81CJH Member 204 Member For: 19y 1m 23d Gender: Male Location: Brisvegas Posted 14/05/08 12:08 PM Share 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. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
South Member 323 Member For: 18y 1m 16d Gender: Male Location: Perth Posted 14/05/08 12:59 PM Share 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! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FastR1Red Member 360 Member For: 19y 6m 8d Gender: Male Location: Mt Waverley Posted 14/05/08 01:11 PM Share 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. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
smicky Go Pies!!! Donating Members 2,852 Member For: 16y 8m 23d Gender: Male Location: Vic Somewhere - Sometimes NSW Posted 14/05/08 03:47 PM Share 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... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Grudgee Every Mod's Favourite Member Member 1,496 Member For: 16y 8m 4d Gender: Male Location: Melbourne Posted 14/05/08 11:39 PM Share 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! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
veczar Gold Platinum Member Member 1,081 Member For: 20y 4m 14d Gender: Male Location: Victoria Posted 15/05/08 12:23 AM Share 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? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
81CJH Member 204 Member For: 19y 1m 23d Gender: Male Location: Brisvegas Posted 15/05/08 05:56 AM Author Share 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! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TUFXRT6 Silver Donating Members 687 Member For: 18y 7m 20d Gender: Male Location: Victoria Posted 15/05/08 06:52 AM Share 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 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
XR06T Silver Donating Members 4,146 Member For: 19y 4m 17d Gender: Male Posted 15/05/08 07:41 AM Share Posted 15/05/08 07:41 AM very cool man, good job!get some pics up of you and yer mates in action!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
81CJH Member 204 Member For: 19y 1m 23d Gender: Male Location: Brisvegas Posted 15/05/08 08:22 AM Author Share 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. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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