Posted by JP4 on 26, 2000 at 4:43 AM:
In Reply to: You guys are freaking INSANE!!!! posted by CaVol on 25, 2000 at 9:10 AM:
Wow, so my wife ISN'T the only person who thought that I was a nut!
Man, I remember blindly stumbling across the first website of someone who had built his own cabinet, and then eventually finding this site. I am totally with you: I was so blown away with MAME when I first discovered that a few years ago, and that feeling intensified itself 100x when the gears started turning about builing my own cabinet! From the time that I conceived it until the time that I finished it, I was a man posessed. Literally! I think that I can safely speak for most everyone here at BYOAC when I say "Welcome"! It IS unbelievable, ain't it?
So on to your questions:
I built my own cab, so I would recommend it. It does offer the most flexibility.
As far as the control panel goes, you'll basically want to design it so that you can play the games that are your favorite games comfortably. This seems like a simple enough concept, but just make sure that you know what's the most important to you personally. Control panel design is probably the most "personalized" part of the cabinet. There isn't any clear-cut "right" and "wrong"; it's all about what will feel right to YOU. You already mentioned games like Tron and Marble Madness, so keep those in your head when you’re designing the control panel. It also sounds like you want to be able to play the driving games too though, huh? If you’re looking to add a steering wheel, you might want to do swappable control panels (ala Roswell 88201 and Mr. Salty’s cabinets), since a steering wheel requires an awful lot of space. Either that, or you'll have to be pretty clever about how you can mount the steering wheel so that you can reach it without it totally being in the way of your other sticks and buttons.
Yeah, you'll definitely want two 8-way sticks...at least if you’re a Robotron / Crazy Climber fan. Unfortunately, none of the sticks from Happs will let you switch between 8-way and 4-way control "on the fly"; they all require some disassembly to do it. I personally don't have any big problem playing 4-way games like Pac Man, Donkey Kong, etc. with my 8-way sticks, but if it's THAT important to you, you might want to mount a 4-way stick on your panel somewhere. BTW, I have two Happ Super Joysticks in 8-way mode, and they're great.
Don't most steering wheels plug into the PC's joystick port? I don't own one, so I’m not sure. I do have a trackball that plugs into the PS/2 port, and Windows treats it as my mouse. I also have a spinner plugged into COM1, and Windows treats it as a (secondary) "serial mouse". So it is possible to have two "mouse-like" items plugged in without any kind of switch.
A fast PII or K6 will suit you just fine, especially if you're more interested in running the "classics". I just have a Pentium 200 MMX, and it runs all of the classics without a problem. It chugs somewhat on the late-80s games like 720 (and it REALLY chugs on Mortal Kombat), so a PII / K6 should be just fine for ya. To my knowledge, there aren't any motherboards that are made specifically for this kind of thing. That's the whole beauty of this: it IS just a normal PC running the show.
The Wells-Gardner monitors from Happ ARE genuine arcade monitors, so you have that added layer of "authenticity" by using one. However, if you do decide to build your own cabinet, you'll have to figure out a way to mount it in your cabinet. Bear in mind that these monitors don't have any kind of chassis. Here's your dilemma though: the W-G doesn't handle displaying Windows very well. If your PC only boots up in DOS, you'll be okay, but I personally found that to be too limiting. If you boot up in straight DOS, you'll have to find and load all of the DOS drivers for all of your PC's components. And if you want to network the PC up, or if you want to use a USB interface for your controls, you're in for a rougher time. However, a lot of people who use the W-G monitors love them, so there you go. I guess you'll just have to decide what's important to you.
Whew! So that's that. Good luck on your venture, CaVol! And I have to admit that this board community is far and away the friendliest that I have ever encountered on the internet, so please feel free to post any questions that you might have and we'll do what we can to help you out! If there's anything that I can answer for you, feel free to drop me an e-mail too.
-JP4