Why buy a board when you can mame??

[ninn]

I bet every pc boots faster than my monitor's warm up time.

[cools]

Since my original posts in this thread my situation has changed significantly (less space for cabs and PCBs, less time to faff about swapping them) - and I'm now almost exclusively emulation. Helps that GroovyMAME/UME makes it practically indistinguishable from the real thing.

So, what hardware are you using and how is it connected in the cab?
And how long does it take to boot?

http://rogalian.blogspot.co.uk/2014/06/ ... ret-3.html"

Pictures are dead, I've taken new ones to sort that out in the next few days.

I've not measured the boot time but I'm pretty sure it's about the same time as Batrider.

My other cab has an older PC in it and takes a bit longer, but it's under a minute. I'll upgrade that one once CV1000 is properly emulated with slowdown - everything else I want to play on it is fine.

[monouchi]

http://rogalian.blogspot.co.uk/2014/06/ ... ret-3.html"

Pictures are dead, I've taken new ones to sort that out in the next few days.

I've not measured the boot time but I'm pretty sure it's about the same time as Batrider.

My other cab has an older PC in it and takes a bit longer, but it's under a minute. I'll upgrade that one once CV1000 is properly emulated with slowdown - everything else I want to play on it is fine.

Sounds very interesting, especially now when I am finishing my LCD cab....though right now I am way too tired to dive into pc-building/configuring.
A thought though for the future.

[emphatic]

One constant in this hobby as that you often read about people starting to buy PCBs. More often than you see a "I'm selling everything" thread. And since they're not being made anymore, prices should go up on everything. I'm very happy to have a nice collection of boards, but I'm eventually gonna get a PC with GroovyMAME as well.

[Stompp]

One constant in this hobby as that you often read about people starting to buy PCBs. More often than you see a "I'm selling everything" thread. And since they're not being made anymore, prices should go up on everything. I'm very happy to have a nice collection of boards, but I'm eventually gonna get a PC with GroovyMAME as well.

Personally I've never really got hooked on the MAME thing. Mostly because of the hassle setting things up and never getting it exactly how I want it (menu/launcherwise etc). Probably will dig into this again at some point but for now I'm just enjoying playing my PCB's

[cools]

The menu thing was a bugbear for a long time. I'm happy with how mine are now (finally), but I was able to tolerate a crap menu as long as the emulation was fine.

[bloodhokuto]

I've got a Mac mini with MAME osx hooked up to a nice telly, got a 500 in 1 in one cab, and had a 161 in 1 in my cute.

Whenever I place a multi-game set up I keep changing games ever 5 mins and can't get into the games.

I took the 161 out of the cute, and have been happily playing zero 3 on cps2 ever since.

Call me weird, but I enjoy games less when I use MAME or multi-game set ups.

[arcnl]

I have the same problem, dating back from the PSX really. My idea to "fix" that with MAME was to have it boot up and load the game from an SD card, so i at least have to have an SD card per game and have to switch it. Unfortunaltely i havent had time (or too lazy) to actualy fix that

[Ex_Mosquito]

An SD card per game?! Are you serious..

I've never had this problem and I've had GroovyMame set up in my cab exclusively for nearly 2 years now. I really don't get why people can't stick to a single game. It's not the fault of MAME that people lack dedication to get good at a game or focus. I have been playing Air Buster for the past week on and off without any temptation to play anything else and I don't intend to until I do it with 1-Credit. It's so unrewarding to play a game for 5mins and then move onto the next and never actually settle and explore the intricacies of a single game. I think people like this have the same problem with big PCB collections, it's just an excuse imo and you're not really a fan of arcade games.

As far as collecting PCBs. GroovyMame when set up right like cool said is indestinquable from the PCB, it really is. I can understand collecting console games rather than having roms can be fun purely for the boxes and the awesome Japanese art, but having piles of generic PCB boxes with ugly Jamma PCBs inside isn't as attractive to me.

[SuperPang]

I'm now almost exclusively emulation.

Forum administrator wanted. Apply within.

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[cools]

Think I've got more than a cabs worth of paper stored, if that counts?

[cools]

Cobbled together setup; I was given the motherboard/CPU/RAM (Pentium D 2.5GHz I think), found a HDD somewhere, AndyGeezer kindly donated a Type X case, and already had the CF+CF>IDE setup from other projects (used for GroovyArcade experiments. XP x64 is on the HDD). It's got a Radeon X600 I paid about £6 for, a "refurb" PSU from ebay, and a JammASD. Required some drilling to mount the HDD and the case into the cab safely. Not pictured is the USB drive I copy all the hi score saves onto automatically when shutting down the PC.

IMG_20140810_182801.jpg

Custom Attract Mode frontend layout. I usually hate list layouts, but I spotted a couple dotted around the web that didn't make me vomit on sight. All of which were in unmaintained or Windows only frontends. So I made my own that (IMO) doesn't suck.

IMG_20140810_183207.jpg

And in the E3 the purpose built monster described in my blog.

IMG_20140810_191250.jpg

No Mega Drives were JAMMAfied for this screenshot.

IMG_20140810_193628.jpg

[Pete]

Neat set ups !

Where did you get the Jamma loom cover from ?

[cools]

Ebay, was a few quid. I picked up a few when I had to order a JAMMA loom + extender (neither of which I've used ). It's actually a really useful thing, makes it 100x easier to pull the connector from a board.

[Pete]

Looks good nice and neat so ordered 1

[arcnl]

An SD card per game?! Are you serious..

I've never had this problem and I've had GroovyMame set up in my cab exclusively for nearly 2 years now. I really don't get why people can't stick to a single game. It's not the fault of MAME that people lack dedication to get good at a game or focus.

I fully agree its my own lack of discipline

Cools, do you use jamma for controls/sound and VGA for video or does 31k video run over jamma somehow? I seem to recall you switched to 31k only.

[cools]

Pony: PC w/Radeon X600 15KHz > JammASD (audio + video) > JAMMA
Egret 3: PC w/Radeon HD 4350 31KHz > JVS-PAC + Taito JVS/AMP > JAMMA

In the E3 the monitor is connected via the VGA bridgeboard the cab comes with (just connects the JAMMA side with the VGA cable that goes to the monitor). The Sonic screenshot is on the E3, with MAME scanlines.

Thinking back over the years it was: PCBs > MAME/ArcadeOS (DOS)> AdvanceMAME/AdvanceMENU (DOS) > AdvanceMAME/AdvanceMENU (Gentoo Linux) > PCBs & multiple failed MAME experiments (Linux/Windows/1 dead monitor and a lot of wasted cash) > PCBs > PCBs & MAME/Hyperspin (Windows) > GroovyMAME/Attract Mode (Windows)

I've probably spent literal weeks (maybe even months) of my life altering MAME and its environment settings. AdvanceMAME came close to perfect for static screen games but fell over on anything that scrolled. The front ends have universally been terrible to use (apart from the private RUNMAME that D-Zine codes for himself, which is excellent but I've always wanted one that looked different) which hasn't helped. Along the way I've learnt an awful lot, had a bunch of world first hacks and played a heck of a lot of games. Been a fun ride.

Other than a few final tweaks to the frontend layouts I'm happy with it all now. It just works, really well.

Quick video of the Pony. Apologies for terrible video quality, not sure why it's at 360p:

[pubjoe]

That's a lovely frontend cools. Full screen video... Stupendously simple, functional, non-intrusive, and looks fantastic. It simply shows off the games. I agree with the importance of a simple responsive UI. Overly complicated or needlessly flashy ones kill the illusion. It HAS to be simple and plug-and-playable or it's just annoying. Also, although it's only really me that uses my cab, I always feel as though a front-end needs to be obvious to navigate for everyone, and if it's not, I don't feel comfortable using it myself - even if I know full well how to.

I've gone back and forth with Mame / PCBs so many times now. I flirted with Groovymame again recently and got so annoyed with my cab always being in a state of W.I.P (ironically because of endless tinkering to find a simple solution to wrap lots of stuff). I pulled it out again. It's just not the right time for me to be doing that right now, but I'm sure I will again at some point in the future. I think I know what I want to do eventually and I have a slightly different goal to cools, but the focus is on simple plug and play - eventually.

Anyway, at the moment I'm enjoying buying PCBs again - even though I know first hand how good Groovy is. I'm not even going to waste time trying to justify my current thinking again to anyone including myself. It just gives me a fuzzy feeling to fire up a PCB. And if I rationalise my reasoning, I'm only going to argue with myself in this very thread when I change my mind again in a year's time.

As with many people, Mame was my gateway into PCBs. I would have never considered buying a cab if I wasn't planning to run Mame on it.

[arcnl]

I seriously dont understand the hyperspin-crowd.

[monouchi]

Cobbled together setup; I was given the motherboard/CPU/RAM (Pentium D 2.5GHz I think), found a HDD somewhere, AndyGeezer kindly donated a Type X case, and already had the CF+CF>IDE setup from other projects (used for GroovyArcade experiments. XP x64 is on the HDD). It's got a Radeon X600 I paid about £6 for, a "refurb" PSU from ebay, and a JammASD. Required some drilling to mount the HDD and the case into the cab safely. Not pictured is the USB drive I copy all the hi score saves onto automatically when shutting down the PC.

IMG_20140810_182801.jpg

Custom Attract Mode frontend layout. I usually hate list layouts, but I spotted a couple dotted around the web that didn't make me vomit on sight. All of which were in unmaintained or Windows only frontends. So I made my own that (IMO) doesn't suck.

IMG_20140810_183207.jpg

And in the E3 the purpose built monster described in my blog.

IMG_20140810_191250.jpg

No Mega Drives were JAMMAfied for this screenshot.

IMG_20140810_193628.jpg

Very nice! And so much work done. I just get a headache from looking at the pictures.