Twin racing cabs - Single pc or two pc’s?

[jorgenjl2]

What is the recommendation for linking two racing cabs… use one pc or two pc’s? I originally was leaning toward two pc’s but now I am leaning toward one pc. I know Model 2 (Daytona USA) works on one pc. What about Tecknoparrot games? Anyone try this?

I can hopefully get SF Rush the Rock to work on one pc (since it worked perfectly on one pc with no disconnects) using “Nucleus co-op” to map the controls to separate screens but I have to see if two g29 wheels can work on one pc and if nucleus co op supports two g29 wheels. I also need to see if two copies of tecknoparrot is a lot for one pc to run or not.

[buttersoft]

I'm fairly certain you can't open two copies of Teknoparrot on the one PC at the same time. I guess there might be a workaround. A better place to ask would be the TP discord.

FYI LAN is a pain. It's a lot of effort to get right. But to my mind, worth it

[jorgenjl2]

I'm fairly certain you can't open two copies of Teknoparrot on the one PC at the same time. I guess their might be a workaround. A better place to ask would be the TP discord.

FYI LAN is a pain. It's a lot of effort to get right. But to my mind, worth it

Ah good point about Tecknoparrot. I think I may have to use an hdmi switcher and use both options if I can get Rush the Rock to work on one pc using xoutput, two monitors, two g29’s, and NucleusCoop. At least until Mame link play works across PCs.

Do you have a recommended router that works well for two PCs?

[buttersoft]

Nope, haha, no recs for a router. There are one or two obscure features that can trip you up, but just about any router will work of the shelf. I was using an old 300Mbs one years ago, that wasn't new when i got it, and it worked fine.

[jayc001]

Avoid using a router to connector the two PCs. I had an old router I used and had loads of issues with some TP games (Grid, Ford Racing, Storm racer G). It turned out the router did not like multicast used by these games. After a lot of troubleshooting I swapped out the router for a switch and they worked fine there on wards.

[buttersoft]

True, i had thought a switch would jsut work, but i don't see why not. You'd get a 4-port or 5-port switch new for $25 these days.

[POPO69]

Hello...I a big twin player arcade game .....for racing game on TP the best is to have 2 PC
Use switch to connect PC

[jorgenjl2]

Hello...I a big twin player arcade game .....for racing game on TP the best is to have 2 PC
Use switch to connect PC

Well crap I had bought a router just before seeing these replies about using a switch. Every reference I saw before this said to use a router. I bought a $50 TPlink router (AC1750 in my case). It has four Gigabit lan ports and I have cat 8 cables so even though old games won’t ever need it, it should theoretically support future Steam LAN games without issue. I am assuming I can hook up each pc to the yellow lan port and nothing to the blue internet port but there is really not a walkthrough of this anywhere I saw so it will be a learning experience for me.

What IP addresses do you recommend? 192.168.0.2 and .3 work for the two PCs for every game that is linkable?

[buttersoft]

Almost all routers can be set to switch mode. TBH there are one or two TP games that want your gateway/router IP in order to link, now i think about it.

What IP addresses do you recommend? 192.168.0.2 and .3 work for the two PCs for every game that is linkable?

I think so, yep. And if you get into trouble later on, you can run some simple scripts to change your IP before launching a game, and have a script change back after. You might consider the IPs against your wider network. It's convenient to transfer files that way, i find. You can just leave the DNS segments of your ipv4 blank, and that way the PC's still can't reach the net.

[bsoder52]

I'm close to the point on my build as well where I need to tackle Linking the two PCs for as many games as possible between two PCs. I'm not too familiar with switches or how to use them. If someone could post a link or mention a switch name and model that is a good one to use I'd appreciate it. Thank you.

[buttersoft]

Switch tends to be synonymous with unmanaged (ethernet) switch. There's no interface or controls, you just plug into it. Cheap 4/5 port switches should be about $30 new.

[bsoder52]

ok think I have a couple of those in the old storage closet from yesteryear, thanks.

[Nuexzz]

It wouldn't be too crazy to have a switch to switch from 2 pc to 1 pc, in theory you would have to activate the monitor and the joy from pc2 to pc1 
disconnect 2 and connect 1.
for some games that don't work well on lan

[buttersoft]

It wouldn't be too crazy to have a switch to switch from 2 pc to 1 pc, in theory you would have to activate the monitor and the joy from pc2 to pc1 
disconnect 2 and connect 1.
for some games that don't work well on lan

I built myself one, for some games. USB switch and video amp splitter. But it turned out i didn't really want to play those games, or anyway didn't want to with a wheel, so i removed it

[jorgenjl2]

It wouldn't be too crazy to have a switch to switch from 2 pc to 1 pc, in theory you would have to activate the monitor and the joy from pc2 to pc1 
disconnect 2 and connect 1.
for some games that don't work well on lan

I built myself one, for some games. USB switch and video amp splitter. But it turned out i didn't really want to play those games, or anyway didn't want to with a wheel, so i removed it

Did you have two wheels working? I could not get two g29 wheels to work even with the one Mame ini setting. I was looking at a nucleus coop tool to be able to try it.

[flybynight]

100% two PCs networked.

Another benefit of having them on the network us that you can put the data files (roms, artwork, videos) on a shared drive/server and just a little 100GB ssd in the PCs. Much easier to manage.

[buttersoft]

Did you have two wheels working? I could not get two g29 wheels to work even with the one Mame ini setting. I was looking at a nucleus coop tool to be able to try it.

Mine were dumb wheels. Have upgraded since, but i didn't even think about that :/

[jorgenjl2]

In case it helps someone, here are all my findings from doing a two pc racing cabinet setup..

Router and IP’s -
The TPLink router method has worked great so far. I used 192.168.0.2 for pc1 and 192.168.0.3 for pc2. The router (gateway) is 192.168.0.1. This was not spelled out at all but literally all you do is hook up a network cable from pc1 to the yellow/orange router port and hook up pc 2 to another yellow/orange router port. Nothing needs to go in the blue port since you are only communicating over the router. I did go into my router settings via web browser (http://192.168.0.1 or something like that, whatever the instruction book says) and turn off wireless and all the extra stuff but not sure that is needed or not. I am not sure how Teknoparrot games would work without a router since most of them require a gateway.

More IP Address info:
Almost all games work with this ip setup. The only one so far that does not is Daytona USA Championship 3. For that I added a bat file to “add” a 2nd IP address before the game runs (Launchbox has pre and post launch settings on the properties option of the game) and then delete after exiting. I used 192.168.1.3 for pc 1’s added ip and 192.168.1.4 for pc2’s added ip but it just has to be between 192.168.1.1 and 1.8. “Netsh interface ip add address “Ethernet” 192.168.1.3 255.255.255.0” for example. Then just put that in a bat file, create a shortcut to that file, then change the properties of the shortcut to be minimized and also the advance box to run as an administrator since netsh requires admin privs. Then run the shortcut before kicking off Daytona 3. Same thing but delete for remove. It doesn’t matter that the router is actually still 192.168.0.1 or that your main ip is still 192.168.0.2/3.  For all the games I am adding at least this seems to work great.

Daytona USA 3 one and 2 player option?
For Daytona USA 3, if you want both single and multiplayer option, I created a 2nd copy of the Sega folder called Sega_singleplayer and also a copy of the Teknoparrot files pointed to the single player Sega folder. Then you update all of the files for network for the regular Sega folder (another ArcadeControlForum post about a post being removed spells most of this out) and also make sure to enable the camera in the ini file. Otherwise you will get [Good], [Good] before one good goes away. There is a YouTube video where someone says to update the Teknoparrot.ini file but allows no comments on the video. That is incorrect. The file he is showing is for Outrun2 and setting any network related settings in the Sega Daytona folder for Teknoparrot.ini erases all those network related settings after each start and is not used. There are 192.168.1 plus base addr of 3 (or 4 for pc2 in my case) settings plus num of computers and slave/master ini changes that need set through config files though.

Outrun 2 one and 2 player option
For Outrun2, there are config files that are shared in users folder I think it is so creating two copies of outrun2 and Teknoparrot won’t work if you want to have a one player AND LAN 2 player option. If you want both, there is a YouTube video where someone has ahk scripts to copy the needed files (which internally changes service menu lan settings) so you can have both options.

Two PCs?
Two PCs are best. The only exception is Mame Rush the Rock (and sort of Mame Rush 2049 possibly?) is the only game that for now only (with major workarounds) works lan on one pc. Hopefully a mame developer fixes that as it is oh so close to working across PCs and only crashes about 50% of the way through. As far as I can tell it fully works on one pc without crashing. I am not sure if one pc could use usb switches for two (g29, etc) wheels etc to one pc (and also two PCs) but that is a pain. You would also need a third party tool to allows two wheels (g29, etc) dinput inputs at once for example. California Speed seems to work great over two PCs with the caveat below.

Tap adapter Games Scripting network
The bad news with the Mame Rush the Rock/Rush2049/California Speed is that the Tap adapter does not appear to work with the regular networking and breaks the other LAN games. It prevents ping from each pc to another. I thought no sweat at all… I will just script the tap adapter network bridge add and removal.. However, apparently Windows 10 has no way to do this according to Microsoft as of 2020+. I used gpt3 to write a bunch of ways to do this over an hour+ and none worked. If anyone knows a third party tool to do it please let us know.

Mario Kart GP DX ips
I found that keeping both ip addresses at once stopped Mario Kart network ip recognition on pc2 so that is why I add and remove ips just for Daytona 3. Technically you could “change” ips but this way if anything ever happens 95% of the games still work and you just go back to Daytona 3 and start and exit to fix (but no issues so far).


Hopefully this helps since there is surprisingly very little (no?) walkthroughs on a lot of this.

[Fursphere]

jorgenjl2 - Do you not have your arcade machines on your local home network?   (via wifi or otherwise)

You shouldn't need a dedicated router just for your arcade machines.    The 'blue' port you mention if the Ethernet up-link port - its where the router "routes" traffic too that is not local to itself (same subnet - either physically connect to the integrated switch (yellow ports), or via wifi).  The dedicated router could be used for DHCP address assignment, but if you're hard setting each PC to a dedicated IP address (192.168.0.2 or 0.3) they you could just use a simple un-manged switch. 

If you want to go deeper into networking, just let me know. 

[MrThunderwing]

At least until Mame link play works across PCs.

Only just noticed this comment. Does the Midway stuff work different to the Sega MAME network games? Because link play's worked across multiple PCs for those games for years. I've set up a 3 PC game of Virtua Racing in MAME before.

[buttersoft]

Setup is way more complicated, i believe. There's a dedicated thread on here somewhere...

http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php/topic,161667.0.html

See replay #5 in that thread. I haven't done it as i'm worried about messing up my current config by adding the TAP adapters. Well, and i'm not that interest in any of the games besides California Speed.

Was that what you were asking about?

[jorgenjl2]

jorgenjl2 - Do you not have your arcade machines on your local home network?   (via wifi or otherwise)

You shouldn't need a dedicated router just for your arcade machines.    The 'blue' port you mention if the Ethernet up-link port - its where the router "routes" traffic too that is not local to itself (same subnet - either physically connect to the integrated switch (yellow ports), or via wifi).  The dedicated router could be used for DHCP address assignment, but if you're hard setting each PC to a dedicated IP address (192.168.0.2 or 0.3) they you could just use a simple un-manged switch. 

If you want to go deeper into networking, just let me know.

My arcades are in the basement and my regular router is upstairs. I guess I could technically try all this over wifi but I preferred to have a dedicated hardwired connection.

For the switch, does that work with all of the Teknoparrot games that require a gateway ip set? That seemed to be the requirement for almost all the Teknoparrot games I have on my system but maybe a switch has a “default” gateway that would still allow those games to work?

You don’t happen to know the internals of the Tap adapter do you? Is there no other alternative to that since it both stops other games from working and also cannot be scripted as far as I know (unless there is a brand new Win 10 feature or third party tool).

[MrThunderwing]

i'm not that interest in any of the games besides California Speed.

Was that what you were asking about?

Like yourself mate, I'm not really that interested in playing those games linked, I was just highlighting it for the OPs benefit, in case he wasn't aware of the Sega link-up MAME stuff.

[TipsyMcStagger]

Is there any reason you couldn't just use a crossover cable. With one PC pointing to the other as the gateway?

[buttersoft]

Is there any reason you couldn't just use a crossover cable. With one PC pointing to the other as the gateway?

IDK, really. Not sure anyone has tried very hard. If some games don't work, unmanaged switches are cheap

A lot of LAN games are tricky, especially when you first start out, and you probably won't get as much mileage with a setup using a crossover cable - at least from online help.

[TipsyMcStagger]

Thanks. I'm finally starting to muck around with mine so I'll see how things go

[Fursphere]

Is there any reason you couldn't just use a crossover cable. With one PC pointing to the other as the gateway?

Modern NICs do not need a crossover cable (where the physical wires are swapped).  They can detect when they are directly attached to another NIC and negotiate the connection properly.   

In Windows, you'll get a 169.254.x address (IP address start with 169.254. xxx. xxx means the client cannot contact DHCP server or cannot get response from DHCP server).  You can just manually assign a static IP and subnet mask at this point (192.168.1.x and 255.255.255.0).  You don't need a gateway IP, and there is no router to route requests too. 

[TheCiscoKid]

I've just swapped from 1 PC to 2 and am immediately noticing improvements in my setup
Fullscreen is effortless, no need to worry about emulators not interpreting controls while unfocused, no conflicts with boomslang's force feedback plugin, no mucking about with different settings for player 1 or player 2 (can just copy player 1's settings across both PCs), less demanding on each PC to only run 1 copy of the game at a time

Takes a tiny bit more setup, but it's absolutely worth it

[TipsyMcStagger]

Is there any reason you couldn't just use a crossover cable. With one PC pointing to the other as the gateway?

Modern NICs do not need a crossover cable (where the physical wires are swapped).  They can detect when they are directly attached to another NIC and negotiate the connection properly.   

Thanks mate. I wasn't aware of this. I've already made my crossover but it's good to know for future.

[jorgenjl2]

Do all of those Teknoparrot games that need a gateway IP work with a switch? My router works great but just for anyone else doing this as this becomes a lot more popular.

[vandale]

Do all of those Teknoparrot games that need a gateway IP work with a switch? My router works great but just for anyone else doing this as this becomes a lot more popular.

I use a switch, no router and I run all these in link:
Mame:
F1 Superlap
Outrunners
Virtua Racing
San Francisco Rush
Ridge Racer 2
Raver Racer

M2:
Daytona USA
Daytona USA Turbo
Daytona USA to the MAxx
Sega Rally
Sega Rally Pro Drivin
ManxTT
Motor Raid
Indy 500

Supermodel:
Scud Race
Scud Race Plus
Harley Davidson
Sega Rally 2
Dirt Devils
Daytona 2
Daytona 2 Power Edition

Arcade PC:
Batman
Battle Gear 4
Battle Gear 4 Tuned
Chase HQ 2
Daytona Championship USA
Dirty Drivin
Disney Pixar Cars
Fast & Furious Supercars
Ford Racing Full Blown
GRID
Gti Club
H2 Overdrive
Initial D 5
Initial D 6
Initial D 7
Initial D 8
Mario Kart DX
Outrun 2 SP SDX
Road Fighters 3D
Sega Racing Classic
Sega Rally 3
Storm Racer G
Valve Limit R
Wacky Races
Wangan Midnight Maximum Tune 5
Winter X Games SnoCross

[jorgenjl2]

 

Do all of those Teknoparrot games that need a gateway IP work with a switch? My router works great but just for anyone else doing this as this becomes a lot more popular.

I use a switch, no router and I run all these in link:
Mame:
F1 Superlap
Outrunners
Virtua Racing
San Francisco Rush
Ridge Racer 2
Raver Racer

M2:
Daytona USA
Daytona USA Turbo
Daytona USA to the MAxx
Sega Rally
Sega Rally Pro Drivin
ManxTT
Motor Raid
Indy 500

Supermodel:
Scud Race
Scud Race Plus
Harley Davidson
Sega Rally 2
Dirt Devils
Daytona 2
Daytona 2 Power Edition

Arcade PC:
Batman
Battle Gear 4
Battle Gear 4 Tuned
Chase HQ 2
Daytona Championship USA
Dirty Drivin
Disney Pixar Cars
Fast & Furious Supercars
Ford Racing Full Blown
GRID
Gti Club
H2 Overdrive
Initial D 5
Initial D 6
Initial D 7
Initial D 8
Mario Kart DX
Outrun 2 SP SDX
Road Fighters 3D
Sega Racing Classic
Sega Rally 3
Storm Racer G
Valve Limit R
Wacky Races
Wangan Midnight Maximum Tune 5
Winter X Games SnoCross

Oh great. What do you put for ip for gateway in Teknoparrot? Will that still allow 4 player linking or are you putting each other’s ip in 2 player mode?

[Nuexzz]

About 2 years ago, I managed to connect 2 instances of outrun 2006 (pc) in 1 single pc but I never managed to get past the lobby, I sought help from the devs but nothing. a pity! At least for me I think the best option is 1 PC linked to 2 monitors since my double cabinet is still sleeping waiting for that day

[vandale]

Oh great. What do you put for ip for gateway in Teknoparrot? Will that still allow 4 player linking or are you putting each other’s ip in 2 player mode?

left is 192.168.1.2, right is 192.168.1.3
gateway 192.168.1.1
subnet 255.255.255.0

Cheers