Tech help: MAME machine I bought off of e-bay 9 years ago is dead...

[DefJam]

Hi BYOAC,

It's been awhile since I lurked and posted. (actually since I built my pinball mame machine).... anyhow.... I could use a hand...

A long time ago, probably 7-8 years ago I bought a mame machine off of e-bay.  And it worked nicely for quite awhile.  I moved, and unfortunately it does not appear it made the trip well.   I believe it is the PC that is bad.....  I'm getting a whole series of beeps.... almost to a tune..... 2, 1, 8, 1 ,2.... or something along those lines.... many many beeps.   I tried hooking it up to a pc monitor and get nothing there either... so PC is definitely shot.   Trouble shooting so far:  I unplugged the hard drive, got same series of beeps, unplugged graphics card and sound cards, same series of beeps.

Also important to this is that there is a 3dfX card in the machine that is feeding the arcade monitor.  The person who built this machine did a nice job and attached a normal PC monitor plug to the monitor...... so essentially the monitor can simply plug into the graphics card.

I have 2 options that I'm open to but need a bit of advice on both:

1.  Assuming it is the motherboard that is bad, can I take another old PC and just replace the motherboard/powersupply in the arcade machine ?  (basically use the existing hard drive and graphics card that are in the arcade machine now).  This is my cheapest option as I have an old PC I could just hack apart for this.(I think this would work).

2.   I wouldn't mind putting in more modern PC, adding some lights to the buttons, putting in a nice front-end, etc.....   If I bought an arcadeVGA, and put it a new PC, could I simply plug the monitor into it and be back in action ?

I'm sure I missed relevant info......let me know if you have any reco's.

JIm

[Havok]

Have you re-seated the memory? That is included in the POST, and would cause the pc to beep on boot if not connected properly. Also, if you carefully count the beeps and pauses between you can determine what the computer error is, assuming you can get the codes for that motherboard.

As far as your other questions; (1) most likely not. You can try, but don't be surprised if you get a Blue Screen of Death (assuming windows)

(2) Considering the age of the pc, this is really the best option, to start over. If you go the ArcadeVGA route, get the breakout cable to connect to your monitor. If you're lucky and have a Wells Gardner monitor, it will directly connect to it.

[Hoopz]

If you do have to replace the motherboard, it's not as easy as putting a different one in there.  If the machine is running Windows, it may not like a motherboard change as motherboard specific files are included in the Windows installation.

I'd suggest replacing the machine with a "newer" PC.  Maybe not brand new, but if it's 8+ years old, then it can't be very fast.  You may find a used machine for free that's better than what you have now.  I'd guess maybe it's a 1.2 Ghz or something around there?

[kegger]

As Havoc mentioned reseating the memory and then I would go through the whole pc and reseat every card, memory, plug, and connector and see how you make out as you might just get lucky and fix it.

[Havok]

Good site with beep code troubleshooting:

http://www.computerhope.com/beep.htm

[shardian]

I just had an Emachines pc that was beeping/not working fixed. The culprit - memory.

[northerngames]

yeah I would go down the mobo and 1 stick of ram to start and go from there if you have onboard video but if not just start with the video card and 1 ram stick and then add 1 at a time.

make sure your hdd is set to master the cd drive to slave on their jumpers.

usually the beeps are bad seated ram cards or the jumpers above are not set right. at

you have power so at least you can test things still so thats good .

 

[DefJam]

I tried reseating everything..... one ram stick at a time..... no luck...   (did this a a few times).
I did not check jumpers, I'll go back downstairs and try that now.
I actually had the beeping problem once before but that was for a dead battery on the board, much fewer beeps then this.

It was a bit older then I thought.... Looks like it is an AMD athlon from 1999.  Just think how far computers have come since then.....

Well if, the jumpers don't solve the problem, I think I'm giong to try and put in the montherboard and power supply from my HP from 2000 that is just laying around..... (and won't boot because XP is full of junk and I think the machine has no memory to speak of.  As you guys mentioned, probably will be all kinds of driver issues, but maybe I'll get lucky.

Next post may be,  "looking for cheap new PC" to bring machine back to life.....

[DefJam]

That didn't turn out so well.  Good news was that my old celeron hp use to boot. Swaped in the video card and hard drive from the mame.  Got one beep while booting   Went to reboot and nothing completely dead

so I have two dead pc. Going to call that a night

[Kman-Sweden]

It's a stupid thing but a PC won't boot if the keyboard is missing... Should complain about it on the screen...
Also my HTPC is really sensitive about it's RAM. I had to put it in and pull it out (hold the phun jokes, ok!?) and wiggle it a couple of times to get the PC to boot. The MB bends a bit while inserting the RAM and that made for some bad connections.

[Havok]

I had to put it in and pull it out and wiggle it a couple of times

Must... resist...

[HaRuMaN]

I had to put it in and pull it out and wiggle it a couple of times

Must... resist...

Rofl... you beat me to it

[Gatt]

It's unlikely you're going to be able to do a straight motherboard/processor swap.

The video card in that computer is going to be PCI or AGP,  motherboards don't ship with AGP ports anymore,  and most only ship with a single PCI slot at best.  The memory definitely won't fit,  as it should be SDram or maybe even EDORam,  and I doubt you'll find a board that'll accept anything less than DDR,  probably nothing less than DDR2.

In honesty,  you're building or buying a new computer.  Which isn't necessarily a bad thing,  given how old that system is,  it'll open up the possibility of alot of new games...

[DefJam]

Ok, you guys convinced me, time to build/buy a new computer.  Not sure if I should start a new thread here or not.....

Any recommendations ?

Ideally, I can get this done fast quick and cheap (still want to build my dream mame machine, but the control panel on this one isn't going to let me do that).....  I'm ok totally ok if it doesn't run the latest games, really interested more in the older stuff.

So, I need to be able to connect to arcade monitor, so I'm assuming I will need arcadevga, I'd like to run a front-end...... Hyperspin looks very cool, but I'm open to other options if that is a resource hog (not sure as I've been out of this scened for awhile, and now have twins... so time is.... well, I don't have much   )  Probably don't need a case as I could just mount this to the board inside the machine....
Not sure what type of CPU would be best here.

Open to any help.  Thanks.

[HaRuMaN]

What's your budget for a new PC build?  That would be helpful in telling you what you could get...

FWIW... you can build a dual core AMD system with 2 gigs of ram for a pretty reasonable price.

[DefJam]

I would have to prioritize in this order: easy, cheap, power.  If I build too good of a PC, that is going to lead me to want a new control panel, then a new cabinet, and costs will escalate quickly.

Looking at the ArcadeVGA the AGP version is half the price of the newer version.... 

Would love to be able to get this done for under 200 bucks, but can go higher if needed.

[Hoopz]

Do you know what version of Mame you had on that PC?  Any idea of what version that you want to upgrade to?  That may drive some of the discussion about what speed you'll need for the PC.

Congrats on the twins.  I have a set that are 16 months old so I understand the lack of time you mentioned.

[DefJam]

Thanks Hoopz.  The twins are really fun.  Mine are at about 13 months now and just into absolutely everything...  it's amazing to watch them learn, but yeah, there is not much free time.

Regarding the version of MAME, unfortunately I don't know but it was over 10 years old (and I think DOS based)... so many versions ago.  I wasn't running virtua fighter for instance so i guess I'm looking to run stuff pre 1993.

Would you guys have reco for a version of MAME that was fast and ran everthing from mid 90's and prior ? 

maybe I should put in a new post as this is off the subject.

[Gatt]

I would have to prioritize in this order: easy, cheap, power.  If I build too good of a PC, that is going to lead me to want a new control panel, then a new cabinet, and costs will escalate quickly.

Looking at the ArcadeVGA the AGP version is half the price of the newer version.... 

Would love to be able to get this done for under 200 bucks, but can go higher if needed.

Well,  at ~$300-350 you may be able to get into an E-machines.  I just helped a friend build a quad-core AMD with 4 gigs of memory and a terra for under $600.  Not much I can think of at $200 other than craig's list or ebay and alot of prayers they don't rob you.

[HaRuMaN]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboDealDetails.aspx?ItemList=Combo.343468