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Below is a detail walkthrough on what I did to create my MAME
Cabinet. I've tried to include pictures where applicable and comments on
what I will do differently on my next MAME Project. If you have any
questions, send me an email at Scott@Farrar.com.
BACKGROUND
- I was first introduced to MAME in 1998 by a group of co-workers.
One of the co-workers (Don) was into MAME big-time. Don gave me a set
of game ROMS and emulation software which I loaded on my PCs at home and at
my in-laws. My kids really enjoyed playing the games via a control pad
I hooked up to the PCs. All of my nieces & nephews played the
games. The older games (circa 1982) have easier rules, so younger kids are able to
pick them up easier. The older games bring back fond memories for
older "kids".
- I've always loved Crazy Climber. Around mid-1999, Don had
mentioned he made an Arcade Cabinet for his home that played all of the
emulation ROMS. I thought that was pretty cool...to get that arcade
feeling you just can't get from the PC keyboard or Nintendo control
pads.
- I asked Don how I could learn to create a MAME Cabinet and he turned
me onto several web-sites that explained the process. I started
visiting these sites and built up my knowledge on the subject.
- I went over to Don's house one night and played his MAME cabinet.
Crazy Climber played EXACTLY like I remember. At that point I was
hooked...I was going to build a MAME cabinet.
BUYING THE ARCADE CABINET
- At this time, I was also into Pinball Machines (a child-hood passion of
mine). I had been going to arcade auctions sponsored by US
Amusement. They usually have 100's of arcade games, pinball machines and other
amusement devices. I now had a solid source for MAME Cabinets.
- I also found, called and visited most of the arcade distributors in the
Louisville Area.
- From the 100's of different types of Arcade Cabinets, I narrowed it
down to the type I wanted:
- It had to be clean since it was going in my family room
- It had to be affordable ($100)
- It had to be big enough for the control panel to support 2
players. It had to support 2 8-way joysticks because
Crazy Climber uses them.
- It couldn't be too big (no 4 player games)
- A working Arcade Monitor with no burn-in was a plus (this can save
you up to $200).
- A working Arcade Game was a plus.
- What I did NOT think about, but will in the future is determining
if I want a VERTICAL game or a HORIZONTAL game!!!
- After visiting all of the local distributors, I found I was going to
get "junk" that I would spend some serious cash to restore (yuk)
or I had to buy a recent game (big $$$). With this info, I headed off
to the auction.
- I bought my Arcade Cabinet in September 2000. It is a Data East
BAD DUDES from 1988 for $75. The arcade cabinet was in excellent shape. I
had to replace 1 push button and 2 40-watt light bulbs to have a perfectly
working game. THAT WAS A DEAL!!!
- There were about 170 games at the auction. By the time I weeded
out the games I did NOT want, I was left with about 5 games to bid on.
The first 2 games were in the best shape. The 1st game went for
$77. I got the next one at $75...I didn't stick around for the rest.
- I paid my money, loaded the game on my trailer and went home. The
kids eyes got really, really big when they saw this animal come into the
house.
- BAD DUDES is a Horizontal game. Vertical
games (like Pac-Man & Galaga) will play on a Horizontal monitor, but
they look "boxy". The same is true about playing Horizontal
games on Vertical monitors. Its best to have two (yes 2) MAME
Games...one Horizontal and one Vertical. Also, a cocktail MAME would
be cool.
FRONT-END EMULATION SOFTWARE
- Initially, I had picked Arcade@Home. It is an excellent Window's
based front-end. However, Arcade@Home doesn't support NTSC Monitor
interfacing, which is what I needed to run the output to my Arcade Monitor.
- MAME32 is also a good Windows based front-end,
but it also has the limitation s of Arcade@Home.
- My brother, Ted, did some research for me and determined that ArcadeOS
(AOS) supported NTSC interfacing and was very popular.
- On my main MAME page, I've got links to Arcade@Home and
ArcadeOS.
- Since AOS is a front-end, I used MAME as the ROM
emulator. MAME is a DOS program. Its the precursor to MAME32,
which is the Windows version. AOS is also a DOS program.
CONTROL PANEL INTERFACE
- This was fun, especially for someone who's never turned on a soldering
iron!! I learned a lot during this process. Now that I'm a little
more experienced, I would do some things differently...I'll point those out
below.
- I ended up doing a keyboard hack (as opposed to a keyboard
interface card - $99). A co-worker (thanks Ricky) gave me a free
keyboard. It was the old, old kind that has a PCB and points for each
key pressed. Today's keyboards have printed circuits on a flimsie (you can't
solder on them because they melt) and a keyboard matrix.
- To keep things simple (in my mind), I soldered a wire to each connector
for each key. For example, to get the letter "A" to work, I
soldered a black wire to one post on "A" and a red wire to the
other post on "A". When "A" was pressed the
connection was made. I did this with every key I wanted to use.
The downfall of this method is I ended up with twice as many wires as I
needed!! Oh well.
- This keyboard hack is critical to the success of your project.
Take your time. Think it through. Visit as many MAME Project websites
as you can to determine what your Control Panel will look like (how many
keys)...this will drive the letters you need to hack on the keyboard.
- I used a program called KEYSCAN.EXE that I downloaded off of one
site. It is a great tool for debugging your keyboard hack...making
sure the keys are working. If you need a copy, drop me an email and I
will send it to you. Don't do your keyboard hack w/o this program...it
will make your life much easier.
- I set my Control Panel up for 2 players, because it came that
way! This was no coincidence...that's why I bought the arcade
cabinet. I have an 8-way joystick for each player. 3 buttons for
each player. There are Player-1, Player-2, Credit and ESCape buttons
on the control panel. In addition, I have numerous other buttons the
front-end emulation software needed. These are hidden in the coin-door
area.
- I ended up replacing all of the buttons and joysticks for $50.
Even though the game was working, the new buttons/joysticks make the game
play "better"...it was worth the money. I purchased the
parts from Happ Controls.
ARCADE MONITOR INTERFACE
- This was a bonus! I had planned on getting stuck with a cabinet
with a burnt-in monitor or a monitor not working, so I was going to place a
PC monitor into the cabinet. The cabinet I purchased had a fully
working monitor with NO burn-in. This saved me about $200, plus the
fact that games appear differently on a PC monitor than they do on an Arcade
Monitor. An Arcade Monitor is the ONLY way to go!
- UPDATE - Since first
purchasing, the monitor takes well over 1/2 to warm up. As time goes
by, even after warming up, I have real bad horizontal syncing problems on
the bottom portion of the screen. From research I've done, I'll have
to install a CAP KIT (this replaces all of the worn out/leaking Capacitors
on the monitor's PCB)...this will cost around $25 + labor.
- Going this route limits you on the choices for Front-end
software. Fortunately there are some smart people out there.
Apparently some guy had to create this software for a thesis paper. It
is referred to as PC2JAMMA...I have a link on the main MAME page. It
is too detail to go into here, but the main concept is it lets you plug a PC
into and arcade cabinet and use its control panel, monitor and speaker
without have to tear anything up. This allows you to plug-n-play your
PC into any of the JAMMA compliant Arcade Cabinets...a big deal!!
- Also, not every video card works with ArcadeOS. I had to buy a
special card (ATI Xpert128) to make it work because the card I had in my PC wasn't
supported. To make matters worse, the PC I had wouldn't support newer
cards, so I had to upgrade my PC ($400). While this wasn't expected, I
was going to have to do this in the next 6 months anyway.
- It took several days to figure out why my new video card wouldn't
work...it was the PC. It took a few hours to hack a video cable from
the PC into the video cable in the Arcade Cabinet. My brother, Ted, took
on this challenge. The PC2JAMMA site and Mr. Salty's site give exact
directions on how to do this hack.
ROM SOFTWARE
- There are over 6,000 supported ROMs. Many are clones of
games. So I would guess there's about 2,000 unique games out there.
- The games are actually ROMs that are downloaded from the web. The
best site is DK ROMS...see main page for the link.
- The ROMs are translated via the MAME software
(Arcade@Home & MAME32 are other programs that perform the same
task). The Front-end software, AOS, then translates the signal to the
Arcade Monitor which uses an NTSC signal.
- My brother, Ted, has a cable modem so he downloaded the vast majority
of the ROMs I'm using. I download the updates to ROMs and new ROMs via
my 56K modem.
- UPDATE - In 2001 the
ROM download sites were shut down. By law, you are only allowed to use
a game ROM if you have the ROM Chip...the sites were being threated with
lawsuits. I have not been following this topic on the web as I had
already obtained most of the ROMs I wanted.
HOW MUCH DID IT COST
HOW LONG DID IT TAKE TO BUILD
CONCLUSION
- Each portion of this project took up more time than I
anticipated. Partly, because I've never done anything like this before
so I had a huge learning curve.
- The designing and planning phase was very interesting and took
months. I spent a lot of time up front determining what I wanted as
the final product.
- It took me about 2 weeks to finish the keyboard hack (I thought it
would take 2 days). I learned a lot about keyboards, soldering, wires,
electricity and interfacing peripherals into PCs.
- The finished product is FUN! I had forgotten about most of the
games that I used to dump quarters into. I personally have a lot of
fun playing the games late at night with the lights turned
off..."Intruder Alert, Intruder Alert", "Come Back and Fight
Like A Robot".
- The kids love it. They play mostly games from the late 80s
(Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, X-Men, Rollergames, etc). I play mostly
games from the early 80s (Crazy Climber, Bezerk, Phoenix, Scramble).
- It was worth every penny and every late night, weekend hour I put into
it...the fun-factor is 100%.
This page was last updated on 01/05/03
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