Sycamore's New Computer

[vsp]

Originally posted by dave
<b>and you could do it for even cheaper!</b>

*WARNING: THREADJACKING IN PROGRESS*

Yep. A MAME cabinet wouldn't require much in the way of a video card or processor, since it doesn't involve anything in the way of 3D rendering or major polygon counts. Moderate RAM and a (by today's standards) small HD would do nicely. If I bought a cabinet that already had a decent mounted display (which most used cabinets do), I could use AdvanceMame to avoid buying a new monitor.

On the flip side, if I went with the monitor approach instead, it'd be easier to run _other_ emulators in the cabinet as well. Picture a batch file producing a startup menu like this:

1) MAME
2) NES
3) SNES
4) TurboGrafx/16 - PC-Engine
5) Vectrex
6) Atari 2600
7) DAPHNE (Dragon's Lair and other laserdisc games)
8) Visual Pinball
(etc.)

What's holding me up is the control panel and associated physical/electrical tinkering, which could easily end up costing more than the computer and cabinet combined.

Even the pre-packaged alternatives (like <a href="http://www.x-arcade.com/pc.shtml">the X-Arcade Two Player</a> model) are around $150, would need to be physically mounted on the face of the cabinet (making it unworkable for cocktail cabinets), and would miss out on many common game control schemes (trac-ball, Tempest spinner, Ikari Warriors rotary joystick, Tron/Gorf-style joystick w/trigger, steering wheel/lo-hi gearshift/analog pedals in some combination).

The D-I-Y approach can produce results <a href="http://www.oscarcontrols.com/controlpanels.htm">much</a><a href="http://www.arcadecontrols.com/arcade_brian.html"> cooler</a> than the basic two-joysticks-and-buttons config, but few are insane enough to put in the time and effort to build such a beast and then sell it to someone else...

Still... I look at projects like <a href="http://www.x-arcade.com/htm/cabinet.shtml">this</a>, and I can't help thinking that beating that price point _can't_ be that hard (especially since no TV or monitor is included for your $999).