Author Topic: OK , I've got the hardware , now what ?? (Read 2462 times)

ssjenkins · « **on:** January 22, 2005, 12:48:11 pm »

Hi All,

OK , this is a continuation of this thread :

http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php/topic,30681.0.html

but as it covers a few topics I thought I'd open a new thread . Here goes . I've got the following .

1) One upright arcade machine with JAMMA harness and ....
2) One Hantarex MTC9110 Monitor

and I've just bought the following ..

3) One J-PAC
4) One ArcadeVGA card
5) One 500Mhz(P3) /128M RAM PC .
6) and 2 new attitional buttons for player 1 and 2 (now 5 in total)

I know I'm asking a lot here but what's the best way to set this up ? Starting with Win98SE . I'm going to do a clean install . I presume all I need is the OS together with DirectX9.0 . Should I load anything else ?

Once the OS is up and running I'm going to load Mame .35 and the latest version of MameWah . Is there anything special I need to know for my setup ? I've always used Mame32 so any help would be appreciated .

At present I've got to physically turn my monitor around if I want to play horizontally oriented games . What's going to happen now once I install Mame ?
If I leave my monitor in vertical mode and I play a horizontal game I presume it'll be "squashed up" a bit .

Sorry for all the questions but I just wanted to be prepared for any problems during the convertion . I'd appreciate any info/advice .

Sammy

krick · « **Reply #1 on:** January 23, 2005, 02:10:31 am »

You should probably turn your monitor horizontal as the majority of games in MAME are horizontal.

You can definitely play vertical games on a horizontal monitor, but I don't know if horizontal games will play on a vertical monitor.

As for installing and hooking everything up, here's my 12 step program as best as I can remember...

1) Install the J-PAC following the J-PAC instructions on the Ultimarc site...
http://www.ultimarc.com/jpac2.html
...pay close attention to the sections titled "JAMMA Cabinet Preparation" and "Connecting to the JAMMA harness and PC".

ssjenkins · « **Reply #2 on:** January 23, 2005, 04:09:46 am »

Just wanted to say many , many thanks for the information krick . That was EXACTLY what I was looking for . I should have all the hardware together within the next week so I'll post back with the results . Once again many thanks for taking the time to reply .

Sammy

ssjenkins · « **Reply #3 on:** January 26, 2005, 10:09:32 am »

Well I'm on my way . All my hardware has arrived and I've cut my 4 new holes in my control panel . Basically I'm still going through point 1) below , however , my question relates to point 2) , software . I ended up buying a 733Mhz P3/128RAM . I'm going to use Mame35 (mame035b_fix.zip) and MameWah V1.6 .
Basically my question is , should I use Win98SE or W2K Pro SP4 ? and do I need DirectX ??

Thanks

Sammy

j123vt_99 · « **Reply #4 on:** January 26, 2005, 10:51:16 am »

asking as a newbie, but why would you use mame .35 if ver .90 is out?

quarterback · « **Reply #5 on:** January 26, 2005, 10:53:13 am »

Quote from: j123vt_99 on January 26, 2005, 10:51:16 am

asking as a newbie, but why would you use mame .35 if ver .90 is out?

This is just a guess, but I'd guess the answer is "speed"

j123vt_99 · « **Reply #6 on:** January 26, 2005, 10:54:41 am »

but, with the limit of not being able to play newer games?

Hoagie_one · « **Reply #7 on:** January 26, 2005, 10:57:42 am »

from his previous thread, he mentioned this was a classics cab hes building

ssjenkins · « **Reply #8 on:** January 26, 2005, 11:03:24 am »

Yeah , I'm really just interested in pre 81 machines .

Sammy

j123vt_99 · « **Reply #9 on:** January 26, 2005, 11:49:31 am »

cool.. so i was kinda right about the limitation... yeah me, i'm learning

krick · « **Reply #10 on:** January 26, 2005, 02:47:56 pm »

Quote from: ssjenkins on January 26, 2005, 10:09:32 am

Basically my question is , should I use Win98SE or W2K Pro SP4 ? and do I need DirectX ??

On that hardware, I'd use Windows 98SE.

Go to windows update and get all the Windows updates, including all the "recommended" updates like DirectX9.

Then install the Unofficial Windows 98SE service pack...
http://exuberant.ms11.net/98sesp.html

Then, you should be good to go.

ssjenkins · « **Reply #11 on:** January 26, 2005, 03:58:39 pm »

Thanks krick . I'm downloading the service pack as we speak . My cabinet is more or less ready . I've just disconnected the 12V/5V supply lines leaving the ground in tack . Hopefully tomorrow I'll be ready to insert the PC and then the fun really begins . I'm still not sure about my Mame/MameWah configuration but I'll give it a go and see what happens . More to follow ...

Thanks again to everyone

Sammy

Matt Berry · « **Reply #12 on:** January 27, 2005, 09:14:11 am »

There are alos a few bootable linux builds out there, add the roms to the image, burn onto a cd, then boot from the cd. Linux has little overhead so it is much faster then windows. Just a thought.

ssjenkins · « **Reply #13 on:** January 27, 2005, 01:16:29 pm »

Well I've just noticed that my new PC that I bought for MAME doesn't have a VGA card slot .

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Typical ! I've just spent the last 24 hours getting all the software ready and I open the cover for the first time to add my shiney new ArcadeVGA card and the friggin' thing has an integrated Intel video chip . I've just double checked on the Dell website and there's no way to fit one . Yes , I know I should have checked that before buying it but hindsight is great .

Anyway , I'm off now to speak nicely to the comany I bought it from to see if they'll change it for me .

I'll be back in a couple of weeks once I've got all this sorted .

Sammy

Hoagie_one · « **Reply #14 on:** January 27, 2005, 01:24:23 pm »

no slot? wow.

Thank sucks

ssjenkins · « **Reply #15 on:** January 27, 2005, 01:38:14 pm »

That's nothing Hoagie . You should have seen me trying to squeeze my VGA card into a PCI slot . Now where did I put that hacksaw

Sammy

Hoagie_one · « **Reply #16 on:** January 27, 2005, 01:40:24 pm »

im surprised the arcade vga doesnt come in a pci version.

krick · « **Reply #17 on:** January 27, 2005, 02:00:02 pm »

Quote from: Hoagie_one on January 27, 2005, 01:40:24 pm

im surprised the arcade vga doesnt come in a pci version.

ssjenkins · « **Reply #18 on:** January 27, 2005, 03:47:42 pm »

Well you can now add me to the PCI version campaign .

Sammy

j123vt_99 · « **Reply #19 on:** January 27, 2005, 03:55:52 pm »

what's the dif between a vga slot and pci? worked with computers a lot and never knew there was a vga slot? is a vga slot equal to agp?

krick · « **Reply #20 on:** January 27, 2005, 04:00:02 pm »

He meant AGP

j123vt_99 · « **Reply #21 on:** January 27, 2005, 04:22:12 pm »

so the arcadevga card does work with agp?

Hoagie_one · « **Reply #22 on:** January 27, 2005, 04:26:29 pm »

only agp

krick · « **Reply #23 on:** January 27, 2005, 05:29:35 pm »

Quote from: j123vt_99 on January 27, 2005, 04:22:12 pm

so the arcadevga card does work with agp?

In the PC world, there are several types of "slots" that video cards plug into...

ISA
EISA
MCA
VLB
PCI
AGP
PCIe

The only ones in current use are PCI, AGP, and PCIe.

The ArcadeVGA card only fits in an AGP slot.

ssjenkins · « **Reply #24 on:** February 16, 2005, 02:03:03 pm »

Hi Again ,

Just thought I'd pop back in to say thanks to everyone for their help . Especially "krick" . It took me a while but I got there in the end . I ended up building my own PC and fitting it inside my cabinet . That was actually a good learning experience . I've still got some tidying up to do and I've a couple of minor issues with my "resolutions" and mameWah but apart from that everything is working fine . Thanks again to everyone for their help .

Sammy

Tiger-Heli · « **Reply #25 on:** February 17, 2005, 11:43:34 am »

Quote from: j123vt_99 on January 26, 2005, 10:54:41 am

but, with the limit of not being able to play newer games?

j123vt_99 -

I know you are new, but I mention this every couple of weeks in the hope that someone will pay attention.

Older MAME's are faster. Bzone ran at 100% and no frameskip with MAME R36B11 on my Pentium 200. Bzone runs at about FS 5 in MAME 0.81 on my XP2800 Barton.

You don't have to have only MAME version X.XX on your machine. Pick the version that runs most games full speed. Set ninety percent of your games up in that. For older (to MAME) games that run too slowly in that version, simply install like MAME 0.35 and run them in that. For newer games that aren't emulated in that MAME version, simply install the first version of MAME that they showed up in (like 0.92 for the newer Golden Tee games) and run those in that (possibly with a high frameskip and not full speed).

Let your frontend handle launching the games and you won't even notice which version of MAME you are using.

RayB · « **Reply #26 on:** February 17, 2005, 11:56:51 am »

Thing is, on newer versions of MAME, there's lots of 'extras'. If you turn those off, you can usually get the full frame rate back.

Tiger-Heli · « **Reply #27 on:** February 17, 2005, 12:13:36 pm »

Quote from: RayB on February 17, 2005, 11:56:51 am

Thing is, on newer versions of MAME, there's lots of 'extras'. If you turn those off, you can usually get the full frame rate back.

That hasn't been my experience.

ssjenkins · « **Reply #28 on:** February 17, 2005, 09:22:19 pm »

Thanks for that . I'm using 0.67 which seems to work well with my setup .

Sammy


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