Building a MAME, just one question???

[CarruthersIII]

Well i am starting to work on a MAME system. It will be placed in a Killer Instinct cabinet. I am pulling out the CRT monitor that it came with a putting in a LCD screen, along with replacing the normal speakers for better quality ones. The system itself will be run off of a Intel Dual Core 2.8Ghz, 3Gb of ram and a 500Gb hard drive, Not to sure on the video card yet. Running Windows XP Media Center 32 bit and using Hyperspin as my FE(front-end). Along with the MAME, i will also have a Nintendo, Super Nintendo, Nintendo 64, Gameboy Advanced, Sega Genisis, Sega Dreamcast, A Pc engine for playing pc Games with the discs loading automatically, a Jukebox, and of course Future Pinball.

Going with a Bio-hazard/green/black/silver theme. Will post up pics and info as i go. If you have any ideas let me know and i might include them in the build.

Well for now i can't afford the lcd, so i was wondering how would convert the molex of the CRT monitor to a VGA video card?? That is the only part i am stuck on.

Joey III

P.S. I will be posting pics tomorrow when my batteries charge. 

[rickhunter]

Depending on the type of monitor and which frequencies it supports there are various options.  You need to know what type of monitor you have on your cabinet (Horizontal frequency, is it 15.75 khz or 31.5 khz?)

This is a good place for this kind of stuff.  I should mention that if you don't have a keyboard encoder you will have issues with certain games in input reponse times and accuracy. (look at the Ipac product)

http://www.ultimarc.com/avgainst.html

You may just want to buy the Jamma adapter (JPac) and save yourself a lot of time.

[CarruthersIII]

I already have an Ipac2 ordered lol 

I was thinking i could use this item, what do you think?

http://www.ultimarc.com/vidamp.html

[rickhunter]

I would hook up the monitor without it first to see if it's compatible.  If its too dim, then you'll need this amplifier, otherwise, it would be an unneeded part.

[CarruthersIII]

ok great I will try that. Have some12" green Cold Cathode tubes coming next week. 

Just took some pics, will have them up soon.

[CarruthersIII]

The paint i am using is a house paint, its specially blended and called Galaxy Depths. Waiting for a price quote on The Marquee & CPO.


Going with a Green and black theme, was testing it out inside.

I want to keep the frame to the coin door but fill it with Plexiglas and mount some hardware in there.

I ran out of paint.

All gutted for the paint.

The bolting hardware, painted biohazard green. With a half finished Xbox Mod.

[rickhunter]

My XBOX360 Elite just RROD'd last night while my son was playing Night at the Museum Battle at the Smithsonian.  That's my 2nd one to go.  I've only had it for 4 months, should know better than buying a refurb X360.  Mind you they don't get a lot of play, my gamer profile is like 6,000 and It's been accumulating since 2006.

[CarruthersIII]

The X360 case you see there is actually my first one. It RROD about 3 months ago  But it was a fist generation, built date was like 3 months after the first release. So all in all not to bad, when i got the rings i decided i was going to mod the case. And maybe when i get a new one just plop the Main Board from it in my Modded case. What do you think about the cabinet for MAME so far?

Joey III

[rickhunter]

Cabinet looks good.  Are you going to put the computer inside a case, or are you mounting the mainboard, etc on the cabinet itself?

[CarruthersIII]

Not to sure yet, i was thinking i would mount it all inside the cabinet. Why would it work better one way or the other? I am a lil worried that putting it in the cabinet will cause a heat problem, not have fans right on the componets and such.

[rickhunter]

Keep in mind you can probably use lower power components to avoid issues with heat.  You do not need any kind of powerful 3d Graphics cards as mame makes no use of GPU's.  Also what kind of dual core processor are you using, you might want to consider a low power based unit. Then you can just get a couple of 120MM fans and put them on top of the components and you should get good to go.

[StatFreak]

My XBOX360 Elite just RROD'd last night while my son was playing Night at the Museum Battle at the Smithsonian.  That's my 2nd one to go.  I've only had it for 4 months, should know better than buying a refurb X360.  Mind you they don't get a lot of play, my gamer profile is like 6,000 and It's been accumulating since 2006.

No endorsement of any kind here, but this guy seems to know what he's doing.
Use your own judgment as to whether you believe in his fix or not.

<ADD> He has older videos posted that demonstrate the earlier attempts that he says weren't as long lasting. These were his most current posts.

This is the repair:
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/r7jGWIF244M&rel=0" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/r7jGWIF244M&rel=0</a>

This is an explanation of his solution:
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/DFnQWfyWqAI&rel=0" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/DFnQWfyWqAI&rel=0</a>

[rickhunter]

I've done that on my 1st Xbox.  It's called the Xclamp mod, where you replace the x-clamps for 8 screws with plastic and aluminum washers.  He adds an aluminum piece to force more pressure on the die.  But I guarantee those will eventually come back too.  The problem is in the solder of the FCBGA chips.  It becomes too brittle and eventually, no matter how much pressure you put on the chip, it will just not make contact with the mainboard.  This is a major design flaw of the XBOX360 as it gets too hot for the type of thermal management they use.  They really needed to have the active  solution right on-top of the heatsinks as opposed to depending on unevenly distributed forced airflow.  The first time I did the xclamp mod, the unit worked fine for 8 months, but then it came back.  The longer term fix, is to re-flow the BGA chip into the mainboard, but it's not something we can do at home.  Of course if you would have used a socketed chip, this would not have been an issue, but it would raise manufacturing costs, so they just went the cheaper route.  The current hardware revision includes chips that generate less heat (65nm process), let's hope those can last longer than the typical 1 1/2 year or so average of regular use.

[CarruthersIII]

I personally think that Microsoft knew when they originally put out the Xbox that it would have problems. I mean have the ever heard of quality control. Shouldent they have put it threw some endurance tests or something. All in all none of the RROD fixs actually last. They better step there game up with the Xbox 540.

As for the CPU for my mame, i plan on using a Intel Core2 Duo E7500 Wolfdale 2.93GHz, its a 75w, 45nm chip.

Joey III

[StatFreak]

We don't call the company MicroS#^T for nothing!

Back in 1999 I pulled an all-nighter trying to get a MS#^t program that analyzed web logs and produced statistical information to work. It took dozens of hours to read all of the logs, and then I spent the night trying to get meaningful data (reports, graphs) from the POS. In addition to bringing our test server to its knees, it never did work, and I ended up finding a program online that I was able to download directly, install in minutes, use to create meaningful reports in less than an hour, and it cost only a few hundred bucks. My superiors were happy.

A few months later, we had a full-time Microsoft consultant on board and I asked him about the product. "Oh, yeah," he laughed, "we knew that that program didn't function properly when we released it, but we needed to get the suite out."

I think I quoted Fred Flintstone: "RackenStatuFrackinM#$^#^ "

BTW, our consultant was a great guy and extremely knowledgeable. Hey, if you're a big company, buy millions of dollars of MS software, and pay them $350-$500/hr @ 40 hours a week for almost two years to have a principle consultant on hand, you actually HAVE their ear. We were actually able to make suggestions and get real changes made to MS software, and we got to be beta testers for Windows2000 Server.

Of course, the rest of us ordinary slobs out in the real world couldn't get the time of day from MS if Big Ben fell on our heads.

[CaptainHappy]

Stat,

So, when you mentioned POS, you didn't mean Point Of Sale, did you!

CaptainHappy

[StatFreak]

Stat,

So, when you mentioned POS, you didn't mean Point Of Sale, did you!

CaptainHappy

Nope. I meant the compliment to what is coming out of toppers these days.

StatFreak

[brichter]

Don't blame Microsoft for an industry-wide practice...

Ask me about my MacBook Pro that is on it's second logic board and needs a third due to the bad VRAM Apple chose to use. Looks like I'll go the aftermarket reman board this time as Apple wants $1200 to fix it.

[StatFreak]

Don't blame Microsoft for an industry-wide practice...

Ask me about my MacBook Pro that is on it's second logic board and needs a third due to the bad VRAM Apple chose to use. Looks like I'll go the aftermarket reman board this time as Apple wants $1200 to fix it.

WOW! A Heretic!
I thought Apple made all Mac users sign a legal agreement to publicly offer nothing but praise of any Apple product that they bought or owned, or ever would own.

[brichter]

Don't blame Microsoft for an industry-wide practice...

Ask me about my MacBook Pro that is on it's second logic board and needs a third due to the bad VRAM Apple chose to use. Looks like I'll go the aftermarket reman board this time as Apple wants $1200 to fix it.

WOW! A Heretic!
I thought Apple made all Mac users sign a legal agreement to publicly offer nothing but praise of any Apple product that they bought or owned, or ever would own.

I used a fake name when I signed it...

[channelmaniac]

I think I quoted Fred Flintstone: "RackenStatuFrackinM#$^#^ "

Your cartoon experience (lack of!) is showing...

[StatFreak]

I think I quoted Fred Flintstone: "RackenStatuFrackinM#$^#^ "

Your cartoon experience (lack of!) is showing...

Yosemite Sam does mumble-swear, and I may have been a bit off in spelling/pronunciation, but Fred does say that many times in the series.

<EDIT> Well, there are surprisingly few Flintstones videos on Youtube or in a Google search. I guess they get policed. I have the DVDs but no way to extract a clip for upload. Oh well.

[CarruthersIII]

1200 bucks ha???  That sucks, so i guess i will just talk crap about all manufactures since most only care about profit not quality.

[CarruthersIII]

Seems like a dead thread now ha...   

I will post some pictures up tonight when i get home from my Computer class, I have most of the paint done and have the monitor back in the game, currently working on getting the adheasive from the old CPO off  Such a pain.

[jay]

Computer class.... Teaching or taking ?