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"Dedicated" Mame Cab.

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PacManFan:

This is what I want to do:

Because I'm way to cheap to buy a Ms.Pac / Galaga combo jamma board, I want to find an embedded solution to run just these 2 games on a Cocktail table. I'm thinking I could get a motherboard with sound/video built in, and a compact flash IDE drive. What I'm concerned about is the boot sequence.

I want this machine to be indistinguisable from a "real" Ms. Pac / Galaga pcb. I want to hide the boot sequence in some way, maybe through turning on the monitor only after the game is launched, or embedding a version of mame into the DOS kernel. My real concern is the boot/bios screen showing up at all. Does anyone know how to turn off the bios screen, or a motherboard that has the option to turn it off?

Has anyone done this before?

-PMF

Edgedamage:

Well I am almost going to do the same thing. Here's what i have planed. I have timed relay that came from a poker machine after power on the monitor switches on 10 sec later. I am planing on using it in my cocktail cab. As for hiding the bois screen I don't think that is something that can be done. Also I heard using CF/IDE is good for fast boot times. Also look into setting your system up with Fraggals Boot CD. If you are using pure DOS.

WonderMellon:

This was posted yesterday.  He mentions just this sort of thing.  Hope this helps

http://www.arcadecontrols.org/yabbse/index.php?board=1;action=display;threadid=16951



Wade:

You should look into the different 3/1, 6/1, and 8/1 boards.  Some of them are very slick, Jamma interface, menu, probably hide the boot screens, VGA & CGA output. I've seen them for $250-450.  Much more elegant solution than a PC board with a DOM.

Wade



Blakey:

If one of those multi JAMMA boards isn't the way you want to go, consider buying an ASUS motherboard which has MyLogo. You can hide the boot screen and replace it with a 256 colour 640x480 image of your choice (test grid/blank screen)

http://usa.asus.com/products/mb/mylogo.htm

I'm considering using a A7N8X-VM microATX board, and this feature is a nice bonus.

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