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Newb questions
Cariba:
Hello All,
I have a couple arcade CRT cabinets, one with a vertical 412 in 1 Elf (19" vertical crt), one with a Neo GEO MVS system (26" crt).
I recently purchased and tested some arcade PCBs and wanted to be able to run various options on the arcades (both Jamma wired), but wanted to under stand FIRST:
1) Am I correct in presuming that if I buy and use one of the Pandora boxes (with for example 3000 games etc, or the ones with less) it would hook up directly via Jamma and I wont need anything further to display CRTs in the cabinets, but I would need dedicated horizonal or vertical RPi or Pandoras boxes correct? BUT some of these Pandora's have both horizonal and vertical games, how are they displayed properly, even when using an LCD?
2) It seems that MAME is a good choice, but I find that is case with an LCD set up; where you can have art bezels, and display both vertical and horizonal (i also have a MAME LCD pedestal set up), so if I wanted to play just classic arcade games, on CRT, wouldn't pandoras plug and play option (right into Jamma) be best option? OR would MAME still be the best option? what are the cons/pros of Rpi/Pandora's etc VRS MAME for a CRT? I know that I would need to set up and use Grovvey MAME to display on CRT when using PC MAME (other than having a good VGA Arcade video card).
-Is MAME only way to display both vertical and horizonal arcade games on a SINGLE CRT arcade monitor of accommodating size?
- If a XXX in 1 or other Rpi/etc can display in both Vertical and Horizontal on a single CRT monitor, is there any particular Pandora's/RPi would be best recommended for this? Any recommendations for a dedicated vertical or Horizontal otherwise?
This info will help me finalize plans...
Thanks,
bobbyb13:
Only particular Pandora's box versions will work with a CRT so just be mindful of what you get.
As far as I know they all use a previous version of MAME as their engine and can display both horiz and vert games to a horizontal screen.
If you are a real stickler for authenticity then you will want to build your own MAME PC using CRTEmudriver and GroovyMame rather than use a Pandora's box unit.
The most important thing is pick your favorite 50 games and think about controls.
You will probably only play half of those regularly anyway- maybe even fewer than that.
Building for what you MIGHT play winds up a huge waste of time and resources.
lilshawn:
XXX-in-1 boards typically use what we colloquially call CHAMMA (chinese jamma) it does not 100% conform to JAMMA pinouts, as some wires are repurposed for other buttons and whatnot... in particular the E/27 positions have been used for a button instead of ground. plugging a xxx-in-1 into a jamma harness results in "BUTTON6" being pressed all the time. not necessarily a problem in games that don't use the button, but a problem in games that do.
so putting a 5000-in-1 or whatever on your machine that currently has a 410-in-1 would probably work just fine.... but the aforementioned issue would arise if it where to be plugged into the MVS systems JAMMA harness.
bobbyb13:
The above is all true of course, with the added fun that if your MVS has original wiring then that too is a deviation from standard JAMMA.
The speaker wiring is different and there is also a change to accomodate the game selection button on the control panel.
Ask me how I know.
Somewhere I have a pinout of the MVS main board connector if you don't find it beforehand.
More specific detail of your cabinets will help with advice!
Cariba:
OK, I see, the reason I was looking XXX in one, is cause they are direct Jamma connections AND I wanted to have the (easy) compatibility option to switch between the XXX-1 and PCBs. I think it gets harder to do that (switch to PCBs) with the MAME PC connection right?
Can you explain why MAME PC would be better emulating that XXX-1 or vers Rpi etc?
Thanks,