Homemade Multi PCB

ManiN

Member
Joined
Jul 31, 2009
Messages
727
Reaction score
7
Location
Washougal, Washington
Anybody ever thought about making one using PC components and MAME? I know that sounds like I'm asking simply about building a mame system, but I'll clarify in a system that doesn't have some windows based garbage with a keyboard and mouse hidden under the control panel. I mean something you wouldn't know it was MAME unless you were shown the inside of the cab. Has anyone dabled in dos based MAME that will run like a 48 in 1 type format? I would think it would be pretty cool to have many games and software on simply a thumb drive I could update etc. on my PC. Correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't you have to also buy the arcade 15hz video card? By the time you spend money on that, you might as well just buy a 48 in 1...

I've seen the D2k which has upgradable capabilities, but I guess I'm trying to 'emulate' that haha

Thoughts?
 
Well, this occurred to me recently: Asteroids boards are going for, what, over a hundred bucks now? jrok was able to sell his Multi-Williams board, which runs the code through a real processor, emulating only sound IIRC, for $150.

I've had a few friend who grew up on Robotron play on jrok's board and they could not tell the difference between it and their memories, both before I told them what board it used and after.

As boards get rarer, I'm thinking it would provide financial incentive for projects like the WMS to come to fruition.
 
advancecd is kinda what your looking for, i think. Basicly, its a super small version of linux that you burn to a cd, or hard drive, and it runs advmame and advmess (frontend). All via the cd. I think the whole install is like 40 megs before the roms are added, so you can set it up how you want it, tweak everything, burn it to cd, and then you only need a mobo and cd rom drive (or hd). No configuring or messing, or ugly windows to deal with.

The project is hosted at sourceforge with the advancemame stuff, and i think there's a forum at byoac as well.
 
advancecd is kinda what your looking for, i think. Basicly, its a super small version of linux that you burn to a cd, or hard drive, and it runs advmame and advmess (frontend). All via the cd. I think the whole install is like 40 megs before the roms are added, so you can set it up how you want it, tweak everything, burn it to cd, and then you only need a mobo and cd rom drive (or hd). No configuring or messing, or ugly windows to deal with.

The project is hosted at sourceforge with the advancemame stuff, and i think there's a forum at byoac as well.

Cool. So I already have lots of computer parts to build a setup, would just need an arcade CGA card right?

That's damn near the price of a multi board haha!
 
i just looked into it briefly, and i know very little about it. But, iirc, i think it has some form of soft 15khz built into it. You could always pick up a cheap computer monitor and relieve it of its case and use your standard onboard video.
Here's the link to it on sourceforge -
http://advancemame.sourceforge.net/cd-readme.html
 
AdvanceMame doesn't require an expensive ArcadeVGA card. It runs off Dos or Linux using really old (10+ year old) video cards that directly support most arcade video modes natively through adjusting the clock speed of the chipset. Since everything is processed at 1 to 1 pixel instead of all the fancy high res processing, you can do amazing things with even Celeron 300 Mhz processors and a 4 MB PCI video card. You can get hundreds of FPS out of Pac-Man. The drawback: configuring dos or linux, configuring the video output, etc.. And there is a slowdown in game boot time since things aren't run off 32 bit drivers. But it beats any of the lousy n-in-1 board emulations using really old Mame versions. However AdvanceMame stopped being updated about 3 years ago around build 110 when they rewrote the video subsystem in regular mame, so it won't have the new stuff but will have good versions of most of the classics.

It takes time but gives you an excellent result for virtually no cost.
 
AdvanceMame doesn't require an expensive ArcadeVGA card. It runs off Dos or Linux using really old (10+ year old) video cards that directly support most arcade video modes natively through adjusting the clock speed of the chipset. Since everything is processed at 1 to 1 pixel instead of all the fancy high res processing, you can do amazing things with even Celeron 300 Mhz processors and a 4 MB PCI video card. You can get hundreds of FPS out of Pac-Man. The drawback: configuring dos or linux, configuring the video output, etc.. And there is a slowdown in game boot time since things aren't run off 32 bit drivers. But it beats any of the lousy n-in-1 board emulations using really old Mame versions. However AdvanceMame stopped being updated about 3 years ago around build 110 when they rewrote the video subsystem in regular mame, so it won't have the new stuff but will have good versions of most of the classics.

It takes time but gives you an excellent result for virtually no cost.

Very cool! I think I may have to give this a shot! I guess the only remaining evil necessity would be the control interface.
 
Back
Top Bottom