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Multi-arcade cabinets??

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Hockeyboy:
So I went to this new store in town to look at their arcade & pinball games, and to look at billiard tables (ended up buying a brand-new one for the basement - woot!) and starting talking to the owner about arcade cabinets. He had several there for sale - a Ms. Pacman cabinet with all the Pacman games loaded, a cabinet with over 40 games loaded and an interesting front-end - the game titles kind of rotated in a circle with a big blue pointer and when you paused on a title the screen for that game would show up in the background...he also had a Williams cabinet that had Stargate, Defender, Robotron2084, and some other Williams games.

...anyway, got to talking about cabinets and he mentioned MAME and asked if I knew anything about it. Well, I haven't built a cabinet yet but I do have MAME on my PC and have lurked these boards for some time now. He showed me this cabinet that had a USB cable just inside the coin door and then showed me a little USB thing that looked just like a flash drive. He said you plug this thing into the USB cable, the computer inside automatically downloads all the games off the chip and then somehow sends a signal to destroy or erase the chip so you can only do this one time to one machine. The software then automatically resorts the titles and you now have 'extra' games available. The USB flash drive thing goes for about $30 cost, and he sells them for a slight mark-up. The cabinet itself was retailing for $2798 and had two tall joysticks, two 6-button setups and a trackball.

Does anyone here know what kind of setup allows for this? Why can't MAME(rs) do an instant upload off a chip to their computers that are running MAME and a front end? What front end (since I haven't built a cabinet yet, I don't know which one does this) has the game titles on the right side with a big blue pointer and they 'rotate' in a circle by use of the trackball or the joysticks?

Obviously, I don't want to spend $2800 on a pre-built cabinet, I just was wondering what the rest of you know about this type of cabinet and it's expandability by use of the USB cable and flash drive chip thing.  Thanks.

CheffoJeffo:
Was it something like this ?

http://www.globalvr.com/products_ultracade_intro.html

Cheers

Hockeyboy:
Can't tell - didn't really get to see the sides of the cabinet so I don't recall. Went to the website you linked but I couldn't find anything that showed the screen in 'action.'

Still wondering two things: what front-end was this cabinet using (hopefully my description is good enough to jar someone's memory) and can MAME builders use the same USB cable connection to instantly download extra games to their machine and have their machine automatically load them?

CheffoJeffo:
Sounds like it was an Ultracade, which has its' own proprietary front-end.

There is a freeware clone:

http://wiki.arcadecontrols.com/wiki/Ultrastyle

If it is an Ultracade, chances are almost 100% that the game update technology has been patented (search on 'Ultracade' or 'Dave Foley' for some light background reading ... neither are popular in MAME-related circles).

Cheers

GoPodular.com:
I'd be willing to bet it was an Ultracade.  They have some USB game packs.  The game pack has to be registered to the individual UC machine.  IIRC, the way it used to work (and still does?) is you call them with the # of the machine and the # of the game pack.  They put it in their database and give you an activation code.  If the game pack was registered previously, you won't get the activation code.

You can see a USB game pack in this ebay auction.

*note: technically this is an illegal gamepack.  IIRC, Ultracade never had proper licensing for these games/artwork and they were all supposed to be returned to UC for destruction or something.  I don't know if they can give an activation code for it or not.  They shouldn't... but who knows.  It also includes Jungle King which was pulled from the arcades in 1982 because of IP infringement, so buyer beware.

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