Xenepp's cab progress thread

[Xenepp]

My workshop could do with a cool distraction (and a jukebox), so I figured a standup Mame cab would do the job nicely!

So my current system specs for the project are:

Athlon XP running at 1.1ghz
128mb DDR
10gb HD
ATI Rage Pro 4mb
Freedos
AdvanceMAME
DosMAME 0.82

I will be upgrading however, to:

512mb DDR
20gb HD
Radeon 7200 or ArcadeVGA  

I think 1.1 ghz should be fine, although I will be wanting to run KI, so I may have to reconsider the system at some point.

So far I've just been running some tests on hardware (what I can run thus far) and how the video output will work.

I'll be running it on a TV via SCART so I'll have a nice 26" TV and RGB Initial tests with this have been fantastic! It looks like an arcade machine alright, but one thing I did have trouble with was my Voodoo3 card.

The video on my TV in system bootup was expectedly warped due to the refresh rate, but you could see it was in proper full colour. ArcadeOS however and mame came out VERY wrong. The colours were totally garbled but later (after much head scratching) I looked at the PC2JAMMA project website which revealed My Voodoo3 card was the problem! So I popped my Rage Pro in there and presto! Propper colours! Just a side note for anyone having the same problem  

Also, I've seen many websites saying you need to resist the sync channels from your VGA source and even one site mentioned an IC to deal with it, but I've had no problems just hooking up with NO resistance and just tied the h and vsync together

So I hooked up on the scart:

Red
Red GND
Green
Green GND
Blue
Blue GND
CSYNC
Fast Blanking (via +12v from PC PSU)
Blanking GND
Video GND

The sound I will be using (but havent bothered to test yet) will be AC97 from my mobo, but was considering a card (SB16, SBlive!), would it make a diffrence in performance? I know the SBLive! can process audio commands fast than the SB16 but does this apply in MAME?

I won't have a rotatable monitor since I can't be bothered really and degaussing everytime would be a pain in the arse. It is a shame though, since I'm a big fan of my vertical shooters like DoDonPachi.

Anyhow, as far as the Cab goes, I'm going to use a nice template I found for a Midway MK cab since it's probably my favorite style. I'm not sure if it'll be full size however, since space is an issue. This may mean I'll have to use a smaller TV and re-scale the cab  

For controls I'm gonna try my hand at a keyboard hack. I was lucky enough to find a computer company that was throwing out hundreds of old keyboards and had my pick, but most of them are contacts that press on the matrix sheet rather than pins so after some mucking around I found one (out of 8!!) That had an actual IC chip on it, so I'll see if I can fry that with my soldering iron  

I'll keep you all updated anyway!

 -Joel

[CitznFish]

won't be much work gettign done in your workshop after this!  GL with your project!

[maraxle]

If you're using FreeDOS, why are you putting 512mb of RAM in it?  DOS doesn't do so well playing above 128mb, due to it not being designed to allocate that much memory.  Also, you'll find that the 10gb harddrive will run faster than the 20gb one (if all other specs are equal), unless you partition it into 2 drives, because FreeDOS's FAT32 support is lackluster and the FAT table uses too small a block size, making seeks take longer the larger the drive gets.

AC97 works great on my FreeDOS cabinet with AdvanceMAME 0.78.1 and AdvanceMenu.

[SirPeale]

AC97 works great on my FreeDOS cabinet with AdvanceMAME 0.78.1 and AdvanceMenu.

Are these generic drivers?  I was looking for a DOS driver for my Asus A7N8X, which uses a RealTek chipset for the audio.  AFAIK it's AC97.

[Xenepp]

If you're using FreeDOS, why are you putting 512mb of RAM in it?  DOS doesn't do so well playing above 128mb, due to it not being designed to allocate that much memory.  Also, you'll find that the 10gb harddrive will run faster than the 20gb one (if all other specs are equal), unless you partition it into 2 drives, because FreeDOS's FAT32 support is lackluster and the FAT table uses too small a block size, making seeks take longer the larger the drive gets.

AC97 works great on my FreeDOS cabinet with AdvanceMAME 0.78.1 and AdvanceMenu.

Well I wanted to be able to run windows if I needed too, and didn't want to drag

I wanted a 20gb HD to store my MAME roms as well as any other system I decided to add after, and yes, I was going to patition the drive.

Oh, and it turns out it was an SIS sound chip NOT AC97 (although I believe no real DOS support exists for either chip). Someone did mention that dmame had a built in AC97 DOS driver, but that sounds wrong to me.. Why would it?? Feel free  to correct me on that...

So I decided to cut my losses and get a real soundblaster. Trouble is, I had no ISA slots, so my SB16 was out, and the SBLive! was only

[maraxle]

AC97 works great on my FreeDOS cabinet with AdvanceMAME 0.78.1 and AdvanceMenu.

Are these generic drivers?  I was looking for a DOS driver for my Asus A7N8X, which uses a RealTek chipset for the audio.  AFAIK it's AC97.

No, they're VIA drivers.  Google for viafmtsr (or viafmtsr.com)  and viaaudio.exe.  They're all over the place.  Or PM me and I'll send them to you.

[maraxle]

Little tech advice for those having trouble with the ArcadeVGA in XP, when I first installed XP using my old rage pro (damn AVGA res in windows setup cut half the screen off  ), then put my AVGA back in, Windows gave me the blue screen of death when trying to install the standard Radeon 7200 driver. Then rebooted EVERY time. Yipe!  

This is because ATI drivers are the most unstable things on the planet.  Their cards have great performance, but my cat can write more solid drivers - and he's not even all that good at C++.

[SirPeale]

AC97 works great on my FreeDOS cabinet with AdvanceMAME 0.78.1 and AdvanceMenu.

Are these generic drivers?  I was looking for a DOS driver for my Asus A7N8X, which uses a RealTek chipset for the audio.  AFAIK it's AC97.

No, they're VIA drivers.  Google for viafmtsr (or viafmtsr.com)  and viaaudio.exe.  They're all over the place.  Or PM me and I'll send them to you.

Wouldn't do me any good.  I've got an Asus A7N8X.  NForce.