Old Vetern but have some newbie questions......

[Savannan]

Hi all,

I built my arcade cabinet about 9 years ago.  Sold it a couple years ago and recently got it back.  Everything is out dated so Im in the process of rebuilding.  I have everything that I need except the Ultimarc VGA 2....But I have some stupid questions....

MY CURRENT SETUP IS...
-nice 2 player arcade cab
-27" D9800 wg
-Gigabyte Mobo
- AMD 3.4 Quad Core with Freezer 64 Pro fan cooler
- 4 gigs pc6400 800mhz memory
- 585w power suppy
- Ipac2
- dvd burner/wireless G/ect...

Now.. the questions 

1) I want to put everything in a computer case and set it inside my arcade cab.  Will that be too much heat for the computer?  I'll have the cabinet all together with minimal air flow....  I could install a couple of fans in the back of the arcade cabinet..but if i do that...should i have the air flow goin in or out? Should I just leave the side panel off on the case also? 

2) I plan on using wither Maximus Arcade or Hyperspin .... Any other good front ends out there are like these two?

3) Which operation system should I use?  XP Vista 7???

Man, what a difference 9 years makes.  Night and day.....

Thanks 
Sav

[mwong168]

Why bother spending money on a case when you can mount everything in a piece of wood or inside your cabinet for next to nothing.  As for air flow ideally it would be best to have fans pulling in cooler air in and another fan to push the hot air out.  If you do end up getting a case probably it is probably best to leave the side panel on because having the side panel off might actual reduce air flow or affect the way the air flow is suppose to go in the design of the case.  

For the front end my vote goes to Maximus Arcade because it is super easy to setup and interface is very clean.  Hyperspin looks great with all the animation bells and whistles but not sure how easy it is to setup and link to all your emulators.  

Operating system either go with good old XP w/SP3 or Windows 7 appears to work fine as well.

[XtraSmiley]

I have Maximus, but man, Hyperspin is soooooo sweet.  When the new version comes out, I'd go with it (should be within the next few weeks).

As for the case, no I run mine in a case and it is fine.  You could mount it like the above poster says though.

Also, I'm a similar set up and actually thining about selling my AVGA2 card b/c since I have that monitor, I can use a better video card, play games like SF4, and still get original rez's b/c the monitor can output them.

Let us know what you go with.

[Dazz]

Yeah, I must say that the new version of HyperSpin that we are releasing in a couple more weeks will blow the current version out of the water. 

[garnerb350]

I'm the same as XtraSmiley...I built my first cab a year & half ago...and it is still going strong. I took a Dell 4600 and threw it in...hooked up a tb drive, extra usb hub, and an old 21 trintron monitor. Went with X-arcade tankstick for CP... I made a vent on the back of the cab to let air flow out. I was worried about air and heat issues, but i havent had any problems.

I have a second cab that i am going to mame (when it gets warmer) and I'm going to try the route that mwong168 was discussing.
(just to see if i can do it)

As for frontends...I use Hyperspin. When i first built my cab, I had Maximus, but the tankstick was causing problems and I was forced to use Hyperspin...and its been great ever since...the forum there is great, they help us noobs and they are constantly finding ways to improve. Check this link here http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=84933.0 they have a list of the current front ends & opinions...

[mwong168]

I have a second cab that i am going to mame (when it gets warmer) and I'm going to try the route that mwong168 was discussing.
(just to see if i can do it)

It is not very hard if you have the right parts to mount all the computer hardware to a board.  Some people on here have been as creative as cutting up a Bic pen and use that as a riser to mount the motherboard or else you could buy these


http://suzohapp.com/gaming/accessories/49101900.htm



I used the copper risers (shown above) that come with all computer cases and drilled a hole slightly smaller and hand screwed them in for my showcase and bartop projects.  As for mounting and securing the power supply you could spend $5 and get a decent sized roll of multi use pipe strapping like this:



You can also this to secure hard drives, dvdroms as well.  Again if you are the type that wants the inside of your cabinet to look as nice as the outside you could always buy these HDD brackets which give you a cleaner way to mount onto the wood or inside of your cabinet.



Mounting your computer inside this way is much better in my opinion because a computer case can be big, bulky and the air flow for a computer case was not designed to be sitting inside another enclosure such as an arcade cabinet.  The air flow of the case might be excellent but unless you exhaust that air out your computer will overheat in the end.  The money spent on the case would be better spent on higher quality quiet fans to intake or exhaust air out of your actual cabinet instead.

[Savannan]

wow, thanks everyone for the fast feed back!!!  I think Ive decided on mounting the mobo on that pull out shelf.   im sure I can goto ace hardware and pick up some kind of hollow plastic dowel that I can cut and use (dont wanna wait for a week and buy those feet.  im jones'n to get started..hahhaah).   I think i'll use windows 7 64bit. 

I have a couple more questions if you guys dont mind.....

I have the D9800 wg monitor....
1) do i *NEED* arcadevga2?

2) when I connected my asus gaming laptop to that monitor...i set up 800x600 on the laptop, turned off everything, connected cables and turn everything on.  it says NO SIGNAL IN.  any ideas?

3) and how do you UPLOAD a picture here    "[ img]   what goes here [ /img]"  location of my file??? or web pic addy? 

thanks all again for your feedback, I appriciate it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Sav

[mwong168]

wow, thanks everyone for the fast feed back!!!  I think Ive decided on mounting the mobo on that pull out shelf.   im sure I can goto ace hardware and pick up some kind of hollow plastic dowel that I can cut and use (dont wanna wait for a week and buy those feet.  im jones'n to get started..hahhaah).   I think i'll use windows 7 64bit. 

I have a couple more questions if you guys dont mind.....

I have the D9800 wg monitor....
1) do i *NEED* arcadevga2?

2) when I connected my asus gaming laptop to that monitor...i set up 800x600 on the laptop, turned off everything, connected cables and turn everything on.  it says NO SIGNAL IN.  any ideas?

3) and how do you UPLOAD a picture here    "[ img]   what goes here [ /img]"  location of my file??? or web pic addy? 

Good idea on mounting it on the pull out tray   I think you should stick with 32bit because most emulators are developed around 32bit operating systems if I recall and unless you are pushing over 3gb of ram that is the only other reason to go 64bit.

To upload or post a picture in between your [ img ] [ /img] tag you put the url location of your image such as www.abc.com/xyz.jpg.  Also don't forget to remove the spaces in between your square brackets.

[drventure]

About uploading images, there's a thread here for that very thing

http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=90051.0

Basically, just post a message with just giberish in it, then attach your pictures. once they're uploading go back to that message, right click on the link to the image and copy the link location, the paste that into whatever other post you're writing.

A bit of a pain but it works!

[saurian333]

That thread was a good idea.  Kind of fun to jump to random pages on that and see what you come up with.

I upload my images to ImageBam.  Free, no limit (except the 3MB limit per file), and usually pretty fast.  I like the fact that you can compress your pics to a .zip file and upload it; it will extract them and create a gallery automagically.  As a little bonus, when you upload a group of pics to a gallery, it will generate BBcode for you that you can just copy and paste into your post.    BBcode's not complicated, but it's handy if you're posting a bunch of pics at once.

Another option is to just attach them to your post, but you have a limit of 8 files/2MB that way, and you can't move them around within the post.