Old mame cab needs work

[24andahalf]

Hi there,

Total noobie here but I roped myself into helping out a guy looking to help raise money for the local community center by setting up an arcade cabinet. The center's makerspace left him hanging so I thought I'd give it a shot. I have the Project Arcade book, and my only "experience" so far is getting buttons and a joystick working with retropie as a shoebox control panel. I'm hoping to get some advice on here and I'll post updates as I slowly try to help this guy out.

I was up to check out the cabinet a couple days ago to get an idea of what we had to work with. I didn't think to take pictures at the time but I have a couple he sent me since and I've attached them here.

The computer that came with the cabinet was dead according to the previous owner but "everything else is usable". The buttons and joysticks are all wired up to an iPac and from what I can tell the speakers are all wired up and ready to go, they just need to be plugged in. I'm not sure how to test anything at this point without bringing in my raspberry pi, or maybe someone setting up another pc but I have no experience there and neither does the guy.  Any  suggestions? I can only make it out to work on this about once a week so there's always time to plan ahead. 

At this point I want to suggest he gets a raspberry pi so we can run Retropie on it. If no one else is going to help him out at the very least I'd like to be working with something I know more than nothing about. My concern is that he's not very techy so I'll quickly become his tech support guy when/if this project gets finished. I'd rather keep those calls to a minimum. Any suggestions here to keep this going as easy as possible? The dude has a pretty small budget the pc we removed, maybe $100 right now. 

That's as far as I've gotten to date. Any advice you folks can offer would be much appreciated

[Mike A]

How is an arcade cabinet stuffed with unlicensed ROMs going to raise money?

[acvieluf]

How is an arcade cabinet stuffed with unlicensed ROMs going to raise money?

Probably just an item to auction off.  Still not legal, but neither is any of it.  As long as it isn't set up to take in quarters, it seems within the acceptable boundaries of the hobby.  Am i wrong?

[BadMouth]

Do you still have the computer that came with it?

It could just be the power supply, in which case you drop a new one in and call it done.

[Vidiot]

If the old computer is shot and not worth fixing I would say raspberry pi is the way to go on such a small budget. Go Pi 3. Amazon has a kit with the power supply and heat sinks for $42.99 right now. The ipac should work fine with it. I would take the ipac out and bring it home where you can test it with your home PC, see how it's currently configured and make any changes you need to. Get retropie set up the way you want it and then make a backup of the image and also burn a second memory card in case anything gets messed up all you need to do is swap the memory cards to get it working again. Good luck.

[Mike A]

ROMs and money are not legal together. Slice it any way you like. You can't (legally) sell the machine stuffed with ROMs. You can't place it and collect revenue either. The tax man will have something to say about it. You can sell the machine without the games.

[dgame]

What make/model is the computer? If it is an old Dell you can probably find another one to  fix/replace it with on eBay.

[acvieluf]

ROMs and money are not legal together. Slice it any way you like. You can't (legally) sell the machine stuffed with ROMs. You can't place it and collect revenue either. The tax man will have something to say about it. You can sell the machine without the games.

True, good point.  Then i suppose you could clear the existing roms on the sold computer, and just hand the buyer a jump drive full of roms for free afterwards.  As a "friendly gift."   

[24andahalf]

ILLEGAL!!!!

Yeah, I'm aware of the legal issue. My take was I volunteered to get some practice fixing up the arcade and then help him get the roms he wants on there. Beyond that it's what he chooses to do with it.  I'll poke him about it to be 100% sure he understands what he's getting into.

Do you still have the computer that came with it?

It could just be the power supply, in which case you drop a new one in and call it done.

Still have the computer, but the guy said it was a busted harddrive and maybe something else too. I don't have much hardware experience so I don't want to be on the line for suggesting what the guy needs to pick up to get it running again.

If the old computer is shot and not worth fixing I would say raspberry pi is the way to go on such a small budget. Go Pi 3. Amazon has a kit with the power supply and heat sinks for $42.99 right now. The ipac should work fine with it. I would take the ipac out and bring it home where you can test it with your home PC, see how it's currently configured and make any changes you need to. Get retropie set up the way you want it and then make a backup of the image and also burn a second memory card in case anything gets messed up all you need to do is swap the memory cards to get it working again. Good luck.

Ah, cool. Thanks for the suggestions, Vid! I've pointed him towards that kit as well as a case for the pi and a vga to hdmi converter, I'll point out the benefits of a second memory card and see how the budget is looking.

Thanks for the feedback so far everyone.

[Mike A]

The responsible thing to do would be to tell these people to cut their losses and hold a bake sale to raise money. Build the cab as a fun project.

[leapinlew]

The responsible thing to do would be to tell these people to cut their losses and hold a bake sale to raise money. Build the cab as a fun project.

Did the Namco police join our forum? What's your angle on this Mike A? I'm trying to figure out why you care so damn much...

[Mike A]

My angle is to help someone to make a good decision regarding fundraising. I do a lot of fundraising and it rankles my sensibilities when I think it is being done badly.
 I'm trying to figure out why you care so damn much that I care so damn much.

[rablack97]

Dude its for a community center, they might get 25-50 a month out of that thing if that.

I highly doubt the tax man is going to come and raid a community center, call every gaming company, tell them a community center just made a .25 off of playing one of their games.

Spend 100,000's of dollars to take them court...........The worse thing that could happen is that if they get raided....Yeah ok....is a cease and desist letter.

Until then let me man help out the community w/o bringing in nonsense that won't ever happen.

[dgame]

I usually cringe at armchair IP lawyer-ing on old video games forums. However, the OP did mention raising money and asked for 'Any advice ' so it was probably fair to bring it up his time.

[Mike A]

Overreact much? In Illinois games have to be licensed and taxed. You cannot get a license for an illegal game. Most states probably have similar laws. Copyright holders are not going to come after you. The tax man is.
Forums are a place to learn stuff. Maybe you should look into the tax implications of an unlicensed coin op machine. this is not nonsense. It is not a MAME cabinet in someone's living room. You are looking to place a revenue generating coin op machine in a public space. If you are comfortable with that then have at it. I am a little irritated in case you couldn't tell.

[Mike A]

dgame. I normally tend to agree with you. There is a big difference between your exposure as an individual and your exposure as a revenue generating entity.

[Mike A]

I am done with this subject. Sorry if I wasn't helpful. That was my intent before I got irritated.

[rablack97]

It's just convo bro simmer down.   

Your book correct, but in reality, what are the chances.  Once again its not a mall, its a community center with a very low budget, the revenue generated wouldn't warrant the tax mans time, and maybe these folks cant bake.

Thats why i said nonsense...what your saying is its illegal to make money off of someone elses work, well hell we might as well shut this forum down, cause not a soul here invented the arcade, and i'm sure we've sold some type of arcade type object that we didn't create or received free of charge.

[Mike A]

No worries.

[Scassidy24]

Hi there, .....

.....
That's as far as I've gotten to date. Any advice you folks can offer would be much appreciated

Let's assume this cabinet is just for personal entertainment instead of getting into a debate about legality  guys just drop the whole debate. This machine is just for fun. Not for financial gain.

back to the principal of restoring a mame cabinet for fun.

My suggestion to you would be to get a working software setup at home and then migrate it to this mame cabinet. 

I'm guessing you have a windows setup. That you use regularly so get mame running in some very basic front end on your PC at home once you have mame and some Roms you'll be able to get lots of help on forums like this to get it all configured properly with a very simple front-end like MaLa.

Mame can run on anything. Just about everybody has a laptop or old beater pc in their closet that's not getting any more use. Surely your buddy can find himself an old clunker of a doner machine running any version of Windows. It'll work! If the thing turns and you can plug it into that monitor on he is good to go.

So have you ever run a mame setup on windows before? If so awesome! You know what to do... otherwise maybe the Pi is an easier route I have zero experience with retro Pi. All I know is windows when it comes to mame... if you do go windows route I wouldn't  bother with fancying up the front end. If you don't have much time to invest. Just a simple list.. Save it all in a neat little directory on your C: drive then copy that directory over to buddy's cabinet in one afternoon.  Let your buddy deal with sourcing any old windows computer and getting it installed in the mame cab. You can just show up. drop the software in and do the final tweaks like control configurations etc.

If I had little to no time and it wasn't in my home to work on daily that would be my own personal approach.

Hope that gives you some more ideas

[Scassidy24]

*This post Edited into my first post.

[Automark]

remove the pc and ipac, and make it a jamma cab.
Put a 60 in 1 jamma pcb in there, and you're done for 50$ if the pc psu still works.

And maybe get even a few $$ for the ipac.


If I make cabs for friends I always install a xx in 1. PC or Pi are just not suitable for people who have no idea how to repair or install programs. A pi is nice, but the sd card often fails, and with windows it often happens that a program doesnt load perfectly or crashes. Or some flaws in the UI of the frontend. etc etc For me no problem, but for not arcade enthusiasts/tech guys it's a pain in the b*tt.


 

[Mike A]

+1 for the  xxx in 1. Unless you want to be on the hook for tech support, this is your best option.

[24andahalf]

I've actually been doing some research on a XXX in 1 approach rather than a pi. I chatted with the guy about going a more legal route abd he wants a cost breakdown and I wanna do some research otherwise I'll be on the hook for setting something up I don't quite know how to use. Luckily(?) I have a terrible flu and am home all day to watch Youtube videos and do some research.

Thanks for the suggestions for a legal approach folks. I'll post here when something new happens.

[Mike A]

The xxx in 1's are not legal for coin-op either. Am I going to get jumped on for that too before you realize I know what I am talking about?

[24andahalf]

The xxx in 1's are not legal for coin-op either. Am I going to get jumped on for that too before you realize I know what I am talking about?

I'll leave the jumping to someone else.

Do you have any legal suggestions? I appreciate your input even if it has kinda pooped the party a bit.

Sent from my SGH-I317M using Tapatalk

[Mike A]

Like I said before an arcade machine won't raise any revenue anyways. That is one reason real arcades died. They need to overcome the State license and taxes. If you have to have an arcade machine, you have to have a legit PCB. Your state might have more requirements than that. They need to license the thing. They will charge you a couple hundred bucks and they will put a tax sticker on it. There goes your first ten months of revenue. Build the machine for fun and put it in your house. It is easy to say "nobody will care" if you have no skin in the game.

[24andahalf]

Like I said before an arcade machine won't raise any revenue anyways.

Alrighty, thanks for the input.

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[Vidiot]

Perhaps you could raffle it off and give that money to the charity.