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Using Smash TV cabinet for a MAME system

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CheffoJeffo:
For some, yes.

FWIW, I am not ticked off with you at all.

I was ticked off with Max for his rant about people who do hate to see classics MAMEd -- their opinions are every bit as valid as yours and his.

 :cheers:

TopJimmyCooks:
Boer:
You're in good shape.  For whatever reason, there's a ton of Robotron/Smash TV love on this board and Klov.  So you're dealing with a desirable game, which gets peoples blood pressure up a little. 

You've chosen what I think is the best course for this situation - Make new parts to suit your needs, while keeping the original CP/speaker panel for possible future restoration.  Best of both worlds. 

I would ask the gents of the forum to redirect their energy towards replying to the technical questions here.  I'm no Jpac expert or I would chime in.  I will say that interfacing with the existing jamma harness is a solid move towards restorability and originality if it was originally a jamma cab.  Wrap the original board in tin foil or an antistatic bag and it should keep for a long time. 

boerbiet:
Thanks, Jimmy :)

I added up the number of buttons I want to use and came to the conclusion I will need a JPAC + IPAC to get the desired amount working as well as utilise the cabinet parts. I'll see how large the original board is and make sure to keep it in a safe place :angel:

Vigo:
Hi boerbiet,

I wanted to weigh in on this one. First Congrats on your Smash TV. I've always really liked the cab and the game. :)

I have a cabinet called Trog. When I bought it, it was a Street Fighter II and painted black. My intention was to Mame it, but when I removed the paint to see what was intact, I found that there was a beautiful cab underneath. Anyway, long story short is that I still decided to Mame it but keep everything intact, and even convert it back into a working Trog so I could switch between playing Trog and my mame machine.

Now the nice thing about a cabinet like Trog or your smash TV (They have a similar base) is that it has a lot of space inside the cabinet is large enough to store a spare control panel right inside the body. I just made a bungee strap to keep it from flopping all over. I made a setup where I could just swap out the JAMMA plug and control panel at any given time to choose between MAME and dedicated Trog.

It turned out I loved the setup. Over the years, I grew more and more fond of Trog as a machine. Friends often opted to want to play Trog over all the MAME games I had. My interest of having a Mame machine had expanded into an interest in arcade machines. I De-Mamed Trog and have been working slowly restoring it.

I'm only pointing this out because I think it would be smart to think over the possibility of keeping Smash TV working in dedicated form. You of course are free to follow your own path on this, but I wanted to briefly go over my method to keep both the Dedicated game alive and kicking, as well as have fully working MAME.

1) I bought an IPAC and an ArcadeVGA video card. from ultimarc.
2) I built a new control panel out of wood that fit in place of the main control panel.
3) Wired only the monitor controls to a JAMMA fingerboard. It was like 4 wires.
4) Connected my new Mame control Panel controls to the Ipac.

So to play Trog, here is what I did:
Plugged the JAMMA Harness into the real Trog PCB
Clamped on the Trog Control Panel I had stashed inside the Cabinet.
Turned it on like a regular Arcade cabinet and Played.

To swap it back into Mame, I just did this:
Unplug the JAMMA Harness from the Trog PCB and plugged it into the JAMMA fingerboard I had mounted inside the cabinet.
Unclamp the original Control Panel and pop in my Mame Control Panel.
Turned on the computer and the cabinet power.

Now you may notice I failed to mention sound. I did not wire the sound up though the JAMMA fingerboard, but I probably could if I bought an amp for the arcade speaker. What I did personally was wired the audio out to to computer speakers I had mounted on the back wall. Later, when I had more space, I just wired the audio out to my music system for glorious surround sound arcade gaming.

Anyway, I am hoping that gives you an option to think over. I personally thought it was an easy solution and it saved my cab. Since this sounds like it will be a 2 player Mame cab, I doubt you really want a Smash TV Mame cab that can't play 2 player smash TV. (Since you would need 4 joysticks)

Good luck with your project!  :)

boerbiet:
Hi Vigo,

Thanks a lot for your post. I was wondering if skipping JPAC alltogether was an option, and apparently it is. I'll look into this fingerboard thing! If it's something you have to build yourself, a friend of mine is quite capable in that division so I'll call for help from him :)

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