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Is there a living to be made from arcade cabs?
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Izrun:
He doesn't build MAME machines anymore.  Cocktail cabinet does not necessarily imply MAME machine.  He said in an earlier message that he build JAMMA machines, so my guess would be he buys up JAMMA boards and just uses them to make dedicated cabs.
leapinlew:

--- Quote from: Izrun on September 18, 2006, 10:02:30 am ---He doesn't build MAME machines anymore.  Cocktail cabinet does not necessarily imply MAME machine.  He said in an earlier message that he build JAMMA machines, so my guess would be he buys up JAMMA boards and just uses them to make dedicated cabs.

--- End quote ---

Got it!

Chalk it up to me reading through it too quickly. :)
spacies:
Sheesh,

MAME in a commercial application?! Might as well go hand myself into the law  :banghead:
Can you imagine a kid banging all the buttons and bringing up menus or shutting the machine down.  ;D

My machines are all JAMMA. Dedicated PCBs as Izrun pointed out.
I doubt there is anyone stoopid enough to install MAME and try to gather revenue from it. Well, there probably is.

Anyway, the MAME team should buy a 100,200,400 or 800-1 board from China and remove the HDD, connect it to a PC and take a look. At first glance you just see a bunch of folders that don't mean much but then you see ArcadeOS. Then you think about it a bit and then a lightbulb goes on above your head and come to the conclusion it needs MAME to work.
After a bit more poking around you will see a 'roms' folder! Take a look inside and you see some good ole roms. Then there is the snap folder and a hi score folder but no MAME emulator.
Scratch you head for a bit and then another lightbulb flashes and you pull off some more tricks and there it is! A hidden partition! And MAME! Well, AdvMAME. Just like fraggals boot disk.

These boards are built for a commercial application. You install them in you JAMMA machine and it makes you money.



Gee, I wonder whats under that fan? You remove it and find an intel CPU.
Crikey, whats that? RAM!
An ATX power supply socket!
A HDD sit clearly on top.

Is this a computer? YES!!!!!!
Does it have MAME? YES!!!!!!
ROMS? YES!!!!!!
Illegal? ...... You do the math.

Whats worse than all those? Windows 98 is installed too. Microsoft would sh*t themselves if they saw that.

How would MAME , a non-revenue gathering 'business' fight the might of the Chinese? Dunno.
Microsoft on the other hand would chew them up and spit out mangled capacitors and resistors.

You cant install a PC with MAME, MAMEWAH, some roms, a coin mech and go stick on site and expect to come back in a week to get you money. It won't work. So the Chinese build a PC, install Windows and DOS, use software similar to Fraggals boot disk, put a JAMMA connector on the side and sell them. Why, 'cos they can. Who cares? Not me! Funny thing is they don't even try to design a new skin for ArcadeOS. Its identical to the version on the net  :dizzy:

Back to the original topic of this thread.
Sealslayer:
Build yourself some JAMMA machines. If you put one of these in a machines in the right bar, nightclub, cafe or whatever and you can generate a fairly good side income. A couple of days ago I got a phone call from a site were I have a Defender tabletop.


 
It has Defender, Robotron, New Rally X and Ghost'n'Goblins on it. He said people had been playing it quite a bit but were complaining because it was too hard, losers, LOL. So I drove to where it was and replaced it with another tabletop with 4 games installed, Ms Pacman, Galaga, Frogger and Space Invaders. I emptied the coins from the machine, $2 = 2 games (we have $1 and $2 coins here) and I drove away with $278 dollars which was my split of the 50/50. The machine had only been there 2 weeks and the bar hadn't even been that busy. So $140 per week from 1 machine is pretty good. If you have 4-5 of those and sell machines on the side you can easily make yourself a good income. The only problem I see though is you guys don't have dollar coins. Just quarters right? Bummer, since our $1 and $2 have become coins it kinda becomes 'worthless' and you don't think twice about sticking it into a pool table or video game for a bit of fun.

Try that to start with and see how you go. Design some business cards or a flyer attach to the machine stating you can also build these to sell and how cool it would be for a customer to have it in there house.

Whatever you do is up to you. I gave it a shot and now do it full time. I have seen a few guys advertise on this forum in the For Sale section advertising that they want to build full time and then you can't get hold of them. Bad business sence. Good luck my friend!  :cheers:


Gambit:

--- Quote from: Paladin on September 18, 2006, 01:38:30 am ---The cab I'm currently working on has cost me less than $30 so far, and I'm going to try and sell it for $175.  Sounds like a good profit until you realize that I problably have 100 hours into it.  It's amazing how much time little things can take to sort out.

--- End quote ---

Wow.  My cab cost me something in the $1000+ range.

Around $450 for the computer, $250 for the monitor, then the artwork, joystick/buttons,  wood, etc.
Flip_Willie:
     Just out of curiousity; don't you have to have an arcade licensed or something before you can legally use it for profit?  I mean, you can't just build a Jamma cabinet and drop it off somewhere and expect it to make money, can you?
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