Build pc question

[JEGGOSH]

I know this is a touchy subject and I have tried to look into it but the search function here is not working for me and I wasn't able to find an answer looking around. Please don't attack me.
I am planning a 4-player pedestal (ideally with 2 guns) It will connect to probably an LCD mounted on the wall as I can get more bang for the buck than a monitor there.
Here is my question, I have been stalling...
I have a dell micro Optiplex with an i7 7700t 2.6 ghz cpu.
16gb ram (is that even relevant? its all cpu from what I've been reading, no?)
will that be enough horse power?
It has 4 cores but I see people saying that they need at least 4 (there are an additional 4 logical but I don't know if those are usable)
as far as games, I'll most likely just use the All killer/no filler lists here as well as consoles up to snes and genesis. I assume dreamcast and ps1 are too much and it's not my plan really.
I would like to be able to use guns as well house of the dead 2 etc.
I promise I will have better questions as I begin building that may or may not be equally as annoying.
That is my question.  be gentle.
Thanks

[JEGGOSH]

also its windows 10 enterprise if that is relevant

[Laythe]

Greetings!

My answer to your core question would be, yes.  That is plenty of horsepower.

The answers to your other peripheral questions are trickier...

Lightguns on LCDs won't be as perfect as lightguns on CRTs could be, for technical reasons.  It can be done, but they work more like wii remotes than like precise aimable guns you could look down the sights of. 

In my opinion you probably could run dreamcast or ps1 emulation on a 2.6ghz i7 7700.  Whether you should run any console games at all is a separate question - some love it, some find the ergonomics aren't right.  I'd say try it and see what you think.

Mostly, I'd say the folks around here aren't quick to attack - they just care a lot about the topic, that's why they're here.  Passionate differences of opinion can get a bit heated, but it's usually not personal.

Good luck!

[PL1]

I am planning a 4-player pedestal

OK.  The important thing is that you've seriously considered whether players 3 and 4 will ever be used, not just made an impulsive knee-jerk, stars-in-your-eyes decision because a 4-player setup looks cool/impressive.

http://wiki.arcadecontrols.com/index.php/FAQ#What_type_of_build_meets_my_needs.3F

Since you're planning on doing a 4P build, here's the obligatory reminder about angled joysticks.   

Green is good.  Red is bad.



http://wiki.arcadecontrols.com/index.php/FAQ#Orientation

I have a dell micro Optiplex with an i7 7700t 2.6 ghz cpu.
16gb ram (is that even relevant? its all cpu from what I've been reading, no?)
will that be enough horse power?
It has 4 cores

It's a bit of overkill on RAM and good on cores.

The 2.6 GHz CPU might be a bit slow depending on the specific games you want to play.
- Press F11 in MAME to toggle the frame skip/rate display.
- If your system can keep up at 100% during gameplay, it's good to go.   

as far as games, I'll most likely just use the All killer/no filler lists here as well as consoles up to snes and genesis.

AK/NF is a great starting point.

For console games, you might want to avoid any titles where gameplay lasts longer than you can bear to stand.


Scott

[mahuti]

With an LCD order a Sinden light gun. There will be a wait for awhile to get it, but worth it.

[Phreakwars]

 i7 7700t is way more then enough, it's actually overkill, and yes, get a Sinden lightgun. I LOVE mine. I at first only bought it for Hogan's Alley and Duck Hunt, but it's been so good and so accurate I just had to try more games with it. It's such a blast. My only regret is I didn't buy the one with recoil. Imma order me another one soon, this time I'm gonna add the recoil option. They also offer holsters, but I found one real cheap on etsy for only $18. All I did was slap some  paint on it, and it looks great, fits the gun nice. https://www.etsy.com/listing/744874494/aimtrak-or-sinden-light-gun-holster-for

[Vocalitus]

With an LCD order a Sinden light gun. There will be a wait for awhile to get it, but worth it.

Cheaper to get a Dolphin bar and use that.  I can count on one hand how many times I played gun games on dedicated gun hardware this year.

The other hand and feet will be used for counting the times I played Singe 2.0. I recently installed all the gun games and played with a wiimote for the fraction of the cost.. 

[mahuti]

Cheaper to get a Dolphin bar and use that.

True. But you get what you pay for.  I don't even like using Wiimotes with the Wii. Too jittery. That said its certainly less expensive. But if I was worried about costs I'd just skip skip the cabinet and play on a console anyway.

[Phreakwars]

Yep, the wiimote version is way too jittery. I have special needs kids. One of those cheapy hack guns ain't gonna cut it when showing them how to play. I wanted accuracy and the Sinden absolutely delivers. My son tried a wi type light gun at a friends house, and that was the very first thing we noticed is the jitter and higher rate of miss because of it. But the very best part... NO CROSS HAIRS NEEDED. Here's a quick vid I did with the Sinden last week when I first set it up. You'll notice no crosshairs on the screen.

[JEGGOSH]

Since you're planning on doing a 4P build, here's the obligatory reminder about angled joysticks.   

On it. I’m doing my research. I ordered the Project Arcade book and have been going through C. Conways’s and severdhed's build posts.  It looks like it is being updated still. Any other recommendations on books or threads? There is so much info on this forum and I’m like a kid in a candy store.

For console games, you might want to avoid any titles where gameplay lasts longer than you can bear to stand.

Oh, I’m getting some comfy stools.  I’m not a savage!

With an LCD order a Sinden light gun. There will be a wait for awhile to get it, but worth it.

Yeah, I watched a Linus review of it this summer and that’s kinda what changed my mind about including it!

My only regret is I didn't buy the one with recoil.

Why? At this price point, I’d rather not have regrets. I assumed it would just get annoying.  What are you thoughts now that you have one without?

Also, Thanks Guys!

[Phreakwars]

Well, with a recoil, you get a "gun like" feel when you fire much like you would when you fire an actual gun, but not quite as hard of course. This changes the dynamic of the game that uses it and brings the experience more to life. On mine without recoil, it's pretty much no different then a Nintendo Zapper in terms of how it feels when you press the trigger. Great for the kids, but for actual gun owners like myself.. well.. I guess it's not quite as entertaining as it has the potential to be. And that's all it really boils down to, the accuracy and usability are no different otherwise.

[Osirus23]

The Wiimote is not a light gun and will never be a light gun.

[JEGGOSH]

but for actual gun owners like myself.. well.. I guess it's not quite as entertaining as it has the potential to be.

Yeah, I'll stick to the range for that 

The Wiimote is not a light gun and will never be a light gun.

But do you have an opinion on it?

[Osirus23]

Yeah, it works like garbage as a light gun.

[KenToad]

Wiimotes with a dolphinbar are fine for many arcade games and definitely the House of the Dead games. I recently played through HotD 1 on the Supermodel emulator and HotD 2 on the Wii using Wiimotes in Zapper shells and the Wiimotes worked really well. They're not good for games that require quick, accurate shots, such as police trainer or the more difficult Point Blank stages. Also, the wiimote connected through a dolphinbar doesn't jitter that much. The real issue is not being able to sight down the barrel. You need crosshairs on screen. If you've ever played T2 the arcade game, then you know how using a Wiimote to play lightgun games feels.

A 2.6 ghz processor probably won't work all that well for the more demanding MAME games, such as Golden Tee Fore! or Psyvariar or any of the other, mainly 3D, high horsepower games. I run a 3.3 ghz AMD processor with 8 cores and 16 GB of RAM through Windows 10 and my system struggles with those games. If you have the means and want to future proof, I'd recommend at least a 4 ghz processor, or as fast as you can afford.

[Laythe]

Re: 4ghz, I think it depends on the kind of games you want to run.  If your interests run mostly toward Joust and Galaga, you have something like 900% of the computer you need.  There are games toward the end of the era that MAME can emulate that likely won't be fast enough, as KenToad mentions.  I don't think any of them are on the All Killer No Filler lists, though.

[Osirus23]

Clock speed (GHz) is a meaningless metric on its own. Today's CPUs have the same clock speeds as a Pentium 4 from 15 years ago.

[Phreakwars]

4Ghz to run MAME.??  

[BadMouth]

The Wiimote is not a light gun and will never be a light gun.

+1

I guess if you are ok with how playing on a wii feels, you won't be disappointed.  If you are used to old school crt guns, they feel like an air mouse.  You don't use the sights on the gun, you watch the crosshairs on the screen and move the gun to lead the crosshairs to the target.

It won't hurt anything to start out with the 2.6Ghz PC then upgrade after the cab is built if you aren't happy with the performance on some games.  You can copy your emulator folder over to a new pc without much hassle if you keep everything in one folder.

[BadMouth]

4Ghz to run MAME.??  

If you want to play Ridge Racer, yes.

[Phreakwars]

4Ghz to run MAME.??  

If you want to play Ridge Racer, yes.

Meanwhile, most all the other games can run with much less. Pretty wasteful to spend that kind of money on just a couple games. What would be the point? Just to say "HEY, IT CAN EVEN PLAY RIDGE RACER"?? 

[Haze]

4Ghz to run MAME.??  

If you want proper sound emulation for the early classics, yes, and believe me, it's worth it.

The late 70s to early 80s stuff will over time become the most demanding in MAME to emulate as the sound circuits are emulated properly; you're running full circuit board simulations of the entire sound sections in realtime, most dedicated software designed for the purpose of running circuit simulations isn't even capable of doing that.

[Phreakwars]

Well, myself personally, I'll hold out on that till it becomes a reality instead of a goal. Very highly doubtful that I would upgrade my hardware because "donkey kong sounds better". Would not advise others to either. I find that about as silly as saying... Gee, can't wait to upgrade my Ryzen 3200g to a 3400g, I can pull 5 more FPS.

[Haze]

Well my point is that the tech has become available, so we're making use of it.

I find it funny the number of people who think we MUST embrace the latest 3D hardware to run 3D stuff, but at the same time turn their noses up at us embracing the latest CPU tech to improve other aspects of our software.

The things we're doing today were not realistic even 5 years ago but the progression of technology has made it possible, so naturally we're going to make use of those advances to the full.

In general this is another reason why MAME realised the arcade-only approach was a dead-end however, your feelings on such things are not uncommon; the progress we've been making, which is magnitudes more demanding work than anything before it, has tended to be met with a resounding "meh, the old versions are good enough, cheaper is better"  It's a very negative scene, so branching out to other areas and appealing to new audiences is healthier for the project.

[Phreakwars]

Well my point is that the tech has become available, so we're making use of it.

I find it funny the number of people who think we MUST embrace the latest 3D hardware to run 3D stuff, but at the same time turn their noses up at us embracing the latest CPU tech to improve other aspects of our software.

The things we're doing today were not realistic even 5 years ago but the progression of technology has made it possible, so naturally we're going to make use of those advances to the full.

In general this is another reason why MAME realised the arcade-only approach was a dead-end however, your feelings on such things are not uncommon; the progress we've been making, which is magnitudes more demanding work than anything before it, has tended to be met with a resounding "meh, the old versions are good enough, cheaper is better"  It's a very negative scene, so branching out to other areas and appealing to new audiences is healthier for the project.

Oh I agree, for the project itself, it's wonderful, but the reality is, no matter how much you try and make your case to someone when it comes to say building an arcade cabinet using mame and doing it with a PC, even a last gen PC, people snub their nose up and go with a Raspberry Pi instead. Something I personally detest. And the reason they do it, is because you can get a Pi B3+ for like $40. There will of course be people who will want to use higher end CPU's and mother boards, and that's fine and dandy, but what I've noticed as of late, is if someone is ignorant enough to waste money on an cheaply built Arcade1Up, there is a high probability they aren't going to want to invest in the PC hardware for an arcade cabinet. That's more of a niche for people like us who have been doing it for years. I do believe though, that once optimizations are done, then CPU useage will lower and people would be more inclined to do so since hardware demands won't exactly put too much demand on the wallet. I personally built tons of PC's over the years, many of them were pretty high end, but at this point I can't justify doing it on an arcade cabinet even though I do advocate using better stuff then a Pi.

[Vocalitus]

One of the reasons why I use throw away PCs from newegg for arcade cabinet use. Cheap and cheerful.  Some come with Windows 10 or its Linux ready.  You would think with all those HP and Dell PCs from the government, you would have a good selection.  Well work from home is now a thing apparently.

I recently had to repurpose my Raspberry PIs that were in my 1Up cabinets, due to their limitations, and stick a PC in there instead.  The PC weight adds to the stability of the enclosure that stops joystick over shift.  Also it makes a great invisible home server that can help in arguments.

Much to my amusement the Raspberry Pi's are better suited for server related tasks (Pihole,VPN, Honeypot) than arcade use.  The cost of  emulating games have risen to a new bar, that the poor ARM CPUs have trouble keeping up.  I know about the PI4 but it is no match for a $50 Core2 in any horse race. That is using discrete graphics too.

Wii motes and the LCD TopGun for the original Xbox and PS2 are fine for a pedestal.  I have my Dolphin bar on my 55 inch TV, employed two Wii mote gun controllers and get very little jitter, if any. 

I experienced the jitter (as some have described) on the 1Up Cabinet, being so close (3 feet) from the bar, and maybe being on the wrong configuration (4), that you have to hold the Wii mote like a Uzi for games like HOTD and Aliens.

As in my previous post, gun games are a small part of my experience, with utilities like Singe 2.0 for all the American Laserdisc Games titles and MAME .149 to justify spending $200 for the same performance of the TopGun (which is not very good with the stupid IR bars).  They just work with just about any emulator on the PC.  Fingers get tired after two games anyway.

I would love to have a pedestal solution in the living room, but with social distancing (we do that at home too) and the lack of a partner in crime willing to pony up a challenge, I opted for the personal gaming platform more suited for the Lazyboy. 

I bought 3 LapGears (I get from Sams Club) to house my HOTAS and arcade controllers with an active 20ft USB cable, saves my poor back from standing and keeps the sanity levels to a minimum when the dark side of the force reacts to more "crap" in the living room. 

Super stable for gaming and that active USB cuts down on the lag.  Standing playing games tends to suck after the first hour.  Which "enables" your friends to game in comfort, and that phone slot is handy for the ball and chain warnings you forget to notice when reliving your youth.

[Haze]

Well thank you to some of the posters here for proving my point.

We do cool things (and these are very cool things indeed) but the community reacts in a negative way, even if not you here directly, you must see it in the people asking you for help with building cabs, but *insisting* on using Pis or ancient PCs etc.

People seem to want it both ways, hald the scene want us to invest time and effort into the arcade side of the project, but then when we do, it's met with scorn because it increases the system requirements or means the ROMs change etc. while the other half of the arcade scene that claims to 'support' MAME just shout '2003 is better' when objectively, it is not, in any sense.

We're better off doing things to appeal to a more forward thinking audience.  The reception from emulating random educational consoles and such is night and day compared to the reception from driving the arcade emulation forward where the majority seem to want it held back for the sake of running on a potato.

Anyway, sorry for the rant, but it's just sad to see people laughing off the idea of emulation of even older games requiring a good machine, it makes for a very toxic environment, one that is not supportive of the project and what we need to do at all, but it has been this way for probably 18 years now, whenever we've tried to move forward.  All I'm asking for is an understanding of why that has led to us branching out instead.

[Laythe]

Mostly, I'd say the folks around here aren't quick to attack - they just care a lot about the topic, that's why they're here.  Passionate differences of opinion can get a bit heated, but it's usually not personal.

Good luck!

Hey again, JEGGOSH. 

... well, coming back to this thread, I see that I should have hedged my bets a little more when I said what I said above.  This does still probably fall under "passionate differences of opinion", but I like to think it isn't usually quite THIS aggressive around here all the time.

Sorry your introductory thread and your reasonable questions touched off one of those heated debates.  I hope you stick around, I'd be interested to see your build.

[mahuti]

TLDR. Move this off to a philosophy post. 

[bobbyb13]

4Ghz to run MAME.??  

If you want proper sound emulation for the early classics, yes, and believe me, it's worth it.

The late 70s to early 80s stuff will over time become the most demanding in MAME to emulate as the sound circuits are emulated properly; you're running full circuit board simulations of the entire sound sections in realtime, most dedicated software designed for the purpose of running circuit simulations isn't even capable of doing that.

I'm surprised to read this (and blessed relevant commentary even!) but there you have it, from a noteworthy source.

[Phreakwars]

4Ghz to run MAME.??  

If you want proper sound emulation for the early classics, yes, and believe me, it's worth it.

The late 70s to early 80s stuff will over time become the most demanding in MAME to emulate as the sound circuits are emulated properly; you're running full circuit board simulations of the entire sound sections in realtime, most dedicated software designed for the purpose of running circuit simulations isn't even capable of doing that.

I'm surprised to read this (and blessed relevant commentary even!) but there you have it, from a noteworthy source.

First of all, thank you for semi getting back on topic. And yes 4Ghz (at this time) would be where you'd wanna be at if you want cutting edge emulation. My point was simply that the average person will not want to incur the extra expense to get to that point unless they specifically are concerned with being able to do so, thus why the conversation lowered to Raspberry Pi's being used more commonly then what would be ideal.

For a common PC translation. Most people (the working class), would rather play Fortnite on say a GTX 1660. If you told them the best frames are on a 1070 or better, they couldn't afford one, but will most certainly dream of getting one some day, those that do own one are evidently the snobby elite rich kids in their eyes. While at the other end of the spectrum, you'll have the one's who bought a used GT710 off of eBay because it seemed like a great price, then demand Epic games make it run at 100FPS and complain about what a ---smurfy--- job the developers did. Haze also said this in so many words when he talked about how people expect it to run on a potato.

[Phreakwars]

I assume dreamcast and ps1 are too much and it's not my plan really.

Actually, you'd be surprised to know the Dreamcast and PS1 would probably run quite well with that configuration should you decide to use those emulators as well.

[Howard_Casto]

MAME has some serious quality of life issues that are absolutely killing the project long term.... to argue otherwise is lunacy.  MAME is also very nice and a lot of people have worked very hard to get all of those games running.  Again, arguing otherwise is lunacy. 

MAME is a very wonderful program that over the past few years has been made so bloated and hard to navigate for the common man that getting new users outside of people installing a pre-configued, pre-loaded pi image of a crappy old build of mame becomes less and less likely as time passes.  I'll say it for the millionth time, making a library (mame's supported gamelist) without a card catalog is exceedingly stupid.  I have no problem with the bloat as it preserves oddball stuff that otherwise wouldn't get touched but as it gets larger, more user friendly means of browsing and searching the gamelist need to be added. 

[Phreakwars]

MAME has some serious quality of life issues that are absolutely killing the project long term.... to argue otherwise is lunacy.  MAME is also very nice and a lot of people have worked very hard to get all of those games running.  Again, arguing otherwise is lunacy. 

MAME is a very wonderful program that over the past few years has been made so bloated and hard to navigate for the common man that getting new users outside of people installing a pre-configued, pre-loaded pi image of a crappy old build of mame becomes less and less likely as time passes.  I'll say it for the millionth time, making a library (mame's supported gamelist) without a card catalog is exceedingly stupid.  I have no problem with the bloat as it preserves oddball stuff that otherwise wouldn't get touched but as it gets larger, more user friendly means of browsing and searching the gamelist need to be added.

Complaints aside, would you recommend someone go bleeding edge with the hardware, or simply find a version that runs well within their budget? I think it comes down to more of what the end user wants to play on it, and for that I think the focus should be one what runs decent right now.

For the inexperienced, and those who have not found a forum like this say to ask around.. if they go to the mamedev website and google the system requirements, they will more then likely find this:



Taking note of the bottom paragraph, it says the goal isn't to make it run awesome on your PC and let you have a great time, but rather to document and reproduce hardware behavior.

BTW, thank you Howard for showing the PROPER way to state your concerns with the software instead of a blanket "MAMEDEVS SUCK" statement.

[saint]

Cleanup in aisle 12. Everyone's got their own opinions but this thread went off-topic and hostile. Apologies to those whose calmer comments got swept up in the cleanup.

Please keep things civil folks - thanks!

[Phreakwars]

Thank you.

[BadMouth]

I know this is a touchy subject and I have tried to look into it but the search function here is not working for me and I wasn't able to find an answer looking around. Please don't attack me.
I am planning a 4-player pedestal (ideally with 2 guns) It will connect to probably an LCD mounted on the wall as I can get more bang for the buck than a monitor there.
Here is my question, I have been stalling...
I have a dell micro Optiplex with an i7 7700t 2.6 ghz cpu.
16gb ram (is that even relevant? its all cpu from what I've been reading, no?)
will that be enough horse power?
It has 4 cores but I see people saying that they need at least 4 (there are an additional 4 logical but I don't know if those are usable)
as far as games, I'll most likely just use the All killer/no filler lists here as well as consoles up to snes and genesis. I assume dreamcast and ps1 are too much and it's not my plan really.
I would like to be able to use guns as well house of the dead 2 etc.
I promise I will have better questions as I begin building that may or may not be equally as annoying.
That is my question.  be gentle.
Thanks

I stand by my original suggestion to use the current PC temporarily and see how it fares.

But the more I think about this, the more I think the answer is to build the PC to run Demul instead of thinking in terms of MAME.
If the PC falls short of running a wanted game in MAME, just use an older version of MAME.

I play Sega Naomi games on my cab as much as anything else.  There are a lot of great shmups like Ikaruga & Psyvariar 2, plus  Dead or Alive 2.
It also plays the Atomiswave games like Metal Slug 6, Dolphin Blue, Guilty Gear, & Demolish Fist.
Demul would require a video card and OS that can do at least Direct X 11.

My cab is outdated and has a 3.8Ghz Athlon X3 that is over a decade old.   It will run the fighting games in Demul, but the shmups choke when there are too many enemies on the screen so I use Makaron emulator for those.  I don't recommend Makaron because you kind of had to collect the pieces while it was being developed to get all the games working.

EDIT: FYI, my cab runs MAME circa v.142-.146 I don't even remember at this point.  It was when the PGM games were added.
That's what was new when I built it.  The games that were borderline playing full speed and required tweaking choke on newer versions of MAME, so I've stayed with what works for that PC. 
It's a case of diminishing returns.  It really does come down to how much you are willing to pay to play a few more specific games.  No processor ever plays "everything" and it will always be a moving goalpost.

[Phreakwars]

I know this is a touchy subject and I have tried to look into it but the search function here is not working for me and I wasn't able to find an answer looking around. Please don't attack me.
I am planning a 4-player pedestal (ideally with 2 guns) It will connect to probably an LCD mounted on the wall as I can get more bang for the buck than a monitor there.
Here is my question, I have been stalling...
I have a dell micro Optiplex with an i7 7700t 2.6 ghz cpu.
16gb ram (is that even relevant? its all cpu from what I've been reading, no?)
will that be enough horse power?
It has 4 cores but I see people saying that they need at least 4 (there are an additional 4 logical but I don't know if those are usable)
as far as games, I'll most likely just use the All killer/no filler lists here as well as consoles up to snes and genesis. I assume dreamcast and ps1 are too much and it's not my plan really.
I would like to be able to use guns as well house of the dead 2 etc.
I promise I will have better questions as I begin building that may or may not be equally as annoying.
That is my question.  be gentle.
Thanks

I stand by my original suggestion to use the current PC temporarily and see how it fares.

But the more I think about this, the more I think the answer is to build the PC to run Demul instead of thinking in terms of MAME.
If the PC falls short of running a wanted game in MAME, just use an older version of MAME.

I play Sega Naomi games on my cab as much as anything else.  There are a lot of great shmups like Ikaruga & Psyvariar 2, plus  Dead or Alive 2.
It also plays the Atomiswave games like Metal Slug 6, Dolphin Blue, Guilty Gear, & Demolish Fist.
Demul would require a video card and OS that can do at least Direct X 11.

My cab is outdated and has a 3.8Ghz Athlon X3 that is over a decade old.   It will run the fighting games in Demul, but the shmups choke when there are too many enemies on the screen so I use Makaron emulator for those.  I don't recommend Makaron because you kind of had to collect the pieces while it was being developed to get all the games working.

EDIT: FYI, my cab runs MAME circa v.142-.146 I don't even remember at this point.  It was when the PGM games were added.
That's what was new when I built it.  The games that were borderline playing full speed and required tweaking choke on newer versions of MAME, so I've stayed with what works for that PC. 
It's a case of diminishing returns.  It really does come down to how much you are willing to pay to play a few more specific games.  No processor ever plays "everything" and it will always be a moving goalpost.

Exactly. And if you think about it, OP is worried about a CPU that is way way more powerful then those silly Pi's everyone is addicted to. Has at least 4 times more memory. With a few exceptions, he'll have a worry free cab that will last several years with the right version of mame to compliment it. Myself I never recommend people go bleeding edge when I build them a personal gaming PC, no reason, at least in my opinion anyway, to tell someone to go bleeding edge on a cab with an emulator either.

[JEGGOSH]

I stand by my original suggestion to use the current PC temporarily and see how it fares.

I think this is the plan.
I have the pc for free so I'll use it, spend that money on joysticks, buttons, guns, a trackball, and a spinner.
see what I se and go from there.  I don't plan on building the cabinet until Spring I think so I just want to plan the ---steaming pile of meadow muffin--- out of it and use the next months to learn, buy stuff in smaller batches and have a good plan before attacking.

[saint]

Looks like I missed a spot in the cleanup, try #2.

For the record, I'm not a blind slave to MAMEDev, and I don't care what anyone's opinions are in terms of whether or not they can be expressed here. Knock yourself out.

I *am* a big fan of MAME for the record, but it's their ballgame to run.

What I am a stickler for is the rules of decorum on this forum, which is my digital home. If you can't abide by the rules, please find another place to express your opinion.

MAME philosophy thread forked to here: http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php/topic,164184.msg1729651.html

Thanks!