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Building a MAME Pc - help please!!
RedSquirrel:
--- Quote from: AlanS17 on June 01, 2003, 12:44:40 pm ---The majority of people on this site that have cabinets use Windows. Just auto-load your favorite front-end at startup (put a shortcut to your program in the "Startup" menu). Then it's all joysticks and buttons from there. Pretty simple, right?
--- End quote ---
Yeah I was thinking that as well. Im 100% going with windows now, instead of DOS.
Is there any programs like MAME32 frontend, that allows to load SNES, Megadrive/Genesis etc though (as in shared with MAME)?
jakejake28:
mamewah. i love it. just downloaded it on one o my pc's. i found it both easy to set up and very functional. it's not much for skinning, but i'm not one to care for aethetics. or try gamelauncher, i run it on me other, an it is great. it is equal to mamewah, pound for pound, but slightly harder to config. (easy nonetheless)
Tiger-Heli:
Q1 - Personal opinion, but see http://www.oscarcontrols.com/monitors.shtml (and also the Xiaou2 link from that page). I prefer monitors, 19-inches are reasonable, 21's are fairly pricey. 27-33 inch TV's are pretty reasonable. Generally PC monitors give much crisper images, but some people feel TV's give more authentic pictures.
Q2 - already answered and moot, since you are going with windows.
Q3 - again moot since you are going with windows
Q4 - http://www.fraggersxtreme.com/arcadepanels/faq.htm#How do I get rid of the blasted "Click Ok to continue?" screens
Q5 - DOS part is irrelevant now. Staying out of this one. A good keyboard encoder (KeyWiz, I-PAC, MK series) has much more programmability than the X-arcade and probably better quality too. OTOH, the X-arcade is less work. Biggest advantage is the X-arcade works with console systems, if that's a concern (OK, I guess I didn't stay out of it.)
Q6 - Dunno, I'm sure there are sites, how generic they are and how close they'll match YOUR hardware (???). If I were building a large screen cab, I like the showcase style like OSCAR mentioned here: http://www.arcadecontrols.org/yabbse/index.php?board=1;action=display;threadid=3994;start=0
Sorry if I sound like an OSCAR fanboy, but he has a lot of cool stuff.
Wade:
1) You could use a TV-out and TV, a VGA monitor, or a real arcade monitor. All are reasonably priced in the 20" range.
2) Some TV out cards won't work correctly in DOS. I have an ATI 3D Xpression+ and it never would do graphic applications properly in DOS.
3) I would strongly recommend using DOS, for many reasons. The big ones are Mame usually performs better in DOS and DOS boots faster and doesn't need shutdown. The big things to consider in your decision are 1) is performance a consideration for you or will your PC be 2000mhz 512 RAM and 2) will all the emulators you want to use run in DOS? GameLauncher is a great frontend that is available for DOS as well as Windows. A lot of other emulators (besides mame) are also available for DOS but there are some that aren't.
There are other threads about DOS vs. Windows which you can do a Search for on this site, many of them are because people using Windows get sound skipping/pausing in Windows.
4) As others said, just toggle the joystick back and forth.
5) I don't know about the Xarcade sticks.
6) You can search around this site for some plans, or browse the Examples section. There are 2 or 3 designs available out there.
Wade
RedSquirrel:
omg, i just saw http://www.xgaming.com/htm/cabinet.shtml and the xarcade unit (not the cab) look well small. Or is it just that the cab is massive?
I wanted to buy it, as I really dont fancy messing around with wires/buttons etc.