thinking about building a mame cabinet- questions

ganonbanned · Post by **ganonbanned** » Wed Nov 15, 2006 7:19 pm

Now I know I made a topic about this a few months, but I never got around to doing it. It costed too much money, and im planning my long-awaited DCp (which I cant work on because im grounded until I get my grades up) and I wouldnt do this right now, but I would probably start once I get a job... (hopefully this summer) I have all my questions in a packet I made, basically all questions I asked and people answered. how much do you think it would cost for this stuff?

windows 95 PC (w/ keyboard and mouse)
arcade controls for a 4 player game, with joystick, d-pad, and 12 buttons each
custom built cabinet for a 4 player game.
TV-out card

also, what is a good word-based linux?

atari2600a · Post by **atari2600a** » Wed Nov 15, 2006 7:23 pm

I'm sure you'll only need 6 buttons for most games. There's no need for 15 each...

ganonbanned · Post by **ganonbanned** » Wed Nov 15, 2006 7:28 pm

atari2600a wrote:I'm sure you'll only need 6 buttons for most games. There's no need for 15 each...

N64:
C buttons (4)
A
B
z
L
R
start
select (not on N64, but this also has NES and SNES)

atari2600a · Post by **atari2600a** » Wed Nov 15, 2006 7:34 pm

That's MESS you're thinking of...

MAME=Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator
MESS=Multi Emulator Super System

I understand now why you'd want 15 buttons...

ganonbanned · Post by **ganonbanned** » Wed Nov 15, 2006 7:44 pm

atari2600a wrote:That's MESS you're thinking of...

MAME=Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator
MESS=Multi Emulator Super System

I understand now why you'd want 15 buttons...

OK can I use maximus arcade with this?

atari2600a · Post by **atari2600a** » Wed Nov 15, 2006 7:54 pm

I didn't see N64 on their homepage. (though I have a strong history of overlooking things no matter what)

Anyways, I doubt a Win95 machine would even run an N64 emulator, as it requires a 3D-accelerating graphics chipset, a processor of probably at least 600MHz, & probably a newer version Direct X or OpenGL.

(BTW, MAME & MESS use practically the same source)

Post by **Triton** » Wed Nov 15, 2006 10:11 pm

my 500mhz compaq with win98 would run nineteen64 at acceptable framerates, i would suggest at least 800mhz tho, the most you can afford really

ganonbanned · Post by **ganonbanned** » Thu Nov 16, 2006 7:12 am

Triton wrote:my 500mhz compaq with win98 would run nineteen64 at acceptable framerates, i would suggest at least 800mhz tho, the most you can afford really

The one im really worried about is the cabinet. Im not tearing up an old cabinet to do this. last years constrution class proved I couldnt build my own. aprox. how much would one cost?

Krepticor · Post by **Krepticor** » Thu Nov 16, 2006 11:22 am

hows about you take good measurements and use the template method with some structured geomatry...much cheaper

and they runn about $600 or so...but mostly they want to sell you a cab with the hardware in it...

ganonbanned · Post by **ganonbanned** » Thu Nov 16, 2006 3:40 pm

Krepticor wrote:hows about you take good measurements and use the template method with some structured geomatry...much cheaper

and they runn about $600 or so...but mostly they want to sell you a cab with the hardware in it...

there goes my 360and wii funds

Krepticor · Post by **Krepticor** » Thu Nov 16, 2006 4:26 pm

not if you take carefulmeasurements and build your own...

ganonbanned · Post by **ganonbanned** » Thu Nov 16, 2006 4:45 pm

Krepticor wrote:not if you take carefulmeasurements and build your own...

I could probably get my uncle to build one now that I think about it...

so whats a good word based linux program

atari2600a · Post by **atari2600a** » Thu Nov 16, 2006 6:22 pm

Don't you mean "what's a good non-gui (no x-serv) Linux Distro?"

loup · Post by **loup** » Sun Nov 19, 2006 2:10 am

I'm going to try to skirt any taboo topics here in this post, but talking about mame or any form of game emulation I think cuts it close.

First off, I think you're skipping around a bit in your planning.

The first thing you want to do is figure out what types of systems you are trying to emulate, and how easily this can be done given your situation.

It sounds like you want to go with MESS rather than just MAME

Going with just MAME would be easer, most MAME games have lower hardware requirement as far as processing speed and memory, and don't rely on a good video card at all (unless it's changed recently, MAME doesn't use the video card to actually render the video, it does it with the CPU.) It also requires less hard drive space, the ROMs are about 15GB and the CHDs are around 35GB. The more systems you add, the more hard drive space you will need. It's also easier to get the MAME roms than many other systems. It's also easier to design you control layout, figure out what games you think you'd like to play and design your controls to best fit those games.

If you really want to go with MESS, I would suggest just designing a simple control layout for the arcade type games you want to play, and then invest in or build some USB N64, SNES, NES type controllers and just plug them in as you need them, it's a lot easier and more comfortable.

Once you've decided what game systems you are emulating, figure out what kind of computer you are going to need, 500-800Mhz is plenty for most, I would recomend around 1Ghz personally, especially if you want to emulate N64. Keep in mind that there are some arcade games that won't play well even at 1Ghz, there are some that won't play well with even a 3Ghz processor, it's just the way things go.

Ultimarc has a great tool for designing your own control layout called WinIPAC, it's free, they've also got a product for sale that will let you interface the arcade controls with your computer, there are other ways of doing it that might be cheaper, but I personally think theirs is the best option.

My guess is that you would want to go with a regular PC monitor or possibly a tv screen for your cabinet, but you could also go with a real arcade monitor. The real arcade monitor is the most expensive route, a TV would be the cheapest I think, but you'd have to use a video card that supported it and also make sure that whatever your eventual OS choice was that it would properly display everything on the TV. The computer monitor is sort of a middle ground.

And lastly, the actual cabinet. I'm going to push building it yourself on you, it's one of the more exciting and fulfilling parts of building your cabinet and allows you to truely customize it for yourself. Have your mom, dad, uncle billy, the homeless guy living in the underpass, anyone help you, just make sure that you're the one building it.

If you do just buy a prebuilt, it will probably be more expensive, if it comes with some sort of monitor, great. If not, you'll have to make sure you get one that fits properly.

And somewhere in all of this you should probably decide what OS you want to go with to run this whole thing. Most people that I know use either DOS or some flavor of stripped down Windows.

If you want to go with linux I'll throw in my minimalistic favorite, DSL. Even though it's meant to be a live CD, it works just fine as a hard drive install, and is a derivative of Debian, a pretty mature version of linux. It does include a GUI, but it's small and fast.

Anyway, that's my advice for the evening, whatever you decide, have fun with it