MAME cabinet, system upgrade part 2

On to some testing results with the MAME cabinet computer upgrade. The new hardware was almost a “no fit” inside the cabinet (silly considering the size of it!), but I got the hardware installed eventually. The coin return slot had to go, but it’s not like there was any actual use for it in the cabinet.

New computer installed!

MAME cabinet, system upgrade part 1

The Esprimo P5916

Heh, just a little over month gone by, since I announced the hardware of my MAME project complete and I already find myself working on it again. But.. as it happens, I managed to get my hands on a Core2Duo PC (E6320 CPU @ 1.86GHz) for next to nothing. Decent performance upgrade and possibly the end of motherboard-related-video-problems?? Sure, sign me up!

The PC I got is a Fujitsu Esprimo 5916 and summing up its specs, well.. Most importantly, the mobo has a serial port! Never thought I’d say this, but it’s actually a much needed legacy feature, as the spinner I have is built around a serial mouse. Little less upgrades this way, perhaps :).

MAME cabinet, end

About time to wrap this one up! Plenty of software config is still pending, but what the hell.. ;)

The completed cabinet feat. CD lamp :)

MAME cabinet, lightgun

Yet another long-pending post, so without further ado: Let’s pyssy!

Like I’ve stated on multiple posts (I think; too lazy to check through all of them), the main reason for using a CRT TV in my MAME cabinet was to allow playing light gun games. Unlike nowadays, back when I started the project there simply weren’t other alternatives for this type of game controller. If I was to start on a new cabinet right now, I’d definitely go for TFT and something like Aimtrak. But with the current project, thanks to “all the legacy”, CRT + GunCon2 is the way to go. Lucky for me, the legacy is not “too legacy”.. Despite GunCon2 is a discontinued product, it seems to have not discouraged hobbyist software development.

Whereas my original plan was to use a Playstation2 for lightgun games, much thanks to Acorn a Windows driver (called WinGun) exists for GunCon2. This driver allows using the gun as a HID pointer, in turn allowing use with MAME as well. Some configuration required of course (more about this in a bit). As the lightgun is now usable on both the PS2 and Windows, I figured why not make a permanent holster for it on the side of the cabinet :)

MAME cabinet, software

Finally dropping fiddling with the video hardware, I was able to move on to the actual emulator configuration. This task also swiftly turned out a far more bigger one than I had expected.  Maybe just a little bit of history repeating to make my day with this project? Whereas it seemed, at a glance, something in the lines of “install frontend + emulator + ROMs, do a bit of config“, actually getting down to it proved out more something like “install frontend and get stuck in a myriad of config options and fine-tuning“. Despite having worked on the configuration quite a lot, it’s still pretty much “in progress”. But since the cabinet is up and running, I figured I might just as well do this post. Nailing things down to the last bit of detail isn’t of importance here anyway.