No Name Xbox Cab

[slapaham]

I have already built a PC-based MAME cabinet that was my first ever project (with another much more powerful and better one to come!) - I was reasonably happy with how it went but the PC was as slow as a snail, my handyman efforts weren't up-to-scratch and overall it was far from perfect. I thought it was quite good as a starter but could see where I would need to go to improve it! Well, anyway, I have a few cabs - they are light and made from fibre-glass and just need the panels made for them.

Anyway, I've been a big fan of the Xbox homebrew scene for over a year now and seeing what they were capable of really inspired me to build a cab based around a modded Xbox. One thing I wanted to avoid was damaging the Xbox in anyway - and yes, that means avoiding soldering, etc as I know it's not my strongest point - I'm still learning!

At first, this seemed an impossible mission. However, lots of research later and I have figured a way of plugging my modded Xbox upto an old CRT monitor - getting it to boot without the Microsoft splash screen and loading straight into the frontend list of games! Certainly beats my PC set up which took around a minute to boot and never quite hid all remnants of actually being a PC (there is some things you just can't get rid of, I'm sure you are all aware!) All in all, the Xbox boots straight into the romlist in just under 10 seconds I would say! The first thing you see is the romlist!

As for games, everyone knows what an Xbox can emulate - and they can emulate extremely well! Especially Neo Geo, CPS1,2 and 3! The next problem was how to get arcade controls linked up - this is still a work in progress but I know whatever happens I will have a successful solution. I found some adaptors that allowed the use of keyboards on the Xbox - I had already bought some PS/2 keyboard encoders for my PC set-ups and these should work perfectly with the adaptors (I've only tried another PS/2 keyboard with it and that worked flawlessly and as the encoders work in exactly the same way I see no reason for them not to work!)

So, all in all, thats what I've done so far. The Xbox is pretty much configured and set up and ready to go - I just need to put the control panel in place and the cab should be finished! As I'm a busy student don't expect that bit to happen until this summer when I graduate (and I'm probably unemployed )

I will post pics when the handyman bits commence! All I can say is I think I will be going for a Japanese style cab look - white fibre glass exterior and bright colours on the control panel and art work. But they are just early thoughts! Need to track down a coin mech too!

[slapaham]

Oh yes, and being an Xbox, I intend to grab couple of cheap lightguns which should work fantastically well with the setup!

[MrMojoZ]

Why not hack some Xbox controllers instead of going the round about way of using keyboard encoders?

[slapaham]

Mainly because I'm not very confident with that type of thing - I will be starting doing more of that type of thing next summer when I hopefully have a bit more time - I really want to make a trackball (I did start but never had any proper time to devote to it!)

This way, I had already got a lot of the stuff I needed - I purchased the keyboard hack from someone and they work very well - so I've decided to keep with them. A controller hack would work just as well but until I get a bit more confident with the soldering iron there is no point spending the time (which I havent got), the money (as all the materials for hacks do add up especially if you're new at it) and it probably wouldn't work!

I'm hoping when I have the time I'll pick it up but until then I try and avoid it!

[JayB]

Be interested to hear what games you can run on the Xbox. I can't get certain games to run, such as, Metal Slug series, SF a lot of them come up with out of memory or have files missing. The same roms work fine on the PC so not sure what's up.

[Malenko]

Be interested to hear what games you can run on the Xbox. I can't get certain games to run, such as, Metal Slug series, SF a lot of them come up with out of memory or have files missing. The same roms work fine on the PC so not sure what's up.

file missing is usually when you have a romset for a different version of MAME.
he could run metal slug by using the xbox verison of the game (MEtal Slug Anthology) same goes for the street fighter games.

[MrMojoZ]

Neo-Geo games need more than just the rom to function btw...

[BASS!]

This is all wrong. There is several awesome mame builds for the xbox. If you can re build rom sets then I would check out fbaxxx pro and mamedox arcades. They play a ton of classics and metal slug is included.

[BASS!]

oh yeah you can even get cps3 up perfectly

[SNAAKE]

oh yeah you can even get cps3 up perfectly

was there any update? the very first one ran real choppy and like half the speed. wouldnt know I have been out of the scene for a while now(random busy)

[BASS!]

Yeah I just got a torrent of it already with the files.  Cpx3 is the emu:-)

[slapaham]

Seriously, you can get the majority of best arcade games running on an Xbox superbly well! All the Neo Geo, Capcom games (CPS1-3), plus lots of the other arcade games (though most of the newer ones don't work!) Plus most console and computer games.

They are great little machines!

Think I will look into controller hacks when I find some time - I agree, they are the way to go - my original train of thought is probably going to cause me headaches (though it does work!)

[HaRuMaN]

Think I will look into controller hacks when I find some time - I agree, they are the way to go - my original train of thought is probably going to cause me headaches (though it does work!)

Did somebody say controller hacks?