Classicamiga Forum Retro Edition
1 2
Thread: A dedicated emulation system
Harrison 23:41 3rd January 2007
How many of you have a dedicated emulation system at home setup with all of the best emulators and rom collections so that all the greatest games are ready and waiting for you to play them?

I know that DC has one, and I do too. I was wondering if anyone else also has one.

Have you ever been tempted to build your own arcade machine? A MAME cabinet. Getting hold of an old real arcade machine and refurbishing it and converting it over to run with a PC inside, or building one from scratch?
[Reply]
AlexJ 09:41 4th January 2007
Working on it at the moment, not too sure about putting it in a cabinet yet for space reasons, but want to get a machine set up that will be primarily for emulation and have a hard disk full of classic games to play.
[Reply]
Demon Cleaner 11:09 4th January 2007
Yep, I still have my barebone with all my emulation, Competition Pro stick and my X-Arcade. I use it mostly for updating though, but if I really need it, I know that it's there

I will post a screenshot here of my desktop, so people can see what is installed, though only showing the icons on the desktop of emulators that actually are running, not what's ALL installed.

I would like to have a cabinet, already thought of buying one through XGaming, but shipping from the US to Europe?? I cannot built one by myself, I don't have the ability to.

But as I already mentioned, I would need some spare space at my home to install one, and for which use? Probably none. But as we are a bit the same Harrison, you understand what I mean
[Reply]
LowercaseE 12:25 4th January 2007
I wouldn't mind having one system strictly for games, but I just don't have the money or space to do it at the moment. My current PC has plenty of space on it though and I have lots of full ROM sets loaded: Amiga, SNES, NES, Genesis, Atari, Commodore 64, TG16, etc.
[Reply]
Harrison 12:39 4th January 2007
Having the space to situate an arcade cabinet is definitely the biggest problem. That is why I dismantled my self built cabinet a couple of years ago. It was huge and used up a lot of space. It ended up being the garage unused and eventually I dismantled it completely.

I am hoping to find the time to build a new smaller one at some point this year. The biggest difference will be to use an LCD instead of a CRT monitor. This has the disadvantage that my lightgun won't work any longer, but it's a small price to pay for the amount of room saved and there are not that many lightgun games for the PC or in MAME. I can always hook the gun up to a different system with a CRT when I wish to play those.

When I eventually get round to begin making the new system I will document the build and post it's progress on the forum as I go. This time I want to really take time to make it as nice as I can and even include a working coin slot with it's coin return buttons linked to the MAME add coin function. I also want to design full cabinet art transfers and get them professionally printed out to stick to the sides of the cabinet. I didn't try that with my original cabinet, that was just spray painted black and made from particle board. I also want to make it out of decent materials this time and will utilise my parents large garage to build it (if they will let me, or when they are on holiday ).

As for using the system, I would definitely get a lot of use out of it. Having a dedicated MAME cabinet definitely makes you play the games a lot more than just having the emulators on a normal PC.
[Reply]
Demon Cleaner 13:49 4th January 2007
Originally Posted by :
Having a dedicated MAME cabinet definitely makes you play the games a lot more than just having the emulators on a normal PC.
That's indeed true.
[Reply]
Toasty667 15:37 2nd May 2007
Well at the risk of cutting my fingers off no. I'm good and using machines and not making them. It would be absolutely fantastic and I'd love it but I dont have the knowledge or space sadly. But yes I'd defo like one.
[Reply]
Submeg 22:20 2nd May 2007
Its not too hard, you just need a massive screen, a few HDs, and a graphics card that will run the older stuff of the PS2. thats about it.
[Reply]
Harrison 22:48 2nd May 2007
Well, building a full MAME cabinet is a bit harder than that, but the whole point of such a project is the fun had building it, and then the great enjoyment you have playing it.

Equally, just building a computer system is great fun, well I think it is anyway.
[Reply]
Submeg 03:11 3rd May 2007
Lol, I was being general Harrison lol
[Reply]
Tags:Array
1 2
Up