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building a desktop controll box, need help.
vide0bug13:
Last time I had a nice post then that log out after 60 minutes thing went off and I lost all of it :( so heres a short rundown:
I am making a table top arcade box with a laptop in it. the laptop outputs to a television, so the box will plug into a television.
IMPORTANT STUFF:
* Laptop has a 700 mhz processor, 64mb ram, 3.2 gig HDD and a ATI RAGE mobility-P graphics card.
* I ordered 2 8-way joysticks and 12 buttons (plus 2 player and 1 player buttons)
A few questions:
1. How can i get 2 players playing smoothly at once? From past experiences I have seen keyboard don't like more than 3 things happening at once.
The laptop has its built in keyboard, serial port, usb port, and a ps/2 port.
2. I have a windows 98 disk, will this be good? (i play on trying to do a "front end", all I have to do is edit the boot file right?)
3.How many buttons do most games need, I can have up to 6 buttons a player but i would still need exit and coin buttons right?
Any other tips/ tricks will be welcomed.
PS. Sorry for being so blunt, I'm pretty sick right now and don't fell like typing another super post
BASS!:
To get this running smoothly you will need a very trimmed down version of mame. I would reccomend going to the software forum search, and look up advancecd / or dos mame. I have gotten mame to run great on similar specs, but it does take a bit of work. I would say .84 mame would be a good version to go for. As for your controllers, it does look like you are trying to go on the cheap, but you will need some way to translate those button presses / joystick hits to keyboard keys. Do a search for the ipac2 or the keywiz ( you can mash every single button at once and it will register). You will wire your controls into this, and when you hit a button, your computer will think a key is being pressed on the keyboard.
As far as your windows cd goes, you may just be using it to install the latest dos, and then erase windows all together, and just load into your frontend.
Good luck:-)
BASS!:
Oh yeah, I totally forgott. If this is your first wiring job I really recomend the minipac. It comes with all of the wires and connectors, so there is no fiddly crimping and soldering. I myself have never used one, but many here have, and rave about it.
vide0bug13:
yep, I am doing this cheap ;D. Most of this thing is made of parts laying around, i really don't want to buy anything else.
Also, what would slow mame down? If it needs more ram i can get some...
And I had an idea, if I have player one connected to the laptop keyboard and player 2 connected to an external keyboard would they still run into the key ghosting problem?
EDIT: i found a key wiz here:
http://groovygamegear.com/webstore/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=200
are you shure this will support 2 players with no problems? I will buy this if i have to...
Turnarcades:
I'm pretty much an expert in running low-end deskop PC's and 700 Mhz is about the minimum I would use with XP, a resource-friendly front-end and a pre-0.106 build of MAME. As I find laptops generally need higher specs to work equivalently well (particularly RAM requirements), you should not aim any higher than this software arrangement for the system you intend to use in your project.
With regards to controls, I seriously recommend you go with an i-pac or equivalent as it will save you tons of time and headaches, plus overcomes the problems related to keyboard hacks and ghosting. Wiring your own can seem like a good choice, but for the £30 it saves you you can run into a host of complaints and kick yourself every time you experience a problem. 6 buttons each should be plenty for you, with coin+credit each and maybe one or two more for frequent use commands like escape or pause if you don't like the idea of shifted functions. The credit buttons come in handy as an additional button for other platforms too, like 'select' on SNES.