MAME Arcade Cabinet

[ICPjuggla]

I would go with red..

[Attezz]

Red will shock ya eyelids.

[The Kongo]

Opinion...I'm painting this thing black...for the t-molding trim, what color do you think would look best?

Black
Red
Blue

I'm thinking red to match the X on my controls, but I don't know...

red or white to tie the controller in.

[Turd]

Remember this old thread? I made progress:

Lots more to do...the unpainted part is where the red (I think) t-molding will go...

[fknmclane]

That's pretty fkn cool.

[Turd]

Othanks. I'll slowly add stuff until its finished. Monitor bezel and t-molding are next.

[BeefMaster]

For the bezel and marquee, are you getting something that's custom-made for projects like this, or using something from an existing arcade game?  Also, did you ever get RBI working?  I've never had problems running that game in MAME... I think I have the ROM from Gantry's ROMs page, but in the event it isn't, I can upload mine if you don't have yours working.

[Turd]

For the bezel, I'm just taking a piece of plex and masking off the non-monitor areas.  For the marquee, I'm designing something myself. Not sure what yet, but def. custom and not from an existing game. 

Yes, I got RBI working...I learned a lot since that post, and basically what I know is that every new release of MAME comes updates and changes to ROMs.  Your ROMset needs to match your MAME version.  I now have in my possession the lastest MAME emulator and every workable ROM for that version.

Furthermore, I've setup Hyperspin, which is an awesome front-end.  I have it set to have a theme for each game, as well as an image for each game so instead of just showing "RBI Baseball" in some basic font, it shows it using the real logo text from the game.  It also shows a preview video for each game.  The whole thing is rather authentic-looking, and should be a really nice tough for those like myself who like aesthetics...

[Turd]

Trim newly applied. It's all coming together.

[Gantry]

Pretty fkn sweet...

[Turd]

I would agree. Lots of coolness to add yet.

[fknmclane]

Turd is a craftsman.

[Turd]

Damn skippy.  I'm a crappy one though.  This first one is a learning experience.

[BeefMaster]

That thing does look pretty phenomenal.

How many games do you currently have?  Are you grabbing entire sets of ROMs, or being fairly choosy about what you put on there?

[rdub]

so hard. my only critique would have been to go with one of the four-person jobbers so you could play some Gauntlet, TMNT, etc and throw in a flying-game style joystick in the middle so you can play some afterburner.

how difficult was the wiring for the joysticks and buttons or is that just plug and play?

[fathedX]

You can't really second-guess the joystick configuration because he bought this:

http://www.xgaming.com/

It's plug and play, so he doesn't have to do any troubleshooting.  Plug it in to the USB port and go.  Smart. 

[rdub]

what are you, his mother? I'll second guess his control panel all I want!

[Turd]

I went with x-arcade at first because the wiring was kind of scary to me.  Now that I've been through it, wired up a few test buttons on my own, and wired an arcade button the outside of the cabinet so I can power up/down the PC without opening the cabinet, I know that it's a piece of cake.  Seriously, it's really simple...you get an ipac which maps the joystick movements and button presses to keyboard commands.  I'l lbe rewiring this to be 4-player when I get motivation.

As for games, I have every possible MAME game ever made, 40GB worth of games.  Some I don't ahve the CHD's for so some don't work, but most do.

I have a front-end called Hyperspin that lets me have SNES, NES, MAME, etc each in different wheels that you control with the joystick.  So for MAME there's a master list of games, and then you can press a button to go to your favorites which lets you be as choosy as you want. 

I donated to their site as well, so I have a theme for most of the games and a preview video for most of the games so that when you cycle on to say RBI Baseball in the wheel, it shows a preview video of the arcade game and some flashy theme graphics with RBI Baseball's title text bouncing on the screen...I move to Frogger, and it shows the theme and a preview video of Frogger gameplay.  It's all really well done.

[rdub]

hardly worth mentioning in comparison to what you're making but there is a guy in St. Louis who sells modified xbox and wii's that he loads up with one of those interfaces, 2000 arcade games and every NES, SNES and Genesis game ever made and sells it for $175. As I know the MAME cabinet is a pipe dream, I'm thinking of pullling the trigger on one of these instead.

[Turd]

My next project is going to be an NES PC. It's basically what you're talking about.  You stuff a mini-ITX motherboard inside an NES case and hook up all the emulators.  It should be pretty cool for non-mame stuff, which I'd rather use in a standup unit.

I actually have a mini-ATX board laying around I just need a power supply for it.

Why is the MAME cab a pipe dream? What about a bar-top cade? Those things are nice, way less expensive...though if you don't care about the fun of building it, $175 for one of those x-box things is not a bad deal.  Got a link to them? I'd like to see them...