Bored, Broke, and Boards .... BARTOP

[Ed ONeill]

Ok so I am :

BORED-  because I haven't built my new MAME project. I have however built MAME on the MOVE, a portable/laptop machine.

BROKE  - because I have no money  to buy an arcade vga and a trackball.

BOARDS - but I have plenty of spare wood hanging around .

So having said that I am contimplating building a BARTOP that would play mostly classic games using an old computer I have hanging around (650 amd mhz).

There are not many examples on the examples page (4.. I beleive) so I hope I can get some answers to my questions.

1. Should I use the computer in or out of the case?
2. What are some  good dimensions or should I wing it?
3. Should I do a vertical or horizontal machine?
4. Is there a list of games that a 650mhz would play ? I seem to to remeber a website with some info on computer specs.
5. Any other things I should consider?

Thanks
Ed

[Gunstar Hero]

You got questions, we got answers.  

1. Out. Saves space aplenty, and in a bartop smaller is better.
2. It'll really depend on your display. Again, smaller is better!
3. Depends on your game list, but I'd say horizontal.
4. It'll play tons of games. Try older MAME builds.
5. Probably, but I won't list any of those.  

[Ed ONeill]

Please by all means elaborate on question 5

[JoyMonkey]

I still haven't found the time to build the Galaga bar-top that I was planning on (just got back from the honeymoon last night).  This design should house a standard 17" CRT monitor and your old PC's motherboard & PSU no problem.

A 650mhz machine should play every vertical game perfectly, I'd use DOS Mame 0.66 or earlier just to be sure. Here's a list to give you an idea.
I'd say it'll also play about 90% of all horizontal games perfectly too, if you want to go that route, if you want to play mostly classics you should stick with a vertical monitor though.

[paigeoliver]

Ok so I am :

BORED-  because I haven't built my new MAME project. I have however built MAME on the MOVE, a portable/laptop machine.

BROKE  - because I have no money  to buy an arcade vga and a trackball.

BOARDS - but I have plenty of spare wood hanging around .

So having said that I am contimplating building a BARTOP that would play mostly classic games using an old computer I have hanging around (650 amd mhz).

There are not many examples on the examples page (4.. I beleive) so I hope I can get some answers to my questions.

1. Should I use the computer in or out of the case?
2. What are some  good dimensions or should I wing it?
3. Should I do a vertical or horizontal machine?
4. Is there a list of games that a 650mhz would play ? I seem to to remeber a website with some info on computer specs.
5. Any other things I should consider?

Thanks
Ed

A 650 will play pretty much everything that was in the mame .55 - .65 era. Pick a mame somewhere in there and you will be fine.

[Gunstar Hero]

Please by all means elaborate on question 5

Don't worry, it wasn't a shot at you or anything. There's always things you never considered or thought of popping up during a project like this, and I felt that trying to list such things would be futile... but hey, I'll throw some out.

Examples include... (fade to dream sequence)

"Do I have a place to set a bartop, or do I need to build a bar first? What is the Matrix? Maybe a stand? Am I gonna be happy playing games on a 15 inch monitor, or is this gonna be a "bigger" bartop? Is the top flat so I have a good place to put my brew? Cupholders? Do androids dream of electric sheep? Coin slot or no? What color scheme would look good? Maybe make it look like a mini arcade machine? How do I mount cards in a machine with no case?"

(The above is a somewhat accurate look at the way my mind works/doesn't work.)  

BTW, MAME on the MOVE rocks. Someday my P3 500mhz laptop will become one of those.  

Course, I'll have to get a better laptop first. And a free briefcase.  

[pointdablame]

I would definitely use the computer out of its case.  I am currently building a bartop and built it with the plan of keeping my computer in its case, and I could have saved a lot of space by not doing that.  It's not that it'll be overly huge with the case, but as was said, smaller is better with a bartop.

My bartop is 18" wide and 30" or so deep (guesses off the top of my head.  Your best bet is to grab the monitor you're gonna use, and rough up an idea for space needed for computer parts and everything else.  I actually put a piece of MDF right up to my monitor to get a rough idea, sketched something out, then went from there.

As for horizontal/vertical... you really have to consider what you're gonna play.  I'm going horizontal because most of the games I play often are horizontal.  Vetical games aren't terrible on a 15" or 17" screen, but it does get small quick.  If you think you're gonna be playing mostly verticals, just go vertical to avoid the even smaller screen.

I'm using a 450mhz Athlon and have had good results with a .55 set so far.  I haven't played much, but it seems to run most games fairly well.  You'll be even better off of course.

[paigeoliver]

I'm using a 450mhz Athlon and have had good results with a .55 set so far.  I haven't played much, but it seems to run most games fairly well.  You'll be even better off of course.

Where did you find an Athlon 450? The slowest Athlon was a 500, and even those are pretty rare.

[Ed ONeill]

I'm using a 450mhz Athlon and have had good results with a .55 set so far.

[Ed ONeill]

Thanks everyone.

now if I could only find an old set of roms ...hmmm

Thanks
Ed

[paigeoliver]

Thanks everyone.

now if I could only find an old set of roms ...hmmm

Thanks
Ed

Most of the roms are unchanged from that era until today, and most of the ones that did change were those HUGE romsets. I remember some of them 50+ meg ones changing like 4 or 5 times.

[SirPeale]

Most of the roms are unchanged from that era until today, and most of the ones that did change were those HUGE romsets.

And even then, a ROM manager (such as ClrMame can sort out 99% of those.

[Tiger-Heli]

Similar thread with lots of examples:

here

[Ed ONeill]

Ok so I can use the roms I already have , but I remember reading somewhere to use a certain mame build, or can I use mame version 32.79

Tiger-Heli ...thanks for the link , I'll have to check it out !

Signed
Ed

[neuromancer]

I just finished my cab, and I haven't submitted it yet. It's kinda big for a bartop, but it's about the smallest that can be made with a 15" horizontal monitor. It's 23" tall.

In my case, the PC case was just 1/2" narrower than the monitor, and a lot shallower. That just leaves the height -- I might have been able to shave 3" by mounting the components without the case, but the height of the PCI cards and the power supply are givens. It would have required a lot more planning to build it sans case.

Since my PC and monitor are still in their cases, It's not too big a deal to pull them out to work on them, should any work be needed.

I have some pictures and text: www.2fiddles.com

Bob

[pointdablame]

I'm using a 450mhz Athlon and have had good results with a .55 set so far.  I haven't played much, but it seems to run most games fairly well.  You'll be even better off of course.

Where did you find an Athlon 450? The slowest Athlon was a 500, and even those are pretty rare.

yeah, its a K6-2 I think actually.  It's been a long few weeks and my brain is pretty much mush.  Thanks for catching that.

[Tiger-Heli]

Ok so I can use the roms I already have , but I remember reading somewhere to use a certain mame build, or can I use mame version 32.79

Ummm, Paige said about 5 replies up to use .55 to .65.  I would trust him on this.

You can always run one of these versions for the majority of games and use 0.79 only for the games that were added.

Your ROMS are most likely find b/c of the following hypothetical example:

For MAME 0.55, the devs think ROMset A has only 5 roms:

For MAME 0.60, the devs find a new ROMset A board with two additional roms.

But MAME only checks for the roms it needs, so the 0.60 ROM will work with 0.55, but the 0.55 ROM will not work with 0.60

etc.

Of course the dev's also randomly rename stuff which ClrMAME can help with.

[Ed ONeill]

Thanks everyone ...now onto the build

Signed
Ed

[jfunk]

Of course the dev's also randomly rename stuff which ClrMAME can help with.

But how does one go about checking older non-xmlinfo versions with ClrMAME?  I can't find old datfiles..?  Have an old PC and a smaller HD and wanted to put only useable roms on it, but can't rebuild my romset to an older version..  Is that even possible?

(sorry to hijack the thread...)

[Tiger-Heli]

Of course the dev's also randomly rename stuff which ClrMAME can help with.

But how does one go about checking older non-xmlinfo versions with ClrMAME?  I can't find old datfiles..?  Have an old PC and a smaller HD and wanted to put only useable roms on it, but can't rebuild my romset to an older version..  Is that even possible?

(sorry to hijack the thread...)

ClrMAME builds it's own datfiles from the MAME executable.  I assume it can still handle .txt MAME executables, with the new version.  If not you might need to E-mail Roman or use an older version of ClrMAME.

It should be possible.

[SirPeale]

ClrMAME is fully backwards compatible with older versions of Mame.  Instead of '-listxml' to generate a list, it's '-listinfo'. on pre-.84 builds.

[jfunk]

ClrMAME is fully backwards compatible with older versions of Mame.  Instead of '-listxml' to generate a list, it's '-listinfo'. on pre-.84 builds.

DOH!  I just missed the 'OLD_MAME' type    Works, now!  THNX!