Cab question

[Sorex]

Hello,

I might buy a cabinet one of these days, it's said to have a jamma connector and pcb of Street Fighter 2 or Mortal Combat.

It's having 2 joys &  3 buttons for each player.

No side or front art or anything, it seems to be a general cab.

Question is if I should go for it or not, and if it can be modded easily for MAME, can I still use that 25'' monitor that's in it or do I need another gfx cart or convertor?

Cab is about 250 euro's ($350?) incl. 25'' monitor.

picture is attached...

[Jack Burton]

Super easy to MAME.


You can use the existing monitor and controls.  If you don't want to be bothered with the specifics and just get to playing games I suggest you purchase an arcadeVGA and j-pac from ultimarc.com

Otherwise, you can buy a keyboard encoder for your controls and hack a VGA cable to use as your video cable.  You will need to install a program called soft 15khz to display the  video correctly on your monitor.

[Sorex]

in any way this is an ideal deal for those like me who don't have the skills to do the woodwork?

the rest can be arranged with help from you guys I guess?

[8way]

Well if your not planing on fighting games, then that cab would be perfect. But if you what a 6 button layout that control panel might be to small for that. Funny to see Street Fighter II CE in that cab with 3 buttons. By the way that's not an official Street Fighter II CE board. Its a bootleg board, plus it has the one of the variations of the hacked roms upgrade (probably Accelerator Pt.II if i had to guess by the color of the SF2CE logo.) I would say for the price its worth it, for me it would be a gold mine. Its very hard finding any arcade cabs locally for me.

VERY IMPORTANT READ!!!!
If you decide to get a J-Pac be very carfull when hooking it up to this cab. The resone i say this is because bootleg SF2CE boards did not have Polarizing slot cut out on their boards. This means in order to hook them up to a standard Jamma harness, the Polarizing Key had to be removed. What those this all mean you ask?? Without the presence of a Polarizing Key on the Jamma harness, theirs nothing stopping you from hooking it up backward. And yeah you don't want to see what could happen to your new toy from this simple mistake. This is not specific to the J-Pac alone, it goes for any jamma arcade PCB game you might want to hook up to it. Good luck

[Sorex]

well they are hard to find here in Belgium aswell, not to mention original ones from the 80s with all the original paintings/stickers intact.

where are you from by the way?

oh, and thanks for the tip, but besides that small issue those pc<>jamma boards/controllers will work on it, right?

and no I'm not into street fighter & mortal combat games, I'm more the pacman, amidar, donkey kong, wonderboy, bombjack kind of guy
as I am from '73 those influenced most of my childhood and not the fighters, well besides Kung-Fu Master, Yie Ar Kung-fu & Double Dragon which were cool

and yes, there is not much room for more buttons, maybe I can adapt it to a replacable thing, so that I can swap it with one that has a spinner (steering wheel) or trackball.

[CheffoJeffo]

VERY IMPORTANT READ!!!!
If you decide to get a J-Pac be very carfull when hooking it up to this cab. The resone i say this is because bootleg SF2CE boards did not have Polarizing slot cut out on their boards. This means in order to hook them up to a standard Jamma harness, the Polarizing Key had to be removed. What those this all mean you ask?? Without the presence of a Polarizing Key on the Jamma harness, theirs nothing stopping you from hooking it up backward. And yeah you don't want to see what could happen to your new toy from this simple mistake. This is not specific to the J-Pac alone, it goes for any jamma arcade PCB game you might want to hook up to it. Good luck

The new J-Pac is apparently protected against reverse connection, although I agree wholeheartedly with the sentiment.

[8way]

where are you from by the way?

oh, and thanks for the tip, but besides that small issue those pc<>jamma boards/controllers will work on it, right?

I'm from Florida and in my area theirs nothing. I have to drive out to Tampa or Orlando to really find anything. I remember when i lived in NYC i could find arcades everywere, but that was 15 years ago too.

Yes those pc<>jamma boards/controllers will work. As suggested earlier, just get a J-Pac and a Arcadevga. That would be your cleanest and easiest setup to get you up and going.

[Sorex]

same here, you have to be really lucky to find it locally (read Belgium) and it's not even big

is there any change that I could add more bottons to that board? maybe it's capable to have 5 or 6 buttons per player but are they simply not connected.

he also has a cab with I believe 4 neogeo games in it, cab looks weird and will take even more space in depth, the control panel is wider on that one tho
and has already 4 buttons and more room for additionals.

I can use the front panel or top for the mame stuff tho (esc, tab ...)

[8way]

same here, you have to be really lucky to find it locally (read Belgium) and it's not even big

is there any change that I could add more bottons to that board? maybe it's capable to have 5 or 6 buttons per player but are they simply not connected.

he also has a cab with I believe 4 neogeo games in it, cab looks weird and will take even more space in depth, the control panel is wider on that one tho
and has already 4 buttons and more room for additionals.

I can use the front panel or top for the mame stuff tho (esc, tab ...)

Well its a standard Jamma so the will only have 3 buttons per side. On some occasions you might find four per side. To hook up that SF2CE you would need to get the kick harness witch would have the additional 3 buttons per side. But if you get a J-pac its very easy to add additional buttons, obviously for MAME purposes and not for that SF2CE board. Personally i don't care for that second cab, i would stick with the first one.

[Jack Burton]

IF you can get that Neo Geo cab cabinet for the same price as the other then definitely get it instead.  The existing controls on it are probably way better and much closer to those on the classic games you listed.  Plus the experience of playing games for long periods is much easier on a sit down cab like that one than on that wooden cab, which looks like it would hurt you back after a while.

Sit down cabs like that one are known as candy cabinets and are actually highly sought after.  You have no idea how jealous I am right now.

[Sorex]

I went for the first one, the only problem seen so far is a bug in the scrolling of Street Fighter II,
part of the screen appears at the bottom when it scrolls up during a jump.
but as it will be a mame box this is not really a big issue for me as I can run it emulated if needed.

With another pcb it worked fine so it's not the monitor, besides that it's in excellent shape and the guy
(who is a pinball/arcade technician during daytime) showed me that I simply could use a few pins
to have my 4th button and even more if I used some credit select pins or so that are not really needed in mame.

If nothing comes in between I'll have the cab tomorrow afternoon, drooool 

[Sorex]

Jump for joy!

the cab has arrived

what's the easiest/fastest way to get it operational as mame box?

I have a mobo here (only a 1.1GHz with currently 128Mb RAM tho but that should be enough for the classics)
can I attach it to the cab's transformer? Or should I use the powersupply from the desktop for it?