shmups.system11.org

heres my cab

Does this actually fit inside your astro city cab?

It actually fits quite nicely. I measured it out so it would fit right over the existing cabinet power supply, giving it about a half inch clearance from the PC PSU to the right. The hard drive and jpac are placed on the original mounting board; and the sound amp, which is mounted inside the coin door for easy access to volume control and option to plug in headphones.


This pic shows the current setup. I recently swapped the motherboard with a micro atx. The only thing I need to do is take the green push button power switch and mount it in the existing pre-drilled hole in the back of the cab.

Wow great idea! Amazing you fit all that stuff in there!

Here is a pic of my Mame setup - laptop docking station strapped to the board via a belt (no kidding).

Nice one! I never thought of using a laptop. It sure solves the space issue pretty well.

Dave, what chipset/cpu is on the "cab laptop" ?
any issues with heat ?
do you have to have the cabs monitor setup as a secondary display and extended desktop ?

the older I get the less time I have for pissing around with base units whether they be small form factor or big chunky rigs, I have been using a laptop externally on occasion on my New Net City but I have to set it as a secondary display

very cool setup though, actually quite innovative, I certainly never would have thought of doing it like you have

I'd like to use mame in my cab which is an AWSD with VGA input, so video is straight forward. However, I'm not sure what else I need. My laptop has no joystick input, only USB.

richie ! hello
you'd need some form of stereo amp ideally for the AWSD, and you could use a USB based J-Pac to sort controls out.

Great thing with laptops is any that are a few years old are still good for MAME and dirt cheap - free if the screen is busted. Damn quiet too. Built in wireless makes for easy admin. Altogether a lot neater.

The laptop is about 4 years old, has an ATI chipset with 3d acceleration, runs Mame 2d, ShikiIII and Raiden III, and Doujins fine, but not really made for FPS shooters. It is also capable of 15khz output via svideo, and driver tweaking tools out the vga port, but I run this at 31khz (640x480 VGA with mame scanlines) on my tri-sync monitor. I also run a serial interface to a betabrite lcd up top. More details on the cab setup and picture here.

The laptop is dual head capable, but I run it single monitor since I leave the LCD closed inside the cab anyway. This was also my everyday laptop up until recently, so I would only dock it inside the cab whenever I wanted to play. Very convenient.

Oh yeah, the note about wireless is also a plus for playing networked Mame...although with the board fully inside the cab, I get zero signal because this Namco cab has an all metal enclosure.

Need to show updated photos, look much better now that I replaced the Blast city side art and adjusted the monitor for perfect geometry (no joke, it can be done)

The Blast is now my dedicated CPS2 cab, monitor is set for perfect colors on that system.

Dave, sorry if these questions are kinda stupid, but how does this work?
Do i need to solder anything? Do i need to put an USB Joystick on my cab or will it work with the Jamma one? And will it work with my low-rez monitor?
Is there a special Mame OS that boots with the PC, or does it just start the usual OS and you start mame from there?

Is that picture Casey's or do you have a Garegga too?

Dave_k - Your Namco cab is magnificent! I love those cup holders, speakers, and the way the front swings up on a hinge. I bet its a lot easier to deal with than an Astro City. I was considering buying an MGCD for dreamcast, but I heard in order for it to interface correctly, you had to modify your Jamma harness. It that true? I'd like to play MAME and DC by just swapping the harness from the jpac to the MGCD.

Jockel - MAME cabs are really easy to setup if you have an existing Jamma candy cab. There is no soldering required (use quick disconnects for any extra connections). If you have a jamma setup, all you need to buy is a jpac from ultimarc. You plug your harness into one end, and then run a usb cable out the other end to your pc. This takes all your button presses and coin inserts and converts them into keyboard characters that the computer understands. All you do is go into MAME and setup the keys like you would on your keyboard. The jpac also sends the video signals from the arcade monitor to your graphics card. I use an arcade VGA from ultimarc, as it syncs up quite well with any low rez arcade monitor. If you look at the above pics on Dave_k's or on mine you'll see that little rectangular board with the jamma harness plugged in.

Most people use Windows XP for their MAME OS. There is no dedicated OS, unless someone made a linux distro for it. The trick is to mask the OS so it doesn't look like you are running windows. This is easily done by replacing your windows shell with a MAME frontend program. I use GameEx for my front end. There are many out there. When the pc boots it will go strait into the MAME frontend.

Wow glad you got those monitor issues sorted! You must be a pro now if you've got perfect geometry (with that Wei-ya chassis no less).



Ya lots of Q's there. In short no you don't need to solder anything. If you already have a Jamma cabinet, then you just buy an Ultimarc J-PAC. If you buy an ArcadeVGA card for your PC, that will drive a regular 15khz arcade monitor fine. Lastly, as described in my blog post linked above, I use Windows XP and Mala front-end to Mame.



This is true of the MGCD, but you can make it really plug-n-play by constructing your own interface board (jamma finger board and edge connector)...then you can lift the ground lines on those last 4 buttons. I went a little crazy and did this mod, along with bypassing the onscreen timer. Here are some pictures of my modified MGCD for PS2 and Dreamcast. Bypassing the video means they are unamplified by the MGCD, so I need to adjust the monitor brightness when plugging it into a cab, but thats about it.

yippee....just got my second new astro city home and its sooooo mint!!!

im just going to clean it up and throw the PS2 in it and i will take some pics of the setup tomorrow......

yay!!!

thank you brendz!!!!

edit.....forgot to post some pics of the new setup......lolz

the new one is on the left

I finally just finished restoring this....


to this....!




was alot of fun but Im glad its done, now I get to actually enjoy it.
Here is the thread I created at n-g.com if you want to see more pictures.
http://www.neo-geo.com/forums/showthrea ... erid=14817

My candys:



The one on the left is a Chinese made (Macrown) Xiong Ba 29" with a tri sync monitor (but it gives me headaches since it's a bitch getting a really good picture on, knock off Wei-Ya chassie ) and on the right my very nice EGRET II.

Emph

man i really want an egret 2...but id have to get rid of one of the astros...or my g/f would have my balls....lolz

and that chinese cab looks a lot like a blast city.....

and i kind of like that pink aero city....and i hate pink....nice job

Wow, congrats on a job well done, it looks great! Painting cabs is a PITA isn't it. And excellent choice of colors to appease the wife.

thanks alot dudes!

Dave; almost seems like I am trying to replace something with that pink color scheme huh? haha

I hope you looked over your shoulder before posting that one!

Where are you guys getting these?

depends....where are you located?

hahaha. Thats hilarious...!

I actually meant replacing the pink Konami Windy that I sold to Dave K., not my wife! haha.

Not in a million years, im a raelly lucky dude actually to have an awesome wife like her!

same .....my g/f was actually happy i got another cab, because a) she likes soul calibur and my other cab is vert exclusive and b) it 'balanced out the wall'

shes an interior designer

Southeast US.

get a hold of droid or matsu.....droid can put you in contact with matsu...he imports cabs from japan...he is in southern california

heres a link to his thread:

http://shmups.system11.org/viewto ... ight=matsu

sega astro city, ,2 Egret II cabs and a atomiswave SD

some pics with the xbox,ps2 and dc in one of my cabs.....lolz







had to get a bit inventive to fit it all in

works nice.....and easy to switch systems.....control adapters are right there and the video cables are easily accessible