MAME Arcade Cab

[Beaps]

Hi All,

This is my first post and I am a total noob..

I recently bought a Killer Instinct 1 Cab and I am looking at putting MAME inside it.

My PC Specs

Intel Pentium III 833

256 RAM

Onboard Graphics Card

The problem I have MAME runs so sloooooooow and I get the Direct Draw issues etc.

I want to buy an AvanceVGA card buy they are way to exspensive. Can someone recomend a card that I can just slap in my PC and wire it up to my JPAC and will work on my cab (I dont what the monitor is in the cab its standard)

Thanks!!

[Brian Hoffman]

Hi All,

This is my first post and I am a total noob..

I recently bought a Killer Instinct 1 Cab and I am looking at putting MAME inside it.

My PC Specs

Intel Pentium III 833

256 RAM

Onboard Graphics Card

The problem I have MAME runs so sloooooooow and I get the Direct Draw issues etc.

I want to buy an AvanceVGA card buy they are way to exspensive. Can someone recomend a card that I can just slap in my PC and wire it up to my JPAC and will work on my cab (I dont what the monitor is in the cab its standard)

Thanks!!

I use an NVIDIA card that supports SVIDEO out and connect it to a TV inside the cab. Its a compromise but the games look way better than on a lcd/crt PC monitor. 800mhz/256meg is a little light these days to run mame effecently.. Id look into running a older build of mame like .96 Hey you might even get killerinstinct to run ok on that build. EDIT: It probably still wont run full speed.

Id also remove the -tripplebuffer swich from the gameex advanced confg>mame settings.

[Beaps]

I dont really wanna change the monitor can someone not just tell me what that ArcadeVGA canrd is and I will pick one up and try that.

[Brian Hoffman]

http://www.ultimarc.com/avgainf.html

Oh and your welcome.

[mightypeniz]

heheh

[shaunopp]

Hi All,

This is my first post and I am a total noob..

I recently bought a Killer Instinct 1 Cab and I am looking at putting MAME inside it.

My PC Specs

Intel Pentium III 833

256 RAM

Onboard Graphics Card

The problem I have MAME runs so sloooooooow and I get the Direct Draw issues etc.

I want to buy an AvanceVGA card buy they are way to exspensive. Can someone recomend a card that I can just slap in my PC and wire it up to my JPAC and will work on my cab (I dont what the monitor is in the cab its standard)

Thanks!!

Are you hooking this up to a Computer Monitor or trying to use the Arcade Monitor that came with the cabinet?

Brian's suggestion didn't mean you have to swap out the monitor if you're currently using a Computer Monitor, just that it would be better. If you're on a budget the best and easiest route to go is a TV. You can pick up a 27" tv with S-video off of Craigslist for around $40.

If you're trying to use the existing monitor, I wouldn't suggest it if you're a noob, especially without being willing to invest in an ArcadeVGA card. You can't just 'slap' something in and expect it to work with the existing arcade monitor.

[bkenobi]

hehe, an ArcadeVGA card is a card that works as a video card for the PC but has an arcade monitor output (both resolution and connector). They are spendy, but if you want to connect to an arcade monitor, that's probably the easiest way to do it. I've seen circuits people have put together that are supposed to allow you to connect a VGA output to an arcade monitor, but I don't know how well they work, how hard they are to build, or how expensive the components are.

[iano]

Yeah, if you intend on using an arcade monitor i'd go the arcadevga route (workarounds are not worth the hassle IMO). It may seem expensive but time is money too and the alternatives are more time consuming. Other than that i'd just use a pc monitor (even less hassle) maybe a 21" ctr (i don't like lcds). I made up a vga/scart lead to work with a crt tv using a arcadevga card - the picture was fairly authentic arcade wise but i had no way of getting the tv to start up on av channel without using the remote (i'm sure there's workarounds) and it put me off the idea so i'm using an arcade monitor.

[bkenobi]

I know you already have a working solution with the PC monitor, but the workaround I came up with was to use winlirc and a serial IR blaster. The schematics are available in lots of places and it's pretty easy to put together. The only real problem is coming up with the IR codes. My set wasn't in any of the databases, so I ended up searching quite a bit and using educated guessing and experimentation to figure out what the exact codes were (I wanted discrete codes, not toggle stuff that's easy to find).

Anyway, I went with a PC monitor for my second cab The TV makes for a nicer arcade feel cause I have it turn on when GameEx is all up and running so I never see BIOS or anything loading, but when configuring stuff in Windows the monitor wins hands down!

[Beaps]

Thanks to all your replys but as I said I want to stick with the original monitor so it looks like I am going to have to fork out and get a ArcadeVGA :-( (tooooo expensive)

Also What is the best Frontend to use is it Gameex or MaLa or something else?

Thanks again

[Tempest]

Thanks to all your replys but as I said I want to stick with the original monitor so it looks like I am going to have to fork out and get a ArcadeVGA :-( (tooooo expensive)

Also What is the best Frontend to use is it Gameex or MaLa or something else?

Thanks again

(guys, let me get this one!)

O.K. first off, you do know that this is a Gameex (GX) forum right? All of the people that post here on a regular basis have all been brainwashed by Tom (the author of GX) to tell you what he wants you to hear.

I'm not going to do that, I'm going to tell you the truth.

I downloaded Mala, and about 6 or 8 other frontends, and it is not my intention to bash any of them. To be honest, there is no way I could remember (I suffer from CRS) what I didn't like about any of them specifically. I can tell you that for me, after I do download something, I have to be able to use it right away without alot of complications. At the time, the only emulator that I was using was Mame. With GX, if you already have Mame working, all you have to do is set up your paths and go. It is also fairly easy to set up other emulators as well. Not only does GX have over 100 configurations for different emulators, It will even download some of the most popular ones for you.

Reasons to use Gameex:

1. Alot of nice features

2. Program under constant developement

3. A great Forum

Take five minutes and go to:

http://www.gameex.info/forums/index.php?showforum=2

at the top of the page, click on "view new posts", and see how many questions go unanswered. I'm willing to bet that 99.9% will at the very least have a response the first day, with many having a solution. That's tough to find. And, as you may have noticed, most of the questions are not about GX itself, but about setting up other emulators, and how to hook up an arcade monitor

I personally have only registered two programs that I have downloaded. The first one I registered to get more features, and support is nonexistant.

The second one is Gameex, and I didn't register for extra features, I registered because after trying alot of other front ends, I felt that Gameex was worth it, and then later learned that the support that you can find in the forums is unbeatable.

Get Gameex, what do you have to lose?

Welcome Aboard!

[bkenobi]

Hehe, that's a funny question for the GameEx forum...

Actually, if you really wanted to stir things up, you would ask about Maximus Arcade (there's some history on that though)

[headkaze]

Hehe, that's a funny question for the GameEx forum...

Actually, if you really wanted to stir things up, you would ask about Maximus Arcade (there's some history on that though)

Well it wasn't so much Maximus Arcade itself it was a member of their forums coming here and leeching our tools then bashing GameEx on their forums. But he did apologise and all that. Lol it still makes me laugh though his reaction when we caught him out