ArPiCade?

bones3010

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Now that this has been around a little while, I'm wondering what people think of it. Is it worth the near-$150? How difficult is it to get up and running well in a JAMMA cabinet? I know there's a lengthy "help" thread on here but is there a simple tutorial post somewhere showing how to get a RPi programmed and running with it?

I only recently decided to get a Pi3 in order to play around with emulation, but if you're a bit slow with programming like I am it's been slow-going (ultimately, I'd love to set one of these up as a handheld, but that's another subject). Anyway, having one of these JAMMA converters would be pretty awesome if the set up was simple enough for thick-headed people like me to figure out...
 
I'm talking about the JAMMA adapter itself, which I seen for sale for $144. But yeah, closer to $200 after the Pi and whatever other accessories you need...
 
I really like the board for what it is. You basically get the easiest MAME set up for a JAMMA wired cabinet. Now, I don't have any idea of the ease of programming it, I have people for that :D Here's my set up in a Cosmic Alien cabinet that I call "Cosmic Capers Space Shooter Multigame":

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I've got about 70 space shooters like Cosmic Alien, Galaxian, Galaga, Space Invaders, etc. to play around with. I designed the frontend and chose the games and behrmr programmed the SD card for me.
 
Now that this has been around a little while, I'm wondering what people think of it. Is it worth the near-$150? How difficult is it to get up and running well in a JAMMA cabinet? I know there's a lengthy "help" thread on here but is there a simple tutorial post somewhere showing how to get a RPi programmed and running with it?

I only recently decided to get a Pi3 in order to play around with emulation, but if you're a bit slow with programming like I am it's been slow-going (ultimately, I'd love to set one of these up as a handheld, but that's another subject). Anyway, having one of these JAMMA converters would be pretty awesome if the set up was simple enough for thick-headed people like me to figure out...


Never understood why people would waste their time with a pi + all the materials needed to get it running on a standard CGA-Jamma setup when you can get the much better results buying or recycling an old PC, modified ATI/AMD drivers and a J-pac.

An old second hand dual core PC can handle about 90% of the mame titles with little effort. The Pi setups out there rely on using both mame and final burn to run games and only about 60% of mame titles run decently enough to play. That doesn't even involve the headache of some of these stupid retropi builds available online which are a complete mess.
 
Never understood why people would waste their time with a pi + all the materials needed to get it running on a standard CGA-Jamma setup when you can get the much better results buying or recycling an old PC, modified ATI/AMD drivers and a J-pac.

An old second hand dual core PC can handle about 90% of the mame titles with little effort. The Pi setups out there rely on using both mame and final burn to run games and only about 60% of mame titles run decently enough to play. That doesn't even involve the headache of some of these stupid retropi builds available online which are a complete mess.

Winner winner chicken dinner
 
Never understood why people would waste their time with a pi + all the materials needed to get it running on a standard CGA-Jamma setup when you can get the much better results buying or recycling an old PC, modified ATI/AMD drivers and a J-pac.

An old second hand dual core PC can handle about 90% of the mame titles with little effort. The Pi setups out there rely on using both mame and final burn to run games and only about 60% of mame titles run decently enough to play. That doesn't even involve the headache of some of these stupid retropi builds available online which are a complete mess.

For me, the headache is configuring all the MAME stuff needed. Wiping an old computer, hiding start up screens, setting up the frontend, wiring up J-pac, getting the drivers, etc. None of that is needed for the arpicade. Just plug and play in a JAMMA cab. Once I degaussed my monitor, it looks great on the 19" Kortek that's in there.

I cannot speak for what it entails to get the SD card set up how I wanted it, but I don't think behrmr had to go through too much trouble. I also can't speak about how "newer" games run, as I had no interest in that. I held to the space shooter theme and almost all of those games are late 70's/early 80's games.
 
For me, the headache is configuring all the MAME stuff needed. Wiping an old computer, hiding start up screens, setting up the frontend, wiring up J-pac, getting the drivers, etc. None of that is needed for the arpicade. Just plug and play in a JAMMA cab. Once I degaussed my monitor, it looks great on the 19" Kortek that's in there.

I cannot speak for what it entails to get the SD card set up how I wanted it, but I don't think behrmr had to go through too much trouble. I also can't speak about how "newer" games run, as I had no interest in that. I held to the space shooter theme and almost all of those games are late 70's/early 80's games.

There's a ton of that involved even if you build your own pi setup from scratch. There are tons of pre-built setups for PC's already including setups for hyperspin, attract mode etc so to be brutally blunt, there is almost zero excuse at this point for finishing up the final steps required. 99.9% of these Pi builds you see are based off of each-other and they all share some of the same stupidities.

Wrong games, wrong game names, bugs galore, non-minted romsets, running old-inaccurate roms and even having porn hacks instead of the original title are just some of the norms of these dumb builds. I would know, I just helped mint a new Pi setup for a friend and it's clear that all of these guys simply steal from each other and just alter the artwork and maybe add a system or two to their builds and claim it as new and unique.

I didn't even bring up the fact that both mame and FB are not even remotely optimized for ARM based processors. Running mame on the pi is about as optimal as running modern day (post 0.106 core) mame on a pentiumIII processor.

Oh and let's not forget that you won't be getting anything even close to pixel perfection using these external hdmi to CGA converters that these bogus addon boards for the pi offer.

This isn't a rant. It's just being brutally real about the pitfalls of these systems. The list of cons are larger than the pros.
 
For me, the headache is configuring all the MAME stuff needed. Wiping an old computer, hiding start up screens, setting up the frontend, wiring up J-pac, getting the drivers, etc. None of that is needed for the arpicade. Just plug and play in a JAMMA cab. Once I degaussed my monitor, it looks great on the 19" Kortek that's in there.

I cannot speak for what it entails to get the SD card set up how I wanted it, but I don't think behrmr had to go through too much trouble. I also can't speak about how "newer" games run, as I had no interest in that. I held to the space shooter theme and almost all of those games are late 70's/early 80's games.

This is pretty much what I see as being the appeal for a Pi versus doing a complete PC MAME setup. I've never done the PC route, simply because the process seemed way too convoluted, whereas the Pi (by itself, minus this JAMMA route) wasn't bad at all once I found the right tutorial. Obviously if I cared about being pixel-perfect I'd just stick with an original board set or at least one of the better emulation boards, but in a case like this where I'm only looking to run more basic games on a single machine, "good enough" will suffice. I'm just wondering if the setup itself is easy enough that I could pull it off or if I'd need to hire out for it like you did. I'd prefer to learn it myself if it isn't too complicated. I'm great with hardware, but programming and software is way over my head. :-/
 
There's a ton of that involved even if you build your own pi setup from scratch. There are tons of pre-built setups for PC's already including setups for hyperspin, attract mode etc so to be brutally blunt, there is almost zero excuse at this point for finishing up the final steps required. 99.9% of these Pi builds you see are based off of each-other and they all share some of the same stupidities.

Wrong games, wrong game names, bugs galore, non-minted romsets, running old-inaccurate roms and even having porn hacks instead of the original title are just some of the norms of these dumb builds. I would know, I just helped mint a new Pi setup for a friend and it's clear that all of these guys simply steal from each other and just alter the artwork and maybe add a system or two to their builds and claim it as new and unique.

I didn't even bring up the fact that both mame and FB are not even remotely optimized for ARM based processors. Running mame on the pi is about as optimal as running modern day (post 0.106 core) mame on a pentiumIII processor.

Oh and let's not forget that you won't be getting anything even close to pixel perfection using these external hdmi to CGA converters that these bogus addon boards for the pi offer.

This isn't a rant. It's just being brutally real about the pitfalls of these systems. The list of cons are larger than the pros.

Oh, don't get me wrong, I wouldn't build my own pi set up from scratch either. You know WAY more than me, that's obvious. That's part of my problem, I suppose. I have zero desire to dig around to find all that is needed for a good set up, zero desire to mod an old computer, etc. I wanted a board that plugged into a JAMMA wired cab with a 19" CRT. That's what I got with the arpicade.
 
the quality of the arpicade is very good.
whether you like the convenience vs drawbacks of using a pi is another matter.

I have the arpicade image but I'm not really understanding all the tech talk about how to interact with it in the other thread.

Which leaves me to stick with Retropie UI which is the "easiest" of the setups to interact with and update...such as things like turning on wifi so you can transfer new games. I went through a rampage of trying all the pi game UIs I could find and they all had nuances and differences. found one i kinda liked but it was made in France, so all the help content was in French. he he he.

I have real pcbs, multipcbs, mame with pc and pi's in a variety of cabs. If you want convenience and don't mind some inherent lag then the Pi is decent fun for the cost.
slower movement games like galaxian don't really make the lag obvious...but faster games like SMB on NES, you can feel it and it affects the control.

Gotta say though.....after messing with Pi I have run across thousands of games I never even knew about from the oldest up to ps1/n64 era. And for replay value, there are many console games that are more fun than the arcade quarter munchers. Pi lets you go beyond just arcade genre on your machine. that's pretty good fun for the cost.
 
The only reason I don't have one of these already is because I have two functioning MAME cabinets (one horizontal one vertical) and I don't see a need for me PERSONALLY.

They seem like they'd be fun to tinker with though.
 
It is a great fix it solution for a "dedicated" cabinet that is in need of having a board repaired or replaced. Hate to have a dedicated game with an out of order sign on it.

Brian
 
It is a great fix it solution for a "dedicated" cabinet that is in need of having a board repaired or replaced. Hate to have a dedicated game with an out of order sign on it.

Brian

if all you want to do is run one game and its available on the older mame 0.106 core, why not use an old pc with DOS?

no windows
no need for a frontend
can find a compatible dos pc for free
can use the 15khz driver for dos
etc
 
if all you want to do is run one game and its available on the older mame 0.106 core, why not use an old pc with DOS?

no windows
no need for a frontend
can find a compatible dos pc for free
can use the 15khz driver for dos
etc

Most people don't want to mess with DOS let alone driver compatibility and configuration. And you still need to wire the PC up to your cabinet so j-pac/i-pac/some kbd encoder will be needed as well. Add a custom VGA breakout cable for your CGA monitor too. There are other things to consider like powering it and turning it on and off.

Assuming the ROM works with the Arpicade you need to add that one ROM (maybe a bios) and tweak one line in a script to bypass the FE. No wiring needed if JAMMA. Plug it in and play your game.

Again, there are compromises, but potentially a lot less work.
 
Sounds like a decent compromise for one of these, especially if you've already got a Pi around like I do. Now I just need to save some pennies to get the ArPiCade... A few too many hobbies and a bit too much spending on toys lately. ;-)
 
Most people don't want to mess with DOS let alone driver compatibility and configuration. And you still need to wire the PC up to your cabinet so j-pac/i-pac/some kbd encoder will be needed as well. Add a custom VGA breakout cable for your CGA monitor too. There are other things to consider like powering it and turning it on and off.

Assuming the ROM works with the Arpicade you need to add that one ROM (maybe a bios) and tweak one line in a script to bypass the FE. No wiring needed if JAMMA. Plug it in and play your game.

Again, there are compromises, but potentially a lot less work.


Don't want to mess with DOS but encourage others to edit some script lines to bypass a frontend? Really?

Unless you plan on using the GPIO of the pi, you need to have your own encoder and/or usb joystick. As for the rest, these pi-cade addons are nothing more than gio breakouts with some wonky hdmi to cga converter and a single asic amp. You can get virtually the same effect by using a Jpac + AMD card or onboard AMD northbridge.

Again, the pi as a definitive solution that some people claim is nonsense. It's hardly a viable solution.
 
I JUST setup a Arpicade (yesterday) into my Taito Egret 29.

A quick install (Pi to board, install SD card).

Worked great out of the box.

This was actually replacing a PC setup. I've had a MAME setup in this machine since the late 90s. It used to be DOS, then I used GroovyArcade (which worked great BTW).

My reason for the Arpicade? I'm going to add in a 6 in 1 switcher for a couple PCBs. I wanted to clean up the power supply and run everything off the PSU/JAMMA.

I tested a few games last night. Even Dragon's Lair. That worked great! This is my only MAME ,machine in my lineup. I can't fit any more games in my basement so this is my catchall machine.
 
Unless you plan on using the GPIO of the pi, you need to have your own encoder and/or usb joystick.

I don't know what this is, but I'm using a 2-way Wico leaf joystick and it works flawlessly. No encoder, no usb joystick. Unless behrmr did something on the SD card that I'm unaware of...
 
Don't want to mess with DOS but encourage others to edit some script lines to bypass a frontend? Really?

Unless you plan on using the GPIO of the pi, you need to have your own encoder and/or usb joystick. As for the rest, these pi-cade addons are nothing more than gio breakouts with some wonky hdmi to cga converter and a single asic amp. You can get virtually the same effect by using a Jpac + AMD card or onboard AMD northbridge.

Again, the pi as a definitive solution that some people claim is nonsense. It's hardly a viable solution.

Don, it sounds like you have ulterior motives. You really come across as an unpleasant person who is desperate to push people away from a Rasberry Pi. You have expressed your opinion, perhaps it is time for you to move on to another thread.
 
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