New to the board. Input needed on project.

[92greenyj]

Hi all. New here. I am actually an arcade manager. I run the arcade at the Corvette Diner and Gamers Garage in San Diego California.

Anyway. I have a home/personal project that I am asking about. I have a 1980 Pacman cabinet that was converted to a Ms. Pacman via a marquee switch and the original Ms. Pacman daughter board. It hasn't worked in several years due to a bad monitor. My Mom has finally decided that she wants to get it going again. Her original intent was to sell it, but after making some calls to my distributors and doing some research, I just don't think we would get enough out of it right now to be worth it. Now of course we love Ms. Pacman, but there are many other classics we all enjoy as well, so I am going to do a MAME conversion, but of a different sort.

My plan is to do this in such a way that we can easily convert it back to its original condition easily. I plan to remove the Ms. pac marquee, control panel, bezel, and the bad monitor. I am going to leave the original boards and such in place as theres a ton of room to slap a computer tower in there as it is. I am going to build a slitghtly larger control panel to take the place of the original using the original mounts and put a LCD monitor under a piece of plexi where the original monitor goes.

What do you all think? is this a good idea?

EDIT: this project is a home/personal project. Not for my Arcade that I run.

[Slippyblade]

Possibly.  First thing to keep in mind is that using MAME to make money is a big no-no. 

On the technical front you might want to look at the Jamma2Mame project.  They are doing exactly what you are talking about.

[92greenyj]

More questions. (thru just reading I saw several claim time outs and lost posts, hence the multiple posts.)

I just won this tower on ebay:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=220594219142&ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT

obviously the hard drive won't cut it. but I have a plethora of computer parts laying around. including a 120 gig and a 160 gig hard drive. My plan is to put both of them in. Add some Ram, etc. it comes without an OS so I am going to download and install TinyXP on it. I also plan to add a better graphics card (again, i have a few laying around). I also plan to install a wireless card with an antenna on top of the cabinet so I can download games straight to the tower whenever I want. Good idea?
Will this computer handle most MAME games?

For my control panel I am planning to do a 2player panel. an 8 way joystick per player with 6 buttons (my wife loves fighters) with a dedicated 4 way stick and 2 (maybe 3. whats better?) buttons in the middle for games like Ms. Pac, DK, etc. player 1 and 2 coin up and start. then top center a triangle of admin buttons. (pause, enter, escape)
I am also planning to hide a keyboard and mouse in a drawer built into the bottom front of the CP for when I want to get online to DL stuff to the cabinet.

Controller will be the Ipac.

So what does everyone think? thoughts, ideas, and input are greatly appreciated as this is all pretty new to me. including the PC stuff. I'm a Mac guy

[92greenyj]

Possibly.  First thing to keep in mind is that using MAME to make money is a big no-no. 

On the technical front you might want to look at the Jamma2Mame project.  They are doing exactly what you are talking about.

Sorry, forgot to mention this is for home personal use. Not for my work.


oh yeah, and i forgot, what front end does everyone prefer?

[92greenyj]

Bueller? Bueller?

[kegger]

 what front end does everyone prefer?
[/quote]


I use Mala but there are alot to choose from.

[severdhed]

sounds like an interesting project...here are my 2 cents....


Definitely keep the cabinet so that it can be restored later.

How big of a control panel do you plan on installing in there, and how do you plan to attach it so that it doesnt look weird?

as for a front end, MALA is the way to go, it is easy to set up and easy to build a custom theme.

personally, if this were my cabinet, i would set it up so that it looks like a standard pacman cab, with the normal control panel and a vertical monitor, and set it up to run mame, with all the games that are playable with only a 4way stick.  you would also have the two start buttons, which could double as action buttons if you needed them to.  this is what i am doing with my Donkey Kong cabinet.  the control panel will be just like the original, and it is set up to run the 30 or so games that have a vertical monitor, and can be controlled with a 4way stick and 1 button.  i recently decided that the two start buttons could also be used for action buttons for specific games, so i added Tutenkham, which is alot of fun.   of course this is your cabinet and you can do what you want to with it, but i think adding a frankenpanel to a pacman cabinet just seems wrong.  you would be better off getting a generic empty cabinet for an all-in-one mame machine, and keep this one dedicated to the classics.

[drventure]

+1 for Mala

Hyperspin sure looks pretty slick, but personally, i think it's a bit over the top in terms of animation and "crap flying around" 

I really just depends on what you like.

Emulaxian is pretty nice too, if you can get over the incredibly huge hurdle of actually configuring it 

[opt2not]

+1 to Mala.

Mala makes you hollah!

[92greenyj]

sounds like an interesting project...here are my 2 cents....


Definitely keep the cabinet so that it can be restored later.

How big of a control panel do you plan on installing in there, and how do you plan to attach it so that it doesnt look weird?

as for a front end, MALA is the way to go, it is easy to set up and easy to build a custom theme.

personally, if this were my cabinet, i would set it up so that it looks like a standard pacman cab, with the normal control panel and a vertical monitor, and set it up to run mame, with all the games that are playable with only a 4way stick.  you would also have the two start buttons, which could double as action buttons if you needed them to.  this is what i am doing with my Donkey Kong cabinet.  the control panel will be just like the original, and it is set up to run the 30 or so games that have a vertical monitor, and can be controlled with a 4way stick and 1 button.  i recently decided that the two start buttons could also be used for action buttons for specific games, so i added Tutenkham, which is alot of fun.   of course this is your cabinet and you can do what you want to with it, but i think adding a frankenpanel to a pacman cabinet just seems wrong.  you would be better off getting a generic empty cabinet for an all-in-one mame machine, and keep this one dedicated to the classics.

I appreciate the input. this is the kind of stuff I was looking for!

for the control panel. I first removed the original and took a lot of measurements. (this is something i have kind of already started to toy with while I wait for my pc to come in) Took some with the original panel in place as well. the original panel mounts simply enough. two alignment pegs at the top, and two panel clips (the metal latch type) one on either side. Basically I added about 4"s to the length of the original control panel (started with 6"s) and made a cardboard template. Once I had the first cut I taped it in place of the original panel to get an idea of size. it stuck out too far so I cut it down by 2"s and got it to a size that personally I don't feel looks too large to have been there from Namco. So i took that template and cut 3 more out of cardboard at the same size. Then I drew out a 1/2" x 1/2" grid. marking my center lines and where they intersect so I knew where my dead center was. I measured a stock button from the original CP for size and got the joystick dimensions from Happs website then sat down with one template at a time, a ruler, a pencil, and a compass and sketched out a few different button layouts and configurations on each one until I got something I was happy with.

My plan is to make it mount in the exact same way the original does. Again, I dont want to physically alter the cabinet if at all possible. the original control panel also has about 2.5"s of "underhang" (technical term) so I will extend that out as well and come up with some method to hide a door in the front of it that will conceal a slide out tray with a keyboard and mouse in it for when I want to get online to get more roms or what have you. Again, plan is to have a wireless card on the PC inside the cab with an antenna mounted on top of the cab somehow. This will allow me to update and such without pulling everything out of the cabinet.

[nitz]

Another vote for Mala!

Seriously, every other FE I've tried made me want to slam my head against the wall just trying to configure the thing! I could probably figure them out if I really wanted to, but I don't want to devote a day and a half to setting up a front end. Mala is really easy to configure. There are lots of skins you can download for it and if you have any art skills and the right software, making your own skin shouldn't be too tough either.

Good luck on this project! I'm envious. A tasteful MAME of an old Midway Pac/Ms. Pac/Galaga style cab is actually the project I really wanted to do. It's my favorite cab. Alas, I have never seen one for sale around here (and even if I did find one, the price would be ridiculous judging by the stuff I have seen in my local classifieds ) So I'm just making a generic cab as Ms. Pacman like as I can.

Can't wait to see how this turns out!

[92greenyj]

Nitz,
thanks for the input. I agree with not wanting to spend hours configuring a front end. I will definitely look into Mala.

As for my conversion, My cab is in pretty good shape for the most part. though the paint need s a bit of work. Somebody did a pretty piss poor touch up job on it in the past. Used the wrong yellow in a few areas and actually painted over a little bit of the Pac side art. My plan for that is to get some transfer paper rolls and mask the whole side of the cabinet and kick panel (where the shody paint is). I plan to use transfer paper as it will be easier to see thru than my standard blue masking tape. then I'm going to spend what I am sure will be a fair few hours tracing everything out with an exacto knife, peeling and painting to try to restore the paint. My plan is to then paint the new control panel like the original Pacman control panel overlay. (the dots around the edges, pac and the ghosts, etc.) hopefully I can find a Pacman font to use for the button labels as well. then maybe get a marquee made. think I'm gonna dub this project Pac-Mame. I also want to do a Pac inspired bezel around my 21" LCD monitor that I will be using in place of the currently dead 19" original monitor.

Which leads me to another question. Obviously the original monitor is mounted vertically in orientation. should I mount the LCD in the same manner? or have it mounted horizontally as the screen would normally be oriented if it were sitting on my desk? if rotated 90 degrees and mounted vertically, how could I make the image on the screen match that orientation?

[nitz]

Which leads me to another question. Obviously the original monitor is mounted vertically in orientation. should I mount the LCD in the same manner? or have it mounted horizontally as the screen would normally be oriented if it were sitting on my desk? if rotated 90 degrees and mounted vertically, how could I make the image on the screen match that orientation?

Have a look at the following options in the MAME ini: ror, rol, autoror, autorol. Those are what you need to play with to get vertical games displaying the way you want - I can never remember which it is off the top of my head, and it will depend on whether you're turning your monitor clockwise or counterclockwise.

Alternatively, if you mount it horizontally, you can run the vertical games pillarboxed. Of course this will make them much smaller than if the monitor was mounted vertically - on a 21" 4:3 monitor it will probably be in the neighborhood of the equivalent of a 15" or 16" vertical monitor.

If you're not planning on a rotating monitor, I would decide which games are most important to you on this cab - horizonatal or vertical - then mount it that way and realize that the games in the other orientation will be much smaller.

Hope this helps.