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Advice on how hard this would be to convert to MAME

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markronz:

Hello everyone-
   I have built two arcade machines so far.  Both have been relatively "from scratch".  But recently a friend of mine approached me.  He is considering converting his existing cocktail cab into a MAME one.   Attached below are two pictures of his cabinet.   I haven't seen it in person yet, but he said it's one of those 60-in-1 type games that you see in bars.  So I would assume this is a Jamma board, right?   And then I would also assume that the monitor is a regular arcade monitor.    I have no experience with Jamma yet.   What would be the advantages of using a J-Pac to convert this, rather than a Key-Wiz (which is what I have experience with)?    Currently the cabinet only has two buttons, I think he might be thinking of expanding this to three, or maybe four, if we can fit it.  Since we would be adding additional buttons, would this still be an option to use a J-Pac?  I sort of thought the idea of a J-Pac was so that you could use existing controls, and if we're adding buttons, I was just wondering if it was still easier to use a J-Pac?

And then I assume we'd need a Arcade VGA as well to do this conversion.  And, obviously, a computer.

Is there anything else I am missing here?   Any guesses as to how hard this would be to convert to MAME?

Thanks!

newmanfamilyvlogs:

http://www.ultimarc.com/jpac2.html

If I'm reading this right it looks like it supports 8 buttons per player. 4 of which per player are supported by the jamma harness, the other 4 are screw down terminals.

If you go JPAC instead of Keywiz, then you just unplug the jamma harness, hook it into the jpac, then run a few extra wires for your additional buttons (unless you want to wire them into the jamma harness). With the Keywiz you'll be disconnecting everything from the harness then hooking them back up to the Keywiz.


As for getting video from the PC to the Jpac, you could go with an AVGA or use (almost) any video card and Soft15kHz (ATI cards seem to have the best success at the moment).

There are some really exciting things going on over in the "Switchres/GroovyArcade" thread for working with standard res monitors right now:
http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=106405.0

Between the programs being developed there you can set up essentially a turnkey, just add roms, system based on Linux, or in Windows just use the SwitchRes tool along with a modified MAME build that supports dynamically created video modes on a per-game basis, making every game display exactly as it's suppose to on the standard res monitor.

markronz:

Ok thanks so much for the information.   That really clarifies some things.   Appreciate those essential links!

Does anyone have any pictures of a Jpac all wired up that I could look at?   Just want to get some idea of what it looks like, beyond that one pic they have on ultimarc.com.    They should have a customer submitted picture gallery on their site.  :)  Just an idea.

Malenko:

I love the peter pepper chair/stool

newmanfamilyvlogs:

http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=90691.0

From that thread:

Fullsize: http://i380.photobucket.com/albums/oo244/mlwood2008/MicroSwitch1.jpg

And here is a picture of what it looks like in real life:


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