Ok, so PlayerTwo is kind enough to donate 3 arcade cabinets. One is already gutted and I started to gut the second one today. We have a lot of the parts necessary to setup a MAME cabinet but there are still some we need.
We have almost all the parts necessary to make a MAME cabinet one of the first projects of the space that could be ready in time for the party and will be a good addition as well. Iāve built a MAME cabinet before and my electronic skills are pretty crappy. WIth that I feel that anybody can put these together and itās a good āstarterā project that is easy to show off.
Iām not too worried about getting some 8-ways but the J-Pac is a bit more expensive. Since we are dealing with real cabinets the JAMMA interface is much perfered to the I-Pac boards. I know originally we were going to raffle one of at the first party. Since money will probably be pretty tight the first month we might just want to build 1 box for the space to use first.
i have the PC ready to go and can bring it on tuesday.
i donāt mind kicking in some for the jpack. keeping it in the space is cool with me, though if we do that, we need to step up with something else for the raffle.
Yeah, Iām going to just buy at least one of them. Having this as a raffle could bring in more money than the cost of the J-Pacā¦IF we have enough ppl raffling.
I just donāt want to spend ādonationā money on just fun stuff because we still need to get a lock system (~$200) and insulation (~$500). Iām not sure how we decide what (how much) to spend for fundraisers.
I think one facet of this should be a budgetary evaluation. How much X will we have to provide at Y cost, and how many Z tickets/cups/whatever do we have to sell to break even, etc.
A few key items in both the raffle and the silent auction could be big draws, which will also drive the other moneymakers. I think it would be worthwhile to continue to pursue completing a cabinet just for the raffle.
Think of them as loss leaders in a retail sense; show up for the mame cabinet raffle, and then sell them hard on donated homebrew which makes us the best margin
I went for a jog to think it over and came to the same conclusion. I also think that maybe we should invest in a 3rd J-Pac to build the third cabinet. But have this one up for sale. Say $250 or more. It costs us around $75 bucks in new parts to get one up in running. So if we could sell them to members or whoever it could bring in enough profit to warrant the initial hit.
Personally I think paying $250 for a fully working mame cabinet with a JAMMA harness is a steal. I might donate the costs of 2 to start with. If I order them now we should have the parts for the first day we open so we can get started. Use the money we make from fundraisers to pay for the other two necessities then if we want we can pitch in some extra money for the 3rd cabinet.
Craig was cruisin' on the mame cab part-out, at the shop, today! A
bit more of that and you should have a viable pre-wired cabinet.
I went ahead and dug the third cab out of the back of the shop, rolled
it up front next to the others. It's identical to the other two
(JAMMA Dynamo 25" cab) and should be pretty well suited to the
purposes planned for it. It has the same lousy deer hunting game in
it as the one you were working on, today, Craig. It'll need to be
parted out, as well.
I undid some of the clearing done to make room for work on the cabs,
as Karl was delivering a truckload of office furniture to the P2
space. I just wanted to make sure he had enough room to move, place
and store the goods. He moved everything well out of the way which
should ensure work can continue on the cabs. If anyone else wants to
work on the cabs prior to the Hive move-in, just let me know and we'll
try to work something out and get you access to our space.
If anyone else has something that's gotta be moved now, before the
hackerspace is ready, we'll be happy to store it down in our space.
Pls don't hesitate to ask if there's anything we can do to help.
Just bought 2 J-Pac cards! Didnāt get the joysticks yetā¦ PlayerTwo, recommendation? The cards are being sent DHLā¦not sure when they will arrive but hopefully it will be by the 1st!
Oh and for the Mame menu system. PlayerTwo suggested HyperSpin (http://www.hyperspin-fe.com/) Which has a very nice interface. 2 issues I see with it are that it does not have source and it appears to only run on windows
For the box we are going to raffle off we could use HyperSpin but we need to put some version of windows on there. But for our space I would like to see an open source menu system that could run on any platform we chose. This way we can tie it into backend systems, etc. I have X config files for the Mame modelines I use on my home cabinet and I also have a custom menu system I wrote in C w/ the SDL libraries. It has mysql backend support and is themeable but not nearly as nice as HyperSpin.
So I was thinking about using the blender3d game engine instead. Blender (http://www.blender.org/) is a kick ass 3d tool that has a full blown game engine that is coded via Python. It can then generate executables that can run on any system. I know blender but not the game engine ā¦ yet But I was thinking that would be a good candidate for an open source collaborative project for the Hive as well.
Yep, my take is that HyperSpin is going to be best for the average
person's use. I'm pretty sure they use it in a couple of the
commercial multicade cabs. Our Global VR Classics is very likely
running some variant of HyperSpin and the current versions of
Ultracade appear to have a similar interface. I agree, completely,
that the hackerspace should have a hacked/homebrew/custom system
running in it. Wouldn't be a hackerspace if the resident arcade
cabinet wasn't continually being improved and enhanced! As a bonus,
we get to mess with some advanced Blender stuff? I'm definitely on
board with that!
I'll try to remember to snag a spare 80Gb drive from the shop so I can
deliver the arcade and laserdisc arcade roms, drive images and LD
dumps to you guys. It doesn't represent the absolute definitive
complete and current set but it's pretty close. I should be getting
my hands on some updates soon and will happily provide that when I get
it.
Happ is the definitive place for this stuff in the industry. They're
a pretty heavy OEM supplier. Likely they designed and manufactured
some of your favorite arcade controls from the past, as well. As far
as the specific stick goes, that's up to you. Check the price points
on these and get the best you can afford. I'm just sorry we don't
have any available to provide to the project.
