Converting Grand Prix Star driving cabinet to mame

[Maniacmat]

I have googled and searched multiple forums but found little info on the best angle of attack, I want to make this a mame driving cabinet and have no clue how to make it all operate well with mame, I was looking at the J-Pac ultimarc controller and think it would be the easiest way, but have never used one and unsure if thats what I need, has anyone done this?? and also wondering about running the games 2 player or link, is there a trick to it?

Mat

[SavannahLion]

I can't tell if you're trying to preserve what you have and shoehorning in MAME into your setup so you can just swap jamma boards (i am not confirming if your cab is jamma as I have not looked into it yet) or you're simplifying the amount of work involved or you have a largely gutted cab or some combination thereof.

It's a very generalized question. Better to ask specific questions.

If it helps

inventory what you have. See what works and what doesn't.
Decide what you want and why.
If what you have fits with what you want, keep it.
If not, can you compromise?
If not sell it and get what works.

If you still have trouble, try and find a copy of Saint's book. Or spend more time browing the forums here in general to get an idea of what works and what doesn't.

[BadMouth]

For the controls:

Ultimark U-HID is the easiest route if you're not worried about having force feedback.
MAME currently doesn't support force feedback, but other emulators do.

Hacking an older potentiometer based Logitech steering wheel is the most popular method, but that involves swapping out potentiometers on all your current controls.
Logitech Profiler software is a life-saver when it comes to tweaking the wheel for a wide variety of emulators and games.

Lotsa info in my signature.

I'm not too knowledgable about hooking up the arcade monitor. 
I assume you'd need an ArcadeVGA video card (or similar video card) for the pc.

[BadMouth]

and also wondering about running the games 2 player or link, is there a trick to it?

Nebula's Sega Model 2 emulator is currently the only emulator capable of doing that.
It requires 2 computers and a cheap router.
Instructions are in the readme file that comes with the emulator.

[Maniacmat]

Thanks for your help people, very great info, i'm not looking to preserve the original machine in any way, i've stripped a lot of the gear out that wont be used and will be running 2 pc's in the back of it.

Thanks heaps for the tip on Nebula BadMouth, looks great!

One thing i am not sure of is the jamma connector, the one in it is a 72 pin and it looks like the J-Pac suits 56 pin, are these compatible or will i need to rewire the connector??

I really thought this would have been done a lot more with a driving cab but struggling to find a lot of info on it, i'll more than likely run late release PC driving games on it as they easily support link play, and the graphics and gameplay are 100% better IMHO