MAME/Supergun hybrid cabinet?

[sisko]

The Neo Geo topic in the VG forum gave me an idea...

I know relatively little when it comes to building a MAME cabinet, and even less when it comes to building a Supergun.

Is it even possible to make a hybrid cabinet using some sort of advanced "KVM" switch?

[chadtower]

Anything is possible. The questions are things like "can it be done with off the shelf components" and "how much work would it be" and "is it cost effective".

[xertcev]

The JPac will do that for you:
http://www.ultimarc.com/jpac.html
It let's you run Jamma and a PC in the same cabinet.

[sisko]

Excellent!

Bear with me here...some really stupid questions coming up...

How the hell do you connect these?

I hear IPAC is the best keyboard emulator, but how do you use them in conjuction with each other?

It looks like I wire the controls into the IPAC, and connect the output to the input of the JPAC, and the output of the JPAC to the keyboard on the PC?

The JPAC looks like it has inputs for controls too. Or are those jumpers between the JPAC and IPAC?

I need to hook the VGA on the JPAC to something too, but what?

[xertcev]

I don't have a jpac (but an older ipac) so don't quote me on this :)

You actually use a jpac in place of the ipac.
The jpac supports 3 buttons that usually would be wired to the
jamma connector. You can add more buttons to those screw
terminals on the jpac, if you want more than three.

The VGA connector would connect to your PC's video out

A very good site I always recommend: (If you haven't seen it yet)
http://www.arcadecontrols.com/arcade.htm

[Anonymous]

I just purchased a jpac last week, and it was a snap (literally) to set up! the jpac does incorporate the ipac with it, and for the relatively small price difference, is definitely the way to go, especially if you've already got a JAMMA harness in your cabinet. Here's how mine worked.

I had a six button fighter wired up with the first three buttons, monitor, power, and coin slots going to the JAMMA board via a JAMMA harness. The other three buttons were wired via a second harness. When the jpac arrived, I first connected the jpac to my computer along with a monitor A/B switch so that I can go between modes (when I get an arcade signal I switch to the arcade monitor, when I get a PC signal, ie Windows, I switch back to the PC monitor). I also connected it using the supplied PS/2 to USB cable (I got the USB ver). Then I cut the wires for the extra three buttons off of the extra, smaller harness and attached them to the screw spots on the jpac, and that was it! Once I snapped the Jpac into the JAMMA harness, everything was recognized! The jpac and ipac are automatically configured to MAME controls as default, so I didn't have to rewire anything or change anything; the controllers and coin box worked just like that!

The monitor on the other hand is more complicated to set up. The jpac is designed to allow you to hook it up, and will spare your monitor sometimes, but the A/B switch is the best option to protect your monitor from damage. It only works in certain frequencies (the arcade monitor), and if you have an ATI card then you will be fine, BUT you still need to use certain software for it to work properly. Also, regular MAME or windows MAME will not work. You must use a modified DOS version of MAME, like DMAME or ADVMAME. These emulators allow you to tweak the video modes so that they will work on your PC.

By far, the easiest way to set everything up is to use the jpac, and get a dedicated PC with hard drives that are formatted to FAT32 (NTFS won't work), then grab the ISO off of this website:

http://www.mame.how.to

called the Boot CD. It automatically installs DOS, ADVMAME and ARCADEOS. Once you run this utility, it tells you when to hook it up to your arcade monitor. You do some quick tweaks, it asks you some simple questions, and one or two reboots later, you have a working MAME cabinet. Absolutely amazing. I will have a full journal and thread about this shortly, once I've finished tweaking my cabinet.

[sisko]

I will have a full journal and thread about this shortly, once I've finished tweaking my cabinet.

Good, because I didn't understand a damn thing you said LOL

It helped a little though...

It explained the lack of inputs on the JPAC, and that I need to find a JAMMA harness.

Does HAPP sell harnesses too?

[Anonymous]

They do, but if you buy a cabinet with a game in it, and it's not a specialty cabinet, then there is an excellent chance there will be a JAMMA harness inside. If you are going to go the SuperGun route, and hook all of your stuff up to a standard television, then talk to Captain Wrong, as he built his awhile ago. What I did is hook up PC >Arcade Monitor. What a SuperGun does is hook up ArcadeBoard >Regular TV.

[sisko]

FABombjoy is hooking me up with a free Tempest cab, but is keeping the harness because he needs it.

Apparantly I got the terminology wrong though. This won't be a supergun because I intend to use a 19" (S)VGA monitor

I just want to be able to run MAME, and use actual PCBs through the JAMMA interface if I have one all in the same cab..

[FABombjoy]

The Tempest harness isn't JAMMA, so I don't think it would be of much help in your project (unless you want to do a lot of cut and splice work & have to run a lot of additional wiring). It would be a ton easier to pick up a prewired harness for your project.