mame + xbox help needed

[severdhed]

hey guys, i'm looking for a little guidance here with mameox on the xbox. 

i was moving right along with my plan to have 3 arcade cabinets.
1 with a horizontal monitor and a standard street fighter layout
1 with a vertical monitor for just 4 way and trackball and spinner games
1 with a playstation 2 and some light gun games

i have all 3 cabinets.  the horizontal cabinet is together and functional, just needs to be made pretty. it has a 19" lcd montior.
the ps2 gun cabinet is also together and working, just not pretty. it has a 25" tv for a monitor
the vertical cabinet needs a monitor, and the control panel built.

well, as it turns out, about 2 weeks after purchasing the 3rd cabinet, my wife and i decided to look into buying a house, instead of continuing to rent.  we found a house we like and put in an offer, things are looking like they will go through and we are closing at the end of august.  anyway, the place we are in now has a finished basement, the new house does not, and probably will not.  there is a family room that i plan on having my cabinets in, as well as my home theater projector. 

anyway, i'm thinking that 3 cabinets is possibly a waste of space.  i was reading a thread here the other day where someone mentioned running mameox on a modded xbox and that it worked well with the mame lightgun games.  so this got me thinking, i could possibly take the lcd monitor from the horizontal cabinet and move it to the vertical cabinet to get that up and running.  then take the Tv from the gun cabinet and move it to the horizontal cabinet, take the pc out and install a modded xbox.  that way i could play xbox games, plus mame.  i could then get rid of the 3rd cabinet since i wouldn't need it any more. 

i am pretty familiar with xbox modding, i currently have two modded xboxes running in my house.  I am very comfortable about getting it set up and running.  it has been a few years since i have tried running mame on one though, and when i did, i didn't have great results.  alot of the roms just wouldn't load.  i am hoping things have gotten better in the last few years.

so, here are my questions: 
1. do any of you guys run mame on an xbox, and if so, how well does it actually work?
2. is it easy to get working with standard xbox lightguns?
3. how do i know which romset to use?  i currently have a .124 set, will that work?
4. I play a wide variety of games on my mame cabinet currently, is the performance going to be suitable to be my only mame cabinet for horizontal games.  this includes games like MK3, samurai showdown, metal slug series...etc.

i know that some of those games are available as regular xbox games and wouldn't need to be run from mame, however they usually lack the coin insertion requirement and therefore don't feel quite right.  plus, i would have to exit mame to run them.  i have most, if not all of the classic arcade compilation games for the xbox, but i would constantly have to be rebooting to the dashboard and launching something else, so it would make browsing a list and just finding a game alot more difficult. 

so, should i even bother doing this?  i guess my other option is to forget about the vertical classics cabinet, have one horizontal monitor mame cabinet with a frankenpanel of some kind and just do all of my maming on there.  i could then setup the other cabinet with an xbox and use it for gun games..but once again that seems like such a waste of space.  i don't plan on having a tv in this room, and i can't play lightgun games on my projector.

i really just need some advice.  if i am going to get rid of a cabinet, i'd much rather do it before i move, because moving cabinets is not a fun thing to do.

please help

[M.Lanza]

The most current version of mameox uses the 0.84 romset.
You can use romcenter to convert your .124 romset ( I think that's what I used ) over to .84
if you can find the .DAT file.

You have to a split romset or mameox wont see all of the games, though I think
that romcenter can convert between split and merged as well.

It's fairly easy to get lightguns working.
It's just plug and play, though sometimes I have to set up the guns in the calibration screen.

Mameox will run most horizontal games in the 0.84 romset quite well, but you are limited
by processor speed and memory. A 128mb memory upgrade will allow you to run more games
and help some games run better.

Most of the neo geo games run really well, but none of the mortal kombat games run fast enough to be playable.

There are pros and cons to using an xbox, so it's just a matter of personal preference.
It would be best to try it out for a few hours on your t.v. before deciding to use one in a cabinet.

[evilfuzzle]

xboxes are only 700mhz or something like that, you may want to take that into consideration as this will limit the games that you can play and it also only has 64mb of ram. i wouldn't personally use one if i was you, they where a great alternative a few years ago when most computers where still in that range anyway but it isn't as good these days.

[BASS!]

I have an original xbox running Mamedox arcades (all working roms) FbaxxxPRO (99% working, one game is either wrong or just not available) I also run scummvm and psxbox. Along with all those I have nearly all decent older consoles loaded with all roms. It may be a older system, but it still plays games awesomely and as far as I can think would make an awesome super cheap mame machine. If you look hard enough and maybe shoot me a pm you will be able to get full packs, and at least a place to go to check out to get your dat files for rommerger.

The only down side to xbox emulation is no lightgun and very moderate trackball support. Both of which really aren't feasible for a xbox. If you were able to buckle down and do without those it would work just fine. I have had tons for fun playing do don pachi on my 60" tv, why not go to town on a arcade?