Hacking (sort of) My Ultracade ... Need Help

MRDC

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I recently bought an Ultracade machine from an arcade store going out of business. The 86 games on it were okay but I want more and I had a MAME machine lined up to buy but the dude sold it to someone else ... I will stop there since that is still a touchy subject.

Anyway, I have researched a lot about the ultracade and I see that Foley is in legal trouble, games are hard to find, the Joshua system is tough to hack, etc. This morning I found here some info about a guy adding a hard drive selector so his unit could run either the arcade legends or mame. I would like to do this but I need help. The forum a found this topic didn't have enough information on the directions for me to do it on my own. Well if someone understands this machine well enough to help me, I sure would appreciate your help. I also see that many of you hate these systems (more I am guessing due to Foley) but can you keep this thread on topic and not tell me to throw the system away, screw ultracade, etc. Thanks.

Here is the post I am referring to.
http://forums.arcade-museum.com/showthread.php?t=81766&highlight=ultracade
 
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I thought the directions we're pretty cut and dry, he added a selector switch in between the drive and the game, and then hooked up a second drive. No 'hacking' involved.
 
Not so cut and dry for a newbie like me. I will open up the ultracade to check around inside and then go back to those directions to see if I can make sense of them.
 
Not hard

Like he said, it has about 20 screws you have to remove to get to the cpu.
There is very tight space so You will have to get creative on how to get the selector in a usable spot. I took my front panel selector off, weaved it in a hole and peered out the front.

THen, once you have it in and setup your windows, I used xp shouldn't have but did. Takes more resources. This computer is very good for purpose but not for xp.

Then you have to monkey with the lpt settings in dos due to the vga. This is the only non- obvious thing. Foley told me it was in bios, and lpt setting. There are only 3 try it out. No hacking really involved other than taking the switch panel off.

Easy as pie.
 
Not all Ultracades are the same configuration nor do they have the same PC in them. There are at least 4 PC's that went into Ultracade.
 
Like he said, it has about 20 screws you have to remove to get to the cpu.
There is very tight space so You will have to get creative on how to get the selector in a usable spot. I took my front panel selector off, weaved it in a hole and peered out the front.

THen, once you have it in and setup your windows, I used xp shouldn't have but did. Takes more resources. This computer is very good for purpose but not for xp.

Then you have to monkey with the lpt settings in dos due to the vga. This is the only non- obvious thing. Foley told me it was in bios, and lpt setting. There are only 3 try it out. No hacking really involved other than taking the switch panel off.

Easy as pie.

It would be cool to see the pictures of your setup. I have a Arcade Legends maybe I will do something like this too!!
 
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