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Building cabinets to sell.
Mr. Bubblehead:
--- Quote from: picasso on September 14, 2005, 12:47:48 pm ---One thing I have wondered. I know its illegal to sell w/MAME and ROMS. What if you sold just the cab and then had someone (a friend) come out and install the emulator and ROMS for free? Would that not get around the limitations???
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If this were to happen I don't want to know anything about it.
I LEGALLY own a few ROMs, and I install them for testing purposes on all the cabs I make. Now, if I were to sell a cabinet and I forgot to erase the files or the new owner did an "undelete" of the files, well then....
brain21:
Here's the thing:
I don't know about MAME itself, but selling them with ROMs is technically illegal. Even if you own the ROMs (jamma boards), unless you are reselling the Jamma Boards themselves.
I would guess that the people selling them loaded with games either have licenses for the games, or are reselling versions that you can actually purchase (like the Atari bundles of some of their games for the PC, etc.), or they are basically lucky that no manufacturer (Bally, Williams, etc.) has decided to enforce it's copyrights, or that the local gov't hasn't decided to enfore anti-piracy laws.
This is why earlier I suggested installing linux or PC-Dos. You can alway include an option to install Windows using a customer's valid Windows license # or something.
Now, what the customers do or get AFTER the product has been sold, is up to them :-)
Brain21
Stingray:
--- Quote from: Crazy Cooter on September 14, 2005, 02:51:35 pm ---
--- Quote from: Stingray on September 14, 2005, 02:13:19 pm ---
--- Quote from: RayB on September 14, 2005, 02:03:25 pm ---
--- Quote from: Stingray on September 14, 2005, 01:58:28 pm ---Because they're $1200. They can certainly be built from scratch for a fraction of that.
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LABOR. Always count labor, tools, employees. We're talking about doing this as a business, no?
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Now come on Ray, are you seriously trying to convince me that it would cost you $1200 to scratch build a cab even counting labor?
-S
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At the rate some of us do things... ;)
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Conceded. ;D
-S
AC.:
--- Quote from: brain21 on September 13, 2005, 05:33:28 pm ---You might want to consider a couple of options:
A friend of mine was interested in this as well. I told him that I thought that the way to go was to make a port-a-mame. Build a control panel & very deep box. Mount a motherboard (mini-itx, or just a really small, 2 slot ATX MB) inside the control panel box. Use a cheap video card that has s-video out (Xpert@play 98 is one). Run PC-dos & possibly arcadeOS. set everything up on the box (PC-wise) the way you want it (minus the roms) and ghost image the hard drive. See if you can get $500 for it. This thing would be portable, and can hook up to both a TV and/or a VGA monitor. They can put it on the floor in front of the TV like you would an Xbox. The price difference is the fact that it is also a PC. You could put all sorts of additional features on there like some sort of an arcade jukebox and they customer can use the ethernet port from the MB (that you mounted into the box w/ easy access to the RJ-45 plug), and connect it to a media server, or whatever. If you have a CD-Rom drive installed (reccomended) then they can pop in a CD or an MP3 loaded CD & play it (speakers sold extra).
Brain21
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Brain21 you just described my 1st cabinet perfectly. After I built it, i then built the lower cabinet to support it. The price increases with the accessories like paint, hinges, fans, breakout power button - etc.
To answer the main question: Not economically worth it. Everyone that comes to my house tells me I should sell it -- and I then immediately ask if they want to buy it, they pause and stammer and avoid a response. Shipping, customer service, and making a profit would be a problem.
Pik4chu:
--- Quote from: Mr. Bubblehead on September 14, 2005, 03:25:37 pm ---
--- Quote from: picasso on September 14, 2005, 12:47:48 pm ---One thing I have wondered.
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