got input or advice for newbie?

[austinrfnd]

Hey there!

I have always wanted to build a Mame cabinet, and i have finally got off my lazy ass to build one of them.  Anyways i am going to give you my initial brain work and can you guys give me feedback or advice on it?

Here it goes:

I am going to base my design on Lusid's Mame cabinet:
http://home.earthlink.net/~seanhat/arcade/

I want to slap a 25 inch tv with s-video input

slap a 450 mhz pII, 128 megs of ram, ati all in wonder 8mb PCI

I want to build my own controls rather than buying a silk stik or x-arcade.  Thus I want to add two joysticks, a slew of buttons, one trackball, and one spinner (got any suggestions on which trackball and spinner?)

i want to use an i-pac interface for the joysticks and buttons.  And use another i-pac interface for the trackball, and spinner.  (Question: can i use a mouse and keyboard simultaneously through the i-pac modules?)

I want to be able to paint my designs on - is there a specific contact paper or wood that i need to be aware of?  

Thanks for helping out a newbie at this, before you know it I may be helping out a newbie on his first emu cabinet
-austinrfnd

[shmokes]

Here're my suggestions:

The PC you are using is too slow for newer games.  If you only have the old classics such as Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, Defender, etc. it'll be fine, but if you want to play the Street Fighters or Cruisin' games you need to at least double that processor speed.


Yes the mouse and keyboard can be used simultaneously.   And the Joysticks/buttons and trackball can be used simultaneously.  And they Joystick/buttons and a regular keyboard can be used simultaneously (I'm operating under the assumption that you really end up getting the I-Pac.  

By the way, you will need an Opti-pac for the trackball and spinner, not another I-Pac, but I'm sure you would have figured that out for yourself.

Suggestions for trackball & spinner:  Depends on how much work you want to go through and how much money you have.  Oscar makes great spinners and in about a week or two he will release his brand new one that will work with all spinner games including Discs of Tron.  The spinner can be pulled up or pushed down in addition to the standard spinning motion.  Check out his thread currently on the main forum page with a title something like "New Product Sneak Peak"

You have a bunch of options for a trackball.  You could just buy a regular Logitech trackball or something, hack it open with a dremel tool and figure out a way to mount it, but it will be the least arcadey feeling and will also not control well.  You could get an authentic trackball and mounting plate from Happ.  It will be relatively easy to install and will be completely authentic, but it'll set you back about $100.  There are other options such as hacking a Crayola Kids-Ball or buying a refurbished Imperial Trackball (highly recommended, about 1/3 the cost, but just as authentic and high-quality of the happ option).  I'm not sure where to get the Imperial refurbs and don't know if they're always available so someone else will have to help you out there.

I'm not sure about painting the cabinet either.  I'll be laminating mine.  Frostillicious has shown very impressive results with paint.  Track him down for info.

[medley]

the pc isn't as slow as the graphics card and the ram. I would upgrade those first.

[Carsten Carlos]

Graphicscard is fast enough for MAME, it doesn't benefit from 3D-features anyway. (Unless you use hardware-stretch and some scanline-features. I don't use them either)

Certain games won't run if you haven't at least 256MB. I tried a P2-350 with 512MB before, but as it wasn't fast enough to run games like Puzzle Bobble smoothly, I later upgraded to a P3-800, which runs fine for me. (Of course, there are always some games that want more. But not that many, at this point I haven't found one I miss, but that's just me)
Anyway, the old P2 helped me much in the testing phase, and I won't upgrade anything (maybe +128MB RAM if you get it cheap) until you are done with the cab anyway.
You know, these things are getting cheaper any week, so why hurry?

[Sasquatch!]

I've found a PII-450 to be plenty adequate, but it depends on what games are important to you.  Since it's probably the easiest part of the cabinet to swap out (provided that you don't mount it to the cabinet), it's an easy upgrade if it's not to your liking.

[Lilwolf]

My advice.

1) If you already have the computer, its great.  Dont buy anything that slow thought.  You will want faster.  But if you already have it, you can upgrade it at any point in the future without a problem.  Might as well use what you got for now.  But the computer will be one of the cheaper parts of your project.

2) The computer is fine for most games.  Download an older version of mame and you will get more games to run 36ish maybe.  Older versions are optimized for slower computers.

3) The video card is FINE!  will work great in mame.  TV out will be top notch.  Hardware stretching might not work well, so you might have to get sci display doctor to get all the resolutions to run native.  If you DO upgrade your video card (because you are buying one).  Consider buying a little faster radeon ViVo with TiVo support.  Gives your cabinet another use!

3) Opti-pacs are for trackballs.  IPacs are for keyboard connections.   You can also buy a hacked mouse from Oscar for 10 bucks.

4) Trackballs, look for a 2 1/4" if you are price consious.  The benson imperials are VERY cheap (2 for less then the price of a single 3" from happs).  These are the size of the original centipede and MUCH better then any PC trackball (they usually have bad scroll back problems).  Also, the 2 1/4" ones you can replace the balls with any standard pool balls for a cool effect.

good luck