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Two arcade machines linked up?

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Jack Burton:

The games at planet Zero support linking cabinets.  that means two cabs and two independant pcbs.  That means the two cabs can play one player games separately, or match up against one another.

But if all you want to do is have a separate cab for each player, I recommend you build one complete cab, then simply clone the inputs and video over to another second player.

There are a number of ways to go about splitting up you inputs, but I figure the absolute easiest and cleanest way is to just buy separate USB I-pacs and set the same inputs to both panels in MAME.  If you don't wanna spend the extra $40 on a 2nd I-pac, then you can always just extend the wires over to the second cabinet through project boxes, hacked cables, and terminal strips.


NOTE: This is all assuming you are using emulators.  If you are using real hardware then you will simply need to buy the requisite equipment, pcbs, monitors, powersupplies, harnesses, etc.

Xiaou2:


 Games in Mame which support 2 Monitors, such as "Outrunners",  can be used with
a single video card which has dual monitor output.

 When you run such a game, Press tab and go into video options.. and you can see the
many dual monitor output options.   

 I dont have mine hooked up currently... but if I recall correctly, Mame might over-ride
the clone option, and create the spanning automatically.   If not, then you may have
to alternate between the two styles of output by adjusting the settings in the control
panel/video settings,  depending on what you wanted to play.


 Any game which can be seen with one screen will work great with clone mode.

 Any Non-Mame game probably wont support dual monitor output to two players.
In such a case.. the only option would be to have a 2nd pc (or console) linked up.

 There is the rare change that some games can be ran in multiple instances in window
mode... and can be dropped to the 2nd display.

 A theoretical thing to try,  would be to set up a Virtual machine that has another virtual OS
running a game on it.   However, I would think that may suffer lag and or focus problems.


protokatie:


--- Quote ---Games in Mame which support 2 Monitors, such as "Outrunners",  can be used with
a single video card which has dual monitor output.

 When you run such a game, Press tab and go into video options.. and you can see the
many dual monitor output options.   

 I dont have mine hooked up currently... but if I recall correctly, Mame might over-ride
the clone option, and create the spanning automatically.   If not, then you may have
to alternate between the two styles of output by adjusting the settings in the control
panel/video settings,  depending on what you wanted to play.
--- End quote ---

I just tested this on my dual screen laptop. It works, but you have to first tell MAME to use 2 screens first, otherwise the game will run with both screens shown on the first one only.

Ummon:

Ahh, I forgot about that feature in mame because I generally don't use two monitors simultaneously, and have the desktop cloned. In any case, perusing the news at mame.org, it seems there's stuff relevant to this thread.

ItchyD:

If anyone ever gets mario kart arcade working, I'd love to know about it.

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