG.e3fb3265f764020aa2302c676a2f9c8a.JPG

2100039622_IMG_0633(Small).JPG.ea3d8202b1ad5928756a53188aab43e4.JPG

433810564_IMG_0634(Small).JPG.b50a038c9f1e50e4aa49fa8bb3b2549a.JPG

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yeah i would definantly go for the JPAC method, it does will do your video and your buttons in 1 and plugs straight into your jamma.

 

http://members.iinet.net.au/~stuartpotter/arcade2/IMG_1009.JPG

 

Check that pic out, thats my JPAC with a little plug i made for buttons 5+6 for players 1 and 2. My cabinet is wired so my 4th button is through the jamma but the JPAC has a slot for button 4 also. There is also 2 more spare button slots on there for button 7+8 for both players, and all those functions are just mapped to keystrokes of your choice (by deafult the jpac is mapped to mame standard controls)

 

Very easy to hook up, basically if you plugged that JPAC into your jamma harness and ran a chord from your vga out on your pc to the vga in on the JPAC, there is your computer hooked up to your arcade cab with video, joysticks, start buttons for both players + 3 buttons for both players working. Then you just have to wire the extra buttons in. You can do this by hard wiring the buttons into the JPAC or the way i did it with the plug. I used the plug because i want to be able to pull the setup out and hook up my arcade boards really easy and not have to screw wires in and out each time i do it. Even the coin slot works when i put a dollar in !!!

 

As for your other questions.

 

3. I;m thinking it would but i can;t be sure, i have a beasty pc and hve no issues but maybe someone else can comment.

 

4. Dos mame is pretty much what gets released first i think, so it's the latest up to date version as any other. I have never setup a dos based system for mame so i cant help you there, i use mamewah frontend on my windows system. Windows boots and start mamewah straight away as soon as my machine starts, it totally hides windows and you use the joystick to scroll the game menu, 1 player start brings up the options etc.

 

5. Thats the beauty of the JPAC and IPAC, they just basically convert button presses to keystrokes. So if you want to scroll your game menu in say mame32 or a frontend, and it's up and down on the keyboard that you use, map player 1 joystick to up, down, left right. Each time you move the joystick as far as the pc knows your pressing up arrow, down arrow etc.

 

Hope this helps

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hey there Myti.

 

In short, keep the panel as simple and uncluttered as possible. Most frontends allow navigation via joystick and buttons so you will not need a trackball. DOS is generally quicker than Windows and you will need to go DOS if you go without the ArcadeVGA.

 

Feel free to give me a call tomorrow and I'll help you work out the best way to go. I'd post a loger reply here but it's easier to speak with you directly. Grab my mobile number from the top of any page at our website.

 

Cheers,

Chris

Link to comment
Share on other sites

3. Computer, I was looking at getting a pentium 4 1.6 gig with 256meg of ram will this run games like mortal kombat 3 o.k. ? or what ram and processor do I use.

1.6GHz will get you by for MK3, or most 2D fighting games (with the exception of ST-V stuff).

 

256MB RAM is pushing it. There are plenty of games that decompress out to 300MB+, which means you'll be hitting swap if you lpay games with large ROM files (any of the recent King Of Fighters games, DoDonPachi, GunBird 2, etc - all of these decompress to well over 300MB RAM in use).

 

I would strongly recommend 512MB, particularly if you are running Windows. But I would recommend AGAINST Windows. If Linux is too tricky, try FreeDOS:

http://www.aussiearcade.com/showthread.php?t=2527

 

All the pros of DOS, with heaps of extras to make life easy.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

How so? Doesnt the JPAC sort of convert the signal from vga to 15khz? Or am i mistaken??

 

Not exactly. As per the Ultimarc website:

 

If required, can divide a 31Khz VGA signal in half so that it will display a stable picture on a 15Khz arcade monitor. Useful for checking boot-up progress and configuration (not for application use). Automatically stops dividing the signal when it detects a correct 15Khz rate is being send by the PC.

 

So although it provides a stable signal, it is not altogether safe in extended use, therefore it's not ideal to be running Windows with a video card incapable of outputting 15kHz.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

You can skip the ArcadeVGA if you use either DOS or Linux with AdvanceMAME and SVGALib (or FBDev under Linux too), or build custom modes in Windows using a tool like Powerstrip.

 

But end user beware! All of these methods are not your average mindless point'n'click installs. You need to know what you are doing. Anyone afraid of editing config files by hand and installing things without a graphical interface need not apply.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

oops, my bad.....maybe the ipac and arcadevga is the best way then..

 

The "best way" should be whatever solution you are most comfortable achieving - I'm always objective when talking to customers about their projects and simply state that the ArcadeVGA with the J-PAC is the easiest way yo go.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

the ArcadeVGA with the J-PAC is the easiest way yo go.

And the quickest. Even someone like myself would take a few solid hours setting up a Linux+AdvanceMAME+SVGALib setup. I think my record for an ArcadeVGA+J-Pac is currently around 15 minutes, including time wasted waiting for Windows to reboot. :)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

oops, my bad.....maybe the ipac and arcadevga is the best way then..

 

You are a little confused.

 

The I-PAC is a keyboard encoder, plain and simple. It plugs into your PC via PS2 or USB and is recognised as a keyboard. Instead of having keyboard buttons though you have to wire it to the arcade buttons and sticks yourself.

 

A J-PAC is also a keyboard encoder. However as a JAMMA cabinet is already pre-wired to the JAMMA harness the J-PAC plugs into the PC via PS2 or USB and as with the I-PAC is recognised as a keyboard but instead of having to wire the buttons yourself it uses the JAMMA fingerboard. Now as the JAMMA harness is also used for sound to the cabinet speakers, coin mech and video to the monitor chassis the J-PAC also interfaces to these and has a VGA connector to interface to your PC video card. However you either need a video card that can output 15KHz or an arcade monitor that supports 31KHz VGA signal unless of course you go with the option Elvis has stated regarding using AdvanceMAME which can do it in software for you. I believe the J-PAC does have an inbuilt video amp also. Remember the JAMMA standard is for 2 players with 3 buttons so these are catered for via the JAMMA fingerboard on the J-PAC, for extra buttons the J-PAC also has screw terminals to support up to 8 buttons per player.

 

An ArcadeVGA card is simply a PC video card that has been setup to output 15KHz signal and using it with a J-PAC is the simplest and fasted way to get a JAMMA cab running off a PC. I had my PC precofigured with MAME and after installing the ArcadeVGA card has the machine running games within 15 minutes. Getting the sound working through the cabinet speakers took a little extra time though.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

With the Ipac/Jpac you will not need the 'extra' buttons for pause etc as the Ipac shift function lets you use the joystick for pause, tab, tilda & enter.

 

I always turn the shift functions off. My kids and missus are chronic button mashers when something goes wrong (say, they lose a life and need to continue). Start+ any direction, and all of a sudden they are pausing the game, changing the volume, etc. Very frustrating, as MAME tends to save alot of those settings to files when exiting the game, and loads them back in on next play. It pissed me off no end when I found the kids had been on the cab and changed all sorts of shit thanks to their button mashing, so I used the Ultimarc programming utilities and set the shift function to an unused input.

 

Also, the shift key when set will not register an input until the button is RELEASED. This makes for laggy input from whatever button you set it to. Not so bad for 1P start I guess, but it was yet another thing about it that annoyed me.

 

The biggest downside to the i/J-Pac is the default mapping for the shift key. I believe the KeyWiz is superior there, as it's "shazaam" key (same as shift) is a entirely separate input, which you can simply not wire if you don't need it. And if you do want it, you can wire it as a separate button, or simply bridge it to another button and have it perform just like the I/J-Pac. Giving the end user choice is always a winner.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Also, the shift key when set will not register an input until the button is RELEASED. This makes for laggy input from whatever button you set it to. Not so bad for 1P start I guess, but it was yet another thing about it that annoyed me.

 

The biggest downside to the i/J-Pac is the default mapping for the shift key........

 

I nearly agree with you Elvis, but then you can assign the Shift Key as "NONE" so the I-PAC etc won't use it at all. The beauty of the Ultimarc encoders is that they offer almost unlimited flexibility, provided that you are prepared to think outside the square a little.

 

Cheers,

Chris

Link to comment
Share on other sites

thanks for the posts guy's.

 

Ithink I would like to go with using Dos or linux as the setup just download free dos and advance mame to check it out. Been a while since I played with dos would be great to have some help from someone in brisbane to set it up if I get stuck ....hint hint Elvis :)

I live at Algester so I imagine I wouldn't be to far from you.

 

I was also thinking about using my toshiba laptop (pentium 4 2.4 with 512meg ram and geforce 4) for now until I get a cheap pentium 4 for a couple of hundred dollars I can permenantly mount inside the arcade cabinet. Would this be a problem at all as it goes to the lcd screen by default on the laptop?

 

How much harder is linux than dos? to set stuff up can I just get a ghost of someone elses drive or is there a lot to do with mounting drives and video cards etc?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I nearly agree with you Elvis, but then you can assign the Shift Key as "NONE" so the I-PAC etc won't use it at all.

Yes, but then the last key you assigned as the shift key still gets the "lag" of only outputting data when released. At least, it does on my generation of I-PAC. Things may have changed in newer versions, seeing as it's all run from a small on-system piece of software. Not that you generally need your 1P start button to be input-accurate to the microsecond, mind you.

 

Either way, in the grand scheme of things it is the tiniest of nit-picking in an otherwise brilliant piece of hardware, and I should be careful to not make it sound like such a big deal. I feel I harp on that point too much and a too often.

 

Ithink I would like to go with using Dos or linux as the setup just download free dos and advance mame to check it out. Been a while since I played with dos would be great to have some help from someone in brisbane to set it up if I get stuck ....hint hint Elvis :)

Yeah no dramas. Always glad to help a fellow Brisbanite. I do warn you however that the next few weeks (and weekends) for me are flat out, so I can't help hands-on for a while. Email/forum/PM help (or remote logon if you use Linux) is doable of course.

 

I was also thinking about using my toshiba laptop (pentium 4 2.4 with 512meg ram and geforce 4) for now until I get a cheap pentium 4 for a couple of hundred dollars I can permenantly mount inside the arcade cabinet. Would this be a problem at all as it goes to the lcd screen by default on the laptop?

You should be able to change the primary output in the laptop's BIOS.

 

How much harder is linux than dos? to set stuff up can I just get a ghost of someone elses drive or is there a lot to do with mounting drives and video cards etc?

Linux has several pros over Windows/DOS:

 

1) All config files are plain text, and live in one folder. "Ghosting" an image from one machine to another and setting everything up requires modifying maybe 5 files to make it work on brand new hardware

 

2) All drivers are kernel based - if you install new hardware, rebooting is all you need to detect the new device and have the system load the right kernel module (essentially a "driver" in windows speak). No need to manually add/remove drivers ala Windows/DOS.

 

3) No hidden config files. No black magic. Everything in Linux is open and viewable. You can literally copy an existing Linux system in realtime to another hard disk, reinstall the boot manager with a one-line command, and away it goes. There is no need to use "ghost" or other expensive proprietary software duplication systems. In fact, that's how Linux "installers" work. No registry, no mysterious closed boot sectors, no binary-only files. All plain text and open to the user.

 

Those three points together make Linux a much easier system to copy/manage/duplicate/upgrade than Windows/DOS.

 

Cons:

 

1) LINUX IS NOT DOS. It sounds simple, but you won't believe the crap I have to deal with when people swear black and blue that they should be able to use Linux because they are DOS savvy, and then end up fucking something up. Linux (and it's command shell, BASH) don't use DOS commands, and don't use DOS syntax. If you are not prepared to read documentation, Linux will be "hard". If you are capable of reading a manual and following plain english instructions, Linux is "easy". Again, there is no black magic. People who can't follow instructions will have problems with Linux. I know, because I've seen it happen countless times.

 

I'm more than happy to give "Linux lessons" either at your place or mine (again, see my disclaimer above about the coming months' schedule).

 

EVENTUALLY I am planning on writing a comprehensive step-by-step guide to installing Linux and getting things like XMAME, SDLMAME, and more interestingly AdvanceMAME/AdvanceMESS (MAME=arcade, MESS=console) on a real arcade monitor with real arcade resolutions and modelines working (even Arcade King wouldn't be able to tell the difference :P ).

 

In the meantime, have a look at these two sites if MAME+Linux interests you:

http://web.tampabay.rr.com/whammoed/whammocade/whammocade.htm (Click the "software" link)

http://easymamecab.mameworld.net/ (Click the "Linux" link)

 

EasyMAMECab in particular documents about 4 different ways to set up Linux and MAME. Remember that Linux doesn't force you to do anything. You can pick the type of setup you want. For people who need their software to tell them what to do (the "I want just one simple option" folks), this can be scary. For people who like customisation and choice, this is very exciting.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I was also thinking about using my toshiba laptop (pentium 4 2.4 with 512meg ram and geforce 4) for now until I get a cheap pentium 4 for a couple of hundred dollars I can permenantly mount inside the arcade cabinet. Would this be a problem at all as it goes to the lcd screen by default on the laptop?

/QUOTE]

 

I dunno about the newer ones but all the old Toshiba notebooks I have or have had (except my old Libretto) have a switch so it knows when the lid is open or not plus the power buttons are generally on the outside. In which case if you have it shut and power it on plus have something plugged into the 15 pin VGA connector it tends to know to use the external display.

 

My Dell on the other hand has the power button on the inside above the keyboard which is bloody stupid IMHO.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Another vote here for looking up EasyMAMECab - a very useful website that contains info on setting up a PC with DOS, Windows or Linux which should help you immensely in deciding which is the right way to go for you.

 

A few of us should put or heads together and come up with a "Home Arcade Primer" for those out there attempting their first cabinet. I always tell my customers that a successful result is all in the planning, so it would be good to have something in writing that outlines exactly what I mean by that!

 

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...