My arcade setup... Overkill??? probably so!

[mcseforsale]

Datacenter says cluster.  freeNAS says you're a rookie.  What exactly are you trying to accomplish.  None of these things make any sense.

AJ

[DaveMMR]

    

[Unstupid]

 

Be honest... You don't know what you are doing, do you?

Page 2!

[Gamester]

Young man, I applaud your effort, and I'm honestly impressed that someone as young as you is interested building a machine to play these old games.

That being said, I think you're getting in over your head. There is probably like a gajillion years worth of combined IT and arcade experience represented on this forum.  My recommendation would that you try to convey what you want to accomplish clearly, take the guidance here with grace, and stop trying to impress everyone with your ingenuity.  A little humility will get you a lot further around here...

Now with that being said, carry on.

Oh, and one more thing...never underestimate the power of posting pictures around here.  It will gain you a lot more credibility, and frankly makes a thread way more interesting to read.  Nobody wants to read endless pages of just text.

[Drnick]

Datacenter Licenses are listed at $4809.

Wow for that kind of money I would just buy a machine.   I guess along with buying the rom's someone got themselves a dodgy copy of 2012.

Seriously kid, and I mean that in a non disrespectful way,  I was once like you with massive ideas.  Mine was building a submarine out of lego.  It has something in common with your idea.  It's never going to hold water.

You can store all your roms etc on the server and share these out to the other systems with no problem.  You can virtualise some PC's from within 2012 and publish these to the desktops of your pc's around the house.  You could even install Hyperspin with all the art and everything locally to each machine and then point all installs to the videos and roms on the server. But I just cannot get my head around what you are planning and how you think it is going to work.  Gameex from Hyperspin, Why would you do this, both are front ends, use one or the other.

[yotsuya]

Datacenter Licenses are listed at $4809.

Wow for that kind of money I would just buy a machine.   I guess along with buying the rom's someone got themselves a dodgy copy of 2012.

Seriously kid, and I mean that in a non disrespectful way,  I was once like you with massive ideas.  Mine was building a submarine out of lego.  It has something in common with your idea.  It's never going to hold water.

Dammit, where's the link to Le Chuck's Cyrano post....

[mcseforsale]

I can't see serving emulators in a thin-client environment as virtual apps, either.  They're so lightweight anyhow, it doesn't make sense.  And, there's nothing really to support, so centralizing support isn't a good reason either.

AJ

[Le Chuck]

Datacenter Licenses are listed at $4809.

Wow for that kind of money I would just buy a machine.   I guess along with buying the rom's someone got themselves a dodgy copy of 2012.

Seriously kid, and I mean that in a non disrespectful way,  I was once like you with massive ideas.  Mine was building a submarine out of lego.  It has something in common with your idea.  It's never going to hold water.

Dammit, where's the link to Le Chuck's Cyrano post....

Oh and thanks for the prompt badmouth, but I'm a designer by trade and I'll be damned if anyone is going to design the frontend but me, I have a vision!  If you've seen the project you should be starting see that unfold.

When I was 13 I made a putty nose that looked like a big dick hanging off my face.  I wanted to be Cyrano de Begerac for Halloween.  My mother told me it looked like a dick and I told her I had vision.  Sometimes you have vision and sometimes you have a dick on your face.  I'm not saying you have a dick on your face, I'm just saying that you never know.

[Seith]

Seriously kid, and I mean that in a non disrespectful way,  I was once like you with massive ideas.  Mine was building a submarine out of lego.  It has something in common with your idea.  It's never going to hold water.

fixed

[mcseforsale]

Datacenter Licenses are listed at $4809.

Wow for that kind of money I would just buy a machine.   I guess along with buying the rom's someone got themselves a dodgy copy of 2012.

Seriously kid, and I mean that in a non disrespectful way,  I was once like you with massive ideas.  Mine was building a submarine out of lego.  It has something in common with your idea.  It's never going to hold water.

Dammit, where's the link to Le Chuck's Cyrano post....

Oh and thanks for the prompt badmouth, but I'm a designer by trade and I'll be damned if anyone is going to design the frontend but me, I have a vision!  If you've seen the project you should be starting see that unfold.

When I was 13 I made a putty nose that looked like a big dick hanging off my face.  I wanted to be Cyrano de Begerac for Halloween.  My mother told me it looked like a dick and I told her I had vision.  Sometimes you have vision and sometimes you have a dick on your face.  I'm not saying you have a dick on your face, I'm just saying that you never know.

Hahahaha.  this^^

[Dawgz Rule]

When I was 13 I made a putty nose that looked like a big dick hanging off my face.  I wanted to be Cyrano de Begerac for Halloween.  My mother told me it looked like a dick and I told her I had vision.  Sometimes you have vision and sometimes you have a dick on your face.  I'm not saying you have a dick on your face, I'm just saying that you never know.

To ---smurfing--- funny.   

[griffindodd]

When I was 13 I made a putty nose that looked like a big dick hanging off my face.  I wanted to be Cyrano de Begerac for Halloween.  My mother told me it looked like a dick and I told her I had vision.  Sometimes you have vision and sometimes you have a dick on your face.  I'm not saying you have a dick on your face, I'm just saying that you never know.

OMG I just spat out my coffee 

[Dawgz Rule]

Le Chuck...this still has me laughing.  Nice, real nice.

[DaveMMR]

Haha - that's a great little speech. Love it! 

[crtrrss]

Finally got a screen! Also, after I took off the glass to put the screen in, I TAPPED the glass against the ground and this happened

[yotsuya]

I guess you learned the lesson that you NEVER put glass on the edges on a hard floor.

[Dawgz Rule]

Now you can get a nice piece of greylite glass to replace it.  It will look even better.

[sandheaver]

Finally got a screen! Also, after I took off the glass to put the screen in, I TAPPED the glass against the ground and this happened

if it did that it was tempered glass and not suitable for arcade front-glass.  far too easily shattered.  I'd be glad I figured that out before I finished, if I were you.

Just pop a thick piece of plexiglass in there.  much lighter and much less fragile.  Just be careful touching it.

[crtrrss]

So should I get another form of glass or good plexi?

[chopperthedog]

if it did that it was tempered glass and not suitable for arcade front-glass.  far too easily shattered.  I'd be glad I figured that out before I finished, if I were you.

Just pop a thick piece of plexiglass in there.  much lighter and much less fragile.  Just be careful touching it.

Ummmm, If glass is to be used in an arcade game you WANT/NEED it tempered. Tempering glass increases the overall strength of the glass and adds the safety feature (shattering to very small pieces) that in the event it does break you're not left with machete like shards that will slice through flesh with ease. But good ole crtrrss did by far the WORST thing you could do with a piece of tempered glass by placing the edge on ceramic tile plus he probably very softly (it doesn't take much) bumped the corner first as he was setting it down. If you do go with glass again make sure you get it tempered and have the edges polished.


good day.

[sandheaver]

I agree on the breakage pattern, but glass in an environment where people tap corners of it on the tile floor and are then surprised by the outcome is not an environment where glass should be utilized.

[DaveMMR]

Didn't temper my glass - price difference was just too great. But it's in a home where I would hope people wouldn't willy-nilly be punching at my screen.

[sandheaver]

Didn't temper my glass - price difference was just too great. But it's in a home where I would hope people wouldn't willy-nilly be punching at my screen.

well it shattered like it was tempered.  no big shards.

at home is where people get a bit careless.  (or drunk, or friends who just don't care come over, etc.); I've found things get damaged at home before they would in other places.  your experiences may differ.

[chopperthedog]

I agree on the breakage pattern, but glass in an environment where people tap corners of it on the tile floor is not an environment where glass should be utilized.

Tempered glass is everywhere. Shower doors, cutting boards, retail store fronts, windows, sliding patio doors, arcade games, cocktail tables, picnic tables, cell phones, cars, ice arenas and the list could go on and on. But as I said crtrrss did the worst thing he could possibly do with a piece of tempered glass. Had it been a wood floor, vinyl tile, linoleum or laminate he would still probably have a complete piece of glass. And one could consider what that piece has already been through in its life. Did crtrrss remove the glass from the cab when he picked it up and moved it into his house? I doubt it. Any arcade cab that has tempered glass, should have it removed before moving the cabinet. As a cab is moved over things like door thresholds no matter how solid the cab may be it will still tweak a bit and pinch the glass. Considering how old that cab is and if it was in the wild and moved without having the glass removed it's always a gamble. But he set fire to the gasoline basically setting it on ceramic . If he does go for glass again it MUST be tempered.

If you can find a glass service in your area that has an oven on site and they do cash and carry a piece of 1/4" thick tv glass (it's a biz term) tempered say 23 1/2" x 26" will run about $46. Retail price mark that up 50~80%.


good day.

[Unstupid]

What he said!

[sandheaver]

I agree on the breakage pattern, but glass in an environment where people tap corners of it on the tile floor is not an environment where glass should be utilized.

Tempered glass is everywhere. Shower doors, cutting boards, retail store fronts, windows, sliding patio doors, arcade games, cocktail tables, picnic tables, cell phones, cars, ice arenas and the list could go on and on. But as I said crtrrss did the worst thing he could possibly do with a piece of tempered glass. Had it been a wood floor, vinyl tile, linoleum or laminate he would still probably have a complete piece of glass. And one could consider what that piece has already been through in its life. Did crtrrss remove the glass from the cab when he picked it up and moved it into his house? I doubt it. Any arcade cab that has tempered glass, should have it removed before moving the cabinet. As a cab is moved over things like door thresholds no matter how solid the cab may be it will still tweak a bit and pinch the glass. Considering how old that cab is and if it was in the wild and moved without having the glass removed it's always a gamble. But he set fire to the gasoline basically setting it on ceramic . If he does go for glass again it MUST be tempered.

If you can find a glass service in your area that has an oven on site and they do cash and carry a piece of 1/4" thick tv glass (it's a biz term) tempered say 23 1/2" x 26" will run about $46. Retail price mark that up 50~80%.


good day.

Fine, you win.  Holy hell.

[DaveMMR]

If he does go for glass again it MUST be tempered. If you try to use un tempered cut glass in arcade game, you would be cut to the bones in you hand just putting it in.

Okay I don't know much about glass. The piece I got was untempered but I can totally carry and hold it without cutting myself (whatever it is they do to the edges, whatever they call it, that's what it was that made it safe to carry around.)

And heck if that thing wasn't tough as nails. Still survived even after the rest of my cab was tossed.

Yeah but if you can temper it, it's probably better for piece of mind.

[kahlid74]

Oh my goodness, how did I miss this thread.

I think you're too high into the "sky's the limit" with this thing.  You're trying to build what will become a semi-complex networked system and at the same time design an arcade machine with lots of cool stuff many people have worked very hard to build/incorporate.  You need to focus on one or the other and then really push to completion.  So often is it easy to do something and then not actually reach completion or get sidetracked.

Now onto technology.  So you're going to stream mame from a server to your cabinet.  You don't need FreeNAS to do this, only one server with SMB shares as others have stated.  Additionally FreeNAS is a piece of junk throughput wise, so stay away from it if you can.  I see you have an HP 1U server.  Will you be using Both NICs to transfer data?  What type of switching systems will you be using?  I saw mention of Thin Client in the thread but don't remember you saying whether you would have an actual computer in the arcade cabinet.  If you roll TC don't forget the severe limitations of TC/VM in a box graphics options unless of corse we're talking nVidia CAD cards for monster boxes.

[Malenko]

may I suggest you start with a basic cabinet, get it done, then slowly upgrade it to Version 2.0 ? Basic cab = local PC, street fighter layout for 2 players, no trackball, spinners, LEDs,etc

as for the front glass, get a piece of plexi for the front for now, its what I used on the ShoRyuKade:

[sandheaver]

Oh my goodness, how did I miss this thread.

I think you're too high into the "sky's the limit" with this thing.  You're trying to build what will become a semi-complex networked system and at the same time design an arcade machine with lots of cool stuff many people have worked very hard to build/incorporate.  You need to focus on one or the other and then really push to completion.  So often is it easy to do something and then not actually reach completion or get sidetracked.

Now onto technology.  So you're going to stream mame from a server to your cabinet.  You don't need FreeNAS to do this, only one server with SMB shares as others have stated.  Additionally FreeNAS is a piece of junk throughput wise, so stay away from it if you can.  I see you have an HP 1U server.  Will you be using Both NICs to transfer data?  What type of switching systems will you be using?  I saw mention of Thin Client in the thread but don't remember you saying whether you would have an actual computer in the arcade cabinet.  If you roll TC don't forget the severe limitations of TC/VM in a box graphics options unless of corse we're talking nVidia CAD cards for monster boxes.

I've seen magic happen with Windows Server 2012, Hyper-V virtual machines, and remote desktop.  Gaming cards work just fine in a RemoteFX solution.  60fps and sub-millisecond response easily obtained (though not always cheaply.)

I would definitely recommend starting small, and expanding, rather than building this out in one big single deployment.

[crtrrss]

So will any viewing problems be caused by 1/8 in plexi? Plexi is cheaper and less fragile so I'm in favor of it

[kahlid74]

So will any viewing problems be caused by 1/8 in plexi? Plexi is cheaper and less fragile so I'm in favor of it

Shouldn't be but there are positives and negatives to using Plexi in this place.  If you do a quick search you should find other threads where there's lots of information dealing with this.

I've seen magic happen with Windows Server 2012, Hyper-V virtual machines, and remote desktop.  Gaming cards work just fine in a RemoteFX solution.  60fps and sub-millisecond response easily obtained (though not always cheaply.)

I would definitely recommend starting small, and expanding, rather than building this out in one big single deployment.

You have links?  I've got a whee bit of experience with Hyper-V/VMware and what you're talking about, to my knowledge is achieved with graphics cards specifically built for terminalization.  Off the shelf graphics cards do not perform the way you've described them above.

[sandheaver]

You have links?  I've got a whee bit of experience with Hyper-V/VMware and what you're talking about, to my knowledge is achieved with graphics cards specifically built for terminalization.  Off the shelf graphics cards do not perform the way you've described them above.

Off the shelf, gaming GPUs don't always work, but some do, and none are officially supported.  What I saw was such a card, and while it was kind of forced to work, it did work, with a few little annoying issues.  There was also a very powerful server wrapped around that card, and enterprise network gear between, but the client side was a very small, cheap terminal client.

I imagine that RemoteFX-certified Workstation class cards would work fine for MAME since i'm pretty sure the actual number of triangles actually rendered is very low.  I've done lots of gaming on workstation-class cards and they certainly perform well enough for actual 3D stuff.  Stands to reason that a workstation class card would do fine, but I've not seen this configuration with my own eyes.

[stuckpixel]

This whole remotely streamed arcade seems a bit silly. Overengineering the problem is going to result in unnecessary complication and multiple points of failure.

Slap a decent motherboard/processor/GPU in the box. Use the onboard NIC and share your stuff on SMB if you want to be able to use the ROMS on another machine.

It's fine if you want to build a FreeNAS or another NAS box -- and it's fine to dabble with virtualization -- but you seem to be attempting to engineer solutions to a problem you aren't likely to have.

How often will you actually be 'streaming' arcade games to anything other than your cabinet? And why on earth would you want to play your arcade games on anything other than your cabinet if you have it built?

Focus on doing something cool/innovative with your arcade build -- there's a reason that the computer stuff generally isn't complicated (it's because it doesn't need to be).

[sandheaver]

Yeah, I agree.  We went off on a different conversation, there.

I really don't understand when people feel they need every single version of every single emulated game in their cabinet.  No one is going to play all of the hundreds of Amcoe games.  No one.  No one is going to play all 20 or so SF2 clones & bootlegs often enough that they need them each in the menu.

This whole sense that you must have everything... that's the cause of a lot of trouble in the world outside of emulation, and the cause of a lot of trouble inside the world of emulation.  Worry about what you need, and nothing else.  Better yet, worry about what you legally own, and nothing else.

If OP has the full CHD set, even for games they'll NEVER play, I can understand where the desire to centralize originates.  Takes a long while to pull down enough of a CHD over a network to get started in an emulator, and folks that have every single game in their menu seem to do so because they can't just pick a game and play it, alone, for a few days.

But, yes.  If you can't fit everything you want on a computer in the cabinet, maybe it's time to really survey what you need and what you don't.  You most definitely do not need everything.

[crtrrss]

I currently don't have a home for my server because of heat issues in its only eligible spots so I'm just going to install freeNAS on an old desktop. I'm moving in approximately 6 months so i might set up something like that there where I will have an actual server rack

[crtrrss]

Oh and I want to use NAS so I can have my PS2 games. I play that on other things

[Malenko]

Oh and I want to use NAS so I can have my PS2 games. I play that on other things

so just pluggin a 2TB drive in a desktop isnt an option?

[Drnick]

@Malenko, I'm sure that plugging in a 2TB Drive directly to the Desktop would work fine, but if he has a nas he can just plug the 2TB into that and share it up.  This saves him from having to open up the arcade machine and put in/remove the drive etc for updates and/or not having it in the Box means 1 less PSU connection required. It does almost make sense. (But it means that rather then 1 device (Arcade) having to use electricity he will have 2 (Arcade & Desktop).  Not the most energy efficient method of playing games.

@ Crtrrss = If you are streaming the files for your PS2 games to a modded PS2 (This is possible although it is truly slow due to the 10Mb ethernet on the PS2) then yeah the NAS kinda makes sense.  In fact installing Freenas on an old desktop makes sense if you have different flavours of system that need to access files and you want everything available to you but just want a small hdd in your cabinet.

There is one proviso to all of this, all the emulators, all the art files and whatever front end you use will all want to be stored on the local hdd.  The roms and videos are fine being stored on a Nas.

At least what you are attempting makes more sense when you remove server 2012 out of the equation.

I think for now you should concentrate on getting the cab all up and running and then go back and revisit the software and the best way to get what you want later.

[crtrrss]

Hmmmmm. That ps2 playing Roms idea is interesting. I might get a 10/100 USB Ethernet connector for that