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Mame Candy Cab


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G'day guys,

 

This is my first post here. Chris from OzStick put me onto this forum (great guy too). Anyway, I first got into MAME about three years ago, put it aside, picked it up again recently and, more than ever now, now want my own MAME cab!! What I was hoping for was you guys could look over my cunning plan and help me improve. I've done a tonne of research already but still have a few questions. My intent is to play the games I grew up with: Street Fighters, NBA Jam etc

 

My Plan:

 

I plan on buying one of the cabs that Elvis has imported: http://www.gamedude.com.au/arcade. I'm going to go with the cheaper 15khz models over the 31khz (or is it worthwhile paying the extra $700 for the 31khz?) Purchase a PC, JPac and ArcadeVGA, put it all together and enjoy.

 

That's my broadbrush plan, now for the details/questions:

* Is there a better cab to buy? I like the candy cabs and the price point which GameDude offers;

 

* What sort of PC should I go after? I know the main focus is on CPU but do I need to worry about stuff like cache? ie Go for Pentium 4/AMD 64 or the cheaper Sempron/Celeron? Also does a PC tower fit in a candy cab?;

 

* My OS of choice is XP as the FE I want to run is GameEx, but does anyone have any other suggestions? I'll also be using the cab as an MP3 jukebox/movies and all that other Jazz. Plus I'm wanting to boot straight into the FE without seeing the OS and navigate simply by using the arcade controls; and

 

* After reading reviews on the controls of the LS Sound (the cab I intend to buy) which weren't too flattering, I intend on replacing the joysticks and buttons. Any suggestions on good replacement ones? I want to recreate the feel of the Neo Geo candy cabs.

 

Well those are the big ones, there's more but I'll concentrate on solving these ones first. Any help is appreciated. I look forward to showing you guys the finished cab, but I think that will be a few months away :(

 

Cheers,

 

Luke

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G'day Luke,

 

Well I can't offer the kind of advice everyone else will no doubt soon share with you because I don't have the knowledge but I was in your exact position maybe 9 months ago and so I'll tell you what I do know.....

 

- I don't know much about the Game Dude cabs but you can buy cabs alot cheaper but they will be used and possibly knocked around. If you want a brand new cab there aren't too many other options. To offset some of the cost of the upgrade to the 31 kHz monitor version is the fact that you then don't need an ArcadeVGA card ~$150 or so.

 

- As for a pc I read that extra memory is good for mame. I have P4 3.2gHz, 1gig RAM and have not yet encountered any slowing of games. My mate has a P4, 2.8gHz 512mB ram and he has encountered some games (newer shoot 'em ups) that are slow in spots on his but not on mine. So don't know but people said mine was overkill :unsure The pc will very likely fit in your candy cab but I have not put mine in due to space restriction because I have a sub inside my cab. If I got a smaller tower and did some organising it would not be a prob though.

 

- I use xp and mamewah and so far no probs. It was hell for me to set up because that sorta stuff is definitely not my forte. Mine boots straight into mamewah and I control everything from there with the joystick and buttons.

 

- As for controls, I have Sanwa on my Atomiswave cab which I like on most games but others I find them not so great. They are heaps better than MCA imo but I am still looking for my perfect joystick.

 

I hope some of that helps you.

Mark.

 

-

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For the most authentic setup I would stick with the 15Khz cabinet, just personally. The 31KHz cabs look nice for high-res and 3D games, but older games come out looking very blocky if you run MAME through these. Definitely not unplayable, but just not authentic.

 

the benefit of the 31KHz cabs is they will do 640x480 right up to 1024x768, which is good for normal windows games. However if you are going to dedicate this to MAME, I'd stick with the ArcadeVGA+15KHz.

 

Just my 2c. :)

 

Oh, and don't forget that AA members get $100 of the cabs, so make sure to mention the forums when you make the order! Also remember that I'm not in this whole week, so if you want to come and have a look inside a cab, organise a time with me next monday onwards.

 

[edit] Oh, I see your a Sydney resident... obviously you won't just be "popping in for a chat" then. :)

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For the most authentic setup I would stick with the 15Khz cabinet, just personally. The 31KHz cabs look nice for high-res and 3D games, but older games come out looking very blocky if you run MAME through these. Definitely not unplayable, but just not authentic.

QUOTE]

 

you've got better eyesight than me elvis, I play all mine on 31 kHz and can't tell the difference even when I compare to my 15kHz cab next to it. I have heard people say that about pc monitors :unsure maybe I'm just not the detail person :)

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am i the only person who likes the controls on the gamedude cabs? i think they would make a pretty sweet mame machine. most people use the old wooden standup cabs but the newer the better i say. also, a pc would fit pretty easily into one of these, there's a fair bit of room.
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am i the only person who likes the controls on the gamedude cabs? i think they would make a pretty sweet mame machine. most people use the old wooden standup cabs but the newer the better i say. also, a pc would fit pretty easily into one of these, there's a fair bit of room.

That's because with the older ones you don't pay over a grand just for the cab, plus they are more authentic for the older games MOST MAMEers play. Like I've said before though, if price wasn't an issue I'd rather a candy sitting in my back room.

 

As for PC specs it depends what you want to play. If you are into the more recent releases in MAME then go for something quick. Personally I wouldn't be going out and getting the latest and greatest but usually you'll find that price point where the cost really jumps. I'd stay just under that. If you build it yourself and use a micro-ATX M/B you'll have no trouble fitting the components in regardless what cab you get. I couldn't imagine any MAME cab would need more than a gig of RAM either.

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hi luke

 

i use xp to which is alot more customisable (eg replace the xp loading screen with a mame one - i have this if you want it)

 

GameEx is the best front end in my opinion so your right there

 

Candy cabinets, well i dont know to much on them but they look great, although very pricey

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Linux + SVGALib + AdvanceMAME is the only way to fly on real arcade monitors. Of course, it requires quite a bit more effort than the safety of Windows' point'n'click, but the results are far more pleasing. :)
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Linux + SVGALib + AdvanceMAME is the only way to fly on real arcade monitors. Of course, it requires quite a bit more effort than the safety of Windows' point'n'click, but the results are far more pleasing. :)

 

 

I would like to know more. How you configure the thing. My cab could do with a redo of everything. Sounds great.

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My two favourite Linix-cab resources:

 

http://easymamecab.mameworld.net/html/linux.htm

http://web.tampabay.rr.com/whammoed/whammocade/software.htm

 

Basically you have the following components to set up, from bottom to top:

 

1) A working Linux setup. Includes drivers for your input (keyboard/usb/mouse), and output (sound and video via X/FBDev/SVGALib)

 

1a) Video output - you can choose from

* X (ie: X-Windows) - easy to set up, but you need to manually add all your own modelines (ie: resolutions)

* FBDev (FrameBuffer Device) - kernel level driver with good support for common video cards

* SVGALib - low level display library for graphics output.

 

I personally opt for SVGALib due to it's ease of setup and fantastic programmability of video cards (ie: no need for expensive ArcadeVGA's for low-res output). Likewise it is small (just a few kilobytes), and there is no need for a full-blown and bloated graphic setup. My cocktail arcade cabinet has the entire OS plus compile tools plus every single vertical ROM in MAME all squeezed on a 2GB hard disk! Show me a Windows setup that can do that. :) (Note: The "Whammocade" link above uses X/KDE, which I think is a waste of space).

 

2) AdvanceMenu (or whatever frontend you like). I chose AdvanceMenu because it easily sits on top of SVGALib. Not all frontend will wirk under SVGALib, and many require X (which I find bulky and not good for MAME, as it's designed for desktop use instead).

 

3) AdvanceMAME (or any other emulator). I prefer AdvanceMAME with SVGALib as the two of them combined can auto-create modelines on the fly and feed them to a real arcade monitor. Simply tell the software the upper and lower scanrates of your monitor, and it will create the modes on the fly. Arcade perfect timing via arcade perfect resolutions. Very handy. It also works on (S/X)VGA monitors by using double-scan modes, so there's no missing line information or weird effects from scaling images to the non-arcade-standard resolutions that Windows forces.

 

Again, this is NOT a point and click setup. Expect to do a lot of reading, and quite a bit of teeth gnashing. I've helped plenty of folks over on BYOAC by having them post .rc files (config files similar to .ini files in Windows land) and suggesting possible fixes, or guiding them through cryptic compiler output. I'm happy to do the same here, but issue the warning straight up that it is time consuming, and will be NOTHING like Windows (before people start the "why doesn't it work like Windows?" thing :) ).

 

I prefer starting with cut-back distros like Debian or Slackware too. The less clutter on board the better. For the brave you can use Gentoo (my personal favourite Linux distro) or LFS, but I suggest leaving those for folks with plenty of Linux experience. You can install your distro of choice without a graphic system in around 200-300MB of space easily, That will include basic networking tools like wget and ssh to push software/files back and forth between machines, and allow you to slowly build the system up, as well as compilers to make the things you need. Remember if you choose a system that needs kernel information (like SVGAlib) to also install the relevant kernel source and headers from the install CD to match your installed kernel!

 

Yeah... not a short answer, but it never is with Linux. :)

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