CNTBD - Cab Name to be Determined - First Go

[pithed2]

I have a tendency to be long winded, so I'll take the short approach.  I've been interested in creating a cab for about 10 years now.  Got into MAME back around 2000-2001 and thought about creating the cab then, but didn't have tools, money or know-how.  Fast forward 10 years and here I sit.  I have the tools, a modest amount of knowledge, but I'm still poor (not sure if that's the one thing I want to have missing!).

I've looked through this forum quite a bit for the past few months.  It's obvious there is a wealth of knowledge here, so I thought I'd ask you guys my numerous questions. 

I've created the cab, for the most part, based off Lusid's Arcade Flashback.  I did make some alterations to make it fit for me.  I'd like to build on that to make it a little bit nicer.  I really like Knievel's Neon Mame and Epyx's Alien themed cab.  So I might go a little toward that.  All that said, I have a number of questions and hope you all can help be through this process.

Here's what it looks like thus far:



1.  For the CP, I'm going with a 2-player 6 button setup with 8-way joysticks, with trackball and possibly an additional 4-way with 2 buttons.  I'm a wiring noob, but love the look of the led buttons.  Is this something I should stay away from with my first cab?  I'm a little leery of all the wiring.  Does it require both an ipac and a ledwiz?

2.  I know this stuff requires extra power, but how do you pull the 5v or 12v power?  Does anyone know of a tutorial or walkthrough of any sort on it?  That part throws me.

3.  Will I need extra fans inside the cab?  I'm planning on going with a partially open back to the cab and having one of the sides off of the pc.  The design of the cab allows for a ton of room in the bottom.  I guess my only concern would be for the monitor and marquee lights. 

4.  I'm using an older pc with an AMD Athlon 64 processor running at 2.4 ghz with 1G of ram.  I intend to stick an ATI 9200 series video card in.  Will that be sufficient to run Maximus Arcade and most of the classic arcade games?

[Corbo]

1.  For the CP, I'm going with a 2-player 6 button setup with 8-way joysticks, with trackball and possibly an additional 4-way with 2 buttons.  I'm a wiring noob, but love the look of the led buttons.  Is this something I should stay away from with my first cab?  I'm a little leery of all the wiring.  Does it require both an ipac and a ledwiz?

PACLED http://www.ultimarc.com/pacled64.html can be controlled using LEDWIZ, that's USB powered and will handle your LED lighting.
IPAC or MINIPAC can be purchased with a wiring harness which makes wiring easy http://www.ultimarc.com/minipac.html

2.  I know this stuff requires extra power, but how do you pull the 5v or 12v power?  Does anyone know of a tutorial or walkthrough of any sort on it?  That part throws me.
PACLED should handle the LED's, or you can pull 12v from a molex connector.

3.  Will I need extra fans inside the cab?  I'm planning on going with a partially open back to the cab and having one of the sides off of the pc.  The design of the cab allows for a ton of room in the bottom.  I guess my only concern would be for the monitor and marquee lights.

Put a large case fan in at the back near the PC to draw out the hot air, other than that you should be fine.

4.  I'm using an older pc with an AMD Athlon 64 processor running at 2.4 ghz with 1G of ram.  I intend to stick an ATI 9200 series video card in.  Will that be sufficient to run Maximus Arcade and most of the classic arcade games?

I don't know about Maximus as I haven't used it, but that should be fine for a lot of MAME games.  You might want to put 2gb RAM in just to allow for the Windows and front end overhead, so that things run along smoothly.

[pithed2]

Thanks for the quick reply Corbo.

Just so I'm straight with 1.  For the CP, I'd need a IPAC for the 2 players and admin stuff (didn't mention that, planning on putting above the CP), MINIPAC for the trackball, PACLED and LEDWIZ for the LED lighting? 

[Corbo]

The minipac does joysticks, buttons and trackball/spinner, so you may get away with just a minipac.  Have a read on the ultimarc website and see if it fits your requirments.  I think the IPAC only does joystick/buttons, so you'd need a mini or optipac if you went with the IPAC.  The website is informative and Andy who runs it has a great reputation.

PACLED will light up your LED's in the buttons, and the LEDWIZ software will talk to the PACLED and your frontend to light up the buttons, flash in pretty patterns etc.