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PostPosted: Wed Jan 31, 2001 7:57 pm 
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Joined: Sun Jan 21, 2001 1:00 am
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Location: Lacey, WA
I’m building a dedicated cabinet

I have few questions and <b>I’d like your thoughts</b>:

Which is easiest? A TV or arcade monitor? I know little of arcade monitors. How do I convert the signal from a LD player to a monitor? Mounting a TV tube is likely to be a hassle. Any thoughts on this?

Since I’m working with a cabinet, I’m trying to <i>avoid</i> using a computer monitor, keyboard, and mouse. What is the easiest way of avoiding messing with Windows dialogs, using the mouse, and starting Daphne? Just put a shortcut in the startup group like : daphne.exe –autostart -preset 0 -sony -port 1

If I do this, what is the easiest way of shutting down Windows?

I’ve thought of using an IPAC to handle all the GUI key needs (especially ALT-F4). I think this will work.
http://www.spaceinvaders.uk.com/

I suppose I can just stop the LD player and power off all components. Next time I boot the computer, it will run a scandisk, but at least I shouldn’t have to mess with the keyboard, right?

Any comments are appreciated


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PostPosted: Fri Feb 09, 2001 9:41 am 
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Suggestions:

Why do you need to run Windows in a dedicated cabinet config? Do you really need all the Windows fluff, keyboard, mouse, etc? Your best bet is to create a bootable Linux distro CD with your kernel, boot scripts, and minimal utils and X configuration that boots Daphne from your .xinitrc (and uses no hard drive). You can put items like /tmp, /root, and parts of /var into a RAMfs so the system can be shut down simply by cycling the power (and avoid a fsck on reboot). The only input device you'll need is your gaming controlls (jamma, etc.). No keyboard or mouse required. You won't be able to tell the difference from a real cabinet, esp. since the LD into stuff will play during your boot.

I have an ISO I can get to you if interested. I'm working on a combination Daphne/Mame tabletop unit that uses a standard TV, LDP-2000, motherboard, and USB game controls. I'm going to put all this stuff up on my website (including the ISO) when I get some time, but I've been *very* busy lately, so Daphne and 'nix have been on the back burner for awhile.

I'm using a standard TV as the Monitor connected to a Matrox G400 with a Rainbow Runner-G series video capture card. The logic behind this is I have the laserdisc player connected to one input on the capture card and my SLI setup (for Glide MAME/MESS) connected to the second input (using TV-out on the Voodoo). The TV output on the G400 feeds the TV directly. With some clever scripting and a little C code, the user is presented with a menu on bootup with a list of games. When switching between a laser game or a MAME/MESS game, the transition is tranparent. The user can't distinguish that different emulators/hardware is being utilized. As far as the user is concerned, Dragon's Lair and SA appears on the menu as any other game like NeoGeo, etc. The process is very seamless.

The more elegant solution would be to design a relay network to do the video switching rather than use a capture card, but I'm not an electronics buff :p...


Last edited by Axatax on Fri Feb 09, 2001 2:50 am, edited 1 time in total.

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PostPosted: Fri Feb 09, 2001 6:07 pm 
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What version of MAME are you using, and what kind of video settings to get the output to the TV right? I'm planning on building a MAME cabinet later this year, and I'm very interested in what options are available to me. I've never been able to get MAME to output to a TV very well (I've used both a Voodoo3 and a GTS2 with video output).


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PostPosted: Fri Feb 09, 2001 7:26 pm 
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I use XMAME/XMESS 0.37b10.1 with the Glide Renderer. I have a Glide patch and kernel module that programs the Chrontel 7001 video encoder thus enabling S-VIDEO and composite output and disables bilinear filtering in the Glide renderer. I use an Obsidian X-24 which is essentially two V2's sandwiched on a single card and has _excellent_ TV output (much better IMHO, than the V3's). Similar boards are used in arcade hardware, and these can be had for cheap nowawadys on E-bay (I think I pad ~$75 new about a year ago, IIRC, they cost ~$800 when new!). The module _should_ work with the Canopus cards since they use the same Chrontel chip, but I think the i2c buses are slightly different on the cards.

Now, before you laugh at the idea of using a V2, remember - we're not using the 3D stuff (well, _technically_ we are). The advantage to using the Glide renderer is that you don't need X - *at all* to run MAME/MESS. You can run the emulator directory from the commandline which is wonderful for an ersatz "embedded" type of application (more room for ROMS on your CD). Oh, and did I mention it's nearly twice as fast as the OpenGL renderer :wink:

Using a BP6 with two Cel 366's @ 550 (but you really don't need SMP) for this setup, all but the very newest of games run at seemingly native speed. The Glide renderer is quite amazing. The NEO GEO emulation is absolutely perfect.

What I'm working on now is an ISO that is a complete bootable Linux distro on CD. The idea is that you don't need to know jack about Linux, just boot the CD and you're off using your multi-emulator menu driven setup. Ideally, I'd like to make an optional patch for Daphne that (sorry Matt!) removes the dependance on a GUI so that we don't need to incorporate X into the distro. As far as I can see, the only need for graphics in the Linux version is the scoreboard. What I'd like to do is make a "generic" scoreboard for the cabinet project that can work with various games (but this is something down the road).

EDIT: I failed Inglish class.


Last edited by Axatax on Fri Feb 09, 2001 12:32 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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PostPosted: Fri Feb 09, 2001 8:09 pm 
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daphne doesn't rely on X or Win32, it relies on SDL.
SDL _can_ be made to use svgalib as well as a bunch of other schlop that I'm not even aware of. There might even be a "text mode" that simulates graphics. This is one of the reasons I liked SDL--because it doesn't require X.

As for disabling the bilinear filtering... why didn't I think of that! hehe.. that's a good idea.


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PostPosted: Tue Sep 25, 2001 8:46 pm 
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check out my post in the "Wish List" section under the thread "Auto Shutdown". You can automatically run daphne and then shutdown windows with a little fancy batch filke tweaking. However, Linux is by far the superior choice for this endeavor.

As for TV vs. Monitor, if your cab already has a monitor, (and possibly an NTSC card), I'd just use it. It'll look alot more like it did originally. However, you'll get a shaper picture using a TV tube.

I used an original monitor in my cab until it blew one day (err... until I blew it up... hehe...) so I replaced it with a TV.

Basically, use what you have. If you don't have anything, use an old TV. It's easier, and looks better, but isn't as authentic.


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 Post subject: Re:
PostPosted: Sat Mar 11, 2017 5:50 pm 
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[quote="Axatax"]Suggestions:

I have an ISO I can get to you if interested. I'm working on a combination Daphne/Mame tabletop unit that uses a standard TV, LDP-2000, motherboard, and USB game controls. I'm going to put all this stuff up on my website (including the ISO) when I get some time, but I've been *very* busy lately, so Daphne and 'nix have been on the back burner for awhile.[/quote]


Any chance you have that iso? I'm currently running mint 17.3 and I don't have enough linux skills to accomplish that. I've tried several things but no luck...

thanks
-rj


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 Post subject: Re: Dedicated Cabinet Questions
PostPosted: Sat Aug 24, 2019 11:45 pm 
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Yea, I'd love that iso as well. I'm trying to do this exact thing, and if I can ditch windows, even better! I have a raspberry pi, running retropie, doing this exact thing, but I can't figure out for the life of me how to do it on a Linux distro. Tho, truth be told, I'm not very Linux savvy either.


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