81CJH Member 204 Member For: 21y 10d Gender: Male Location: Brisvegas Posted 14/05/08 12:08 PM Posted 14/05/08 12:08 PM All righty then. Who remembers going to the arcade halls back when the machines only cost 20c a go? Double Dragon, Street Fighter, Golden Axe, Snow Bros.... all the classics.Well I've been messing around with MAME in recent months, and have built a setup which is portable, durable and pretty much fool proof.As it turns out you can still buy brand new parts for arcade machines, and they're not even that expensive! A local computer store in Brisbane Gamedude sells joysticks and buttons and all that stuff, as well as keyboard encoders to hook it up to a PC, which is really cool. So, rather than build an arcade cabinet which is large and not very portable, I bought a bunch of buttons & a couple of joysticks, and mounted them into a pair of stable tables! I also added a couple of extra buttons mounted in the Player 1 table which allows for game swapping & shutting the PC down.Each stable table has two cat5 network cables which run back to the keyboard encoder mounted in a dedicated MAME PC, which just runs a minimal install of Windows 98. The PC is pretty old and crap (you don't need much to run MAME), but has a basic 3d card in it with a tv out, and I've made a short 3.5mm to female RCA lead, so that all you need is an off-the-shelf RCA cable to run both video & audio into the AV input of any TV.If you wanted to get hardcore portable you could possibly adapt this to suit a laptop or one of those barebones mini PC's.Take a look, fire off any questions, and go build yourself one just like it! It's awesome fun.
South Member 323 Member For: 20y 3d Gender: Male Location: Perth Posted 14/05/08 12:59 PM Posted 14/05/08 12:59 PM I've been looking for a reasonably priced Twin Daytona USA arcade setup to have in my home. Love that game, cheapest I have found is 5k Want it baaaaaaaaaaad!
FastR1Red Member 360 Member For: 21y 4m 25d Gender: Male Location: Mt Waverley Posted 14/05/08 01:11 PM Posted 14/05/08 01:11 PM My first job when I left school was with Goddards. I was a pinball tech, repaired pinnies, juke boxes video arcade games etc. I built some of the first batch of Space Invaders in the country. Galaga, Pac Man etc etc. I still have the original 45 that came with the Kiss pinball plus the T-Shirt. It's floating around somewhere.Used to love it when I went in to arcades and the kids used to run up and call me the pinball wizard. I gave em heaps of free games..hehe.So if you need one fixed, let me know. Happy to come around.
smicky Go Pies!!! Legacy Donating Member 2,852 Member For: 18y 7m 10d Gender: Male Location: Vic Somewhere - Sometimes NSW Posted 14/05/08 03:47 PM Posted 14/05/08 03:47 PM I've been looking for a reasonably priced Twin Daytona USA arcade setup to have in my home. Love that game, cheapest I have found is 5k Want it baaaaaaaaaaad!Hear you on that one!!!Have come across a few also... but not cheap... And most not in to good nick anymore....Such a shame...
Grudgee Every Mod's Favourite Member Member 1,496 Member For: 18y 6m 22d Gender: Male Location: Melbourne Posted 14/05/08 11:39 PM Posted 14/05/08 11:39 PM When I have a mortgage that isn't stupidly ridiculous, I want to set up a hardcore games room, with all the old-school faves. Just need to knock another $400k off the loan and I'll be ready to roll!
veczar Gold Platinum Member Member 1,081 Member For: 22y 3m 1d Gender: Male Location: Victoria Posted 15/05/08 12:23 AM Posted 15/05/08 12:23 AM Nice. Im thinking of buiding this sort of setup into my T carputer system. Where do you get your ROMS?
81CJH Member 204 Member For: 21y 10d Gender: Male Location: Brisvegas Posted 15/05/08 05:56 AM Author Posted 15/05/08 05:56 AM Nice. Im thinking of buiding this sort of setup into my T carputer system. Where do you get your ROMS?From the local ROM-Grocer, of course. My absolute all time favourite is Snow Bros, which you can get from here..Enjoy!
TUFXRT6 Legacy Donating Member 687 Member For: 20y 6m 7d Gender: Male Location: Victoria Posted 15/05/08 06:52 AM Posted 15/05/08 06:52 AM Its a bloody great set up but....How come you didn't put an extra three buttons???You need six buttons for Street Fighter & Mortal Combat!!!RegardsTUFXRT6
XR06T Legacy Donating Member 4,146 Member For: 21y 3m 4d Gender: Male Posted 15/05/08 07:41 AM Posted 15/05/08 07:41 AM very cool man, good job!get some pics up of you and yer mates in action!!
81CJH Member 204 Member For: 21y 10d Gender: Male Location: Brisvegas Posted 15/05/08 08:22 AM Author Posted 15/05/08 08:22 AM Its a bloody great set up but....How come you didn't put an extra three buttons???You need six buttons for Street Fighter & Mortal Combat!!!RegardsTUFXRT6 Simple really... I S.U.C.K. at street fighter & mortal kombat....but I could easily add another three buttons, that's the beauty of it.2 cat 5 cables, each with 8 wires.A joystick takes 4 wires, one wire per button after that and one for an earth, so I could expand up to another 4 buttons on the Player 1 table & 6 on player 2.Out of interest, it cost me around $150 to build both tables ($69 just for the kb encoder), and I already had the PC kicking around gathering dust.
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