Converting cabinet

[ammonk]

Thanks to everyone with the good info and insight on my cabinet. I think I have decided to mame this cabinet, yet make it reversible. I am guessing that I will have to get a video card that will run at a lower frequency for this monitor. Does that apply to ALL monitors or just the much older machines?

With that in mind, what interface board would you suggest? I'd like to keep the current joystick+3 button controls for now, but maybe build a new control board later with more button support. Any help is greatly appreciated as this will be my first full mame arcade project.

[Hawk Daddy]

Your going to need more buttons for player 1 and 2, just for the fighting games, unless you plan on just playing like the classics.  You should probably take the top of the control panel off and redo it with your own cp.  You can still use the buttons and joys from that one.  You would just be able to lay out the stuff better.

Hawk

[xmenxmen]

http://www.ultimarc.com/jpac.html

A jpac would be what you need to interface the jamma with the pc and use the existing arcade monitor.

[AwesomeAlbert]

if i was you, i would take the cp off, make my own.  7 button player 1-2, 4 button player 3-4. , jpac (no wires), ipac or minipac (if you want a trackball)(leave the old wires hanging in there).  Have printed a modified original control panel overlay.  make a frontend with a xmen theme. 

it would be sweet

(leave the old cp on and just get a jpac and play 3 button games if you dont want to mess with anything)

[Crowquill]

I think AwesomeAlbert summed it up pretty well. The JPAC can use buttons 1-3 from the JAMMA harness (X-Men doesn't have start buttons). Additional buttons can be wired directly to the JPAC up to 8 buttons for player 1 & 2. If you need additional buttons you can add an IPAC/MiniPac. You will still need a video card that can output a 15kHz signal. You could pick up a ArcadeVGA card or utilize a software hack for existing cards.

There are basically three types of arcade monitors. Most games including X-Men used "Standard Resolution". This has a 15kHz sync rate. There's also Medium Resolution (25kHz) and VGA capable monitors. Download the manual to your monitor model. If it's a Wells-Gardner K7000 series (which I think is what's most common in these) you can download it HERE. You will probably want to do a "cap kit" on your monitor.

Nice score on a good-looking cabinet. Does everything work fully on it? If not you might want to troubleshoot a bit before trying to change it around too much.

[ammonk]

Thanks for the good info. I think I will get the jpac and make my own cp. How much work is involved in switching the jpac if I want to use the current cp and put a new cp on later? Is it one of those things where once that jpac is on, I would need another jpac if I want a different jpac?

I have a stack of video cards here that I may look at doing a software hack on. Are there certain brand cards that seem to work better than others and have more available hacks for them (ATI, nVidia...)?

Everything works perfectly on the cabinet. All four controls, and monitor are in excellent condition.

One thing I would like to do on the new cp however is add a button for each player to 'add coin' so i don't have to reach down and throw a quarter in. Which brings me to a seperate question:

Right now, each coin slot is the credit for the corresponding player (slot 1 = player 1 cred). Is this controlled on the current game board, and when I add that jpac will it re-route that so a quarter in any slot will allow me to select a player by the buttin I push?

[Crowquill]

Thanks for the good info. I think I will get the jpac and make my own cp. How much work is involved in switching the jpac if I want to use the current cp and put a new cp on later? Is it one of those things where once that jpac is on, I would need another jpac if I want a different jpac?

The J-Pac is going to utilize the existing wiring that's part of the JAMMA harness that's already connected to players 1-2. You shouldn't have a problem replacing the top and transplanting the controls and wiring. You will probably want to add an Mini-Pac for player 3-4 controls. If you don't want to add a trackball then you could use a standard I-Pac instead.

I have a stack of video cards here that I may look at doing a software hack on. Are there certain brand cards that seem to work better than others and have more available hacks for them (ATI, nVidia...)?

Read the Wiki. Particularly the part about PowerStrip and Soft 15khz.

Everything works perfectly on the cabinet. All four controls, and monitor are in excellent condition.

One thing I would like to do on the new cp however is add a button for each player to 'add coin' so i don't have to reach down and throw a quarter in. Which brings me to a seperate question:

Right now, each coin slot is the credit for the corresponding player (slot 1 = player 1 cred). Is this controlled on the current game board, and when I add that jpac will it re-route that so a quarter in any slot will allow me to select a player by the buttin I push?

Personally I'd worry more about adding individual start buttons as many games require them. A "coin button" can be set up through simply remapping buttons in MAME. On my MAME cab holding down on the joystick while pressing start inserts a coin. You'll probably have to wire these extra buttons to the input terminals on the J-Pac or Mini-Pac/I-Pac since X-Men probably doesn't have the wiring for a start button in it's JAMMA harness.

As far as how the coin slots are set up it depends on the game. IIRC, all Konami 4-player games (and 6-player X-Men) have independent coin slots for each player. The only way around that would be to have a single credit add a credit for all 4 players. You could accomplish this by simply mapping that credit switch to "add coin" for all 4 players in MAME's controls.

[ammonk]

Thanks Crowquill. The links and info are exactly what I was looking for.