Author Topic: A Teacher in a search for answers (Read 3464 times)

SnowsDream · « **on:** March 08, 2005, 11:39:36 am »

Hello!

I spent time reading thru' the various links your noob thread provided. But I still got a few questions sense I have never built a cab before. I'm a teacher for this after school program and right now we made a mock musuem to video games and it was a blast and the kids learned some intresting things. I thought an awesome way to end the musuem would be too have me and the kids build a cab. So thats the situation.

My questions are basic, I just wanna bounce some ideas off of you guys sense you got all the experince I lack. First off my cash resources are limited and this is what I have to work with off hand. Wood and anything else at home depoe should be fine sense school resouces will pay for that. The pc I am donating to this project is a:

P3
256 Ram 133mhz
10gig hardrive

on board sound and graphics... =( Got no choice it's a corp pc that a hospital got rid of and I got for free =) How capable is this pc for running older arcade games. Things from the 80's to maybe 91'

I was thinking of buying one of those TV out cards thats not built into a graphics card like teh Geforces and Radeons. Anyone have any experine with those.

I was checking out the I-PAC and Opti-PAC interface boards and buttons from Ultimarcto for use in the control layout, and they seemed nice. But was wondering if any one had personal experince with them. Sense most seem to talk about HAPPS controls. Ultimarc stuff is cheaper and I'll be payin' for those out of pocket. Also I will be buyin' the coin door and tv out of pocket so I was askin' if a basic S-Video capble tv is cool and where a decent coin door is for less then 100 bucks. I'm still in the process of finding some layouts I wanna use, I want something that will susport a 25' tv but i have a 17inch monitor I wanna use too. Oh and I wanna make it a 2 player model with a rollerball. So thats it, plz lend your idea if you can.
Thanks
Jason

P.S. I also liked the ultimarc becuase the kids could do the hook ups on it. Were as I wasn't sure about other interfaces

bye

RayB · « **Reply #1 on:** March 08, 2005, 11:44:59 am »

Welcome! You're not an english teacher, are you?

OK as far as I know, a 133 mhz system will only run the REALLY old stuff, like 1979 to 1983... And it will require an emulator like Vantage, or MAME version 0.55.

Wanting a trackball (and optipac) increases your budget quite a bit. You might have to go without those.

As for the other questions, I'll let better informed members reply.

Ray B.

whammoed · « **Reply #2 on:** March 08, 2005, 11:50:09 am »

Quote from: RayB on March 08, 2005, 11:44:59 am

Welcome! You're not an english teacher, are you?

OK as far as I know, a 133 mhz system will only run the REALLY old stuff, like 1979 to 1983... And it will require an emulator like Vantage, or MAME version 0.55.

Wanting a trackball (and optipac) increases your budget quite a bit. You might have to go without those.

As for the other questions, I'll let better informed members reply.

Ray B.

Not sure here, but I think they meant the front side bus is at 133 mhz.

Witchboard · « **Reply #3 on:** March 08, 2005, 11:53:24 am »

What is your processor speed?

quarterback · « **Reply #4 on:** March 08, 2005, 11:57:41 am »

Quote from: RayB on March 08, 2005, 11:44:59 am

Welcome! You're not an english teacher, are you?

My thoughts exactly

markrvp · « **Reply #5 on:** March 08, 2005, 12:03:01 pm »

The Ultimarc I-pac works GREAT.

Lilwolf · « **Reply #6 on:** March 08, 2005, 12:42:08 pm »

Going on the cheap cheap... consider buying a pre-hacked mouse form Oscar... 12 bucks and your good to go.

For a lot of items.. .Also look at www.therealbobroberts.com. Hes great and sells items for cheaper then anywhere else. He usually has great prices on joysticks and buttons (and everything else really)

I personally wouldn't buy a video card for 50 bucks. You can get older but great ATI cards on ebay for 5-10 bucks that will do fine. And if you want to spend some real money... look at getting a arcadeVGA... (they do SVID right?) for 90 bucks.. and get a 19" arcade CRT from ebay new for 150+45 shipping or so. Should end up less then what your looking at and will have better output (and work with standard parts like bezels.)

evlbeaver · « **Reply #7 on:** March 08, 2005, 12:52:34 pm »

You didn't mention age/number of kids but be careful if you go the arcade monitor and ArcadeVGA route. Hi voltage and kids are not a good mix.

RetroJames · « **Reply #8 on:** March 08, 2005, 01:15:48 pm »

If on the cheap, i would go with a straight pc to pc monitor setup. You can get an encoder for around $25.00, maybe any extra could be used to update the pc.

Fat_Trucker · « **Reply #9 on:** March 08, 2005, 01:34:09 pm »

Buy a copy of project arcade and get them hacking their own gear. It will be an excellent group learning experience for them and they will really feel they have 'made' the machine rather than just put it together.

Also optical and keyboard hacks are really very interesting and will teach them how the different components in a PC (and arcade machine) actually work.

Perhaps you could challenge them to build the machine purely from things they can bring from home. Make it a really creative learning experience. Maybe even invite their English teacher to help out too?.

GGKoul · « **Reply #10 on:** March 08, 2005, 01:51:10 pm »

I have a 1 gig AMD with 512 ram and it runs 90% of the games with no hassle. So you shouldn't have an issues with your P3.

You should get cheapie sound card. As the onboard one does take up processing power.

SnowsDream · « **Reply #11 on:** March 08, 2005, 02:29:39 pm »

LOL no no I'm no english teacher, but I'm not writing a term paper here, so blah =p No I'm a teacher through this program. However I am thinking of getting my license and am in school.

sorry about the sepc listing, the P3 is 500mhz. Ram was just of a 133hz variety.

Thanks for all your input so far. Yea my kids are K-5th grade so a variety of ages. so no fighting games =( I wanted to do controler setup with 2 8ways and 6 buttons each incase I ever take this thing to the 6th grade program where I can do more games. And the track ball for various other arcade favorites. As for the hack your own gear that sounds really intresting how many of you have experimented with that? I got tons of old keyboards and mouses lyin' around. However all of the mouses are the ones with out the roller ball on the top just regular push around types (sorry don't know specific name for each one)

I'll check out the links you've sent me and get back to ya. thanks again and peace!

tmasman · « **Reply #12 on:** March 08, 2005, 03:14:28 pm »

These hacks typically take a fare amount of soldering... Not usually something you'd have K-5 kids doing...

If you were going to use a mouse hack to drive an arcade trackball, it'd need to be one of the very common older ones with the ball below that moves some rollers inside (I'll almost garantee it's the kind you have). You can find the guides to hack one yourself, or as mentioned above Oscar has a pre-hacked one for $12. You'll still need to get the arcade trackball though... This is just the device to connect it to the PC.

a keyboard hack isn't too hard, but does take some time & soldering skills. It's also not a good solution if you want a 2 player setup. My suggestion:Go with the IPAC for the joysticks & buttons.

Controls (joys, buttons, trackball) Look around eBay... Deals go by all the time. www.therealbobroberts.com is also a great resource for parts. Ultimarc.com has a pretty inexpensive trackball for $35...

I've got some old 2 1/4" trackballs, but I need to open them up & clean them up before they'd be ready for use... Keep your eye on the Buy/Sell/Trade forum for deals.

Apollo · « **Reply #13 on:** March 08, 2005, 03:40:43 pm »

I suggest you build a bar top type cab with your PC plus 19"-21" PC monitor depending on what you can find. 2 joysticks with 2 buttons each and a Keywhiz. Not quite sure how you are going to explain to the kids the concept of "borrowing" ROM's, that will be an interesting talk. I guess you could go to StarROMs. If you do it this way they will learn a lot ( woodworking, circuits, software etc ) it will cost you very little and it will probably get one or two of them in to building a full size cab themselves someday.

sWampy · « **Reply #14 on:** March 08, 2005, 04:15:35 pm »

You might want to take a trip around your town's arcades and arcade distributors. A lot of times you can find old cabinets that are in pretty bad shape for $25-100 with working monitors and coin doors in them. If you are lucky, you might even find a jamma cabinet where you can just get an ulitmarc j-pac and save even more bucks.

gnateye · « **Reply #15 on:** March 08, 2005, 04:59:27 pm »

you may also luck out at an OP, if you explain to them what the project is for, you may get some free stuff that the Op can write off on his taxes (an old cab, your coindoor, monitors etc. you'd be suprised). its worth a try.

as far as the rom issues go. i would avoid it all together and buy a pc 'arcade flashback' CDrom of some sort, so that is it fully legal. or go the 'star roms' route, something really on the up and up though. you dont need to teach a whole grade of kids how to steal copywritten material (they'll learn that soon enough)

back to your setup though. if i was in your position (monitarily as well as literally) i would skip the tv idea, use the monitor you have, or buy a cheap 19" they are super cheap right now. get an ipac maybe even the VE (value edition) or the key wiz, both are well worth their prices. buy a set of those joysticks and buttons that are on ebay all the time for 20$ for a joystick with 6 buttons, they arent the highest quality sticks and buttons, but your on a budget and most of what your gonna end up with isnt going to be top notch. you can find trackballs on ebay as well, get hte usb mouse interface from oscar controls.

and your best money spent is going to be buying the "project arcade" book. that will teach you everything you need to know and i gues swill be your kind of ad hoc textbook (not sure of the copyright rules etc about that, but you get the picture)

god luck and have fun!

krick · « **Reply #16 on:** March 08, 2005, 05:10:39 pm »

I think the quickest, easiest, and probably cheapest route to results for your situation is to use your PC with a PC monitor.

paigeoliver · « **Reply #17 on:** March 08, 2005, 05:24:52 pm »

Also, with that processor speed try using mame version .55 or .60 as opposed to the current mame. The popular Neo Geo puzzle and sports titles will run full speed with those older versions on the hardware you have, but will not run full speed on that hardware with the current version of mame.

SnowsDream · « **Reply #18 on:** March 09, 2005, 09:47:41 am »

Awesome!

You guys are so helpful, thanks for all the support.
I'm checking out the sites you guys listed and looking up some of the other info you posted.

My budget that I work with is around 200 - 300 dollars I was gonna personally pump into this. Basically when the school year ends I become responsible for the Cabs well being so it will go with me every where and I wanted to make it durable and of at least a decent quality.

As for ports, it's got 2 USB ports so that's all and all the rest are regular stuff.

I was wondering about the copyright issue. I thought and this is another question I needed to post to you all. I had someone tell me that the copyrights sunset ed on alto of older games. Something about a clause that if a piece of software is not available in it's original form any longer for so many years that it then becomes legal to own a back up of that. I could not find info on my own research, but maybe you've all heard that? but I love that there is sites out there with free Roms and I haven't checked out the sites yet but if they are made but regular Joe's I think that would be even more awesome for the kids to experience. I really want them to get a wide range of experiences from this. To the shaping of the cabnet to the mounting of the gear into the cab, too the painting and designing the look, too programing the machine it self. Now if I run the older Mame, should I stick to the dos based or windows based? I was gonna do windows just because I am more familiar with that environment or is it possible to have a boot option at start up? that would be really nice. OK well off I go to research the links and info you all posted. Thanks again!

P.S. Last thing, whats an "OP"?

markrvp · « **Reply #19 on:** March 10, 2005, 03:29:38 am »

Check this Ebay auction for a coin door:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=6161545761

paigeoliver · « **Reply #20 on:** March 10, 2005, 04:13:50 am »

Windows based mame is just fine, most cabinets I have built have run windows.

NiN^_^NiN · « **Reply #21 on:** March 10, 2005, 04:41:19 am »

All my cabinets i run are dos based cause i like to be able to turn on and off in a second

But i could run neogeo games at full speed on a win98 266mhz PII with 64mb of ram and it ran great so 500Mhz is fast enough for almost all the games you would wanna play.

rchadd · « **Reply #22 on:** March 10, 2005, 04:47:24 am »

the ultimarc minipac is alternative to ipac + optipc combination

maybe try a keyboard + mouse hack if you really want to save money

use regular video card and VGA monitor - enable scan lines feature in mame for that TV style look to the games

Nannuu · « **Reply #23 on:** March 10, 2005, 05:31:03 pm »

The Minipac Opti w/ Harness is $69. I'd go with the cheaper Keywiz Eco 2 for sticks and buttons (www.groovygamegear.com) and the Oscar (www.oscarcontrols.com) pre hacked mouse for the trackball. You would have a heck of a time hacking a keyboard to get 2 sticks with 6 buttons each.

SnowsDream · « **Reply #24 on:** March 11, 2005, 12:19:48 am »

Awesome I'll look that up...

Is there any benefit with me goin' for the 49-way joystick over the 8-way, personaly I was gonna do 8-ways but I saw that and was thinking maybe it's better to have 49 ways? Althought I didn't see alot of documentation sayin' what aws so great. Thanks again =)

yalborap · « **Reply #25 on:** March 11, 2005, 09:02:54 am »

yes.

you get fourty-nine directions.

in all seriousness, you won't need it if you're going arcade game only. all arcade games that use standard joysticks are either 2, 4, or eight ways, to my knowledge.

daywane · « **Reply #26 on:** March 11, 2005, 03:19:08 pm »

no one has mentioned a game pad hack.
I have all my cabs running on game pad hacks. I found a store going out of business and bout all there game pads very cheep.
simple and cheep
works very well

DrewKaree · « **Reply #27 on:** March 11, 2005, 05:40:42 pm »

WHERE ARE YOU LOCATED AT?

Perhaps if we know where you're at, someone may be in the area and can be put in touch with you or maybe even donate some materials to you.

If I'm in your area, I'd consider helping you, and I'd bet others would too.

SnowsDream · « **Reply #28 on:** March 11, 2005, 06:48:26 pm »

I live in the D.C. Area in Fairfax County, and any help would be awesome, I've been callin' all the local arcades and even got an appt with a lady at the Planet Play to discuss some stuff about cabinet parts that are unused/damage, etc.

So yea, and I read about gamepad hacks, this is my concern, that my kids take it apon themselves to become mini Dr.Frankenstiens with their home console equipment =p but I myself and gonna try to build a personal CAB and might do that, I think it sounds neat, but I still haven't ruled anything out becuase I do want the kids to get the most out of this sense this is one of the big projects at the end of the year. Thanks agian

paigeoliver · « **Reply #29 on:** March 11, 2005, 08:43:19 pm »

Quote from: SnowsDream on March 11, 2005, 06:48:26 pm

I live in the D.C. Area in Fairfax County, and any help would be awesome, I've been callin' all the local arcades and even got an appt with a lady at the Planet Play to discuss some stuff about cabinet parts that are unused/damage, etc.

So yea, and I read about gamepad hacks, this is my concern, that my kids take it apon themselves to become mini Dr.Frankenstiens with their home console equipment =p but I myself and gonna try to build a personal CAB and might do that, I think it sounds neat, but I still haven't ruled anything out becuase I do want the kids to get the most out of this sense this is one of the big projects at the end of the year. Thanks agian

Gamepad hacks are also fragile creatures, never doing another one, over time mine have only had about a 40 percent survival rate.

daywane · « **Reply #30 on:** March 12, 2005, 09:58:00 am »

my side winders are still going strong 2 years.
or if you are in a rush ... slam one of these in for a quick game,
blaze... ps1 game CP. someone has one here for $30.00 + ship
I have 2 allready so I did not want to spend that much. a cheep ps1/ps2 usb adaptor from ebay and you are in quick.

SnowsDream · « **Reply #31 on:** March 12, 2005, 11:55:30 am »

that blaze is an awesome option if I get into crunch time, but if I can make it with them that would be even more fun! and twice the experince they will get from it.

Zook · « **Reply #32 on:** March 12, 2005, 08:00:58 pm »

I just finished this cabinet for about $350.

SnowsDream · « **Reply #33 on:** March 15, 2005, 11:05:58 am »

Awesome Zook, I did get a donated 25' TV, so thats what I am gonna use, and I'm glad it's about the same specs and you can do what you can.

Is there anything else out there like StarRoms, it's awesome but only carries atari arcade games and I was hoppin' for alot of different kinds. I looked for somekind of Flashback type cd's but wasn't succesful. I saw one site selling DVD's full of roms but it did not state anywhere that it was a legal pratice cus they even had Dreamcast and N64 roms but did say they wouldn't carry roms for any popular or on going systems like ps1-2, xbox, etc.

Arcade-Achieve.com I think was the site. Again thanks for all the susport, Tomarrow we buy all the wood! i'm freakin' excited and on Friday I order all the parts =)

JDSkydiver · « **Reply #34 on:** March 15, 2005, 11:55:52 am »

What a GREAT motivational tool. Some teachers give Homework Passes for good work/behavior, you could give out TOKENS! Just put in a token Mech in the coin door and kids will be scrambling to get their homework done to get the tokens!

JDSkydiver

SnowsDream · « **Reply #35 on:** March 16, 2005, 12:58:42 pm »

Yea I thought so too, Good behavior, acts, doing homework, things of that sort awards tokens. I even purchased some of those MAME tokens I saw tho' I wanted those BYOAC tokens they were cool.

So this Coin mech? I am proably getting this Happs over and under coin door, it should have all the working parts in it right?

and i got all the wood! *whew* that MDF is heavy, but I'm so excited

jcrouse · « **Reply #36 on:** March 16, 2005, 01:03:35 pm »

Yes, if it's a new Happs over/under coin door it will have working coin mechanisms with it and no assemble will be required.

Also yes, a 4' x 8' sheet of MDF is a wrestling match for one person until you start to get it carved down.

John

SnowsDream · « **Reply #37 on:** March 17, 2005, 11:44:12 am »

Awesome thanks!

Any suggestions on a good cab design I was gonna use the Lucid's Rev.7 I got, it seemed nice, plus I'm still deciding on how the control panel should be layed out
cus' the only Arcade legal roms I can get are Atari from StarRoms and so I was thinking of going with a trackball and dial and maybe 4 way and then maybe 2 8ways with 6 buttons apiece if I use this Mamebox for other things later dow nthe road... but i dunno, and StarRoms doesn't list weither any of there games require
and 8way joy. If not I might just get 2 4ways. Thanks agian all!


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