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Thread: Anotherfluke's MAME cabinet Journal

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    Default Anotherfluke's MAME cabinet Journal

    Thus begins my oft delayed MAME cabinet journal. It is heavy on pics, so watch out. The journey begins when I move into my new house, whose previous tenants purchased a Marvel Vs. Capcom arcade cabinet which they now wish to sell. I purchase the cabinet in fine working condition for 300 dollars, and begin to think about what I can do to it. I start looking at MAME sites, and while I fully understand how mame works under windows, I'm not very familiar with DOS MAME.

    Here's a list of the sites I started out with:

    http://www.mameworld.net/
    http://www.mameworld.net/pc2jamma/
    http://advancemame.sourceforge.net/
    http://www.ultimarc.com/

    These sites will cover almost everything you need to know. I started out by looking at how to connect my PC to my Arcade Monitor (A philips standard monitor). It turns out that although arcade monitors are running computer hardware, they are doing so at 15khz horizontal frequency; PC monitors run at 31khz, which means I can't connect them without the proper software and hardware. In other words I needed a card which could output a signal low enough, and drivers to tell the card how to do it.

    The second thing I needed was a method of connecting my controls from my Cabinet into my PC. The most common and oft heard method is to take apart a keyboard and solder the wires from the buttons and joysticks to the keys. I wanted to avoid problems of ghosting (where pressing two keys results in a third key being pressed. I also looked at different hardware solutions since I'm not exactly a soldering wizard. In fact, at NO POINT in this entire MAME cabinet journal do I do any soldering.

    The third hardware problem was that the coin mechanisms didn't work. I took at look at them, disassembled them, and after a little toying around, I was able to get one working with a little tweaking. The other one wouldn't work, and I decided to replace the assembly.

    Finally, I needed to add a sound system. The current setup only had one speaker, which was attached to the JAMMA harness. according to the MAME sites I was visiting, there is a powered mono speaker spot on the JAMMA harness, but it is easier to cannibalize a PC speaker setup. So I would have to disassemble a spare stereo system and mount it in the speaker spots up top behind the marquee.

    The cabinet used a JAMMA harness, which I hoped would facilitate an easy transformation, and because of that, I began looking at Ultimarc's hardware solutions.

    I finally decided that a Jpac would be the best solution for all of the above problems. That still left the software solution, but we'll get back to that. Here are some pics:



    Here's the cabinet with the control panel removed. On my machine you can release two latches on the control panel through the coin door, and it flips down. The control panel is attached to a piece of wood that slides into the cabinet at an angle, and in this case had the CPSII board attached to it.



    The whole piece slides out for easy maintenance. It attaches to the monitor and power supply with just 4 harnesses. I got lucky because this cabinet was a breeze to work with at the beginning. Eventually I will mount the PC to this board once I've finished making the MAME cabinet self contained.

    I took off the CPS II board, ordered a Jpac, and removed the speakers from my spare powered speaker set.

    NEXT: Buying Parts, installing the speakers, testing the Jpac and the PC, figuring out the software.

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    Kirby (Level 13) zektor's Avatar
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    Default Yes!

    I have been waiting for your journal on how you are doing with this! Keep it coming! When you finish I am going to PDF it for future reference...as I will be building my own cab in the near future. Perhaps after that I'll ask Joe to host the PDF in the emulator section as it may make good reference for others that would like to try this.

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    I was thinking about doing a webpage about it also, with more specifc information. Part II will be up later tonight.

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    PART II: Buying Parts, installing the speakers, testing the Jpac and the PC, figuring out the hardware.

    I ordered my Jpac online from Ultimarc. The 2 main differences between the Jpac and the Ipac are the Jamma connector and the Monitor interface. On arcade systems that use JAMMA, the JAMMA harness connects the Arcade board to everything: Power, controls, sound, even video. This means that with the Jpac, Ultimarc was able to integrate the video connection by placing a monitor input on the board along with the PS/2 port for the keyboard controller built into it. And using a JAMMA harness means that buttons 1,2, and 3 for player 1 and 2, as well as the controllers, P1 and P2 buttons, and the coin slots are already wired, and the Jpac (and Ipac) are configured to MAME settings meaning they work without additional programming. There are additional screw connectors on the Jpac for buttons 4-8 on Player 1 and Player 2. Thankfully my local Arcade distributor (more on them in a minute) had an extra operator's manual, and the supplemental harness for the 3 kick buttons that most fighters require was the original, meaning that the wires were color coded, and all I had to do was clip, strip and slip them in the screw connectors on the Jpac and my control setup was complete (for buttons. Trackballs and additional buttons may come later). On the control side, the Jpac is identified as a generic HID device (read: keyboard), but uses a superior controller chip and careful planning on the designer's part to prevent ghosting and masking (multiple button presses cancelling each other out). There is a warning about using USB devices in DOS mode on Ultimarc's website, but the USB version of the Jpac that I bought worked fine in DOS mode anyways. At this point I was still hoping to have WindowsXP running everything in the background, and didn't expect DOS to be much of a problem. More on that later.



    Here is the Jpac attached to the JAMMA harness with the PS/2 adapter and Monitor attached. The wires coming out of the upper right hand corner of it are the additional 3 buttons and single ground for Player 1 and 2 (JAMMA harnesses already support 3 buttons per player)


    The Jpac's monitor setup also worked well. It is designed to prevent potentially harmful signals from reaching an arcade monitor, as well as splitting a 31khz signal into two 15khz signals which results in a harmless (to your arcade monitor) and slightly useless double image that at least allows you to see that things are running smoothly. All PC BIOS screens run at this frequency, so everytime you boot up, this is the image you will get. The Jpac monitor adapter also amplifies the input from the PC to arcade levels. For the extra 25 or so dollars the Jpac costs over the Ipac, you really get a great deal of usability and versatility, and I highly reccomend it.



    The first image you might recognize as the BIOS starting up. The second image is the post POST info screen. Here you can see the Jpac doing it's 31khz split job. It's fuzzier in real life than it looks here, and is quite useless except to make sure that you aren't getting a fuzzy wrong screen

    While the Jpac does allow you to connect the computer to the arcade monitor, and it has enhancements and features that assist you with the connection, it isn't the only necessary part. Finding software (specifically drivers) that support the proper frequencies, and hardware (specifically the video card) that can even DO those frequencies is a bit harder. I wasn't up to that challenge yet, so I began preparing the rest of the cabinet for MAME-ification.

    The first thing I thought when I bought this arcade is "I'm going to make a ton of money off of my roomates!" Of course this has yet to pass since they figured out the coin credit button =). But I still want an authentic arcade, which means the coin mech must work. The Jpac and JAMMA harness mean that the coin mech is already set up, and dropping a quarter into a working coin slot will actually give you a credit, just like in a real arcade. My problem is that my coin mechs weren't working. I'd put in a quarter and it would just get returned to me. So I took a look at the coin mech.

    There turned out to be two kinds. One was nice, part metal part plastic; the other was all plastic. In the pic below you can see the sensor for credits in the blue circle, and the weighted mechanism that determines the path of the quarter in the red circle. On the nice coin mech (pictured), in the upper right area of the red circle, you can see a white plastic adjustment screw. I was able to turn this until the weighted wheel in the lower left area of the red circle would deposit quarters past the coin sensor and into the coin box, while tokens would be routed to the return recepticle.



    The other coin mech (easily removed, btw: the whole coinmech assembly is held together by screws where the coin slot and return recepticles are located. take note of the way the assembly is held, however, since on mine, the assembly is held together by a tabs and notches in various spots, and can be a pain to put together by yourself) was all plastic, and after removing it from the assembly I could find no way of adjusting the flywheel. The two green circles do point out spots where the coin mech can be opened for removal of jammed quarters, which was nice. I took this mech out to take with me when I went to buy parts at my local Arcade distributor.



    I went to my local distributor (Mountain Coin, formerly MusicVend, found under amusement in my phone book) to see what they had available. I brought my 'broken' coin mech with me to see if they were a standard size, and if I could get an affordable replacement, and also to see what parts they had available, and whether they were competitive with Happ Controls (http://www.happcontrols.com/) prices. The vendors were friendly and helpful (I think they were just happy to meet a regular guy who knew the difference between leaf and micro switches), and they had everything I was looking for. It turns out the coin mechs are all the same, and they come in two varieties: nice and plastic. I got a new plastic one for 12 dollars (a nice one was about 24), brought it home, and plopped it in. I also picked up a couple of cam locks with the same key to replace the ones on the coin mech and coin box doors. I hope that one day I will be pulling change out of the coin box


    The cam lock keys have replaced my car keys

    Running the speakers through the cabinet was easy. I removed the marquee, and behind it were the two grills for stereo sound (although only one speaker). I removed the original speaker and replaced it with the two speakers from the PC speaker system. There is a subwoofer part as well (pictured below, sitting on top of my PC), which will go on the bottom of the cabinet when the time is right. I made sure that the wires didn't go near any major electronics, and dropped the volume dial down through the grill for the time being so I could adjust the volume with ease.


    if you can't tell, this is the view behind the marquee. The monitor is just below

    The last step before I really had to dig my claws into the meat of the project was to prepare a computer for dedicated MAME goodness. I want to have a good computer (at least 2ghz) in my MAME pc so I can run all the later stuff (Killer Instinct, etc) without problems, but at the time I wanted to have my cabinet up and running for a party that was coming up in about a week, so my clunker, an 800mhz PIII w/512MB SDRAM would have to do. It had a decent video card in it, a Radeon ViVo (Video in, video out) and SoundBlaster Live, as well as a NIC. At this point I was still hoping to run WindowsXP, so I left everything as is, and set about checking compatibility issues. It turns out that ATI cards are perfect for this sort of thing; They are among the few cards that can physically support the necessary 15khz frequency for arcade games, albeit with specific software. The SoundBlaster Live supports SB16 drivers via emulation which will turn out to be important, and everything else was fine. I put together my computer, connected it to the Jpac, connected the Jpac to the JAMMA harness, and put the Jpac and Control Panel Back into the Arcade Cabinet. I ran the Monitor, speaker, and PS/2 wire out the back of the cabinet so I could switch between a PC monitor and the arcade monitor, and keep the PC accessible while testing it.




    I began doing some research into the software necessary. I wasn't sure if I'd be able to get windows to appear properly, and even if I could I wasn't sure it would be worth it, since most arcade monitors support only 320x240 as their max resolution. I decided I'd try running DMAME first then AdvanceMame if DMAME failed, in the Command Prompt, without bringing Windows up at all. This proved almost impossible, because I didn't know how to get the monitor frequency to match. I needed drivers, and had no idea how to get them to work in windows. There was a program called Arcmon which allowed DOS to run on an arcade monitor, and ArcadeOS worked with these programs in DOS as well. It was clear that I'd have to install DOS, and use ArcadeOS if I was going to get anything to work on my MAME arcade.

    NEXT: Testing Software, Testing Software, and Testing Software

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    Crono (Level 14)
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    Good stuff, man, I'm reading it closely. Keep it coming! \^_^/

    Have you considered this video card?

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

    I hear great things about it with arcade monitors.
    Seeking display quality copy of I Want My Mommy for the 2600... if you have one, PM me, I will pay/trade well.

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    Yeah, I thought about getting one of those, but I wanted to try mine first to try and save some cash. It did work out fine in the end. I'll have more info on that in Part III.

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    Nice of you to document the step here for others..

    make sure to post a link on arcadecontrols.com.. I'm sure you can help others there as well.

    As far as the video card goes, if you're going to connect to a real arcade monitor, don't even think about not getting the arcadeVGA... Heck, I would rather hack a keyboard and get the arcadeVGA over buying my J-PAC and using another video card.

    The arcade VGA converts all output to 15khz. So you don't need to make your PC aware of the 15khz output (as you "hack" it with other video cards).

    This means that the BIOS, DOS, Windows, EVERYTHING will work on the monitor! in full screen (not 1/2 screen problems). And to top it off, the ArcadeVGA, in hardware, supports are known arcade resolutions...

    No hacking, no slashing, no extra software, no hardware streatching.. every game would look the way it should in its true native resolution!

    Can life be any better?

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    Outstanding! Looks good! Best of luck with the project.

    Oh, and if you need a home for that CPSII, let me know.

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    PART III: Testing Software

    After my initial failure with windows on my machine, I began looking around various sites to see what my options were. The best choice it looked like was going to be either AdvanceMAME with AdvanceMENU, or AdvanceMAME with ArcadeOS. I started first with AdvanceMAME and AdvanceMENU since they seemed to complement each other nicely, and were still being updated.

    The first thing AdvanceMAME asks you to do is run a program called advcfg. advcfg begins by asking you some questions about the type of monitor you're running, then asks you to center it. After that, you can run a program called advv that lets you tweak the individual screen modes for optimum effectiveness. Unfortunately I never made it that far because everything would crash constantly. I finally switched over to DOS, and things began to run more smoothly.

    Excellent tutorials on tweaking modes for advmame and for DOS can be found at this invaluable website:

    http://www.mame.how.to

    For a better description of how 'modelines' and other video concepts work, try this website:

    http://easymamecab.mameworld.net/

    There are pictures and descriptions of exactly how to do this on the software page. I followed these instructions to get to a point where I could run all the roms I tested and it worked beautifully with AdvanceMAME. AdvanceMENU was a different story. First of all, it was ugly. I couldn't even figure out how to get it to run at first, despite it having a setup procedure that was virtually identical to AdvanceMAME. Disappointed and discouraged, I decided to try ArcadeOS, mainly since the mame.how.to website had detailed instructions for using it, and it was part of the PC2JAMMA website, which I'd trusted up to now. ArcadeOS is a dream to set up, working almost perfectly the first time I tried it.

    A Quick Note: Running anything other than ArcadeOS and AdvanceMAME in dos requires a little driver called ArcMon.sys . This can be found on the mame.how.to site as well as EasyMame. This utility is placed in the DOS directory, and config.sys is edited to add a line that looks like this: device=C:\DOS\arcmon.sys. What this does is overtake the usual DOS VGA drivers, and allows you to work in a DOS environment right on your arcade monitor. There is a similar utility for Windows, but so far I've only found one for Win98, and all I've got anymore is WinXP/2K. Once I find a copy of Win98, I will go back to trying out these custom drivers, but for now ArcMon suits my needs quite well.

    Around this same time, I decided to wipe the HD and start over from the beginning since a number of tweaks and file copying had left my file system in a bit of a mess, and I wanted everything to be as clean as possible. The mame.how.to site has an ISO available for download that it says will install an optimized version of DOS as well as the most current version of ArcadeOS (2.5) and AdvanceMAME (6.2 in this case). I decided to try it out, and lo and behold, it installed a working MAME cabinet in about 5 minutes. The disk asked me a few questions, and two reboots later, all my hard work was duplicated, cleanly and quickly. Only minor tweaks were required for my hardware, but after that point, everything ran beautifully. I began moving all of my ROMS on to the hard drive, and the lengthy process of tweaking my video modes.

    My system currently has a horizontal monitor which runs in EGA (16.5khz) modes. I am able to run most arcade games with this monitor. It took a little tweaking of the vertical hold, since many games use video modes that require a different frequency than the 53khz that my monitor supported, but they work fine for the most part. The vertical games play fine if you are willing to accept a little loss on the bottom and top. After I verified all of the software, and double checked to make sure that my favorites were working, I began the process of mounting the hardware inside the cabinet, and planning my next software task: dual booting with windows, and integrating network support.

    NEXT: Installing a PC inside an Arcade Cabinet

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    Pear (Level 6)
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    anotherfluke:

    OS Choicce:

    Unless your CPU is less than 1Ghz in speed, going with DOS for emulation actually works against you. The reason why you should use Windows (windows XP for ~2Ghz or better!) on new systems for emulations is simple. All H/W speed tweaks today are enabled only by drivers (chipset speed enablement, UDMA HD access, faster memory access, etc). Don't believe me? Press F8 next time your Windows PC reboots, and select "Safe mode". See how much slower your PC runs with all the speed tweaks and drivers not loaded.

    If you run DOS on your fast CPU, you are running with most of these software enabled speed tweaks off, and hence you're wasting your CPU. I've managed to tweak my Windows XP to boot in less than 10 seconds into game play, and best of all.. you can administrate the box from your main PC over the network w/o a person playing on the machine even knowing it.

    VIDEO:

    There is an alternative which will result in super smooth and accurate game play ..

    Here's the text as I read/wrote it on another board. Hope this helps:
    (Mind you that 95-99% of all arcade games ever made run on 15khz CGA monitor mode at 60hz - I've heard that EGA monitors can be easy changed to run at this resultion)

    Mind you it relies on the ArcadeVGA card that makes life so much easier.

    The thing about arcade monitors is that they are not smart enough to switch resolutions and output it nicely. Once you set the resolution to a certain level, and a frequency to a certain level, if you switch resolutions or switch frequencies, you'll have to play with the pots on the monitor (especially the hold ones) to get it to look good again. It's a real pain.. especially if you have a lot of games from different generations. As such, you have to try and fix 2 things.. the resolution and the frequency.

    Here's the trick I use that allows me to play any game perfectly:

    - Since not all arcade games are 60hz frequency, we need to have it stick at 60. That's why I chose to use SmoothMAME. It forces all games to 60hz and they play smoother and nicer on your monitor. Here's a link to more info about it:

    http://www.arcadecontrols.org/yabbse...;threadid=9195

    - The next problem is resolution. I quickly realized that the magic resolution (for me) is 240. 240 lines vertical is about mid-range for most games. All neo geo games are 240 lines vertical, others are at there or less. All the vertical games, and a few others (namly the Mortal Kombat and NBA Jam's are more). For these games, I use H/W streatching. H/W streatching is basically your video card adding more lines than there really are. Think of it as playing a VHS tape on an HDTV.. a game might be only 288 lines vertical, but you tell it to display at 480 lines vertical.

    480 lines is something an arcade monitor can't display.. (not a 15khz one anyways). Yet this resolution is what Daphne runs at, what your Windows OS will run at, etc..

    Here's where the ArcadeVGA shines.. it allows you to run 640x480 on a CGA monitor! It runs it interlaced! So the true resolution is 640x240! (wow! the magic number is back..)

    See how you can now play any game on your arcade monitor and see the full screen perfectly?? Games fall into 2 categories:

    - anything @ 240 lines or less plays at ??? x 240
    - anything over 240 lines gets H/W resampled to ??? x 480

    Now that the resolution is fixed vertically, and with smoothMAME the frequency is also fixed, you will never need to tweak the pots on your monitor and any and all future games will work perfectly.

    Good luck!

    P.S. A really popular and super customizable front end is MAMEWAH .. but that's for another discussion.

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    Wow, thanks for the info, Leonk!

    I've been meaning to get an ArcadeVGA card, as well as upgrade my computer. As it stands I've got an 800mhz PIII in my machine along with an unruly 768 megs of ram (curse you DDR!), so DOS runs everything smoothly. Well, everything that an 800mhz processor can handle. I am planning on eventually moving over to Windows XP when I upgrade my PC parts (In fact I just installed WinXP on the second hard drive in my MAME machine specifically for dual booting until WXP can handle everything), but cost restraints are preventing me from doing so right now. Which is fine for me, because I'm still messing around with windows and whatnot.

    The ISO that I installed took care of all the video mode tweaks for me, and so far I have been able to run every game save a few (720 and it's ilk) by just finding a mode that works on my monitor, no pots adjustments necessary.

    I will definitely look into both smoothMAME and MameWAH for the next upgrade, thanks for the info!

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    PART IV: Installing a PC in an Arcade Cabinet.

    This is the part that I was looking forward to the most. Once I had the machine running the way I wanted it to, I began preparing to install the hardware so the machine would run completely on it's own. This, the initial setup, will see the mounting of the PC hardware, but little else. Once this is complete, I will be done with this iteration of my MAME cabinet. Then work will begin on refining the cabinet. The following list will be things covered once I have the money to take them on:

    1) Currently, the speakers are inside the cabinet, but the subwoofer is on the outside. I will place the subwoofer inside the unit. I will also fix the volume dial in a more permanent position, probably inside the grill of one of the speakers.

    2) Right now, there are 4 things inside the cabinet that use power: The cabinet itself (powering the marquee light, and any JAMMA games I might use), The monitor, the speakers, and the PC. Right now, the Cabinet has a PC style power supply with the in/out style of power cord adapter, and the monitor is plugged into the 'out' spot of the cabinet PS. I will need to buy a second PC Power Supply to chain into the first which will power the PC. I'll also connect the Speaker PS to this, and connect everything to a master switch which will turn everything on and off. I will set it up so that everything begins with the PC PS, and either use the 'off' command that came with AdvanceCAB, or Windows' turn off feature to turn the whole cabinet off via software. If I'm feeling saucy, I may use a proper power distribution block, but we'll see.

    3) A PC Hardware upgrade. I'll eventually replace the PIII with an Athlon, and the video card with an ArcadeVGA card. This might also include a new control panel. As it is, the player 1 and player 2 buttons are way too close together. Some of them are also a bit sticky. I'll be replacing some buttons, and possibly the entire layout.

    Anyways, here is a quick overview of the installation process:

    First, I disassembled the computer into it's component parts. This link will take you to a picture of the components; the second link is more component pics. Aside from the PC components, I also took the case Power supply, and the power switch, in order to turn the PC on and off.
    http://www.kindstranger.com/htdocsol...os/MAME/50.jpg
    All of the PC components: Mobo, Video Card, Sound Card, and NIC: I used a P3BF mobo, Ati Radeon 64ViVo, Sound Blaster Live! and generic 10/100 NIC.

    http://www.kindstranger.com/htdocsol...os/MAME/51.jpg
    The Power Supply, 2 hard drives, and DVD-Rom

    A pic of the supplies needed. As you can see, I didn't need a whole lot. I needed 6 screws for the motherboard, 4 (same size) for the hard drive housing, 6 spacers to keep the mobo raised off of the board (I eventually found rubber beveled sink washers worked perfectly), and zip ties to tame any wiring. I also bought some double sided tape for the Power supply, since it was temporary. I wound up using electrical tape to keep the DVD drive in place, although that will probably be changed eventually. As you can see, mounting the parts was a cheap endeavor.
    http://www.kindstranger.com/htdocsol...os/MAME/52.jpg
    Components: Double Sided Tape for Power Supply, Zip Ties for excess wiring, Beveled Sink Washers, 3/4" screws and 1/2" screws. The hinges were added to a panel in back for convenience.

    I double checked the mounting position of everything, making sure wires reached, and cords didn't interfere. The IDE cable from the DVD drive stretched over the CPU, but didn't touch anything critical, and evrything else seemed to fit without issue.

    Proposed mounting position. I tested cord lengths and positioning to make sure nothing would interfere with anything else.

    The pic in this link is showing me placing the power supply. Before attaching anything, I took a wet paper towel and wiped the board down thoroughly. Not only is dust dangerous around electronics, but I needed a clean surface to mount the power supply with double sided tape. The finished unit will have a better mounting, but this seemed sufficient for the time being.
    http://www.kindstranger.com/htdocsol...os/MAME/54.jpg
    Mounting the power supply.

    The other thing I took from the PC case was the hard drive mount. This particular unit was particularly useful because the mount could be removed from a bottom plate, meaning I could remove the Hard drives without unscrewing anything.

    The bottom plate will be screwed in, and the piece that I'm holding can be removed without screws.

    Here is a closeup of the beveled washer. The link below it shows the placement of the washers on pre-drilled holes where I mounted the motherboard.

    A beveled plumbing washer. Perfect for mounting the motherboard to LDF particle board.

    http://www.kindstranger.com/htdocsol...os/MAME/57.jpg
    Predrilled holes with the washers for the motherboard.

    Once I had everything down, it looked beautiful. I couldn't wait to get it installed and fired up.

    Everything bolted down and attached. Only the video card, sound card, and NIC remain


    The completed board, ready to be installed.


    monitor and keyboard running out the back for easy switching back and forth.

    Once everything was done, I used an A/B box and keyboard to finish any tweaks. For now, the MAME cabinet is done! I've created an Itemized list of all the items I used and the cost of each:

    Pre Owned:
    PC
    -Video Card, CPU, Mobo, Ram, NIC, HDD, CD-ROM, Power Supply
    Speaker System

    Arcade Cabinet:.....125.00
    J-Pac:.....................70.00
    Cam Lock x2:............7.00
    Coin Assembly x1:.. 12.00
    Screws:....................2.00
    Washers:..................3.50
    Tape/Zip Ties:..........3.00
    -------------------------------
    Total:...................222.50


    If people are interested, I can post some pics of the cabinet in action; I'll have a marquee printed out in the next couple of days also, so the finished product will look a little better. Thanks again for the feedback and suggestions, let me know if there's anything you'd like to see or suggest!

  13. #13
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    Oops, Double Post

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    Kirby (Level 13) zektor's Avatar
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    I'd LOVE to see it in action man! Everything looks great. I do notice the MB you have there has one lone ISA slot...whatcha gunna use it for? Sorry...it's just been awhile since I've seen one

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    Pear (Level 6)
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    WOW!

    NICE!

    Here's a couple of suggestions & questions:

    - Position the JPAC in a place where you can easily get to. You'd be surprised how often you'd plug the keyboard back in to tweak stuff. (e.g. pressing F2 in all midway games and changing the volume level from 1% to around 95%!!! or changing the default neo geo level from 4 to a more user friendly level of 1).

    - Be careful with the sub.. unlike the speakers, a sub is not shielded. If you get it close to the monitor, you'll notice the destructive effect it causes. Also, unless very well insulated, a mid range sub can rip a cab apart from the vibration. I'm still trying to figure out what to do with the one that came with my speakers, and I decided to just keep it outside. It's small.. not noticable, and if you keep it on the side at the back, it'll be fine.

    - Why do you have a DVD drive? If you have a 10/100 NIC in the PC, you can always remotly mount your main PC's DVD drive over the LAN..

    - Do a few heat tests... run the cab for 30 minutes and check the heat inside. If it's below 40-45 degrees C, you're good.. otherwise, time to invest in fans. (The reason being that I noticed your PC stuff is pretty close to the monitor rather than down below inside the cab)

    Apart from that, looks amazing! Just don't fall into the trap I'm in now.. any free time I have I play on the arcade machine rather than finish it off..

    GAME ON!!

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    Thanks for the tips, Leonk. The board itself actually sits at an angle when it's fully inserted into the machine, so there's plenty of space between the PC and the monitor, but I'll be doing heat tests anyway since there are no vents on my cab

    The next hardware upgrade (which I neglected to mention) will also see a port on the back with an A/B switch, KB and Mouse ports, as well as USB and NIC. The DVD drive is in there because I don't have the system hooked up to my LAN yet. I actually plan on putting a wireless NIC in it

  17. #17
    Banana (Level 7) § Gideon §'s Avatar
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    Rock on. I read the whole thing. You're my hero.

  18. #18
    Cherry (Level 1) Anotherfluke's Avatar
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    I know it's been forever, but I wanted to update my journal. I'm prepping my MAME machine for sale later this year, and I've been doing some touch ups to it. I added the A/B switch box for easy maintenance, power buttons and switches for both the computer and for the machine itself, and consolidated the power supplies for all involved components for easy 1-switch power on/off.

    I took a couple more pics, which you can see at www.kindstranger.com/index.php?postID=55

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