Looking for Mala/Led-Wiz Experience User (Guru) help for full system setup

[slsimon]

Attention to the Mala and Led-Wiz Guru’s…  I have decided to make a list of the hardware that I will be working with as well as the software I will be utilizing.  I am asking that a Mala/Led-Wiz user (preferably one that has extensive knowledge of and experience working within Mala and Led-Wiz) to help me setup and configure the listed software below as well as help create and or provide a working Mala layout that I can use with multiple emulators.  I really like one of shock_’s layouts posted on one of these forums that had multiple buttons for individual emulators but can’t seem to find it at the moment.  I know this is asking for a lot.  With that said I am more than willing to provide a fee for the help and possibly give away current hardware that I am going to replace which is fairly new.

PC hardware:
Processor:  P4 2.8Ghz
Memory:  1.0GB
Onboard Audio
 PCI SoundBlaster Live
Video:  Will be purchasing a dual head video card (Purchasing soon)
HD:  Will be purchasing (2) 500GB drives (Purchasing soon)
SATA PCI for Raid Mirroring (Purchasing soon)

Arcade Cab hardware currently configured:
4 Player control panel
6 buttons per player
Spinner
Trackball with 2 buttons
Player 1, 2, 3, 4 start buttons
Player 1, 2, 3, 4 coin buttons
4 Admin buttons, (Pause, Tab, ESC, Enter)
4 Reset – Shutdown buttons for computer
21” CRT for emulation
17” touch screen for mp3 playback

GGG’s hardware that will be replacing current hardware:
42 Electric Ice RGB buttons with switches, LED board and cable
Electric Ice T ball and lighting accessories
4 Led-Wiz controllers

I will be replacing all the buttons (total of 42) with GGG’s Electric Ice RGB buttons, with LED and cable accessories.  I will be replacing the current trackball with GGG’s Electric Ice T lighting accessories.  I will be buying 4 of GGG’s Led-Wiz devices to wire all buttons for full RGB functionality.

I am pretty sure I am good to go with wiring all the hardware up.  I will need help with the supported Mala Led-wiz plug-ins as well as Randy T’s Led-Wiz application to create LWA’s.  I was also thinking about utilizing Randy’s Audio app as well.  Below is what I would ultimately love to have done with the RGB lighting..

I would like player 1 through player 4 buttons to have a specific color per player, (player 1 buttons red, player 2 blue, player 3 green, player 4 yellow).  At the same time to make things more interesting, I would like to have the player buttons cycle through a number of colors every so many seconds or minutes, while at the same time no player buttons will cycle through the same color.  Once a game starts, I am wondering if it would be possible then to allow for only the game specific buttons to be lit up a specific color and those that are not used to be another color.  Sounds like alot of work going on here but I am thinking the request is reasonable for this controller.  I realize some of this might not be possible but I would like to get it as close to config as possible.

This PC is also going to focus as a Jukebox player as well, hence the second audio card.  Now this might be a question for a Mala developer, but is it and or will it be possible in a future update to tell Mala what video output (monitor) as well as what audio output can be used for the FE emulation?  I am using a software application by the name of The PC Jukebox for mp3 playback which does not have the ability to specify audio output.  This is a touch screen mp3 player that works great with the 17” flat panel monitor I have mounted on the side of the cab.  You can see where I am going with this.  I would love to be able to utilize the PC as a Jukebox and Emulation playback at the same time.  I do have 4 speakers wired in pairs.  Two speakers per audio output. 


I would like to utilize the following files with Mala as well if possible:
Marquees
Snaps
Videos (Emumovies, attract movies, etc.)
Titles
All necessary INI files to be able to utilize extra configurations within Mala. 
All necessary DAT files to be able to utilize extra configurations within Mala.
Playable background music that Mala allows, preferably the arcade music that is available for download.
All Mala attract screensaver and video playback.

I will be using the latest version of Windows command line version of Mame, which I just learned today how to compile the latest diffs.  Mr. Do’s website is a must website to visit for these instructions.  I also obtained the latest version of the hiscore.txt file and patched this into Mame version .118 so I would not have to worry about all the warnings and unwanted screens.

As you can see, I have the basics down as far as what files I will need as well as where they should be located.  I will need some help walking through all the configurations in Mala and Led-Wiz support. 

This is a side note for Green Giant, Arzoo, loadman and Headkaze.  All of you were very helpful in my lost post and provided enough information to allow me to make a decision to go with Mala as my primary FE.  From the posts, sounds like both Arzoo and GG are using Mala and or have enough information to possibly be able to help me out here with my requests.  I am hoping I will have my cab at the house within the next month or two.   I am still currently waiting for a relative to finish his airbrushing on the cab.  This will also give me a couple of months to come up with the funding to get all the hardware listed above which is going to be quite pricey. 

If anyone would be interested in working with me getting this project kicked off within the next couple of months, please don’t hesitate to PM me.  I provided my email within my profile here on this forum.  We will be communicating via email often and I will be pleased to provide all the information needed at that point with pics.  Thanks,  Shane

[arzoo]

GGG’s hardware that will be replacing current hardware:
42 Electric Ice RGB buttons with switches, LED board and cable
Electric Ice T ball and lighting accessories
4 Led-Wiz controllers

Wow! Randy should give you a discount

Don't waste your time trying to use Randy's app to build the LWA files - it never really worked that well and can only handle one LED-Wiz at a time. I've just about completed my LEDBlinky Animation Editor - I hope to post it for beta testing some time this weekend.

It's still not clear you'll be able to light the LEDs on your CP exactly as you’ve described. If you go with the LEDBlinky or LEDWiz plugin, the LED animation (player buttons cycle through a number of colors every so many seconds or minutes) would only play when the screen saver is active. But I'm sure that after you get your system up and running you'll find the LED software has enough features to get all those Electric-Ice buttons blinking and flashing if full RGB glory!

Good luck with your build!

[Katana Man]

slsimon,
  Curious. What is the purpose of a 2nd second audio card?

[loadman]

This PC is also going to focus as a Jukebox player as well, hence the second audio card.  Now this might be a question for a Mala developer, but is it and or will it be possible in a future update to tell Mala what video output (monitor) as well as what audio output can be used for the FE emulation

I guess that would be possible to have mala Audio only channel to a particular soundcard... But you still have an issue don't you with the games themselves. MaLa has no control over what they do with audio.

[Space Fractal]

Personly it's absolute not a good idea to have 2 difficents software running on the PC same time, because PC Jukebox is not designed to run along with emulation and is really slow too under navigation. This would take to much CPU power from MAME (even on a decent CPU), so except to run MAME games slow when using that way.

Instead, you should seperate these to have 2 machines, and let the second do have a ITX or such motherboard instead and connect them with network.

My software, MultiJuke, can output to second soundcard, but graphics is need to been on primary screen, due to techinal limits. So 2 machines is only the way for best performnets.

[slsimon]

slsimon,
  Curious. What is the purpose of a 2nd second audio card?

Hello Katana Man.  I currently have 2 sound cards, (onboard and PCI) for the following reasons.  Not sure if this would be possible yet but maybe in the future it will be.  First, I was going to use the PCI audio for emulation specific audio output (not windows default audio).  I have reading on the mame forums and a user by the name on zinky created a patch diff update for mame for version .111 that allows to specify audio output in mame with a -soundcard switch.  I tried to compile this update to version .118 with no luck.  So I might be out of luck here unless someone is familiar with that specific diff update and knows how to create/modify a new diff update for mame. 

My thoughts were to use the windows default audio (onboard audio) for a jukebox player.  I have been using a app by the name of "The PC Jukebox".  This app does not allow one to specify what audio output to send to, hence why I will be using windows default audio. 

I have a second display (17" touchscreen) mounted to the cab that I will be using for mp3 playback.  I would like to setup mame to display to video output 2 which will be my 21" CRT monitor and use the 17" for Jukebox.  I think mame currently has a -switch option to redirect video output.  Not sure how Mala would be able to handle that though.  Thanks,

[slsimon]

Personly it's absolute not a good idea to have 2 difficents software running on the PC same time, because PC Jukebox is not designed to run along with emulation and is really slow too under navigation. This would take to much CPU power from MAME (even on a decent CPU), so except to run MAME games slow when using that way.

Instead, you should seperate these to have 2 machines, and let the second do have a ITX or such motherboard instead and connect them with network.

My software, MultiJuke, can output to second soundcard, but graphics is need to been on primary screen, due to techinal limits. So 2 machines is only the way for best performnets.

Thanks for the update Space Fractal.  You know, I really never thought that far ahead.  I am not sure how system performance will be while running both emulation and mp3 playback via a jukebox software app.  May I ask what an ITX motherboard is?  I have heard of AT and ATX boards but not sure what an ITX board looks like.  The only reason why I want to use one system is of course (money and system overhead/management).  It would be easier for me to buy 2 500GB SATA drives and run a disk mirror set between them for backup purposes.  All software then can be configured/installed and backed up on one system.  I suppose two systems would work out better but that is more money.  Hmm, might have to do some more research....  Thanks,