Portable Mame???

[acidblue0]

I'm thinking about making a portable mame. I want to be able to play all these thousands of games on my TV or anyone eles TV. I was thinking of making a 4 player control panel and put all hardware inside panel. This way all I have to do is bring panel to friends house and plug in audio and video to thier TV and BAM we playing. I know I can make these BUT more worried about motherboard and PCI cards etc falling when banging on buttons. Anybody done anything like these or have a idea on how to get MB and cards to stay put.

[Franco B]

It shouldn't be a problem at all. You will probably have more space etc in your CP than most bartops etc.

You can use PCB mounting feet or Bic tubes etc to mount the mobo nice and securely and make a bracket to secure PCI cards vertically or you could use PCI/AGP etc risers/extensions to mount the cards at 90 degrees or whatever.

A search for 'portable' in Project Announcements brings up a load of results which you should give you some ideas etc.

[DJ_Izumi]

So, just a MAME Supergun?  That'd be doable.  I'd probably use an old laptop for the base components myself.  A model with TV Out of course.

[bigster]

Very easy.  Yes use the PCB feet and a laptop core would be very simple because you can make the cp a more reasonable size. 

a laptop like this one http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002EE1KU4 would be very simple. your one output would be the HDMI cable, which would output the audio and video. 

good luck. 

[BASS!]

Lets just say I've had a portable mame machine for quite a few years. Mod an Xbox, and hack some controllers This is what actually inspired me to get in the hobby.

[acidblue0]

a 360? or the older one?

[Jeffy]

I picked up a two player shell CP from X-Arcade a couple of yrs ago and have that running with spare buttons and sticks on a GGG GPWiz through a laptop with HDMI, it works great and is super portable. I only works with friends who have HDMI capable tv's, but...

[massive88]

Depending on the types of games you are looking for, a netbox platform could work well too.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16883103228&nm_mc=AFC-C8Junction&cm_mmc=AFC-C8Junction-_-Desktop+PC-_-Acer+America-_-83103228

[Turnarcades]

Done it a few times now; very easy if you use a Mini-ITX PC but it doesn't really matter what you use. Screw the components directly into the base and you're good. Here's a picture of one I did and a link to our build thread with a few more pics, though we didn't get chance to document it fully:



Turnarcades build thread

[AgentX]

Extra portable: