Complete Newbie looking for some info.

[nateious]

Hello all, I've been lurking around here for the past few weeks, but this is my first post (and it shall be a long one).

So between a friend giving me the idea when he talked about his plans to build his own cabinet, the panel at PAX East this year on building your own controller, and a general holy crap having one of these would be awesome, I've decided to build a mame cabinet.  In hindsight I probably should have posted this before I started ordering things (which I started last night)  but it's a bit to late for that

I've decided to go with the UA2 cabinet kit and quad controller from mameroom, I read a handful of user reviews and everyone seemed fairly pleased with it.  I went with a kit because I have no real woodworking skills to speak of nor do I have access to many of the tools I'd need.

I've gone with a LCD monitor, from what I've read this is probably making some people cringe right now , believe me as a (primarily) PC gamer I just switched to an LCD a few years ago, (and mostly just  because I was sick of lugging my 21inch CRT to LAN partys ) but an arcade monitor was out of my price range and I was worried about the future, availability of parts and my ability to do any work on it if I needed to.  I also was thinking forward for newer games and I think newer games will look much nicer on a LCD than a low res CRT TV or arcade monitor. (If anyone is curious I went with a Hanns-G HZ281HPB, it was the largest (27.5) 16:10 (I hate 16:9 so very much, plus I'll have more vertical space with a 16:10) affordable monitor I could find that would fit in the UA2.

I've already got a PC to use, benefit of being a PC gamer, I've got all my old PCs laying around  (I assume a AMD 3800+ x2 is sufficient for MAME, if not I've got an E6650 I can probably cannibalize)  Actually while I'm talking about PCs... Windows XP, XP x64, Vista (32 bit), 7 (64bit), linux?  I'm also probably going to want to go with some sort of front end but I've never really looked at these before so recommendations are welcome.

For a pc interface I got the i-pac4

For joysticks i got Sanwa Joystick JLF-TP-8YT-K from arcadespareparts, I have 2 questions about these.  I went with the ones with the metal mounting plate thing because I have no idea how these things mount to the control panel kit, from what I can tell this is removable if it needs to be but if anyone knows how this mounts please fill me in.  The 2nd question I had was these joysticks seem to have a 5 pin out, I assume that is ground, up, down, left and right does anyone know if the pins are labeled or the order?

For buttons I went with happ, but I'm in the middle of trying to cancel my order since I found the site I was going to get the spinner (groovygamegear) from has them much cheaper than happ sells them.  (Though I'm not sure if the player 1-4 buttons are happ (or if it matters) as they are not labeled as such)

That's the extent of what I've ordered so far.  The rest I haven't ordered yet but plan on doing so soon.

For a spinner / trackball I was looking at groovy game gears TurboTwist 2 and Groovy-TB 3" Trackball.  From what I gather, the trackball can plug into the Opti-Wiz, does anyone know if the spinner also can?  I assume you can get 1 opti-wiz and plug in both the trackball and the spinner at the same time?

For wire and those little connector things (does anyone know what these are actually called?) I figure I can just hit up the local Home Depot / Lowe's / hardware store.

Now the most important bit, am I missing anything?

[drventure]

Welcome aboard.

Sounds like you've got a pretty good start on it.

For Front ends, there's a bunch to choose from. Check the Wiki on this board for lots of options. The most popular generally speaking are Mala, Hyperspin, Maximus Arcade, and atomic, but like I said, there are a lot, some free, some reasonably priced.

Finally, you're likely to want some good sound, easiest is a 2.1 set of PC speakers, but just about anything will work

[Cynicaster]

Looks like you’ve done a good bit of up-front research, which is good. 

One thing that comes to mind regarding the Happ buttons, avoid the ones with vertically mounted microswitches like the bubonic plague. 

I completed my first build about a year ago and just finished an article in my blog (see sig) on the various important high-level design decisions that go into these projects, you might find it enlightening. 

[nateious]

Oh I completely forgot to post about speakers.  I have an old set of Cambridge Soundworks FPS2000 which I plan on using.  It is a 4.1 system so I can either just use the sub and 2 speakers, or (since I doubt any of the games I'd be playing have true surround sound :-P) I'll use all 4 and just have the "rears" act as a 2nd set of fronts.

@drventure, neat I didn't notice the wiki before, I'll take a look!

@Cynicaster, yep I read about the problems with the vertically mounted microswitches.  I will be getting the horizontal style

[GregD]

I like the Arcade Prime buttons from Groovy.  They are similar to Happy but they have less travel.  The standard soft touch switches that GGG are very nice IMHO.

[kalars123]

Welcome to BYOAC don't worry about the LCD to much in the end it really comes done to personal preference.  Contrary to most of my posts here I'm a huge advocate of the CRT however I know they are slowly going the way of the betamax, that's why at my request Calamity built in lcd variable refresh support using powerstrip into groovymame you get the convenience of an LCD but the gameplay speed of a CRT.  The only problem is maybe 3/10 consumer LCD panels are compatible it's very hit and miss.

As for your build always looking forward to new projects getting to see how people recreate their childhood/teenage memories. When you get started start a project thread in the project announcement forum and keep us up to date.

[nateious]

As for your build always looking forward to new projects getting to see how people recreate their childhood/teenage memories. When you get started start a project thread in the project announcement forum and keep us up to date.

I will!  My wife wants to take pictures to post on facebook so I should have a good record.