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Early planning of a MAME Cabinet - Looking for opinions
#379880 - 12/03/18 05:45 AM
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Early next year, depending on how my bonus looks, I may be looking into getting/building a MAME cabinet.
I did some looking around and there are just so many options that it's hard to tell what's good and what isn't.
What are things I should be looking at (or not looking at?)
I'd like it to be as classic looking as possible with 2 players (I don't see the need for a 4-player system, I don't have that many friends  ) It would mostly be played as a single-player unit I would imagine.
For cost-savings sake, would like to go LCD vs. trying to go with a CRT that would have an unknown lifespan and harder to replace. So the cabinet should be able to mount an LCD well enough.
And the buttons/joystick should feel like a joystick and buttons, but that's probably normal for this sort of thing. I know there are a few competing technologies on how these are made, but don't know which is which or which is "better".
And for the main computer running everything, I've never owned a mini-computer (RaspberryPi, etc.) so would like some suggestions on if something like that would be good or if I should find a $300 refurb from MicroCenter?
And finally, what do you expect a budget for a project like this may cost total (including cabinet, controllers, CPU, monitor, etc.)
Thanks for any help. I've been a MAME fan for over 20 years and been keeping the old a.b.e.mame newsgroup alive, so I figured it's finally time to have something built to be more authentic than gaming on my PC.
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| R. Belmont |
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Cuckoo for IGAvania
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Reged: 09/21/03
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Posts: 9711
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Loc: ECV-197 The Orville
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Re: Early planning of a MAME Cabinet - Looking for opinions
[Re: Llaffer]
#379936 - 12/07/18 05:03 PM
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For the PC, MAMEdev's current recommended sweet spot is a refurb (or self-built if you have that skill) 4th-generation or later Core i5 at 3.1/3.2 GHz (4-digit part number starting with 4 or higher). That will run almost everything in MAME quite efficiently, and you'll be able to use Windows, your favorite frontend, and up to date MAME. None of those things are options on a Raspberry Pi; you'll get one frontend and MAME from 16 years ago.
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Re: Early planning of a MAME Cabinet - Looking for opinions
[Re: R. Belmont]
#379965 - 12/10/18 12:08 AM
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I can build a PC. I'm currently running a 7th gen i7 that I built last spring and built the last 4 machines that I've used as my primary system.
So sounds like going with a Pi or other micro-PC is out and a traditional PC is in, knowing it can be about 5 years old in terms or processor.
Now to find info about what to look for in the cabinet and controls.
Thanks.
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Re: Early planning of a MAME Cabinet - Looking for opinions
[Re: Llaffer]
#380168 - 12/19/18 08:24 PM
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Here's another question: Has anyone made a cabinet that allows the monitor to be easily rotated?
So if I play a newer game that works best in landscape mode, I can set it up like a normal monitor, but if I want to play a legacy game that would have the screen mounted as portrait, I can just rotate it to get the best use of the screen space?
How complicated would that be?
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Re: Early planning of a MAME Cabinet - Looking for opinions
[Re: R. Belmont]
#381049 - 02/11/19 03:28 AM
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Going back to this for a bit, In addition to that Baby Pac-Man machine from the other thread, I did order the RecRoomMaster's arcade cabinet kit with 4-player joysticks so that will be coming in next month.
Looking at what computer to put in it, I'll check Microcenter refurbs for a processor near what you suggested.
Will I need any video card? Or will standard video from the motherboard work for MAME? And if I need a video card, is there a similar "recommended low-end" like you gave me for what to look for in a CPU?
Thanks.
EDIT: After looking a bit on their web site, I may be going with this one unless someone finds some huge argument against it. It's about $50 more than the "4th gen i5" I was looking at. https://www.microcenter.com/product/0503304/pavilion-570-p047c-desktop-computer-refurbished
Edited by Llaffer (02/11/19 03:53 AM)
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Re: Early planning of a MAME Cabinet - Looking for opinions
[Re: Llaffer]
#381051 - 02/11/19 05:15 AM
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Re: Early planning of a MAME Cabinet - Looking for opinions
[Re: joey35car]
#381054 - 02/11/19 04:04 PM
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Thanks. But with what I'm going with supporting such a large monitor, I don't think the need to rotate exists to maximize space really exists anymore. There is still plenty of vertical space to play games larger than they were on their original 19" monitors.
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Re: Early planning of a MAME Cabinet - Looking for opinions
[Re: Llaffer]
#381058 - 02/12/19 01:08 AM
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> Going back to this for a bit, In addition to that Baby Pac-Man machine from the other
> thread, I did order the RecRoomMaster's arcade cabinet kit with 4-player joysticks so
> that will be coming in next month.
>
> Looking at what computer to put in it, I'll check Microcenter refurbs for a processor
> near what you suggested.
>
> Will I need any video card? Or will standard video from the motherboard work for
> MAME? And if I need a video card, is there a similar "recommended low-end" like you
> gave me for what to look for in a CPU?
>
> Thanks.
>
> EDIT: After looking a bit on their web site, I may be going with this one unless
> someone finds some huge argument against it. It's about $50 more than the "4th gen
> i5" I was looking at.
> https://www.microcenter.com/product/0503304/pavilion-570-p047c-desktop-computer-refurbished
Modern integrated video should be fine for MAME, I assume integrated chipsets have come a long way since my old (2010) Sempron 140 / nForce 360a combo, which doesn't even work in MAME unless I force OpenGL! The last version of MAME which supported that chipset was 0.179.
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Re: Early planning of a MAME Cabinet - Looking for opinions
[Re: Heihachi_73]
#381059 - 02/12/19 01:55 AM
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The PC I was looking at has NVIDIA GeForce Gt 730, so should be better than whatever "Intel Integrated Graphics" is. I ordered this PC and will pick it up tonight. Then I have a month to prepare everything before the kit arrives.
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Re: Early planning of a MAME Cabinet - Looking for opinions
[Re: Llaffer]
#382538 - 05/23/19 05:03 AM
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Any update on your build?
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Re: Early planning of a MAME Cabinet - Looking for opinions
[Re: Heihachi_73]
#383008 - 07/08/19 06:10 PM
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I have a 2011-era laptop with Optimus graphics (Intel+nVidia both) and I was actually shocked at the time I got it that MAME ran just fine with D3D compositing using the Intel GPU. (You can probably easily find my posts on here from that time, in fact.)
It's actually been fine for about ten years now, believe it or not.
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Try checking the MAME manual at http://docs.mamedev.org
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Re: Early planning of a MAME Cabinet - Looking for opinions
[Re: R. Belmont]
#383009 - 07/08/19 06:15 PM
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I know I'm responding to something a bit old here, but I need to caveat this for those not in the know:
I'd keep away from even a fifth or sixth generation i5 at this point unless you're willing to purposefully shut off certain Spectre-mitigations (which is itself somewhat dangerous) because the performance hit is pretty insane.
Spectre and its boatload of offspring are a real source of frustration and will continue to be so for a good long while. I won't be surprised if the entire existing i3/i5/i7/i9 line to this point ends up being a dead end like the Pentium 3 just because of the Spectre side effects being too severe.
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Try checking the MAME manual at http://docs.mamedev.org
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Re: Early planning of a MAME Cabinet - Looking for opinions
[Re: joey35car]
#383204 - 08/04/19 11:22 PM
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I would have replied earlier but didn't see this until now.
I ordered the RecRoomMasters 32" Pro Upright Xtension Arcade 4-player Ultimate Edition back in February and was delivered in March.
My kids and I had assembled it in about 4-5 hours total over two nights.
For the podcast/YouTube channel that I co-host I ended up recording the entire build process and put it up in real-time over 10 videos (each about 20-25 min in length) and one video that was sped up 32x to fit in about a 6 min time span.
The playlist to that is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZPb8TCDtG0&list=PLyID_QWdPfjNnW9NrzUxehIRI1zsYAtZq with the final video the time-lapse video.
I've not been able to get track-ball games to work with it, but everything else that I've tried works great. (track-ball does work as a mouse when out of MAME).
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Re: Early planning of a MAME Cabinet - Looking for opinions
[Re: R. Belmont]
#384059 - 10/25/19 06:37 PM
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Hey R. Belmont.
I’m wondering if this “sweetspot” is still valid give the date of this post (Dec of last year). I’m in a situation where I’m looking for a desktop that can play every emulator (if that’s possible -so don’t need it to be too modern). Robbert mentioned what he uses for his Dev system which is an i7/2600 with windows 7. It’s also recommended to use a 64 bit system (according to the mame manual). I was wondering if you had any input. If my tech can’t help me with this project, then I’m just going to make a shopping list from what’s recommended here and put it together myself if I have to.
Just checking on options before I start purchasing stuff.
Thanks for reading.
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...Nothing like Green Monochrome
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) It would mostly be played as a single-player unit I would imagine. 
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