Just need someone to double check what I'm going to do :)

[ilGaspa]

Hello everyone
After a lot of "forum digging", trying various front-ends and deciding if what I wanted to do could be done, I'm ready to order the parts I need to convert my old working soccer game jamma cabinet to a mame cabinet What I need now is someone so kind to check out my choices and make sure I'm not doing any terrible mistake before I make my online order at Ultimarc
I've already read the wiki, but as english isn't my primary language I'd be happier if someone reassures me I've understand everything correctly

Some infos about my cabinet:
* Each player has a joystick and four buttons, plus a start button.
* In the center of the control panel there's also a lone pushbutton, not associated to any player but that I'd like to use to access the mame menu
* The cabinet has two speakers, however only one emits sounds when playing the soccer game
* I have two "coin doors", with working tokens to operate them. They work in the soccer game
* The cabinet's monitor is an Hantarex MTC-9000

Now, let's check if I'm going to do anything stupid

* I'll remove the soccer game board from the jamma connector and ensure that only the monitor power supply is left in the cabinet, not the jamma board's power supply
* I'll buy a JPac and connect it to the jamma connector (making sure it's in the right direction).
* I'll connect a keyboard to the JPac and the JPac to the pc
* I'll set the two jpac jumpers on 15 and 30 khz to have stable image during boot
* I'll use soft15khz to have my video board output the right frequency... if this doesn't work, I'll order an ArcadeVGA (but I hope it works... an ArcadeVGA is expensive for my already limited budget)
* If each player's 4th pushbutton still doesn't work, I'll wire it directly to the Jpac screw terminals
* I'll wire the "lone pushbutton" placed in the center of my control panel as player one's 8th button, via the jpac screw terminals
* I'll buy a pair of el-cheapo amplified pc speakers, open them, and replace the cabinet speakers with them. I'll then connect them to the pc inside the cabinet trough their amplifier.
* I'll use gameex (shelled) as a frontend, and Mame32fx as the emulator (but I'd like a version of mame wich supports hiscore.dat AND command.dat, without reverting to an outdated version of mame)

If anyone has suggestions, or want to point me towards better hardware, feel free to do so, and thanks for your help

PS sorry for my bad english

[Anubis_au]

ilGaspa,

Doesn't sound like you are doing anything majorly wrong.

Maybe consider going six buttons if you ever want to play the street fighter type games, but if you are happy with four buttons, go it.

One thing I'd advise: if that solo button in the middle of the CP will throw you into MAME's menu system, then I'd protect yourself against accidental button presses during gameplay. One way to do this is to make sure the menu is only accessed via the shift button. That way you'll avoid accidental button presses.

Or, make that solo button the shift button, and one of the game buttons the menu button (tab, from memory).

Just a thought... good luck with the build anyway.