Just finsihed my mame cabinet

[Diverdown]

Cloning a HDD IS the way to go.... I have built 15 cabs now and the last 10 were done faster than the second 1 as i started afresh each time.


TINY XP BEAST edn is all I use now......

Marty, nice work mate.
I am glad you kept the control panel sensible. A lot of people seem to go for the "cram every fkn widget possible onto the control panel" approach. Trackballs, knobs, sliders, guns, wheels, 4 way, 8 way, whistles, etc.
99% of games need a pair of 8 way sticks and 3 buttons, some need 6, maximum.

For your Jukebox program, I use Arcade Jukebox.
Works nicely, very configurable.

I normally use Game Launcher for the MAME menu, it's full screen and can handle a rotated screen and is completely configurable as well. It's not easy to set up but when you get it right it is nice.

The other thing I like about Game Launcher is the fact that I can interface other emulators to it, NES, C64, Amiga, etc... So my MAME boxes have 5000 MAME games, around 30,000 commodore 64 games, etc etc etc..

What I have done is made one mame machine with all the software set up, then the next machine gets a cloned hard drive with new motherboard drivers.
I have built 9 MAME cabinets now and they just keep getting better each time.

My next step is to dump the bloated XP and run a version of TinyXP so it boots up quick.
Can you give me any info here???
What sort of boot times does your machine have, shut down??
Any problems running tinyxp??

[biggeorge]

Shit man. 15 cabinets.

That trumps my effort.

Once you've built 2 or 3 you start to get real good at it though, eh.

I wrote up a little tute on Aussie Arcade about some of the tricks i've learned about building these machines. Worth a read, but if you can contribute then feel free.