More questions from a newbie

[mamefreak2]

First off, let me say that I don't know what I'd do without this site, it's fantastic. So far I've been able to build the control panel and refurb my machine using the examples on the site. Moreover, some people gave me some great advice on these boards. Thanks for all of the help.

Seeing as how I'm in the final stretch for getting my system together I thought I'd ask a couple of questions:

1. My marquee is printed up and looks great. Do I put plexi in front of it and behind it? Or is it safe to have the paper in front of the light that will be behind it? I just dont want it catching on fire.

2. Somebody mentioned a program called bootskin, I'd love to be able to use something like this for the startup, but it won't run on Windows 98. Does anyone know any similar programs?

3. Is there a way to record the sound effects of mame games to your hard drive? I've found some good websites with wav. files, but I'd like to be able to record my own for startup purposes.

4. I've heard people talk about front ends, but I'm not exactly sure what they are. Up until now, I've just been using Mame32 version 84 for windows and its been great. What does a frontend do? Do I need it if I want Mame to begin automatically when I turn on the computer?

Once again, thanks for your help everyone.

[cdbrown]

1 - most people seem to have the marquee wedged between to pieces of plexi which I think is the way to go.  I don't think the printed marquee would be able to stay up and be flat without support so put it in between to sheets of plexi.  If the light is a fluoro then there will be minimal heat, but you'd want the fluoro fixture to be far enough back from the marquee to give an even dispersion of light.

2,3 - can't help on that sorry

4 - mame32 is basically a frontend for the commandline mame.  There are many frontends around that can do a whole range of things - go check out the software section of the forum for links to the frontends.  I have recently tried out ArcadEPIC which is very simple to setup and use - I would recommend that one over mame32.  All you need is to download the commandline version of mame and the ArcadEPIC file, run the config and away you go.  Very easy.  If your looking for a more powerful and fancy FE with 3d graphics and such maybe have a look at emulaxian/3darcade.

Cheers
-cdbrown

[mamefreak2]

Thx CD. I took a look at the 3D frontend and it looks awesome. I'll try installing that sometime this week.

Man, it's incredible how much time this sucks up, especially when you don't really know what you're doing.

[goofy]

Do a search on these boards for Arcade Ambience. The guy who made these put together three compilations of arcade sounds from different years (1981, 1983 and 1986). I think they are about 30 minutes long (the files are 80MB+).

This may be what you are looking for. Otherwise, you might try a program called TotalRecorder to do it yourself.

Or, ask the guy who did Arcade Ambience how he did it.