My checklist! New builder!

[jet989]

So, I'm building a MAME cabinet! Well... not me! But someone I know is building it FOR me, for a great price. I need to know if everything I have here is all I need to do it. This will also help me for when I inevitably want to build myself! The guy I'm talking about might even post on here, or recognize me by my specifications!

Checklist:

-Cabinet
-Monitor (21 inch TV with S-Video input)
-Computer (USB inputs, TV Out card with S-Video)
What's a good speed for this? Will 2GHZ 512MB Ram cover it? 64MB Video card?
-Mouse/Keyboard with PS/2 inputs
-4 sticks and lots o' buttons! 6 for each stick, 4 coin, 4 start = 32 buttons total.
-iPac4 with USB inputs. iPac4 will cover all the buttons and sticks right?
-Speakers

Mouse and Keyboard will go under the joysticks with a piano hinge on the controller mount, so I can just open it up any time I need to. No drawer on this baby.

But essentially all I really need is the iPac4 and a Front Loader on the computer and this would hook up just fine without the cabinet right? The cabinet is just acting as a cool shell for all of these parts. Now this is where I begin to wonder, do I NEED anything else? The wiring my friend is taking care of, the computer installing and everything else I am taking care of, but other than that, this would work right?


That all being said, what if I wanted to add a SPINNER to the control scheme? Is that just a matter of also purchasing a ball and Optipac and using the other USB input? If it's that simple I might just drop the coin. That would be cool.


Thanks for all your help everyone. Also feel free to post suggestions and/or alternatives to what I've listed. From what I've read iPac and Optipac are the best but I have limited knowledge of schematics and the like. Thanks!

[Honkyharris]

Sounds like you've got most of the basics covered. A couple of tips though :

1) You may only want to use 4 buttons for your P3 and P4 locations. I don't think there are any games that require 6 buttons for these players.

2) When you are designing/building your control panel box make sure you make it deep enough to account for the keyboard/mouse you're planning to hide in there. The joysticks/buttons have their own depth so you need to have enough clearance for your other items.

3) Ipac4/Optipac both have rave reviews throughout these forums so I don't believe you can go wrong with either of these and if you look at them closely they are very simple to setup.

4) (Probably should have been first) Make sure you need a 4P setup!! There are only 10 or so games that actually allow for 4 people to play. How often will you have 4 people playing? Etc..

5) Help your friend as much as possible. The more you learn about the process the easier it will be for you to fix/troubleshoot if you begin to have problems.

Edit : Also remember that each joystick will need at 4 wire connections to your ipac4 assuming your planning on using 4-8way joysticks. Although this creates 16 more connections your ipac4 should have no problem covering all the buttons / joystick wiring you've mentioned.

Hope this all makes sense
Honkyharris

[jet989]

Hey Honkyharris, thanks for much for the reply. Definitely going to get the 4 sticks, as I think about games like Turtles, Simpsons and Xmen, it would be a crime not to have 4 sticks. The 6 button thing is more for 'OTHER' games


Finally, here is the specs for the computer I'm building. Should definitely cover me right? I'm going to output the computer audio to the TV speakers


1 Intel Celeron E1500 Dual Core 2.2Ghz Socket 775 CPU, 800FSB, 512k L2 - retail box
1 ASUS P5KPL-AM SE Intel G31 Socket 775 Mainboard, 2xDDR2-800, Intel GMA3100 Graphics & 1xPCI-Ex16, 1xPCI-
Ex1, 2xPCI, 2xEIDE, 4xSATA300, 8Ch Audio, 10/100 LAN, 8xUSB2.0, 1066FSB, mATX
1 Kingston 1GB PC2-6400 800Mhz DDR2 Memory
1 Itech Professional ATX Black Case w/500w Power Supply
1 Western Digital 320GB Caviar Blue 7200rpm SATA300 Hard Drive - 16MB Buffer
1 Sapphire Radeon HD3450 512MB DDR2 PCI-Ex16 2.0 Graphics Card - VGA, DVI, HDTV, Video-Out, CrossfireX,
Integrated 5.1 Audio Controller, 668Mhz GPU, 1656Mhz DDR
1 LG 22x SATA Dual Layer DVD+/-RW - Black

[Honkyharris]

Should be good enough for most games. May not run some newer PC games well if you decide to try to do that.

You're best bet is to go ahead and start getting the software up and running so you can test games ahead of time. Don't play too much or you'll never get anything done!

Honkyharris

[severdhed]

that PC should be fine.  although it wouldn't hurt to add more RAM. 

i'm running a Pentium 4 3ghz, with 2gb of ram, and a 256mb GeForce 4 mx440.  i have no problem playing most mame games.  the 3d games and most of the CHD games dont run that well, but that is to be expected.

[jet989]

Hey everyone, thanks for the responses. Lots of new developments in my cabinet world. Moving along very nicely.

I have decided on the HyperSpin front end, and have gone the full 9 with customizing, wheel art, box art, videos, etc.


 I can definitely add more RAM if necessary, but after some tests the only game that seems to run slow is Blitz and after more research apparently those games aren't supposed to be able to work yet anyways! So that's good!

The building is still being done, and I have a new question and that being the question of admin buttons on the cabinet.

Now I can always pull out the keyboard when it comes to pressing things like escape or alt+f4 to quit emulators or whatever, but I wonder, what about during the MAME experience? If I'm playing a 4 player game, with all the buttons and start buttons and coin buttons in use, and I don't have any admin buttons, what can be done to escape the MAME emulator? I imagine I would have to have some admin buttons separate from everything else that would be dedicated to pressing escape, or alt+f4, or whatever!

My question is, could anyone give me some insight or examples in terms of how they have it setup? Currently my setup is 4 sticks with 6 buttons each, 4 start buttons, 4 coin buttons and that's it.  Obviously during a 2 player game I could set the 4th player start button to be escape or whatever, but that is less than ideal otherwise! So in my opinion, an admin button is necessary!

But perhaps there are other solutions? Press these certain buttons together to escape or quit? I don't know these answers. Thanks to anyone who can respond.