2 Newbie Questions

[archagon]

Hello! I'm new around here, and I look forward to reading all the info on arcadecontrols.org in the next few days, but I was just wondering:

1) Is it possible to use a TV monitor instead of an arcade monitor in my machine? If so, will the result be the same? (I don't want to use PC monitors - they're too small - nor do I want to get anything too expensive)
2) Can I install lightguns to play Area 51 and such (assuming that I am using a TV or arcade monitor)?
2.5) If I choose to enable coin operation, can I change the number of coins required to play a game? Also, whenever I turn my system (and computer) on, is it possible to make the startup routine open a game selection menu that connects to MAME somehow? I mean, I'm sure it's possible, but I'm just wondering if such a thing has been made already.

Oh yeah, and what would be the cost of an average MAME arcade system?

I know, I know, that's 4, sorry X_X

[kevin]

1) A TV will work fine. It's not a real arcade monitor, but it will probably look more authentic than a PC monitor. For what it's worth, a good amount of arcade games only had 19" monitors, so a PC monitor is hardly too small. I can understand why you would want something larger though.

2) Yes, visit Act-Labs and read up a bit. If you search the forum you'll find everything you need regarding compatability and setup.

2.5) The number of coins differs by game in MAME. Many games had dip switches for selecting the price of a game, which MAME will let you set. It would also be possible to rig up a simple circuit to only send a coin signal for every x'th coin inserted, or x signals for each coin.

Automatically loading MAME or a front end can be done a few different ways. The simplest would be to stick a shortcut to your front end inside the startup folder in your start menu, assuming you're running Windows. When windows loads, it will execute your front end automatically.

I can't really comment on cost, as I haven't built a MAME cab myself, but I can say it varies a lot. Are you building from scratch or converting a cab? What controls do you need? How powerful a PC are you going to use? What type/size of monitor? And so on..

-Kevin

[archagon]

Thanks for your answers.

As for the cabinet, I'm planning on using the following:
*Used arcade cabinet, with laminate
*TV Monitor
*PC Speakers, already have
*PC (500mhz), already have. Do you think I'll need a faster machine to play old arcade games, such as Street Fighter and Megal Slug?
*USB ports on bottom, already have
*Little window on side for showcasing motherboard (glass, metal frame)
*Logo on top (get at Kinko's)
*Coin slot (if I'm lucky, might come with case)
*2-4 sets of 7-9 buttons
*2-4 sets of joysticks
*Trackball
*2 lightguns
*A sliding out shelf (with lock) housing attached keyboard/trackball for computer control
*Start buttons

I still gotta decide what games I wanna play, so the controls are not yet final. You think I can pull through with under 500 bucks? Oh, and is it legal, if you have a legal copy of the game, to charge people to play it on your cabinet?

[kevin]

If you want to know the cost, simply visit the various retailers you'll be purchasing from and add it all up. I don't have a PC to test it with, but 500mhz should be enough to run older games. If you already have the PC, why not just test it out?

As far as I know, there is no legal way to actually charge someone money to play a game through MAME. If you have the original game board, then just charge people to play it instead.

-Kevin

[pointdablame]

I may be wrong as I don't play light gun games very often in MAME, but if I remember, you'll need a much faster system than 500mhz to run them. This is especially true for Area 51.  Just a heads up, I'm not sure that system will suffice for light gun games. Classics will run fine though.

[crashwg]

agreed, pointdablame.  I have an athalon 2000+ and I can't even get area51 to be playable on mame or epsxe with the playstation disk(which is exactly the same thing without the insert coin)

[Nailz]

Oh, and is it legal, if you have a legal copy of the game, to charge people to play it on your cabinet?

Absolutely not, sorry.  If you have a legal copy of the game, by that I assume you mean the original boards from this cabinet, and you are dying to charge people $.25 a pop, just leave the cab alone and let people play on it, and make yourself another one strictly for Mame.

[Tailgunner]

Oh, and is it legal, if you have a legal copy of the game, to charge people to play it on your cabinet?

Absolutely not, sorry.  If you have a legal copy of the game, by that I assume you mean the original boards from this cabinet, and you are dying to charge people $.25 a pop, just leave the cab alone and let people play on it, and make yourself another one strictly for Mame.

The closest thing I know of to a pay for play MAME cab would be an Ultracade cab.
Even with the original game boards, charging people to play opens another can of worms. Depending on your location, you might need a business license to operate the games, individual licenses for the cabs themselves, and you'd likely be required to pay taxes on any earnings made from operating the games.

[rhoelsch]

Just a few tips on putting a TV in your cab to save you some research:

1.  Get a "real" (not Powered by") ATI video card --cheap, s-vid out is proportedly better than NVidia...I have a Radeon 7000 in mine, and it works fine...you don't need to spend a lot (unless you want to run hi-end pc games on it as well as mame)

2.  TV's aren't the absolute best, but they're the way to go in my opinion for a less costly option if you want a large screen.  I put a 24" Apex in mine for $150, and it looks pretty darn good after some color tweaking.  I tested it on a 27" Toshiba, and it looked better (that one's staying in the entertaiment center, tho).  Get the best TV you can afford.

3.  Look for a TV that stays in s-vid mode after it's powered off.  It's irritating having to use the remote to switch video modes everytime I turn the thing on.

4.  Search the Monitor/Video forum here.  Lots of caveats and opinions--and links to some pictures as well!

[ashardin]

If yopu want, you can get a used 21 Inch PC monitor for less than $100 on Ebay.  I found one locally and it was $50 total, since I could pick it up.  Just another idea for you.

That 500 mhz machine *should* run most NEO GEO games (i.e. Metal Slug).  SF2 will probably run a little jumpy though.  I built a cab for my brother's family using a 600 mhz machine with 192 MB of memory and although it ran 95% of the mame roms, it was pretty easy to push the top edge of performance.  Forget about Midway games (Mortal Kombat, NBA JAM, etc).  And doubly forget and CHD (compressed hard drive) game like Area 51.  You will need a top of the line rig to begin to run those at 50%.

[fredster]

You can buy an rf adapter from Walmart to convert the signal to plug into the TV with a standard coax cable for $19.00.  Then you can use any TV with sound if you want.

It works okay on most of the old games to use a TV.  So you can buy a cheap TV too with the rf adapter.  

I found out today that you can buy an ACT LABS gun for TV that will support 2 guns at the same time.  The one I have only supports 1 on a PC monitor.

It costs as much as you want to make a Mame CAB.  If you don't have all the power tools, you will have a higher cost in all the little tools necessary.

You have to get Mame working on a bench first.  Load it and then use it with a gamepad before you go nuts with it.  If you like it, move the PC to a cab.  

You can get cabs cheap at auctions.  Look over the paper or search the web for "arcade auction" and see if you have on in your area.  You can pick up dead cabs pretty cheap, and they have lots of parts in them.

The most expensive parts of my cab were :
1) PC - by far with the fancy video card and the memory
2) Monitor
3) Keyboard Interface - get one like an IPAC, it's the heart of the system.  It makes the system.
4) The cab - it was from an auction
I made the side art on a plotter at work.

[paigeoliver]

If yopu want, you can get a used 21 Inch PC monitor for less than $100 on Ebay.  I found one locally and it was $50 total, since I could pick it up.  Just another idea for you.

That 500 mhz machine *should* run most NEO GEO games (i.e. Metal Slug).  SF2 will probably run a little jumpy though.  I built a cab for my brother's family using a 600 mhz machine with 192 MB of memory and although it ran 95% of the mame roms, it was pretty easy to push the top edge of performance.  Forget about Midway games (Mortal Kombat, NBA JAM, etc).  And doubly forget and CHD (compressed hard drive) game like Area 51.  You will need a top of the line rig to begin to run those at 50%.

WHY would Streetfighter 2 be jumpy? CPS1 emulation is not that CPU intensive, and I DEFINITELY remember playing all the emulated Capcom games back when I had a 233 mhz K6 processor (and they ran full speed).

Also, I suggest using Mame version .60 on that processor, newer mame=slower mame. Sure they add new games in the new versions, but many of those new games won't be playable on your hardware, and general slowdowns will render many of the games that WOULD play correctly on .60 unplayable.

There is no AVERAGE cost to a Mame system.
Approximate costs of mine have been.

Amazing Mame (horizontal monitor, 2 joysticks, 6 buttons per player). $300

Galaga (vertical monitor, 4-way joystick, 2 buttons). $120

Gorf cocktail $150 (I did not personally build this, I simply traded something for it, and I paid $150 originally for what I traded).

Space Firebird mini (vertical monitor, 8-way joystick, 2 buttons). $100ish (hard to put an exact price on, since I reused an older computer that I once paid A LOT of money for, but is now worth jack, truth be told I didn't actually spend a dime on it, everything was surplus, free, or otherwise recycled).

Solitaire mini (trackball cabinet). $92

Battlezone (unfinished, but I have everthing I need to finish it). $30 (yes, $30).

Building from scratch usually adds a good $400 to the cost of the project.

Now onto vending roms?

Question one, why? You aren't going to be putting your Mame cabinet out on location, that is for sure (as far as I know there are not any location secure frontends anyway). So that only leaves the option that you want to charge your friends. Now if you are the kind of guy who would charge his buddies, then you are probably the kind of guy who wouldn't care if it was legal.

Now more on vending roms. I have (via web and in person), spoken to several operators who actually DO have Mame cabinets out on location, but they ARE NOT multi-game cabinets. Every one of them runs a single game that also has a broken PCB inside. So regardless of the legalities, people ARE doing it, and anyway, I think that actually IS legal according to recent rulings (there is a thread around here somewhere), having to do with protection on software for obsolete computer systems.

Now more on that. Operators largely don't care about legalities anyway. They  bought and ran bootleg kits back in 1982, they did it in 1992, and they still do it today, (although the bootleg market is a lot smaller today, mostly Neo Geo stuff, and classic "Multigame" JAMMA boards).

[krick]

Forget about Midway games (Mortal Kombat, NBA JAM, etc).  And doubly forget and CHD (compressed hard drive) game like Area 51.  You will need a top of the line rig to begin to run those at 50%.

I'll second that.  I *tried* to play Mortal Kombat on a 1.1GHz Celeron but it could only manage about 19 frames per second.  It was REALLY choppy and the sound stuttered.  It was virtually unplayable.

My 2.13GHz P4 on the other hand seems to be just about fast enough.

The mame cab I'm building will include a 2.8GHz CPU and I don't think that will be fast enough to play the CHD hard drive based games.

[paigeoliver]

Forget about Midway games (Mortal Kombat, NBA JAM, etc).  And doubly forget and CHD (compressed hard drive) game like Area 51.  You will need a top of the line rig to begin to run those at 50%.

I'll second that.  I *tried* to play Mortal Kombat on a 1.1GHz Celeron but it could only manage about 19 frames per second.  It was REALLY choppy and the sound stuttered.  It was virtually unplayable.

My 2.13GHz P4 on the other hand seems to be just about fast enough.

The mame cab I'm building will include a 2.8GHz CPU and I don't think that will be fast enough to play the CHD hard drive based games.

Use an older Mame version on that 1.1 ghz and then it should handle Mortal Kombat just fine. The Midway hardware games keep getting slower because the emulation keeps getting more "accurate".  

[ashardin]

"WHY would Streetfighter 2 be jumpy? CPS1 emulation is not that CPU intensive, and I DEFINITELY remember playing all the emulated Capcom games back when I had a 233 mhz K6 processor (and they ran full speed). "

I dunno, maybe it was the version I used (.64 if I remember correctly), the computer setup, sunspots, whatever,  but it didn't well on that machine.  If it works for him and his setup, more power to him.  I'm just passing on my experience from setting up a similiar machine last x-mas.  I didn't spend a great of time troubleshooting an individual rom.

[sTyLeS]

As far a processing power goes, I've been able to play Area 51 and Maximum Force perfectly fine without any slowdown. And I don't have a top-of-the-line system. I do have an AMD 1700+ with 512MB of RAM, but that's pretty low-end and pretty inexpensive nowadays.

[fredster]

The video card is the key.  The more power it has, the better off you are.  You need to have 128mb Ram to run some of them.

I put in a geoforce64 mb card in my computer and it ran MK from 17 fps to 60 + fps with no other upgrade.

[Stingray]

paigeoliver:
There is no AVERAGE cost to a Mame system.

This is absolutely true. Some of the guys on this board go totally mad on their cabs spending a fortune -- and they do end up with awesome cabs, don't get me wrong about that!. I on the other hand, went the other direction. I spent $50 on a dead cab, which I repainted with paint left over from an unrelated project. I spent another $50 or so on assorted controls and t-molding. The computer was donated from one source, the monitor from another. The control interface is a hacked keyboard (from my junk box). So far I've got a bit over $100 in mine. By the time it's all said and done I'll have more money invested in the artwork than in the rest of the cab.

Hey, whatever you decide to do, have fun!

-S

[archagon]

Dammit, dammit, DAMMIT!! I HATE WINDOWS!! I wrote up this entire post, and then clicked some JPG. WHERE THE HELL DID IMAGE PREVIEW GO?! Noooo...it HAD to open it in THIS window...needless to say, when I went back, my ENTIRE POST WAS DELETED!! ~Sorry, need to let off some steam.

Thanks! This stuff helped me a lot. A few more questions, though.

1) How do arcade monitors compare to TV's? Which is better and why?
2) Are Happ 360 Opticals 8-way or 360 degree? I assume the latter...in that case, they don't click, do they?
3) I plan to make my motherboard visible through a side window, but my PCI/AGP cards would hinder that. Are there any card extention cables out there?
4) What would be a good computer for MAMEing? 1Ghz? 2Ghz? Also, I have a bunch of video cards, but they're all 64MB. Should I "upgrade" to 128? And what about RAM? Will 256MB suffice?
5)

What are the things connected to the monitor in 1), what materials are 2) and 3), and how is the panel in 4) held up? Yes, this is from that new Maximum PC article...very nicely written.

Sorry for the bluntness...this would have been much politer had my computer not decided to get on my nerves.

[ashardin]

fredster:

I'm glad to hear that you got that performance bump in but my understanding from reading the MAME DEV team boards is that the video card does not matter.  MAME is not sending 3-D graphics data like other PC games, it is emulating and then sending the graphic info.

Did you replace an onboard, shared RAM video card?  That may explain the difference.

archagon:

From my experience:

1.  Arcade monitor is "truer" and potentially more expensive.  TV can be easier to set up, and you can get TV's dirt cheap.  I run a 21" PC monitor in my cabs so that is just from what I can gather here.

2.  Don't know off the top of my head.  

3.  I've never seen a PCI extension cable, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist.  Try ebay or google and see what you come up with.

4.  It really depends on your budget.  You can run >90% of the roms with a 1 ghz setup, 2 will push even more of the "newer" roms.  I would suggest at least 256 meg of ram and a 64 mb video should be more than enough.  

Materials:

1.  The monitor is set up, and then a glass (or plexi) bezel is over the top.  T-molding runs around the cab.

2&3.  Plexi on the control panel, the cab is probably made out of MDF with a painted finish.  

4.  That panel is held on from the back (inside where the marquee is)

[archagon]

Thanks! Now for the hard part...getting a cabinet

[paigeoliver]

1. Arcade monitors are MUCH better than TVs. The main problem with TVs is that they overscan, and might very well cut off part of your game. I personally always use VGA monitors, as that makes it simpler.

2. Perfect 360s are just 8-ways (or 4-ways). Don't recall if they click or not.

3. My first reaction is just to attack the entire idea, but if that is what you want to do, then hey, whatever. Never heard of a PCI extension cable, it probably does not exist though. You can just get a motherboard with onboard video and sound, and then not have to worry about having any cards at all.

4. Once again, mame IS NOT video card dependent. A 2MB video card will suffice. It literally does not matter, it is a 2D program, and 2D capablities of video cards have remained pretty much unchanged since 1996. I have a Mame cabinet with 2MB onboard video and it looks no different than Mame does on my main computer which has a 32 MB GeForce II. Anyone reccomending major video card upgrades for Mame is incorrect. There is exactly one reason to get a new video card for Mame, and that is to buy a card that supports the display you want to use (example, buying an "arcadeVGA card, or a card with TV out).

How much RAM you need really depends on the operating system. 128 is actually fine for windows 95/98, for XP you should have more.

Dammit, dammit, DAMMIT!! I HATE WINDOWS!! I wrote up this entire post, and then clicked some JPG. WHERE THE HELL DID IMAGE PREVIEW GO?! Noooo...it HAD to open it in THIS window...needless to say, when I went back, my ENTIRE POST WAS DELETED!! ~Sorry, need to let off some steam.

Thanks! This stuff helped me a lot. A few more questions, though.

1) How do arcade monitors compare to TV's? Which is better and why?
2) Are Happ 360 Opticals 8-way or 360 degree? I assume the latter...in that case, they don't click, do they?
3) I plan to make my motherboard visible through a side window, but my PCI/AGP cards would hinder that. Are there any card extention cables out there?
4) What would be a good computer for MAMEing? 1Ghz? 2Ghz? Also, I have a bunch of video cards, but they're all 64MB. Should I "upgrade" to 128? And what about RAM? Will 256MB suffice?
5)

What are the things connected to the monitor in 1), what materials are 2) and 3), and how is the panel in 4) held up? Yes, this is from that new Maximum PC article...very nicely written.

Sorry for the bluntness...this would have been much politer had my computer not decided to get on my nerves.