The Adventures of Optimus MAME
The story so far...
Joe and I bought an arcade cabinet last wednesday. It contained a crappy rip-off of Pac-man called "Crystal Castles," in which you had to guide D-list game character Bentley Bear to gather gems before other monsters did (oh, and the monsters could kill you, too). We played a few games of that and then decided to repurpose the entire machine.
There's a piece of software available called MAME, which stands for Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator. Basically, it allows you to run thousands of arcade games from a computer. So, we renamed Crystal Castles to Optimus MAME, and set to work - Joe handling the woodworking, while I'm building the software and working on the electronics and wiring. Also, his girlfriend Kristyn is a talented artist, so she'll be repainting the sides of the cabinet.
The software side of things...
Optimus MAME(OM) was originally going to be powered by a Gentoo linux distribution called "Lincade." Lincade looked pretty good; it was going to do everything I wanted for me, with a minimal amount of tweaking required to set the system up. The software side of developing OM was going to be a cinch.
Booted up Lincade the first time, and I was greeted by a loading screen: PC mode, or Arcade Cabinet mode. I went into PC mode to perform a basic set up of my hardware, and then rebooted into Cabinet mode, where I found all the colors of the rainbow output to my screen, and absolutely no interface.
It didn't work.
According to the documentation, a Matrox G400 graphics card would work best with the software, so I hunted on eBay and found one for a VERY reasonable $15 bucks (with shipping). That arrived yesterday, and I installed it today. I reinstalled Lincade, reconfigured the hardware, and...nothing. Same results. Bunch of colors and no actual menu.
So, it looks like I'll be jettisonning Lincade and throwing together my own version of Linux to get things rolling(imagine building your own version of Windows, SPECIFICALLY to play arcade games). After some initial research, it looks like Gentoo is the best springboard to go from (since I don't need to roll my own kernel) so it's off to learn how to build a Portage tree and get this sucker running.
FEATURES TO BE IMPLEMENTED:
-Accept coin input
-Accept a file to bypass coin input
-Implement AdvanceMENU to power both AdvanceMAME and MESS
-Output to a CRT VGA
SOFTWARE:
-Latest GENTOO linux
-Advance MAME
-Advance MESS
-Advance MENU
The hardware side of things...
The original cabinet contains a trackball and two Jump buttons for controlling D-list game character Bentley Bear. This just isn't big enough, so we're ripping the entire console out and replacing it with a custom-fashioned control deck suitable for 4 players. We're purchasing 4 joysticks and roughly 40 buttons (10 per player) and installing them ourselves, wiring them up to a PCB controller that the computer will be able to understand. Cupholders will also be present, since we expect heavy use during parties.
The original cabinet also has 2 coin slots and a coin box. We have the key for the slots, but the key for the box is MIA. We're probably going to have to drill through the lock and then replace it completely, in order to make sure we can access the change.
Two USB ports are going to be installed directly in the front for utility use.
We're replacing the screen that the unit comes with, with a 19" inch CRT VGA computer monitor. This will make hardware management easier, but still allow for upgrades later (say, when we get around to implementing Time Crisis controls).
That's all for now - I'll keep the updates coming as we go. Pictures are here, and constantly updated.
Joe and I bought an arcade cabinet last wednesday. It contained a crappy rip-off of Pac-man called "Crystal Castles," in which you had to guide D-list game character Bentley Bear to gather gems before other monsters did (oh, and the monsters could kill you, too). We played a few games of that and then decided to repurpose the entire machine.
There's a piece of software available called MAME, which stands for Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator. Basically, it allows you to run thousands of arcade games from a computer. So, we renamed Crystal Castles to Optimus MAME, and set to work - Joe handling the woodworking, while I'm building the software and working on the electronics and wiring. Also, his girlfriend Kristyn is a talented artist, so she'll be repainting the sides of the cabinet.
The software side of things...
Optimus MAME(OM) was originally going to be powered by a Gentoo linux distribution called "Lincade." Lincade looked pretty good; it was going to do everything I wanted for me, with a minimal amount of tweaking required to set the system up. The software side of developing OM was going to be a cinch.
Booted up Lincade the first time, and I was greeted by a loading screen: PC mode, or Arcade Cabinet mode. I went into PC mode to perform a basic set up of my hardware, and then rebooted into Cabinet mode, where I found all the colors of the rainbow output to my screen, and absolutely no interface.
It didn't work.
According to the documentation, a Matrox G400 graphics card would work best with the software, so I hunted on eBay and found one for a VERY reasonable $15 bucks (with shipping). That arrived yesterday, and I installed it today. I reinstalled Lincade, reconfigured the hardware, and...nothing. Same results. Bunch of colors and no actual menu.
So, it looks like I'll be jettisonning Lincade and throwing together my own version of Linux to get things rolling(imagine building your own version of Windows, SPECIFICALLY to play arcade games). After some initial research, it looks like Gentoo is the best springboard to go from (since I don't need to roll my own kernel) so it's off to learn how to build a Portage tree and get this sucker running.
FEATURES TO BE IMPLEMENTED:
-Accept coin input
-Accept a file to bypass coin input
-Implement AdvanceMENU to power both AdvanceMAME and MESS
-Output to a CRT VGA
SOFTWARE:
-Latest GENTOO linux
-Advance MAME
-Advance MESS
-Advance MENU
The hardware side of things...
The original cabinet contains a trackball and two Jump buttons for controlling D-list game character Bentley Bear. This just isn't big enough, so we're ripping the entire console out and replacing it with a custom-fashioned control deck suitable for 4 players. We're purchasing 4 joysticks and roughly 40 buttons (10 per player) and installing them ourselves, wiring them up to a PCB controller that the computer will be able to understand. Cupholders will also be present, since we expect heavy use during parties.
The original cabinet also has 2 coin slots and a coin box. We have the key for the slots, but the key for the box is MIA. We're probably going to have to drill through the lock and then replace it completely, in order to make sure we can access the change.
Two USB ports are going to be installed directly in the front for utility use.
We're replacing the screen that the unit comes with, with a 19" inch CRT VGA computer monitor. This will make hardware management easier, but still allow for upgrades later (say, when we get around to implementing Time Crisis controls).
That's all for now - I'll keep the updates coming as we go. Pictures are here, and constantly updated.