Cab Rebuild

[CharlesLam]

Hello all,

Typically i have stayed away from this forum. mainly due to time, but i figured i would start a build thread. i do have some questions but im sure i will figure it out.

Backstory:

way back in my college days i always wanted an arcade cabinet. but never had the funds or necessary tools to buy/build one. A buddy of mine was an avid craigslist free/freecycle guy. He went to a house one day for a futon bed, which had already been picked up. but the lister stated that the "Gamebox" was still available. not knowing what a "Gamebox" was he decided to take a look. It was a repurposed standing arcade cabinet, with X-arcade sticks, 4 channel speakers, and 22" CRT monitor that had been scratched up due to a drunken night of gaming and frustration. He decided to pick it up, sold it to me for $125 because of hauling it around and delivery.

I can tell it was a repurposed one as it had the original coin doors, but the coin mechs were removed. it had an old penitum 2 system in it running a custom live linux distro with games on the disk. as you can imagine this thing was slow. could not even play TMNT turtles in time. The wiring was rather simple. it had a junction box and a switch on top that would turn off and on the whole thing, marquee and all. for a linux live distro this worked fine. but going with a more traditional setup would be trickier.

I replaced the motherboard with a amd 64 s754 system and thats when i found out about gameex. i used the free version from that time till i broke down and purchased the lifetime license. replaced the monitor with ironically an identical monitor (who has spare 22" crt monitors? my professor at college did and wanted to get rid of it. what luck right?) Put a hard drive on there and a cage. i really didnt want to add a smart strip for simplicity sake so i was turning off the system cold. this worked for about 6 months. HDD's dont like being shut off like that.

Replaced system again with a spare amd 64 s939 system, replaced HDD and away i went again. figured i might have had a bad hdd to begin with as i was just throwing in spare parts i would get over the years. this lasted about 8 months. still same cold booting and shutdown. eventually the system had enough and the brand spanking new 320gb IDE drive bit the dust. at this point i was pretty sure that cold power on/offs was the problem.

I then decided it was time to move out of my dad's place and the thing sat for 2 years non-functioning.

I have since then got an intel atom 330 integrated board. and novagem CDR buttons to fill the coin doors to turn on and off the system. The problems i am running into now is the intel atom bored is dog slow. it almost feels slower than the s754 setup! i went through and changed configuration items to show gameex in a lower resolution, and it helps. but it is still unacceptable. as i dont have the room for this anymore, i gave it (when it was functioning) to my sister as a wedding present. well, she moved some stuff around and she wants it now. i do have a core i3 2120t setup and i still have the s939 dual core [email protected]. in terms of performance with the newer features gameex has, what should be my build direction in terms of pc hardware? will the i3 2120t HD graphics be enough for your common mame emulation? I'd prefer not to use the i3 setup, and antivirus is not needed as they dont have internet where they live.

Sidenote, im still getting the nagscreen to register. even after i put the reg file from years back in the gameex directory.

Mods:redirect thread as needed, was unsure where to put it.

[tthurman]

I'd think the i3 would be the best way to go, higher core speed is always a good thing. The 2000 generation graphics will probably do fine, especially with the classics, and most likely has enough horsepower to handle some titles newer than that, within reason anyway. The AMD is pretty dated at this point, but still would work, perhaps even better on someting like MAME 0.106. Considering the extra components required to build out the AMD version, and the baggage that comes with them, I'd keep it simple and go i3, and call it a day.

[tthurman]

Can't offer any insite on the nag screen issue, but I'm sure someone here will help.

[DazzleHP]

Sidenote, im still getting the nagscreen to register. even after i put the reg file from years back in the gameex directory.

Hi Charles, you need execute the .reg file (ie double-click it) to make the changes to your registry. Everything should then be unlocked

I would also 2nd tthurman - the i3 would probably be best. Some of the more recent Mame roms can be quite cpu intensive (compared to a few years ago).

[CharlesLam]

Drat, I was hoping to resell the machine. Well Thank you for your input. I just dont remember it being this slow on the s939 opteron. only thing im missing with that setup is a gfx card. but if thats how the new software works, so be it. Part of me wants to experiment with a 2009 version of gameex and see if i can get it to work, the other part of me really wants to see what is improved with the newer version.

i love my sister, but im not sure if i want to put her on a Intel SSD or not. I will post up pics later of the setup. im sure you all would love to see it.

[CharlesLam]

[tthurman]

Not knowing what the last version you had running, I'll take a guess that the version of MAME you were runninig on that s939 was perhaps when it was still not optimized for dual core processors, that is why I suggested you may want to try a different, older version of MAME. This could explain the slow down you are experieincing, and don't recall.

If I'm not mistaken, 0.106 was the last version before a big re-write in how the graphics processing was handled, and almost certainly prior to dual core support. That AMD cpu would have been a more mainstream chip back in the 0.106 days too. If you really need to sell that i3 setup, and have a graphic card handy, why not load it up and see?

[CharlesLam]

i was more focused on getting the intel 330 atom to work. but i loaded it up, configured it even to a ridiculously low resolution. i hadnt even tested the emulators yet. i was browsing through the menus and the intel atom was just painful. tap down, wait a full second, eventually it would go. im guessing atom processors just arent up to snuff.

the s939 i thought about it, but if its running this slow on a 1.6ghz with hyperthreading, i wonder if it would be even worse with just a dual core amd. even with the 200mhz jump in clock speed.

figured someone would know of a no-brainer that i forgot to check off for older hardware in the configuration wizard or something.

[stigzler]

Sounds like you got the passion to build... thought about a new scratch build?

[nullPointer]

Sidenote, im still getting the nagscreen to register. even after i put the reg file from years back in the gameex directory.

Hi Charles!

Regarding your registration issue please contact Tom Speirs directly. You can do that right here. He'll have you fixed up in no time flat!

[CharlesLam]

I definitely have the passion for many things, but finances make me weigh in alot of what i can and cant do. unfortunately i dont have the tools necessary for the woodworking to start scratch. ever since i got this behemoth of an upright arcade cab i have always wanted to do a cocktail cabinet with glass and use it as a living room table.

Thanks for the compliment stigzler. as of late my motivation has been running on Empty. every bit helps

[stigzler]

Understandable. However, you got the coin door, buttons and joys, cab carcass and monitor. Apart from the PC - most expensive bits. The rest - your local flea market might be your friend (Speakers, amps, wood etc etc)

I even got my rubber mallet for the T-molding from mine - 20p!!!

[CharlesLam]

well this is a bit interesting. i was able to get a dual core AM2+ system with nvidia integrated graphics. technically this system is supposed to be inferior to this atom board and cpu...but gameex works just fine. intel atom processors or their integrated gpus must REALLY be horrible with gameex. not going to lie i am really surprised.

[tthurman]

I was always under the impression the Atom line was mainly geared toward netbooks, and slowly made some inroads as a low end solution for SFF PC's with intergrated graphics.

The fact Tom's did an article comparing an Atom to a P4 is a glaring alert to me that this thing was a pretty under performer thats claim to fame was power efficiency with acceptable computing power. Given that, I'm not surprised it's not a stellar performer with MAME.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/atom-d510-pentium-4-nettop,2649.html

[CharlesLam]

im not sure if the atom will make a great jukebox or not.

[tthurman]

Not sure about jukebox performance, but along the way of trying out front ends, GameEx was the first, and one I ran, and I ran it on a 800 mhz fsb P4 @3.06 with XP SP3. This was at least three, and probably more like four years ago. It ran silky smooth. The P4's were dogs to the AMD's proc's of those days, so I guess what I'm saying is don't throw in the towel on it without giving it a test spin. If it's going to be offline anyway, then there's no reason you can't still run XP on it.

[CharlesLam]

I did try gameex with the intel atom 330. at lowest resolution 200x???? it was laggy still. and thats not even running an emulator, that was just navigating through gameex's menu!

either/or i will repurpose or sell this intel atom board. if i have to sacrifice visual appearance it wont appeal to my intended audience (anti-technology sister and brother-in-law). im fairly certain that jukebox software is nowhere close to hardware intensive. i guess i need to find a touchscreen monitor. only way to find out is to try.