In the market for a cab

[tendollarbanana]

I know this thread has probably been done to death (as a search has shown me several informative posts), but there are a few questions I'd love answers/direction to if I can borrow some of your time.

I recently decided to make, have made, or buy an arcade cabinet. If I go the make or have made route, how hard is it to find a decent sized RGB (assuming this is right, not 100% on what standard display device is)? And any idea what it will cost? I couldn't find anything noteworthy on eBay, but I could have also been looking for the wrong thing.

Another concern for the make/have made route is compatibility. I'm very interested in doing a wide array of things (2d fighters, old school shooters, newer shooters, vert and horizontal). I want to know how realistic it is for me to expect 1 cabinet to do all of these things, and if its possible, how difficult it is. I've been building my own pc's for the past 13 years or so, and if any of those skills translate then that would be fortunate.

On buying a cabinet, I've been looking mostly at Egret II's and Astro Cities. Is it even realistic for me to expect to find one without paying the $1200 shipping charge from Japan? I live in Missouri, and I'd be willing to drive about anywhere or pay freight within the US. And if I were to aquire one of these, how compatible are they with old school and new school games?

Thanks a lot for any help you can offer!

[PC Engine Fan X!]

For tendollarbanana,

If you want to make your own arcade cabinet from scratch, my suggestion is to pick up the very informative book called "Project Arcade" written by John St.Clair and published by Extreme Tech. Head on down to your local Borders or Barnes & Noble's bookstores and special order it. It's well worth the asking price of $29.99 USD for it and even comes with a cool and very handy referental PC CD-Rom disc with:

*Complete cabinet plans and diagrams

*Mame32 software

*Paint Shop Pro evaluation version

*Links to hundreds of arcade cabinet projects

If you like the cuteness factor of a mini arcade game cabinet, then a Mini Mame/Jamma cabinet would something worthy of building from the ground up.

The techincal site of http://www.gamesx.com will tell you all about the arcade primer subject matter of "Jamma" if you want to be able to run both old school Jamma based arcade PCBs on it.

You can purchase a cheap-ass Supergun setup and use that as the basis for DIY arcade cabinet and just pick up a low-resolution CRT-based analog RGB monitor that is capable of accepting 15.7kHz sync rate that the standard Jamma arcade PCBs use these days. A cheap 14" Commodore Amiga 1080 or the 1084S RGB monitors are the perfect size for such mini Jamma-based arcade cabinet projects. ^_~

Or if you want to forego the DIY arcade cabinet route and buy a Japanese candy cabinet, a Taito Egret II cabinet is great for such incredible ease of rotating the 29" Nanao CRT-based RGB monitor -- it is capable of accepting both low-res 15.7khz (standard Jamma based arcade PCBs) and med-res 24kHz sync rates (used for the medium resolution based arcade PCBs like Sega's Model 2 based Virtual On arcade PCB). The control panel will already have either Japanese Sanwa or Seimitsu brand arcade parts installed from the get-go (usually it will be of the Sanwa variety anyways). The going rate of $1,350+ for an Egret II cabinet is the norm these days. Plan spending another $200-$300 to get it shipped to your front door. The catch is you'll will need to disassemble the Egret II's control panel in order for the metal cabinet to fit through your front door (unless if you have a double door front entrance setup, then it would a breeze getting it in). ^_~

If you want to run such Mame arcade emulation on such an Japanese candy cabinet setup, there are two ways you can do it:

* Pick up a cheap-ass Gamebox PCB and install the arcade Roms on the included HDD with the use of a second PC, re-install it back into the Gamebox PCB and connect it to the candy cab's 56-pin Jamma edge connection interface and you're good to go.

* Use a compact PC tower or notebook PC with Ultimarc Arcade VGA card and Ultimarc J-PAC PC keyboard encoder to run Mame/Mame32 emulation on a standard Jamma arcade cabinet setup. Visit http://www.ultimarc.com to get them. Use a Jamma Y-harness PCB adapter to select between using Mame/Mame32 or Jamma PCB setup if you want to play the best of both worlds on just one candy cabinet setup.

Hope all this info is helpful to you, tendollarbanana.

PC Engine Fan X! ^_~

[tendollarbanana]

Hey PC Engine Fan,

That book sounds awesome, and I'll probably pick it up regardless of which route I go. I don't really have any interest in doing mame/emulation of any kind, but want to do a true blue cabinet. Egret IIs look and sound awesome, and I may being a serious search for one post-tax return. At my work we have an old Gauntlet Legends machine...is there anything I can do with this? I'd love to do whats necessary to get it playing some shooter pcbs (or even some cool old 4 player games like tmntiv or simpsons arcade).

Also some of the mechanics of arcade cabinets are still semi-confusing to me. People talk about jamma, naomi, cps2, etc. Does this mean I need a "jamma" arcade cabinet to play jamma games? Like needing a snes to play snes games? Or is it just the name of the circuit board the game is put on? An example this is how a PC can support cd-rom, dvd-rom and 3.5 floppy disks. Can one cabinet do all the different types of pcbs? Or are they more like consoles where I need a specific...I guess processing system to run that systems pcbs.

Sorry to ask so many dumb questions, but for some reason the way arcade cabinets work has always just baffled me

Thanks for all the help!

[PC Engine Fan X!]

Glad to help you out tendollarbanana,

If that old Gaunlet Legends cabinet at your workplace is standard Jamma, then your work is definitely cut out for you. You can play standard Jamma based PCBs on it (but if the monitor can't be rotated vertically for those cool vertical oriented arcade shmup titles, then you'll just have to be content with playing horizontal oriented arcade PCBs for the time being).

Yes, you would need an arcade cabinet with a Jamma setup to boot up/play such Jamma PCBs. Some Jamma PCBs have a built-in back-up battery or large capacitor to save "high scores" and/or keep real time/calendar stats upon powering them down for the night. There is what is known as "Jamma+" format to consider as well but most arcade PCBs use standard Jamma setup from the get-go. ^_~

If you do procure an Egret II cabinet or another fine Japanese candy cab, be sure to plug it into a good high quality computer surge protector strip. ^_~

Here's a sample list of Jamma compatible motherboard setups with seperate mobo + cartridge based software to run:

* Taito G-Net mobo with Taito G-Card cartridges

* Seibu Kaihatsu's SP1 mobo with SP1 game carts such as Viper Phase 1, Raiden Fighters series, Senkyu (aka Battle Balls in the USA).

* Sega Titan ST-V mobo with ST-V carts -- uses an CR-2032 coin-type battery to save high scores and keep real time clock/calendar stats

* Sega Naomi mobo with GD-Rom drive interface and some other necessary components to get it up and running -- uses both Naomi carts and GD-Rom discs + security key dongle

* Taito Type X mobo with Type X game HDD + USB-based security dongle key

* Capcom CPS2 mobo with board "A+B" set

* Neo-Geo MVS mobo with MVS game carts -- has built-in back-up battery for saving of high scores, game settings, real time clock/ calendar etc.

* Seta's Aleck64 mobo with Aleck64-based game carts (basically an N64 powered arcade mobo setup)

* SSV mobo (Sammy, Seta, and Visco joint venture to produce their own mobo setup for the arcades) with top layer board is the mobo portion whilst the bottom board is the actual game itself.

--------------------------

Some arcade PCBs combine both the actual mobo and game Rom(s) into a single printed circuit board (i.e. Seibu Kaihatsu's Raiden, Raiden II and Raiden DX PCBs series) so there's no need for seperate mobo & cart setup.

PC Engine Fan X! ^_~

[tendollarbanana]

That sounds awesome! So am I correct that if i have, say, a cps2 motherboard then I just need different carts/cards to switch out to play different games?

[PC Engine Fan X!]

Yep, that's correct...you're starting to get the hang of it now. ^_~

[tendollarbanana]

one last question before i venture off on my own...is there any good way to find out what mobo gauntlet legends uses? like a website that catalogs this type of thing?

[caldwert]

www.klov.com is a good resource. As is www.system16.com . It appears that Gauntlet Legends runs on the Atari Vegas hardware. Pretty sure that System 16 site will tell you what else is on that hardware. Where in Missouri are you? I'm in St. Louis. I think you said you were down in Springfield.

[tendollarbanana]

Yep, from Springfield. Wish I would have been able to make it to the shmeet in the Columbia area, but I had to run a smash bros tournament at work that day. Thanks for the links caldwert, proving very helpful!

http://www.klov.com/game_detail.php?game_id=7924

That is the machine we have at work, so I'll need to hunt down that Jamma conversion kit to get it running, say, TMNT IV?

[mrtie]

Not really assuming the the first 2 controls use standard layout and the 2 are on a a kick harness it should literally be as easy as unplug power, JAMMA harness, and kicks, remove the board, then put the new one and plug it in.

JAMMA is really just a big plug that carries power and controls into the board, and audio and video out of it.



That obviously a image for a video encoder, but that's the standard jamma pin out, I'm not certain but I'm pretty sure gauntlet has one of them then a small other piece of wiring that allows it to do 4 player.[/url]

[Low.Blow]

I believe gauntlet legends is a medium resolution game. Standard resolution jamma boards likely won't work in that cabinet unless the monitor in it supports multiple resolutions(unlikely?).