Crippius

Hi After some days of configuration I have pretty much everything working except the ability to light up LEDs following the games controls in MAME. I hope you understand what I mean... I use a PAc-drive and headkaze's LED pluggin. The LED are working as expected in GameEX (I've got them all blinking the way I want following the events) However I can't make them work for MAME. Strangely, there's only the LED of P2_BUTTON1 that is lighting up when I launch a game. The same happens when I am in the plugin configuration under tab "LED Input Map". I have been through every LED option carefully and could not manage to fix it. Also I don't really understand the meaning of this to what is related led0-to-3 and lamp0-to-3 exactly ?? ANd is there anything I have to change ?

It looks great !

A few questions from an IPAC2 noob to pros 1. I thought to assign the IPAC SHIFT to the PAUSE key, which is the white on the middle edge. Is that a good idea ? Apparently it is set by default on P1 Start. 2. I have placed 2 buttons on each side for the flipper, where should I plug them? I mean which IPAC2 entry is the more convenient in terms of gameplay, config and usability? I have never played with your flipper emulators. 3. I absolutely need an efficient and highly responsive combination to control the volume. It should be WINDOWS WIDE, and not MAME/GameEx only. I thought to SHIFT (Pause) + joystick or trackball up and down. Is this a good idea and as anyone have a good working software/plugging for doing that? Something win7 compatible.

Yesterday evening I placed all the button LEDS and micro switches, then I made a daisy-chain out of power wires that I recuperated on 2 old PSU. P1 controls ground is done Slowly but surely

Thanks for the compliment I'll pass the message to the wife

Hi Painting is done. 2 primer and 5 black coats. Its not totally perfect but I give up. I hate painting and I don't have the will nor the patience to spend one week on this. I tried to wet sand between coats but that not really worked the way I would. That's not bad anyway. So I worked late yesterday to mount the buttons, IT and Audio. Everything's good. To answer tthurman: the trackball is not steel but illuminated... And I absolutely hate it. I ordered a blue and received this ugly green. I will have to either change their LEDs with blue or remove them. Drawer Opened/Closed That's the bottom CP when the drawer is opened: everything's accessible so its very convenient for maintenance and 4/8 way switch. Somewhat clear wiring wiring Tomorrow I'll show you some pictures in darkness with all the blue light fancy things I put everywhere

Last straight line to the paint. Flipper buttons holes CP Holes. My illuminated and chromed buttons are diam. 24 but they have an edge on top of diam 28, so I had to make 2 different holes Firstly 28mm Check Secondly 24mm SUPER CHECK I love it. And the very last: screen area. I let down the rotating monitor. And this is not by despair. I could not find any 4:3 monitor higher than 19". So I thought to it all the winter and I came to the conclusion that using a "small" 4/3 on this huge area will just look silly. Added to this, I have taken a 27" and the vertical size is almost the same as if I had used a 19" 4:3 in portrait mode. Placement and removal of the screen will be super easy thanks to this thing: http://www.materiel.net/accessoire-pour-ecran-lcd/ergotron-kit-extracteur-express-lcd-60-589-060-74105.html Crafters Here we go And finally, here's where I am right now. 2 coats of primer, 3 coats of black. I'll apply another 1 or 2. AND NOW THAT WILL BECOME INTERESTING

It's time for necroing my thread !! I was busy with too much work during the winter and I let the cabinet sleep in the basements for 3 months. Beginning of April I decided it should end and I worked on it my ass off all the month. We are almost there. Woodworking is done, and paint almost... I have nothing to do while waiting for my last coat to dry so I am taking a few time to show you the job, and I've got a lot of things to show. First I modified the control panel area to add a crafter. This was the last thing to do prior to make CP definitive plans in order to craft the metal piece. Then I drew this plan ANd I went to my friend's house to reproduce it in Autocad (he is an industrial designer drawing metal structures) Then I had to wait a few days to get the paper plans in A0 format, and 2 weeks to receive the crafted metal CP-top. Finally I chose to go with brushed inox That let me a few time to work on the Audio. I went to a local specialist in Car AUdio and discussed with him about the project. I initially thought to purchase a car amplificator, but since I had an old Stereo Sony Ampli of good quality, he advised me to use that one instead. So I bought him 2 big 350W speakers, 2 small 250W (Alpine) and very nice grids That's my AMpli I dismount it to analyse whether it was possible to remove the buttons from their chassis in order to integrate them in my CP. The circuit card was way to big to do anything, and unsolder would have lead to a total failure as some buttons was like glued in the chassis. So I decided to put it like this in the cabinet and to use windows to control the volume. And here it is remounted with the speakers The ampli is 150W. I couldn't push the volume more than HALF without turning deaf. the powerfulness of this install is absolutely crazy, and this is what I want In the meantime I received the printed CP plan and made some checkings Working on speakers holes It looks fantastic, especially with the grids which aren't on the picture Those speakers are so heavy that I prefered to add a solid rafter to discharge their 4 screws from the miserable 12mm MDF And ten the holes for the 2 Alpine 250W going on top Got an evening without anything else to do so I decided to fill all the screw holes Here comes a fun part. During the winter I desperately tried to find some sort of 3.5" PC front panel control for, in others, powering the PC. Apparently that doesn't even exists. I had this old PC and the power button wasn't bad So I decided to use that. I love my dremel. I began to cut the plastic to dismount the pieces I would And then I polished the plastic around power button to give it a round form Looks good enough Some days after I decided to craft the CP main control area : The support for 3.5" stuff and DVD Digging holes for devices, Power button and reset button, and leds (power/hdd) Let's work on the air flow. There will be 2 fans with blue led on the bottom side (flowing in), and 2 other flowing out on the top back Last week I got a phone call from my friend, the CP metal piece was waiting. I got palpitations I placed it on the CP, on top of the paper plan in order to have the holes centers to drill: I had a good surprise when I removed everything... This is a useless hole I drilled on the center of the trackball, just to see if it was centered with the CP like I planned it: Just perfect

Little update: my friend, which is industrial designer in a metal factory, has taken the measurements of the control panel. he will reproduce that in Autocad, then : print it at 1/1 scale so i can use that as a drilling template use that plan to craft the aluminium piece using a high-tech machine.That's the best way I found to have a highly polished aluminium piece that will fit perfectly atop the MDF that's a nice step forward as once I have the drilling template I can start to temporary mount the controls and test.

I begun with this but I found that it was incomplete as some sentences were referring to other sentences/options which I didn't find in the ini file. This caused a serious issue as I need to keep everything coherent. Example: Hide Create Snaps does not lie in the language.ini file I then searched a bit in the file system and found that the setup wizard has it's own xml language file, in which I could find the missing terms: CONFIG\SetupWizard_fr.xml Do you confirm that I can modify the translations directly in this XMLfile and send it to Tom along with the french.ini ?

ok thanks. That looks pretty straight forward. I'll work on this within a week (hope not month )

Not sure where to post this I went through the GameEx Wizard on my new system and noticed that the french translations are terrible. Some of them, long sentences, coming from an online translator for sure. I can help you to fix that if interrested. Just tell me how.

I have to update this Already 2 months since my last message ! The reason is that I was really out of money. I decided to wait a few weeks for a big payment to arrive, and to move on other development projects in the meantime. Which was good as I had plenty of time to think about my cabinet and not do things in a hurry. So, 3 weeks ago, right after my bank account replenishment I made various online orders to get all the cabinet hardware, and I received the last delivery today. All that was lot of little packages full of wonderful things! I ordered at those sites: Joysticks and PCB @ http://www.arcadeshop.de/Buttons @ http://www.starcab.net/Motor and it's controller @ http://www.pololu.com/IT Hardware @ http://www.materiel.net/Rotating Monitor I am more than ever decided to go the auto-rotating monitor way. I found a lot of inspiration in this project based on a Pololu motor and it's PCB, and I'll reproduce it the best I could. I know it will be the hardest part, everything else looks peanuts compared to that. I've got mostly everything I need to proceed, in fact only this piece is missing, which is annoying as I can't really move forward with the rotation mechanism without it. No local store sell this, and online I only found US and chinese sites and the shipping costs are astronomical compared to the piece cost. One of my friend is currently looking for one at it's work place and he looks confident that he will find something. Arcade Controls Joysticks: 2x Ultimarc T-Stick as the way I will build the CP (we'll see that in details later), it will be extremely easy to change from 8 to 4 way from below the CP, and it was a really nice feature to have Buttons : Most of them are chromed and illuminated . After long analysis I finally decided to drop to 6 buttons per player only. I don't want overstuffed CP. They will be blue for the 2 players. Than I've got 4 other illuminated for 1P 2P Pause in white (CP vertical front) , and the Exit button on top of the CP in red. So it is 16 illuminated buttons. The 2 coin buttons will be a bit smaller and entirely chromed and the flipper buttons on the side are standard red and black. I haven't found a trackball that fit my needs. I want a 2" with 2/3 buttons, and all EU webshops selling these were out of stock Very annoying. If I don't find it for now I am thinking to make the hole in the CP anyway and transform it in a "beer bottle holder" for a couple of months And finally I've got a Pacdrive for the 16 illuminated buttons and an I-PAC 2 IT Hardware CPU Intel Dualcore 3.1Ghz + MotherBoard MSI H81M-P33 + 4Go RAMPSU Corsair CX430 Bronze - 430WSSD Kingston SSDNow V300 - 240 GoCPU FAN Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro Rev.2Other fans Antec TwoCool 120 (for the back of the cabinet)So I've built this setup because it was cheap and largely good for what it's supposed to do: emulate old arcade games. I took a micro-atx motherboard so it doesn't eat too much space. I wanted fast response and SILENCE so I went the SDD-only path. I know Intel default CPU fans are not really quiet so I've changed it for this big freezer. I hesitated for PSU, wasnt sure that 450Watts was enough with all the Leds and other fancy things I plan to add later. We'll see. Everything temporary set up for install : I forgot something important when ordering... since I have no case, I have no Power/Reset buttons So I had to take this old PC and connects it's buttons to the MB in order to power it up. I am currently looking for a motherboard front panel that could also include USB entries and Mic/Audio, and I will put this on top of the CP. Not sure if that exists, if you know, please link. I am very happy with the test perf results, I really thought the Graphic test would be bad and planned to order a better CG accordingly...but I won't finally, asd this Intel HD chip is surprisingly good. The goal is not to play Battlefield 4 after all. Also it is as super ultra quiet as I would, I almost don't hear anything, and I it will be nothing for sure in the cabinet. Last but not least, boot to windows desktop in 10 seconds without login prompt. That's for today... pretty much all the hardware is covered but the audio. While not totally decided yet, I am pretty sure that it will be based on a car audio system. Ah yeah last point : Zero answer for the LED panel. I let that down for now. So for the time being I'll set up a classical Neon/sticker panel, and I 'll probably build the LED panel myself, but after everything else is finished (after summer...)

Ok thanks for all these usefull info ! No doubt I can help too to improve the existing tools But I am not there yet 2 weeks ago I sent several requests for estimate to local companies for the led panel crafting, and no one replied yet... I have the feeling that they ignore me because the panel is too small. Now I am wondering if I shouldnt built it myself out of led stripes and an arduino controler so much things to do

Wow great work on your led panel ! What do you use to synchronise its display with the current game? I am a programmer so I initially thought to develop my own gameex pluggin for that, but if something already exists I might reconsider

Got some work done yesterday... Wood structure almost done. I have taken the decision to shorten the CP. I found it too big for the living room. So I'll probably let down the 4 ways stick as I dont have enough room anymore. I know its bad but I ran out of medium screws late evening I am gonna order the CP electronics very soon I think. And for the rotating monitor I am still searching

Lest assemble this now First I fix solid rafters Then I fix corners iron to them Then I fix with only one screw the perpendicular rafters And after that I can assemble the 2 parts and screw everything I can almost play pac-man now Note : sorry for my english, I am a french-speaking native and when it comes to technical building terms I am not really confident to use the correct words.

Wood work started. I decided to stop thinking about the rotating screen for the moment I begun to cut a first side and to test its stability when pressing on the edge of the CP. It's surprisingly good, I was a bit afraid. And when all the heavy stuff will be inside that will be even better. If my daughter decide to hangs on from the edge I am not sure that it will still be OK but anyway I plan to fix it on the wall too so there shouldn't be any problem Let's go for the second side, using the first one to trace the lines And here we are, perfect symmetry

Yes I'll probably go with IPAC2This CPwizard looks fantastic, thanks for advertising this. Looking on the button layout at that page, I notice that most of the layout there are: _123 _456 7 Which are meant to do what I am trying to achieve (capcom and neogeo). Its a popular layout that I had considered and seeing this I will probably go that route as the CPwizard looks like to handle it properly. So your answer definitely helped. No offense but I hate this stained wood looking it just remind me the furniture at my >85yo grand-parents!For the color/paint, my plan is clear: SOBER. No stickers/art.Just black. Highly sanded and polished car sprayed paint to get a mirror effect. The dynamic LED panel marquee will be in charge of giving a colorfull touch to the whole thing. Also the CP will be made of a high quality metal (probably alu), with indications engraved in it. I have a friend working in metallic construction that has access to the most modern machinery to craft it My main concern now is the rotating monitor. None of those based on a polulu 12v motor that I plan to use will fit my needs as with my design, the room behind the monitor is very limited. I must say that my mecanical skills are pretty low and this is THE bottleneck actually. I already spent 2 evening just sit down thinking to it while looking at my screen beside a mdf template of a side of the cabinet. Thats a nightmare as I cant really start the building without having a solution for that

Not showing? Sure? I see it on my mobile and desktop...

Hello all This is my first post here I am actually (well for 2 months already) brainstorming my future arcade cabinet. Since I want it to be a jukebox and radio as well, I decided to go with GameEx. Here's the SketchUp of the project: The shape is largely inspired from Retro Space. Since the cabinet will be placed in the living room, I needed something small and modern to accommodate with the wife's repulsive nature against that kind of things I felt in love with RetroSpace design and decided to slightly reproduce it's shape. Normally the cabinet should have a rotating screen (not sure yet how I will accomplish that but I really want it). The big innovation will be the marquee. I will make a LED panel that will display various info dinamycally following user choices, and pulse with the music when its in Jukebox/Radio mode. I say it's an innovation because I have never seen this after having spent years lurking on arcade controls and other huge Mame boards. So, back to business. I have a concern regarding the 1 & 2 player buttons layout on the control panel. This is my very first cabinet and I am still unsure of how I can configure GameEx, Mame and console emulators to fit my needs. I have read hundred of pages regarding this and I still can't find an answer to my questions. Basically, I WANT both Capcom fighting and NeoGeo layout for each player. Capcom: 123 456 Neogeo: 234 1 So the simple way to achieve this IMHO would be having a layout like this: 1234 5678 for capcom games, use : 123 or 234 567 678 for Neogeo, use : *234 5*** And other classic arcade games using 1, 2, 3 or 4 buttons, go with: 1234 Is this a good idea? The main concern being, won't it be a nightmare to configure ? I really don't want to have to adapt my control config file MANUALLY for each game... For console that's easy as the controllers stays the same, but with arcade that's a different story. So basically, is there something in MAME or GameEx that makes possible to "dynamically" adapt the controls cfg for each game based on the editor, the Game DB or whatever else ? Any suggestions or hints are welcome Cheers