How would you do it on a Budget? Ms. Pacman cocktail to Mame Vertical setup

[jtslade]

So here is what I want to do.

Create a Vertical Only cocktail multicab, non-destructive that will play the classic vertical games....
I already have a Horizontal Mame cab in a Neo Geo MVS cab that will be set to play all the Horizontal stuff.

I have a authentic Ms. Pacman cocktail cab. I won't have the room to create my arcade room for a while so I want to have a collection of 60-100 4-way arcade games (Pacman/ DonkeyKong/ Etc) that will work in a flip screen cocktail mode and use two buttons or less.

I am on an extreme budget and want to achieve it for as little cash as possible while still providing authentic arcade goodness!

I'm open to Windows XP 32bit  or Linux as I have experience with both.

I have:

1 Ms. Pacman arcade cocktail unit
Freshly capped (needs new flyback 19" G07 on my to do list)

Set of full cocktail control panel's metal for a Super Pacman cocktail (this had a button on left 4-way leaf joystick on the right / two sides)

One Oem HP P4 desktop (small) GX system

Asus Socket 754 Mobo and CPU and DDR2 (2GB) ram / PCIE slot

another no name P4 with power supply desktop PC

VGA breakout cable from Ultimarc (just have one lying around)

ATI HD2600 PCI express (that has been tested to work with Groovy mame and CRT emu drivers)

Collection of several AGP cards Nvidia and ATI

Great Weller Soldering Iron and skills to match..

I want to protect the monitor from the 31khz signal at PC boot (this will damage the monitor over time right?)
A front end that is very easy for someone to sit down and start using without me having to explain everything or take months to configure.

I will drill the Super PacMan control panels so that the 4-Way stick is on the left and two buttons fit on the right. Everything else will be non-destructive so that the cab can be restored back to a original.

What would you do?


 

[jtslade]

Any ideas, am I missing something?

[rpgposer]

It's your cab and your business, and I am by no means a hard core preservationist, but I would leave a working Ms. Pacman cocktail as is.

[jtslade]

Maybe I didn't stress enough that this will be 100% non-destructive to the extreme. I am a hardcore preservationist and cant cope with classic arcade conversions of any kind. All cables, PCB's and every square centimeter of this cab will remain original. I have some Super PacMan control panel parts that came out of a cockpit cab that I rescued from a guy who let them sit in his garage for 25 years and be destroyed by termites. 

Pics of the Super Pacman parts I saved from the termites and trash. This cab fell apart in my hands just touching it.




These are the Super Pacman controls that I salvaged. My original controls will be placed in storage (NON-Destructive)





Btw, the parts I rescued were put into restoring a Galaga upright (G07 chassis), the tube went into fixing a classic arcade. The PCB and harness and every other piece went into fixing classic arcade games. These were parts that I paid money to save. I wish I could of saved more.

I am a hardcore purist.

But I won't have the space to have 20-40+ arcade cabs for many years so I need to get some vertical arcade CRT authentic classic gameplay and I don't have a ton of money to do it with. I have some of the parts from the Super Pacman and an Asteroids Deluxe that was also saved that sold will provide some funds.

I'm not destroying a classic cocktail cab. If the majority disagrees then I'll request this topic be deleted.

JtSlade.

[rpgposer]

IDK - tough call, and it's your call.  I wasn't getting on your back, btw.  I modified my generic angle cabinet which had Midway's Strike Force in it in a similar manner.  Swap a jamma harness and the original can be played.
If had a real Strike Force cabinet, that would be a different story.  Probably would have sold it to someone who loves the game to fund a generic cab.

[paigeoliver]

If I already had an existing Ms. Pac cocktail I would probably go with Mike Doyle's 96 in one multipac kit. It keeps you busy enough, runs on the original hardware and the resulting machine plays better, looks better and is more valuable than it would be with a mame setup or 60 in 1 crammed into it.

I run Mike's kit in my Ms. Pac upright and it gets played all the time. I have another machine with a 60 in 1 board and it never gets played at all.

[wxforecaster]

I'll tell you what I did and it wasn't that expensive (couple hundred maybe?)

I have an original working Ms Pac Man as well.

1.) Purchased a Ms. Pac Man to JAMMA adapter at jammaboards.com
2.) Purchased an iCade 60-1 board (from someone on here I think).
3.) Purchased a switching PC power supply (which powers the iCade) -- monitor, Ms Pac lights, fan, etc...all still run off the existing power supply.
4.) Since Ms Pac doesn't have any fire/jump buttons, I remove the existing control panels as I wanted to be able to return this to an original Ms pac cocktail at any time. They are held in by a handful of Phillips screws and the light panel by a couple hex screws. I then sourced two midway cocktail CPs. I found someone local with a couple junkers for $20, but I've seen them on Ebay, Mike's Arcade, etc...
5.) Mine were blank CPs so I purchased a couple joysticks (you could do top-switchable 4/8 ways, 4 ways, 8 ways, depends on your taste), 4 buttons, and 2 midway start buttons (mike's arcade). I also needed slide on connectors for the new buttons, joystick.
6.) Each Ms Pacman CP runs to a molex connector. I want to say one is 12 pin and the player two is 9?? I bought a couple molex connectors and a bunch of .093" pins. You also need a .100 header and pins to wire the fire/jump buttons to the iCade board. I think the total cost for the three molex connectors and pins was like $4.

Putting it all together:
1.) Using the existing Ms Pacman control panels as a guide, I basically wired the new control panels to the new molex connectors, and the two fire buttons from each CP run to a .100 connector that goes on the iCade board.

2.) The Ms Pac Man edge connector, instead of going to the Ms Pacman PCB now goes to the Ms Pac-Jamma adapter board, and the other end of that board goes to your iCade board.

3.) Connect the .100 connector from the four fire buttons to the iCade board.

4.) Take one of the  PC power supply connectors and plug it into the iCade board.

5.) Lastly, drop a power strip inside the cocktail. Both the PC Power supply and the original Ms Pac Man plug go into the power strip. The power strip is now what plugs into the wall and turns on both.

6.) Enjoy!

It seems really complex, but it's not. I actually enjoyed crimping my own wiring connectors. I think the only "gotcha" is that the two lamps on each side of the cocktail also run through those 12/9 pin molex connectors, so I used my .093" pin extractor to remove them, and put them in the new connector. Otherwise you're going to have to buy two acrylic panels, light bulbs, bulb sockets, etc...
It sounds complex, but I'm a total noob and did those all in just a couple hours.

If you need more details/specifics and want to go this route, let me know. I can also post pics if you're interested.