Building a MAME Machine

[Tempest]

I'm finally going to get off my butt and build a MAME machine. However I need to plan out exactly what I'm going to put in it. I was hoping I could get everyone's opinion on this:

 

Cabinet: Going to be a custom cab built by a friend. So thankfully I don't have to worry about finding a decent used cab in good shape.

 

CPU: I'm still debating about what kind of CPU to use. I'm mostly going to be playing older games (79-90), but I'd hate to skimp on the CPU and not be able to play newer stuff as it becomes available. I think you can get a semi-fast motherboard, video card, and sound card fairly cheaply. This brings me to my next quandary:

 

Video Card: What kind of video card is best for a MAME machine? I haven't looked at video cards in over 8 years so I have no idea what's good and what's not. I imagine it wouldn't have to be a high end card, it's not like I'm playing Doom 3 on it.

 

Monitor: This is the part I'm having the most problems with. I'm not sure which route I want to go. You can either use a TV, a computer monitor, or an arcade monitor. TV's are cheapest, but have the worst picture, computer monitors are the most expensive but have the highest resolution picture, while arcade monitors are somewhat expensive but are the closest to the true arcade experience (obviously).

 

I was looking over this review of the Wells Gardner D9200 (http://www.retroblast.com/reviews/d9200-1.html). It's not all that expensive (I think the 27 inch model is only $470) and seems to be the best option. Does anyone have any experience with this particular monitor? Are there better options?

 

This leads to another issue though. How big does the monitor need to be to play vertical orientation games on a monitor in the horizontal position? Unless I want to build some complicated monitor rotating device, the monitor is going to but mounted in one position (horizontal). This means that many older games like Donkey Kong, Frogger, Galaga, etc. which use a vertical monitor are going to look squished unless the monitor is big enough. Does anyone know exactly how big it needs to be before squishing isn’t a problem?

 

Controls: Another tough issue. I was thinking about keeping it simple with two joysticks (4-way to 8-way convertible) with 6 buttons each, a trackball, and a spinner. This will allow me to play 95% of all games. Later I may get more complex by making a separate panel I can swap in that has specialty controllers like guns, a steering wheel, a Tron joystick, those odd rotating joysticks that Ikari Warriors used, etc.

 

 

So what does everyone think? I'd like to get everyone's input on this so I can make the best MAME machine ever.

 

Tempest

[Tempest]

I just found a video card called ArcadeVGA. It seems to be the optimal solution (especially if I go with the WG D9200): http://www.retroblast.com/reviews/avga.html

 

Tempest

[Starman]

What I found is that Gorf is the CPU killer. Maybe there are others, but Gorf was always the game that never played smoothly until I got a higher end machine. Someone else should really chime in on this because we really should have an emulation litmus test for people that want to build MAME machines.

 

My current PC is 2.53 GHz. Probably more than what you need. I'd say you're safe with a 2.0 GHz P4 (or AMD equivalent, blah blah blah).

 

For a video card, you want something with fast response and driver updates. I'd say a used 3dfx is out of the question. Any ATI Radeon 7000 series or nVidia GeForce 4 series is good enough. I like to have room to breathe.

 

The controller would probably be an X-Arcade, but I personally have a problem with it since it doesn't have an analog wheel for Tron. You could get a Griffin USB controller for that if you wanted to. Tron's important to me so if I were to ever build a MAME machine (which might be soon, I have a PC sitting around doing nothing) I'd have to factor that in.

 

Mike

[Tempest]

I think I found a better monitor choice: http://www.retroblast.com/reviews/betson.html

 

This seems to be the new 'monitor of choice'. Looks nice.

 

Tempest

[Stingray]

I'm told that 27 inch is the best size monitor to play vertical games that were originally on a 19 inch monitor. Apparantly the size is exactly the same as the original on a 27. I'm using a 19 inch horizontal on mine. Vertical games are somewhat small on it, but I've never gotten any complaints.

 

-S

[Lord Helmet]

What I found is that Gorf is the CPU killer. Maybe there are others, but Gorf was always the game that never played smoothly until I got a higher end machine. Someone else should really chime in on this because we really should have an emulation litmus test for people that want to build MAME machines.

 

Gorf kills my machine also, as far as the classic games go. Major slowdown and frame skipping.

[shep]

I have an old 600 mhz Celeron box that I plan on turning into a Mame box for the older games up to 90s. I'm gonna get a decent video card (that isn't too powerful for the CPU) since it only has onboard, and upgrade the RAM from 64 to 256. Its a decent machine and should perform just fine. However, I am not sure about ever building a cabinent. I barley know how to use a screwdriver. Possibly my father could help but he isn't really a carpenter.

[AtariYoungin]

I've got a mame cabinet...the PC is a 2800+ with 256 meg of ram. Mame does not use the videocard for much at all, only hardware stretching and certain DirectX functions. So any crappy 8 meg card will do the job. Unless your hooking up to an Arcade monitor. Then should use an ArcadeVGA for best results. www.arcadecontrols.com is compleatly dedicated to this topic. Should post it there

[Blackjack]

Couple of Notes:

 

1) As above poster noted, an expensive video card for Mame is a waste of money. Mame doesn't use them to make the games play faster. But I would still buy a "decent" one, you might want to use Zinc or some other emulator that does use them for acceleration. Something along the lines of a GeForce 4 w/64 megs maybe. Very Cheap and will do the job and then some. DO NOT use Intel "Extreme" graphics! Mame has had a lot of problems with intel graphics lately. Stick w/ nVidia or Ati.

 

2) There is no such thing as "enough" cpu power for Mame. To play the "upcoming" games as well as some of the existing ones, you'll need a cpu that doesn't exist yet (8 ghz or so!) So you'll have to decide for yourself how important these games are to you. I'm running an amd64 3200 and my wife an amd64 2800. They both play about 99% of the games perfectly. Some exceptions are:

Killer Instinct 2 is a bit slow

Cruisn USA and Cruisin World are unplayable

The Tekkens are too slow as well

A couple more recent lightgun games (can't remember which ones)

 

3) The Control Panel - I can without reservation give Slik Stik my highest recommendation! I've got a Slik Stik Classic with the extra pinball buttons, Yes it was expensive, but not much more than you would pay building it yourself, and it just plain ROCKS. I've never regretted spending a months rent on it and just the fact that Mame has a preset config file for the SS panel is worth the extra money alone.

If I could improve on the SS Classic at all it would be the 4 way joy, but I can live with it.

 

My 2 cents

[Blackjack]

Just in case you're not familiar with Slik Stik

 

http://www.slikstik.com/classfeatures.htm