How to setup two light guns in WinXP with Arcade monitor

[tw661]

I just finished my cab and I'm already thinking of upgrades.  I want to connect two light guns.  Searching around I have seen a lot of concerns about configuring two light guns.  Most of the treads are over a year old, so I'm not sure what the state is these days.  Any help is appreciated.  What model of guns are available, HOWTO, and where to get the guns.  My setup is WinXP PC with 700mHz and 256 RAM, connected to JPAC to Jamma connector to Arcade monitor (not sure what model) connected back to ArcadeVGA card.  Also let me know what processor speed do I need.  I just started Area51 and it's butt slow.  I was thinking going Athlon XP ot sure what speed though.  This is a MAME dedicated pc.

Thanks everyone

[jerryjanis]

I can't recommend a processor speed, but I can address the lightgun question.

Here's a little chart of the different light guns and which features each gun has:

http://jstookey.com/arcade/lightguns/

I gathered this information from messages on this board.  If you're using a standard resolution arcade monitor with the ArcadeVGA, then the Act Labs PC USB light guns are probably the ones you are after.  You can use multiple lightguns with Windows XP using Mame Analog+ XP.

I'm not aware of there being a how-to.  To run Mame Analog+ XP from the command line for multiple lightgun support, you would use:

mameanalogxp -lightgun -multimousexp policetr

And I think that you will probably have to configure which pointer devices (lightguns and mice) are mapped to each player using the -switchmice switch:

mameanalogxp -lightgun -switchmice -multimousexp policetr

Once the game is started, you might also need to remap the lightgun trigger & button to each player in Mame's tab menu.

I think that's everything, but I don't have multiple light guns to actually test the process out on.

Another important note to make is related to a discovery that Andy Warne at Ultimarc made.  He discovered that if you use an arcade monitor and you splice the hsync and vsync wires together in your VGA cable hack, then the light gun won't work. When my lightgun didn't work on my arcade monitor, I added a wire to my monitor's output cable for the vsync, and wired it correctly to the video card, and only then did the gun work.

Here's a pic of what I added:
http://jstookey.com/arcade/WG_25k7191/WG_25K7191_output.JPG

[Doc-]

I just bought a second Act-Labs light gun and I can confirm that it works find under MAME Analog+XP using the command line options listed above.  Head to head is great fun!

I have the PC versions (21" PC monitor), and I'm running a cheap 2.2GHz Athlon and XP.  I do not have an arcade monitor.  So far speed has not been a problem in any of the games I've tried.