How is J-PAC PC to Jamma Interface?...

[PC Engine Fan X!]

I was wondering what are your opinions about using an Ultimarc "J-PAC PC to Jamma Interface for Mame" on a PC tower?

I already have two portable Superguns + two RGB monitors but no interface to hook up a PC tower to a Supergun setup.

Can you play other PC arcade emulation programs such as Raine besides Mame using a J-PAC device?

Raine will run arcade roms at about 59 frames on a P233 with 128Megs of RAM using Win98SE OS, however running MAME32 with the same setup, the framerate drops down to 15 frames per second.

What is the minimum PC spec requirements to get MAME32 to run at 60 frames per second?

PC Engine Fan X! ^_~

[system11]

I have a J-PAC, works fine - built in video booster too, although you will need a graphics card that can be locked to low resolution modes, or an arcadevga card (which is one).

[RGC]

.

[Damocles]

What is the minimum PC spec requirements to get MAME32 to run at 60 frames per second?

Anyone clued up enough to answer this yet? I recently slang together some ancient bits of technology to make a Mame-dedicated system.

PIII750 CPU
256MB PC100
Voodoo3 PCI (tried various drivers)
WinXP

I have set mame32 to auto frame adjust, and it seems to struggle with most games. Set the prog to draw every frame and games like DDP, Batrider, etc run at about 65% speed. While I could potentially achieve some greatscores with this setup, I'd rather play it at a solid 60fps.

I'm wondering if I should just ditch this rig altogether and buy a new mobo/cpu/mem bundle (1.8GB AMD athlons go for relatively little these days). OR, should I upgrade the memory of this heap of junk to 1GB, try a different version of mame, different OS, improved VGA card, or what. Any ideas?

It depends on the game. You're obviously not going to get anywhere near 60fps on stuff like Cruise'n USA. It also depends on your version of Mame. Generally, the newer versions of Mame will be slower due to an increase in emulation accuracy.

The machine you're running now will work for most shooters if you have set it up correctly. I used to run Mame on a P3 766 just fine. The graphics card won't make a bit of difference. My suggestion: Ditch Mame32 and go for an optimised command-line version. More memory would be good, too.

[RGC]

.

[TalkingOctopus]

What is the minimum PC spec requirements to get MAME32 to run at 60 frames per second?

Anyone clued up enough to answer this yet? I recently slang together some ancient bits of technology to make a Mame-dedicated system.

PIII750 CPU
256MB PC100
Voodoo3 PCI (tried various drivers)
WinXP

I have set mame32 to auto frame adjust, and it seems to struggle with most games. Set the prog to draw every frame and games like DDP, Batrider, etc run at about 65% speed. While I could potentially achieve some greatscores with this setup, I'd rather play it at a solid 60fps.

I'm wondering if I should just ditch this rig altogether and buy a new mobo/cpu/mem bundle (1.8GB AMD athlons go for relatively little these days). OR, should I upgrade the memory of this heap of junk to 1GB, try a different version of mame, different OS, improved VGA card, or what. Any ideas?

I use command line mame 0.66 w/ my PIII 733 on windows XP in my arcade. It runs most games pretty well. The older versions of MAME are faster.

[RGC]

.

[ktownhero]

I use command line mame 0.66 w/ my PIII 733 on windows XP in my arcade. It runs most games pretty well. The older versions of MAME are faster.

What's the deal with the command line version then? The thing I like about Mame32 is you can set it to startup with windows, then access games from a list using your keyboard/controller. IIRC, the command line version involves entering various commands (duh!) to load the rom, set the joypad = on, fullscreen = on, etc - in other words, a long winded way of having a quick blast on a range of games.

Is there a scrollable rom selection menu in 0.66? (command line version)

EDIT: OK, so setting up a config file is the way to go...hmmz

You can have a command line version start with the pc as well. I mean, remember, all "Windows" is, is a graphical interface for the command line itself!

[RGC]

.

[Damocles]

Hell...get the best of both world. Use command-line Mame but get a frontend. Many allow you to automatically run Mame upon startup.

http://www.zophar.net/frontends/mame.html

[antron]

The J-Pac is great. It properly merges the syncs to composite. Twisting them together doesn't work on all monitors (but it does on most in my experience) The keyboard encoder/wedge is very fast as far as I can tell. Ultimarc claims their method is the best.

MAMEWah is an excellent windows frontend (supports non-interlaced low resolutions) But I still havn't found a good 15kHz frontend with rotate.

Has anyone gotten windows to display at 15kHz without an ArcadeVGA? Like with Powerstrip or the sort?

On systems that I have built that just use a regular video card I always just went with DOS. But now a friend wants windows but doesn't want to shell out for an ArcadeVGA.

Also, I still want to know more about D's linux setup.

[Hulkcore]

Am I understanding correctly that this makes it possible to run a PC with MAME and a JAMMA board using the same monitor/controls? Or am I totally wrong? I've been trying to decide between possibly doing a MAME cab or a JAMMA cab, but would love to be able to do both in one if at all possible.

[Dave_K.]

Yes thats exactly what its for, to connect a PC to a standard jamma cab. You still need a video card supporting 15khz though like the ArcadeVGA.

[PC Engine Fan X!]

Am I understanding correctly that this makes it possible to run a PC with MAME and a JAMMA board using the same monitor/controls? Or am I totally wrong? I've been trying to decide between possibly doing a MAME cab or a JAMMA cab, but would love to be able to do both in one if at all possible.

Yes, it's possible to hook up both a PC with J-PAC with ArcadeVGA card setup along with your favorite Jamma arcade PCB inside an arcade cabinet by the use of a dual or tri-splitter Jamma harness setup. A simple multiple button press on the arcade control panel swtiches from one to the other desired game setup provided that your cabinet has ample enough room for everything, of course... ^_~

PC Engine Fan X! ^_~

[Hulkcore]

I will definitely do that if/when I get/make a cab. So how does it work for the controls? I mean as far as using the same stick for both the pc and the jamma. Does the J-PAC convert the controls to PC then?

[Dave_K.]

Yes, the JPAC maps jamma joystick/buttons into PC keyboard input.

[Hulkcore]

Damn, that's awesome. I'll definitely have to do this sometime. Thanks for the clarifications.