CoRnDogg's Arcade Machine Blog!

The software for the mame cabinet is coming along nicely. I think I'll be using "MameWha" as my front end. I like it for it easy to use interface and the fact that it's not a pain to take a screenshot of the game and have it pop up when the (totally free and legit) rom is highlighted in the program. There is one more front end I thought of trying, but I don't remember the name right off hand. I'll write about it after testing.

The keyboard is almost setup as well. In case you didn't know, the way you hook up your arcade controls to your computer is to use what is called a keyboard hack. You basically break open a keyboard and strip it down to nothing but the circuit board and the wire hanging off of it. There you will find 2 sets of 15-20 solder points in rows. The way a keyboard works, is when certain pairs of these connections are connected (completing the circuit) a key press is generated in the computer. So you have to take a piece of wire and a key mapping program, and start touching points together to see what key has been pressed, then you write it down (e.g. x1-y1 = a, x1-y2 = t). This is called "mapping keys". After this is done, you can solder the two wires for the arcade buttons to the correct points in order to generate that key press. Time consuming, but cheaper than buying a unit to complete this task. The only thing to worry about using this method is "ghosting" or "blocking", and I'll talk about these when I get to them.

Question: Will I have to add extra buttons for functions like Esc, and the letters "o" and "k"?

Well, one hell of a deal came my way the other day. There was an ad in the paper for free game cabinets and jukebox cabinets. The ad said to inquire at an address or phone number, and I must have called that number about a gazillion times to no avail. I sent one of my operatives (my brother) to check this place out. It's apparently a store according to him, and a jukebox repair store according to my mom. I was supposed to go out there today to check it out, but was moving furniture since 10am instead (check the main blog for super fun info on this). Anyway, I'll post about it when I can get out there.

Okay, I'm just gonna have to find a junker computer and fix it up. I've been looking around and I really dont wanna spend much money on this part. I live in a sea of computer parts so you would figure that I'd have everything I'd need... NO! The closest thing I have is a 500mhtz machine, which is just not fast enough... even with 512 mb RAM. I tested on a 700mhtz which was better, but not perfect. I'm gonna try and find a 900mhtz, but I've got a feeling that I'm gonna have to go with at least a 1.0ghtz to get the results I want. Well... the good news is that this project is still quite a ways off so it's no big rush, but this is how I get when it comes to my projects... full on or not at all.

Okay... rough parts list for this thing...

A desktop computer

• about 1.0 ghtz
• 256 - 512 mb ram
• around 10gb hd
• ati 64mb graphcs card w/ s-video out
• keyboard
• touchpad w/ touch click
• Windows 98 SE
  

27" TV

• s-video in

arcade controls

• 4 joysticks (8-way)
• 30 pushbuttons (various colors)
• 4 player buttons
• i-pac4 keyboard encoder from ultimarc.com
  

MDF board

• 3 Sheets 4' x 8' x 3/4"

Lexan

Custom marquee

Florecent light

coin door

Control panel and side art

other stuff I haven't listed or thought about yet

Here is where I will be discussing my arcade cabinet project. This is well known as a "Mame Cabinet", referring to the arcade emulator "Mame". This has been a project that has been swimming around in my head for quite some time, but I never thought it would become real. After searching on the internet for a while, I've found that building an arcade cabinet for my house will not only be easier than I thought, but less expensive as well. It's still gonna cost a few hundered dollars to build to my plans, but just think of it... a custom built, full size, 4 player arcade machine that will emulate almost any game I want (within reason)! I'm pretty stoked. I still have a few other projects to deal with and finish up, so this won't happen over night... but I'll post any findings I come across here.