ArcadeSD or MAME?

ieure

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So I'm considering dropping a MultiJAMMA + multigame into this Klax cab I got today. I've never done this, so I'm looking for feedback on my options. I'm considering:

  • ArcadeSD. Looks nice, plug-n-play, but pricey and doesn't have a lot of supported games.
  • MAME with a Mini-ITX & J-PAC interface. Around half the cost of an ArcadeSD, but I'd have to do a bit of work to get it up and running. My main concern is that I have no idea how the J-PAC video looks on an arcade monitor.
  • MAME with a Mini-ITX, J-PAC, and ArcadeVGA. Still cheaper than ArcadeSD, and should be perfect video. Looks like it's Windows-only, though. I'm not a fan, and I'd have to pick up a copy of XP or something, which would make it as expensive (or more) than an ArcadeSD, but still be more work. Hmm. But I would still have, I think, more games.
It also looks like there were motherboards with built-in JAMMA interfaces made at one point, though all the references I see are around five years old, so I don't know if they're still available.

Thoughts?
 
I had a jpac and arcade VGA running on a neo geo machine. For some reason the computer does not seem to be loading properly. Mame can be a pain in the butt. For simplicity I would just get the jamma multigame.
 
Go with MAME and Mala or HyperSPin or some other kind of front-end if you decide to go MAME.

Jamma multigames are a no-no.
 
All 3 are good.
I thought ArcadeSD is compatible with most games on Mame.

Not even close, unless the game list is way out of date. It's not a terrible selection, and covers most of the popular games, but it's nowhere near the many thousands of games MAME plays.
 
19 in 1 seems decent to me... i think mame is always better than a bootleg board but theres nothing wrong with the multiboards either for people who want something easy ie: a jamma board with the classics.

even the old versions of mame have thousands of games.
 
i started with 19-1, got the arcadeSD, and recently got a Jpac to learn about MAME.

play wise and choice, MAME. but it's a lot of tinkering.
arcadeSD will be good once Robotron is fixed but it's not fun at all.
been playing MAME a lot because i can pick whatever games I want and they play really nicely with new MAME. but it's still driven from my Microsoft PC so it's always something little to mess with....

nothing at all wrong with 19-1. it's cheap and easy and games play well enough to have a heck of a lot of fun.
 
So I'm considering dropping a MultiJAMMA + multigame into this Klax cab I got today. I've never done this, so I'm looking for feedback on my options. I'm considering:

  • ArcadeSD. Looks nice, plug-n-play, but pricey and doesn't have a lot of supported games.
  • MAME with a Mini-ITX & J-PAC interface. Around half the cost of an ArcadeSD, but I'd have to do a bit of work to get it up and running. My main concern is that I have no idea how the J-PAC video looks on an arcade monitor.
  • MAME with a Mini-ITX, J-PAC, and ArcadeVGA. Still cheaper than ArcadeSD, and should be perfect video. Looks like it's Windows-only, though. I'm not a fan, and I'd have to pick up a copy of XP or something, which would make it as expensive (or more) than an ArcadeSD, but still be more work. Hmm. But I would still have, I think, more games.

A J-Pac simply passes along the video signal from the source, so it has no effect of how it will look on an arcade monitor. To make sure the Mame games look the same on an arcade monitor as the original gameboard does, you have to disable all of the default processing it uses to make it viewable on a PC monitor (such as hardware stretching). So if you're playing e.g. Defender, you want it to simply output an unmolested 292 x 240 @ 60 Hz signal, just as the original gameboard did. This is easy enough to do, but the problem is, such a signal is in the 15 KHz range, and PC video cards don't tend to natively support anything below VGA resolutions (31 KHz). This is where an ArcadeVGA comes into play.

The ArcadeVGA is a normal video card with custom firmware that contains a wide variety of 15 KHz arcade resolutions, which allows you to select the native resolution in MAME for each game you want to play, and the ArcadeVGA can output it properly to the monitor. If you don't have an ArcadeVGA there are software solutions you can try (such as PowerStrip or especially, Soft-15khz, which is written specifically for this task). However, not all video cards/chipset will work with software solutions, so whatever Mini-ITX board you choose, you'd want to find out find out if software solutions work with its onboard graphics chipset (or you could find an an old PCI video card that will work with a software solution).

If you like to tinker (not just with software, but with wiring and such too; because you'll have to do things like rigging up cabinet speakers to the PC's sound card with a Mame cabinet), Mame is very versatile (extensive configurability) and of course, supports pretty much every old arcade game that anyone actually remembers (and thousands that no one remembers). An ArcadeSD on the other hand, is plug and play, just like a normal JAMMA board in a JAMMA cabinet. That is its only advantage over a Mame setup that I can see, aside from perhaps technical advantages with regard to things like accuracy of the emulation, input lag, etc.
 
FYI, you may need to modify some things with the CP wiring (or config buttons in MAME)...

Klax doesn't have P1 and P2 start buttons wired to the CP. It uses Button1 for both the action and start button.
 
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