MAME - The Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator.

[Tyler Aviss]

I have an album here. It's pretty hastily thrown up on FB though,
without rotating or a step-through. Later I'll post it on my webpage

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=184403&id=585701916&l=3af18b43c3

They don't reflect all the recent changes, but covers the basics. The
thing was in deep need of some TLC/cleaning when I got it.


On Wed, Jun 16, 2010 at 10:51 AM, Colin McGregor <colin.mc151-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> On Wed, Jun 16, 2010 at 1:15 PM, Tyler Aviss <tjaviss-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org> wrote:
>> I just finished gutting and rebuilding an arcade cabinet with a linux-based
>> MAME setup actually. Still trying to find an optimal front-end for a "no
>> keyboarf no mouse" experience though
>
> Cool.
>
> Okay some questions:
>
> - How did you get your arcade cabinet? If there is a shop (or shops)
> in the GTA that sell used arcade machines suitable for conversion I
> would love to include them on the GTALug MAME page.
>

I actually bought mine off a co-worker's son, who happened to be one
of those packrat types that had collected a few old cabinets (that was
the only one he's sell though).

> - Where did you get parts to fix / refurbish your cabinet? Again
> something for the Wiki...


I gutted the internals, including the power supply, boards, speakers,
and a rather heavy old CRT, etc. I kept the frame, joystick/buttons,
coin-door assembly, etc.

The computer stuff just came from a normal PC, of course, and a pair
of powered speakers to replace the one that was amp'ed by the internal
power supply. I still need to replace the backlight on the sign (the
ballast appears to be dead) and print up something "prettier" with
colour as well for that.

I used an LCD that I found at Active Surplus quite a long time ago. It
was already out of the bezel etc so it worked nicely after I figured
out the modelines.

To interface with the PC, I picked up a "I-PAC 2" from ultimarc.com.
That can be wired to the buttons (common ground, and one wire per
each) and then acts like a keyboard giving off MAME-friendly codes.
The only real work I had to do was wiring it up properly, and adding a
UDEV entry to set permissions correctly.

http://www.ultimarc.com/ipac1.html

They also have an "economy" version of the I-PAC, which is similar but
with less inputs and you can't permanently save button layout changes
(but the defaults worked just fine for me anyhow).

>
> - What sort of CPU are you using to drive the cabinet and how does it
> perform on games from say the 1990s (ie: I would love to see advice on
> how good (or bad) a machine you can use to drive a MAME system).
>
> Colin.

I believe it was a 2.5Ghz Celeron. I haven't found anything that it
won't run as of yet.
I've played with MAME running on a 1Ghz Via EPIA, and most stuff even
ran OK on that.


Now if anyone can recommend a UI that works well with the joysticks
etc so I can dump the mouse... that'd be awesome.


Let me know if you need more info.

- TJA

>
>> On 2010-06-16 10:08 AM, "Colin McGregor" <colin.mc151-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org> wrote:
>>
>> On Tue, Jun 15, 2010 at 12:59 PM, Christopher Browne <cbbrowne-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org>
>> wrote:
>>> On Tue, Jun 15, 2...
>>
>> Good stuff... Quick question, has anyone on this list built a MAME
>> cabinet (or taken an old video game cabinet and refurbished it to play
>> MAME)? If so, I would love to pick your brain for a bit :-) .
>>
>> Colin McGregor
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-- 
Tyler Aviss
Systems Support
LPIC/LPIC-2/CLA

“It can takes months to gain a customer, but only seconds to lose one"
--
The Toronto Linux Users Group.      Meetings: http://gtalug.org/
TLUG requests: Linux topics, No HTML, wrap text below 80 columns
How to UNSUBSCRIBE: http://gtalug.org/wiki/Mailing_lists