I thought of an idea. A self-contained MAME control panel

[The cranky hermit]

You know those 17cm*17cm mini-ITX motherboards? What if you stuck one of those inside the CP, connected an IPac directly to it, and attached BNC cables to it so you could plug the CP directly into your TV without requiring a whole? Is this a good idea, or is it just wishful thinking?

[anthony691]

You know those 17cm*17cm mini-ITX motherboards? What if you stuck one of those inside the CP, connected an IPac directly to it, and attached BNC cables to it so you could plug the CP directly into your TV without requiring a whole? Is this a good idea, or is it just wishful thinking?

There has been talk of this before. IMHO these arn't a good idea, but I'm wierd.

[Generic Eric]

The thing to consider with the type of board you mentioned is wether or not you will be using its onboard video.  If so, what is the quality.   Does this board allow you to output to a tv?  The same goes for the quality of the audio.  

Consider those points and any others that you would normally make when purchasing a new motherboard.  If the quality is acceptable to you, and the price point is what you are looking for, then only you can prevent forest fires. I mean make the decission.

[BobA]

Arcade in a box has been done.  Buy one here or get plans.

http://arcadeinabox.com/

BobA

[TheTick]

I was gonna do that originally when I built my first control panel 2 years ago (bigger motherboard though). I decided that the computer would likely also be used for DVD, DiVX, MP3, etc; so I set out to build the following:
1) Home Theatre PC (always connected to the TV)
2) Portable Control Panel (preferably with a single USB cable)

Its worked out well so far. The control panel can be moved from room to room (to different computers). And the computer gets much more use than just playing games (also doubles as a TIVO like device).

[WaverBoy]

Arcade In A Box has been discontinued, so none can be bought at the website, unfortunately.  I think it's a fantastic idea, by the way...all it needs is a spinner, a button-topped joystick, and a four-way joystick, and then we're talking.

[AlanS17]

As cheap as mini-itx boards may be by comparison, I would say put the board in a set-top box rather than inside the control panel. Then load the sucker up with every emulated game ever made (arcade, nes, snes, atari, genesis, etc).

Then if you want a control panel build one seperate. Most mini-itx cases have usb ports on the front so setup is a snap. Plus this way you could also use traditional control pads, keyboards, mice, or ANY other input device depending on what you're doing.

I've really researched those mini-itx boards. They would be great for recording TV and video/music playback. Why limit yourself to just playing MAME?

That actually exactly what I want to do with my next project!  

[Smittydc]

Just this weekend I was playing mame outdoors on a projection screen using a portable homebuilt mini-itx computer.  Works great!

www.mini-itx.com is a good place to start if you're interested in building one.

[Brad Lee]

[gtjoe]

I am in the process of building one. I plan on using this to play mame on my TV as well be a DivX movie server and MP3 jukebox.

I have an existing control panel only design that is 27"x11"x6" with 2 joysticks with 7 buttons each, a spinner in the center, ipac , and a 4 port USB in the back.

I was working on new cp to add a Imperial 3" track ball and a 4 way balltop joystick.  The cp is now 30"x16"x6".  

Since the cp grew so much, there was room to put full ATX mb, 300 watt power, hard drive and cd drive inside and a VGA card with TV out.  These will all be mounted to a piece of plywood used as the base of the CP.  I also plan to put some computer speakers inside and mount the speaker grills on the outside.  Also bought a Logitech Cordless Elite Duo setup for wireless control.

Now I just need to assemble it all...

[shmokes]

I suggested this before, but with a Shuttle nForce2 board instead of a mini-itx board.  These boards are only 7"x7" so they are plenty small for just about any two-player control panel.  They also have decent onboard video (GeForce 4 family), superb onboard sound, TV-Out, and can accept processors at least as fast as an Athlon XP 3000+.  Granted, you don't need that kind of power for Mame, but you can also, of course just pop in an Athlon XP 1800+ which is a great, inexpensive chip that will play everything full speed and still give you decent framerates in Windows games.  Those boards, by the way, also have onboard ethernet, firewire, usb 2.0 and have 1 each of AGP and PCI.

[GSXRMovistar]

I actually did something like this a few weeks back, it was BBQ and beers at a mates place and a few of the guys suggested I brought my CP along for a few games.

To save hassle of hooking it up to my mates PC and having to bring Mame softwate/ games with me I just loaded up my laptop (IBM T23) stuffed it into the CP housing and connected the iPAC and OptiPAC.

All I had then was a single S-Video cable coming out that I plugged in my mates TV in the living room.

Worked a charm, whilst the laptop isn

[IG-88]

but with a Shuttle nForce2 board

Hey shmokes, (or anyone else) do you kow where to purchase one of these boards? I can't seem to find any without having to buy a whole barebones kit. Or could you give me a more detailed descripition of the board itself so I could look it up?

[IIOIOOIOO]

Start at pricewatch to find the bare board.
Start at AnandTech to find reviews.

[shmokes]

Here it is from Shuttle's website:

http://us.shuttle.com/specs_access.asp?pro_id=197

They don't make it super easy to find.  You have to click "buy" at the top of the page, then "consumer store", then scroll down on the left in the category section to "xpc motherboards" and choose the FN41.

It's $200, so it's not the cheapest motherboard, but considering that it comes with a superb sound solution, good video/networking and an impressive feature set, in such a small package, it's really not a bad price IMO.

Also, if it is like most other products, you'll get a better price if you find it from a reseller rather than buying it direct from the manufacturer (I've never understood that...it's extremely counterintuitive).

edit:  Wow...I've searched around and it doesn't seem like ANY resellers sell the board alone without the case and everything.  You might have some luck, though, by emailing a couple of them.  I've always been impressed with www.newegg.com and www.thenerds.net.  I wouldn't be surprised if you could find someone else who would quote you a price on the mainboard alone, hopefully cheaper than you could get it direct from Shuttle.

[Jakobud]

Yeah this idea has been brought up before and several people have made something like this.  I had the idea back in October and was gonna do it with the mini-itx boards, but honestly those boards just don't have enuf punch for the Mame games I wanted to play. The 933Mhz one is equivalent to about a P3-400 I've heard. So you are definately limited.  But still nice boards for the size.

Those Shuttle boards might work. Although they are quite a bit bigger than the mini-itx ones.  But at least you can add your own chip to it and have a kicking one.

[IIOIOOIOO]

http://www.essencompu.com/nupplysingar.asp?ID=3288

Go find this... they're sold out most places. Or find the BioStar microatx built of the same chipset. I tell you this because I am kind beyond measure. To hell with shuttle and their noisy ass systems.

You need to do a good job ventilating this thing with an AMD cpu in there etc etc. Think air channeling and big-slows.

[Malachai]

www.mwave.com has mini-itx boards in different speeds (533mhz-1ghz I think).  They start at around $90 + ship.  Check out the Shuttle boards there too.  They have some of the mini Flex boards, no integrated CPU.

[AceTKK]

http://www.essencompu.com/nupplysingar.asp?ID=3288

Go find this... they're sold out most places. Or find the BioStar microatx built of the same chipset. I tell you this because I am kind beyond measure. To hell with shuttle and their noisy ass systems.

Yeah, but that's an ATX board.  The whole point was to use something smaller that can fit inside the control panel.

-Ace-

[gtjoe]

Yeah, but that's an ATX board.  The whole point was to use something smaller that can fit inside the control panel.

-Ace-

An ATX board is 12"x8".  How tiny is your control panel?
 
I would think a 2 player cp has to be at least 20"x10" to be useable.

[IIOIOOIOO]

Doh, my bad. I linked the wrong one. That same manufacturer has a mini/microatx of that chipset.