How to convert an Ultracade to Mame?

[freeder23]

Yes, I have an Ultracade. Yes, I now know how horrible a person I am for having one. Yes, I was stupid.... I bought it on a whim at an arcade auction because it had Street FIghter II and my loves that game... Anyway, now I am trying to make it right.

The Ultracade I have is one of the conversion kits that converts a Jamma cabinet. I'm guessing the Ultracade dates back to around 2000 or 2001 time frame. The cabinet was originally a Killer Instict II from 1996 era. What I want to do is take the Ultracade PC inside and install Windows on it. Then I could install a front end and MAME. Is this even possible? Upon further inspection of the cabinet it appears that the video and keyboard inputs from the PC plug into some type of hardware adapter that is powered by the PC. My hope, is this adapter would still work after installing MAME. Has anyone ever done this? Is it even possible? Am I better off just ripping everything out and starting over? If so, is there a relatively simple way to be able to use the existing arcade monitor?

Thanks in advance for the help!

[BobA]

History of Ultracade

Based on that info the easiest way to get an ultracade working with mame is dump their interface and get an IPAC or KeyWiz and install Mame on the computer from scratch.

[freeder23]

Makes some sense. What about using the existing arcade monitor?

[Dazz]

Makes some sense. What about using the existing arcade monitor?

Jpac from Ultimarc

[Thenasty]

yous houl dnot wipe the Ultracade PC unless you have an image of it.
I say, sell the Ultracade PC with all it's adapters. Keep the CAB and Monitor, Coin Doors and Controls.

Get a a Normal PC, put and OS, MAME, FE and get AVGA Video Card along with Jpac (if the Ultracade uses JAMMA standard).

[Havok]

yous houl dnot wipe the Ultracade PC unless you have an image of it.
I say, sell the Ultracade PC with all it's adapters. Keep the CAB and Monitor, Coin Doors and Controls.

Get a a Normal PC, put and OS, MAME, FE and get AVGA Video Card along with Jpac (if the Ultracade uses JAMMA standard).

I agree with TheNasty; slap that Ultracade pc and interface on GreedBay™ and put a regular pc with an Ipac and AVGA in and you're good to go. Considering how overpriced Ultracades are, you should get enough to cover the costs of a decent pc and the interfaces to at least break even...

[Popcorrin]

I would have to agree with selling the ultracade pc.  I don't think they used much of a computer to power their units anyway.  I think you would be limited on what you could run on it. 

Ultracade did produce a video converter board that converted pc output to either standard or medium resolution for use with an arcade monitor.  I think it was called the uvc and it works pretty good. 
Now I don't know if they used it on all of their machines but I would check to see if there is one and if so it would save you having to buy an arcadevga.  Alot easier to set up too.

[HaRuMaN]

   Set it on fiyah!

[BobA]

Have to agree with the Jpac if the Ultracade interface is Jamma and you have a regular jamma harness in the cab. Even easier than an ipac.

[Charlie97L]

another recommendation here for selling the ultracde specific parts on ebay.  there are doubtless people who would pay a good chunk for that, and you'll be better off spending a few hundred on a current PC to run your mame.

good luck!

[CheffoJeffo]

As I understand it from the documentation, Ultracade came in 4 flavours -- Uprights with 27" VGA, Cabaret with 19" VGA, Cocktail with 25" CGA and a conversion kit (compatible with CGA, EGA and VGA).

First step is to determine which you have, particularly in terms of the monitor. Manuals are available online from GlobalVR:

http://service.globalvr.com/ultracade.asp

While I would love to see someone rework the dedicated computer and, particularly the interface card, that may be more hassle than it would be worth (unless you really like digging into stuff like that ... you may have some driver issues and I haven't heard of anybody breaking the security on the Joshua OS), so I would concur that you should sell the dedicated Ultracade stuff and drop in a normal PC and interfaces.

It looks like the Ultracade is wired to connect via JAMMA harness (with button 4 wired in the harness), with additional connectors on the interface card for buttons 5 and 6 (similar to the JPac), so I would definitely use a JPac for interfacing between the cabinet and the PC. If you have a trackball, I don't know how the interfacing works for Ultracade and can't find any documentation on it, but I would presume that it is a standard arcade trackball that connects to the interface card via some sort of wiring harness. You would need an optical interface to connect to to your PC (Optiwiz, Optipac, etc).

Depending on the monitor you have, you may or may not need a special video card or software solution to drive the monitor at the appropriate resolution and frequency. If you have a CGA (aka standard resolution) monitor, then you can use an ArcadeVGA or a software solution like Soft15Khz. If you have an EGA (aka medium resolution) monitor, then I think you are stuck needing an ArcadeVGA. If you have a VGA monitor, then you can use whatever you like ... just stick to the supported resolutions.

 

[freeder23]

Thanks for all the advice!

I have the conversion kit. The ultracade computer has a hardware adapter on top of it that is converting the controls input to keyboard input on the computer and converting the video. It also has a Jamma adapter. I tried installing Windows 2000 on it with no luck so I reinstalled the Ultracade operating system and put the games back on.

Based on the overwelming input, I think the best way to go is rip out all the Ultracade crap and sell it. Then put in my own computer and use the J-pac. The cabinet was originally a Killer Instinct II. From KLOV, this had a standard resolution monitor. I assume I would need a arcade VGA card to be able to convert the video properly? I'll need to do some more research in that area.

Currently, it has two player control with 6 buttons. I will stick with that for now but want to eventually upgrade to include a track ball and an additional 4-way joystick.