Main > Raspberry Pi & Dev Board
Arcade Cabinet Upgrade - Looking for input
joshlindem:
Almost 20 years ago, I was gifted the remnants of an original arcade cabinet. It had the marquee, controls and coin slots intact. I pulled out all the original wiring\speakers\lights and replaced it with a basic desktop computer running DOS+ MAME w/17" monitor. Wired in some LED lights behind the marquee, computer speakers replacing original and used an IPAC Ultimarc board to connect the arcade controls to the computer.
Much of that was from the help of users on this board.
Flash forward to now, and I'm relooking at my cabinet. It's great. still works and still fun to play. In the time that we've had it, we've had to move twice and it's a "beast". It's heavy, and large. I'm looking to rebuild everything. Maybe see about acquiring a smaller cabinet. (would love separate input on this)
I've built a Rasberry Pi 5 with RetroPie. And now I feel like I'm starting all over again from scratch. Albeit a little more confused this time around. I’ve copied over my roms to the retropi and it currently can work with regulat controllers. But now that the pi5 is working, next step is putting it in the arcade cabinet.
I need to upgrade the current i-PAC (PS2) to the newer i-PAC2 (USB) and the cabinet itself should work the same. But I originally set this up so long ago I don’t recall if I had to do anything to the board in DOS. In which case if I wire up a new ipac2 and connect it with usb to my pi5 what will I need to do in order to get it to work with retropi?
Am I correct in thinking that all the controls should operate the same from the old to the new?
Definitely lots of info to go through here
joshlindem:
the old board
BlueGhost:
A little late, but yes an I-Pac 2 should work. If you are only doing 6 buttons per player + start + coin/select, you may be able to get away with using the GPIO headers on the Pi and skipping an encoder.
I like Batocera, similar to RetroPie but has more options for emulators, including the latest version of MAME compiled for Pi.
burnaz1124:
This is close to what I want to do. I have 24 buttons, 3 joysticks, 1 spinner and 1 trackball. Looking for a board that can handle that. Please advice. TIA!
joshlindem:
--- Quote from: burnaz1124 on February 24, 2025, 09:46:03 pm ---This is close to what I want to do. I have 24 buttons, 3 joysticks, 1 spinner and 1 trackball. Looking for a board that can handle that. Please advice. TIA!
--- End quote ---
Ultimarc has an I-PAC 4 that should cover all that
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