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92greenyj:
Hi all. New here. I am actually an arcade manager. I run the arcade at the Corvette Diner and Gamers Garage in San Diego California.

Anyway. I have a home/personal project that I am asking about. I have a 1980 Pacman cabinet that was converted to a Ms. Pacman via a marquee switch and the original Ms. Pacman daughter board. It hasn't worked in several years due to a bad monitor. My Mom has finally decided that she wants to get it going again. Her original intent was to sell it, but after making some calls to my distributors and doing some research, I just don't think we would get enough out of it right now to be worth it. Now of course we love Ms. Pacman, but there are many other classics we all enjoy as well, so I am going to do a MAME conversion, but of a different sort.

My plan is to do this in such a way that we can easily convert it back to its original condition easily. I plan to remove the Ms. pac marquee, control panel, bezel, and the bad monitor. I am going to leave the original boards and such in place as theres a ton of room to slap a computer tower in there as it is. I am going to build a slitghtly larger control panel to take the place of the original using the original mounts and put a LCD monitor under a piece of plexi where the original monitor goes.

What do you all think? is this a good idea?

EDIT: this project is a home/personal project. Not for my Arcade that I run.

Slippyblade:
Possibly.  First thing to keep in mind is that using MAME to make money is a big no-no. 

On the technical front you might want to look at the Jamma2Mame project.  They are doing exactly what you are talking about. :)

92greenyj:
More questions. (thru just reading I saw several claim time outs and lost posts, hence the multiple posts.)

I just won this tower on ebay:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=220594219142&ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT

obviously the hard drive won't cut it. but I have a plethora of computer parts laying around. including a 120 gig and a 160 gig hard drive. My plan is to put both of them in. Add some Ram, etc. it comes without an OS so I am going to download and install TinyXP on it. I also plan to add a better graphics card (again, i have a few laying around). I also plan to install a wireless card with an antenna on top of the cabinet so I can download games straight to the tower whenever I want. Good idea?
Will this computer handle most MAME games?

For my control panel I am planning to do a 2player panel. an 8 way joystick per player with 6 buttons (my wife loves fighters) with a dedicated 4 way stick and 2 (maybe 3. whats better?) buttons in the middle for games like Ms. Pac, DK, etc. player 1 and 2 coin up and start. then top center a triangle of admin buttons. (pause, enter, escape)
I am also planning to hide a keyboard and mouse in a drawer built into the bottom front of the CP for when I want to get online to DL stuff to the cabinet.

Controller will be the Ipac.

So what does everyone think? thoughts, ideas, and input are greatly appreciated as this is all pretty new to me. including the PC stuff. I'm a Mac guy

92greenyj:

--- Quote from: Slippyblade on April 30, 2010, 01:32:41 pm ---Possibly.  First thing to keep in mind is that using MAME to make money is a big no-no. 

On the technical front you might want to look at the Jamma2Mame project.  They are doing exactly what you are talking about. :)

--- End quote ---

Sorry, forgot to mention this is for home personal use. Not for my work.


oh yeah, and i forgot, what front end does everyone prefer?

92greenyj:
Bueller? Bueller? :applaud:

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