Vertical Mame32 Front End? (Newbie Question)

[inaka]

Hi all,
I'm new and have been fascinated with the help provided by this forum and the amazing collection of info that is here.

I'm still in the planning stages of my first cabinet, and I'm testing out the various front ends to build an arcade game for classic games. I am currently using a PII processor running Windows 98SE.

I've loaded in MAME32 Version 0.53 (old version works much better for this slow machine) and I've run into an major issue. I want to build a vertical cabinet but the MAME32 version I'm using only has horizontal menus. I'm able to have the individual games rotate perfectly using each ROMs properties tag, but it's the MAME32 interface itself I can't rotate.

My vid card does not allow for rotation.

Is there a version of MAME32 (or some hack) that has the ability to show VERTICAL menus?
I've searched the forum and have seen Vertiwah as an option but it appears unavailable/dead.

MAME32 is perfect for me, and it's a shame that something as simple as the vertical menus will make me unable to use it. I'd like something with a GUI if possible, because I'm not that savvy with command-line only.

Lastly, it needs to use minimal resources like MAME32 0.53 because again, I'm using a slow processor.

Any help is appreciated, thank you.

[loadman]

Man it's a shame you are stuck on mame32 as that is so lame on a cab. IMHO

I suggest you try a FE that has native vertical orientation option.

If you have a basic layout without videos your PC should handle it easily.

Look here for options:

http://wiki.arcadecontrols.com/wiki/Front-Ends
We are here to help.

[IG-88]

I don't have an answer for the mame32 question but I would recommend "Spystyles Boot CD" (just do a search for it) for an older system like yours. It installs DOS as an O/S & Game Launcher as a F.E. It's real easy to setup and for older machines you can get some really descent games to run.

What are the exact system specs for your machine?

[inaka]

Guys, thanks for the replies!

Just to note, the reason I'm using such a low-end PC for my first cab is that: 1. I'm cheap and already have both a low end tower and low end laptop lying around in the closet, and 2. my plan is to build a small/unique tabletop arcade that only plays classic games like Mrs pacman, Galaga, etc., so true computing power really isn't 100% necessary.

This particular cab plan is going to be powered by a 6 year old Toshiba Satellite laptop with 128MB or ram and a 10GB hd powering an external 19" Dell 1905 LCD. I already have it up and running (without any controls) with MAME32 just to see the performance, and it's fine. (I also have a PII tower that is equally old that can run MAME32 using Win98 and performance is fine as well but the form factor of the tower is too big for my mini-cab tabletop idea.

IG-88, I did a search for "Spystyles Boot CD" but didn't come up with any direct links to view/download it. Is there an .iso file available, and if so, is there a link someone can provide?

Thanks again for the help, guys. My goal is to get the basic PC emulation tested and working, and then design the mini cab layout. I'm close, but need that vertical front end to really feel comfortable. Thanks.

[inaka]

Just to follow up, I was able to find and download "Spystyle's Boot CD" here: http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=58809.msg742941#msg742941. I burned the .iso file to a CD and the CD burned fine. Strangely, I couldn't even get it to boot from that CD. Not sure why.

However, I may have solved my original problem.
As noted, I have a seriously stripped down version of Win 98 SE running with everything allocated to MAME32. I like the GUI. So I was able to find a utility on the web called Pivot Pro. I installed the trial version and it actually works perfectly. Even though my mini-cab project will be running off of a laptop with limited resources, I was able to install it and now have the MAME32 front menus running vertically or horizontally based on a simple keystroke. ("Control-Shift-9" for 90° rotation, or "Control-shift-0" for back to 0° rotation). I'm assuming I can then map these to button functions in the cab.

What's nice with Pivot is that even if I rotate the menus for MAME32, it doesn't interfere with the individual display properties I've setup for each ROM. So everything is working and the classic ROMS have nice performance on this beat-up old lappy!

With this working now, I plan on mapping out a mini-cab tabletop with (hopefully) the ability to manually rotate the LCD display as well. Any help or info from people who have already done this is appreciated, thanks.

[IG-88]

Glad to see that you got that rotational thing worked out with Pivot Pro. I'll have too look it up. I'd like to see how you get those keys remapped. It be nice if that would be rotated and stay that way all the time so you wouldn't have to mess with it.

As for that CD. Make sure your burning software has the option to burn that file as an ISO and not just copying the file over to a CD. Burn4Free is a good little burner that can do that for you if you are still interested. I can show you how if you want.

Another cool thing I like about this CD is that it boots directly into your FE menu, and quickly I might add. 

[inaka]

Actually, with Pivot Pro, it does stay rotated that way when you select their rotate option. Even after a restart it will stay in the way you last had it rotated.

The keystrokes are good for let's say when you've been playing some vertical games and the menus are vertical in MAME32, and then you select a horizontal game to play. AFTER you have played the horizontal game and manually rotated the display, when you finish, Pivot pro has correctly kept your display rotated for vertical, but you've now manually turned the display for the game play. So you can manually turn it back to vertical, or just use a keystroke to make Pivot Pro rotate all menus back to horizontal again. (I hope that made sense.)

I'll definitely take a closer look at Spystyle's Boot CD. Thanks for the tip of burning it as an .iso. Since this is my first cab idea from essentially using left over junky parts from the closet, I wanted to get my feet wet a bit using a Windows interface I'm comfortable with just to start things off (MAME32.) But I like the idea of  a better alternative like Spystyle's Boot CD.