HOW TO CONVERT A JAMMA CAB TO MAME- IN 100 STEPS!

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Update 20/12/2015

Dont bother reading this post and wasting hours of your life building on Windows XP.

Just read this and buy one ready made for you.

http://www.jammaplus.co.uk/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=68409&PN=1&title=jamma-multigame-board-alternatives

Then buy from 2human instead well worth the money and saves shit loads of hassle !

http://www.jammaplus.co.uk/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=70890&PN=1&title=2huwmans-mame-pcs-jamma-cab-ready

Updated July 2014

I thought I would add a mame pc to my existing cabinet that currently has a neo geo in it, sounded a simple idea at the time. After reading sharkfactors brilliant posting:
http://www.jammaplus.co.uk/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=22768&PID=452234#452234

 I decided to role my sleeves up.. Thanks for all the support. I hope this is a useful guide to others.
COSTS

Next time I will just buy a mame cabinet will be cheaper and less painful

Required:

Jamma switcher £50  from the US  http://www.jammaboards.com/

J-PAC  £55   (UK) If you have any mates that can run through their business you can save 20% !
http://www.ultimarc.com

Speakers/amp 6.99 delivered
From Maplins bought they keep altering product code

Gameex £20 lifetime license (I dont mind funding decent work)  but there are a number of free Front ends
http://www.gameex.com

Hidden Costs:

New Jamma power supply as switcher is fussy about voltage  £22 (UK)
Ebay

July 2014 ***If you are only going to run a PC and your monitor is powered from the mains, you don't actually need a Jamma power supply. I have proven this as unplugged mine !  The j-pac gets its power from the PC. You can then set the PC bios to recovery mode. This means you can cleanly log out of XP as normal within your front end, and power off at the plug. Then when you switch Plug socket on again it will go into power recovery and boot PC up cleanly, no need to press the PC's power button. I.e I have my mame cab set up now so I never have he to go into cab for the pc or the keyboard or the power switch.

Jamma Extension harness 8.99
Members business...
http://www.theretropit.com

THE CURRENT CABINET

This is a small cabinet with a 1 slot ne geo mobo on it running witha 14 inch arcade/amiga  monitor.
I have the original Toie still which was set vertically before. Luckily the amiga monitors run at same frequency as an aracde monitor and are a lot cheaper/easier to get. 

PC Hardware

Bought a 3.0 AMD XPC Shuttle, 120GB ide harddrive 2 gb ram  £40, Thought would be small enought to fit in cabinet. But shuttles look bigger in the flesh than in the photos !

Removed Network card as wanted to keep build to a minimum and keep of the network. What a mistake that was in hindsight should have put on the network so could use terminal services to make changes to it when it had been attached to cabinet.

PC SOFTWARE

Installed all from CD or a distributable, as not web connected.

O/S

Windows XP sp2, there is something about issues with xpsp3 and gameex 
Free in a packet of cereals !

Other Needed Stuff

Direct X_june2010_redist  (direct X last version for XP) 
http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=8109

dotnet35   (Actually .net 3.5sp1 with all the previous versions as well)
http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=22

Windowsinstaller-kb893803-v2-x86
http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=25

InstantSheller. Did not use this in the end I just put Gameex in the startup.

Winipac. Did not use this in the end as managed to set two of the arcade buttons using ,ame to send an exit command to mame.

15K monitor stuff. Gave up with this is the end treated myself to an arcade VGA card 

Quickres  

http://www.ultimarc.com/download.html

Soft15khz (Did not get this working in the end)
http://files.arianchen.de/soft15khz/soft15khz.zip

I did it  but got various issues

*open quickres, a galaga icon appears on bottom right of your taskbar.
*click the galaga icon- select "640 x 480 32bit"- your desktop is now the correct resolution for the arcade monitor.
*open soft-15khz.
*select ONLY the 15khz option to install.
*shut down your PC.

At low resolution just fell into a big heap...

Exception at EIP=01014435 (drawd3d_window_init(win_window_info*)+0x06a5): ACCESS
 VIOLATION
While attempting to read memory at 00000080
-----------------------------------------------------
EAX=00000000 EBX=00000001 ECX=7C91056D EDX=00150000
ESI=00000001 EDI=002FDB58 EBP=0022E828 ESP=0022E1C0
-----------------------------------------------------
Stack crawl:
  0022E828: 01014435 (drawd3d_window_init(win_window_info*)+0x06a5)
  0022E8D8: 00FF34B5 (complete_create(win_window_info*)+0x02f5)
  0022E9B8: 00FF3AC5 (winwindow_video_window_create(running_machine&, int, _win_
monitor_info*, _win_window_config const*)+0x0525)
  0022EAF8: 00FF01B5 (winvideo_init(running_machine&)+0x0a75)
  0022EC48: 00FEBF5C (windows_osd_interface::init(running_machine&)+0x02dc)
  0022ED68: 016454B8 (running_machine::start()+0x0298)
  0022EE18: 01646434 (running_machine::run(bool)+0x02c4)
  0022F988: 0162EFCC (mame_execute(emu_options&, osd_interface&)+0x022c)
  0022FBA8: 0191BC42 (cli_frontend::execute(int, char**)+0x0f02)
  0022FEB8: 00FED5BF (utf8_main(int, char**)+0x01df)
  0022FEF8: 01BBD52E (wmain+0x006e)
  0022FFC0: 00401422 (__tmainCRTStartup+0x0292)
  0022FFF0: 7C816D4F (RegisterWaitForInputIdle+0x0049)

In the end I used this instead of soft 15K

CRT_emudriver_6.5_1.2_xp32_multisynch  (used this instead of soft 15k)

MAME

Have learnt that you should use the version of mame that is for the roms you have downloaded.
I have a full mame set from feb 2012 about 40 gb in roms and 20 gb in extras. This version requires a mame 0145 version.  After testing  mamegui, mameuifx, arcademame and cabmame, I settled with MAMEUIFX

Depending on which version of mame you have you should set the mame.ini or the gui to make sure it is taking advantage of the hardware in relation to aracde monitor. 

Here is the link for full details 

http://www.ultimarc.com/avgainst.html

mame.ini For mame verions that use mame.ini....

if this file does not exist- make one! (start>run>(type) "MAME -CREATECONFIG" >now go to mame folder and open the .ini with notepad, edit as follows..

# VIDEO OPTIONS
# 
video ddraw
numscreens 1
window 0
maximize 1
keepaspect 1
prescale 1
effect none
pause_brightness 0.65
waitvsync 0
syncrefresh 0
#
# DIRECTDRAW-SPECIFIC OPTIONS
#
hwstretch 0
#
# FULL SCREEN OPTIONS
#
triplebuffer 0
switchres 1

In the end I used MAMEUIFX and I set the the default settings in that to Display Tab:

VideoMode: DirectDraw
Stretch Using Hardware = OFF (if this is greyed out you have notswitched Windows to 16 or 32-bit colour mode)
Screen Tab: Screennumber = 0
Screen = \\.\DISPLAY1
Resolution, Size = Auto (or select from drop-down list in game as required)
Switch Resolutions to fit = ON 

I then put gameex shortcut in my startup. I Also configured gameex to run Mameuifx 

EXITING MAME WITHOUT HAVING A KEYBOARD IN THE CABINET.

One you get it all working when you are playing mame you may want to quit a game like you normally would be pressing escape. If you have not got a keyboard installed the J-pac already has a code built in. If you hold player 1 and press player 2 button it will do what used to be done by pressing escape.

If like me you do not have a two player cabinet, you can set it to use other buttons instead.
This is the easiest way you must first load mame and start playing a game.

Brill when in a game click tab
Then selected "Input (general)"
Then "User Interface"
Then Scrolled to the "UI Cancel" I pressed return then quickly pressed keyboard keys "1" and "left shift"

Now I can simply hold down fire button 4 and then press player 1 start button and it acts like escape used to i.e  exits the game and brings me back to my Front end. For some bizzare reason it wont work by holding down player 1 then hitting button 4. It has to be button 4 held down and then press player 1. This is strange as the other J-pac commands work fine by holding player 1 down then moving the joystick. Any way its working and doing what I need it to do thanks all....

Full post here 

http://www.jammaplus.co.uk/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=36403&PID=340214#340214

FRONT END

I chose GAMEEX,  dont do this use something easier !

Install GAMEEX first, then copy the roms and mame into the default paths specified in gameex.
In gameex tell it to use arcadeVGA settings. I also set it not to filter the games list. Otherwise it does not display different versions or bootlegs of the games. In the end I actually told gameex not to use an arcadevga card, I just configured al my settings in mameuifx instead, saved any conflicts of knowing what was overiding ahat

If you are using a arcadevga card you do not need to read the below on soft15K. I have left it in for if people are using say a ati 9200 card and the software instead.

In the shuttle I had the following card but with gameex it would not load properly

So I installed the catalyst software as previously stated that helps with  ati cards.
http://mame.groovy.org/WindowsATIDrivers/ 

July 2014 update as above link down

Use this  site for drivers

http://mame.3feetunder.com/windows-ati-crt-emudriver/

Catalyst 6.5: ATI Radeon 7000, 7200, 7500, 8500, 9000, 9100,
                         9200, 9250, 9500, 9550, 9600, 9700,
                         9800, X300, X550, X600, X700, X800,
                         X850, X1300, X1600, X1800, X1900,
                         X1950, ArcadeVGA 9200/9250, etc.

Handy hit build the pc in he comfort of your lounge on the TV and get it all working as you like before moving it to the arcade machine.

OTHER HARDWARE INSTALL

As I wanted to run both a neo geo and a mame pc in the same cabinet I needed to buy a two way jamma switcher and find a place to install it

Inside the front seemed a good idea....

Before

After

First attempt to get PC working in the cabinet.

Moved my jamma harness to the board then installed a J-pac and bloody thing did not light up at all and I could not switch boards.  Forum members advise that these boards need slightly more than 5 volts from the jamma harness. New power supply was ordered where you could alter the 5v upto 6 volts. Strangely I turned it just to 5 volts to begin with and that worked fine. I could easily switch between my neo geo and the mame pc.

J-pac picture:

I has a spare Jamma exntension lead which I thought I would move to the other swicthers port and discovered it had pin 9 cut out ofit instead of pin 7 

In the end i bought a jamma extender cable from retropit which is ran by one of the members in this forum.

This gives me time to think about where to put the PC

I removed the coin drawers at bottom of cab and fits very snuggly. But I am worried its too snug and may overheat. I am considering cutting a hole in the piece of wood BEHIND the Coin drawers, sacralidge or not ? I.e you will be able to see the front of it instead of it being on the side. I think the cabinet will be fine 

Dont worry about the wiring that will be tidied up later, once I decide where PC is going and I have the new power supply.

To be continued as at present works fine on the LCD TV but does not work in the cabinet ! Resolution issue with gameex or windows ?

Another member is helping with this and also saw shark factor comments ..

*unplug the lcd monitor. 
*plug the vga cable you took from the lcd, into the j-pac*.
*plug the usb cable into the j-pac and your PC
*set ONLY the 15khz jumper on the j-pac.

*use the DVi out on your gfx card if it has one- soft-15khz will choose the DVi if your card has one and will not work through VGA! if you have no DVi out, no worry!, if you have DVi out- use it! -still no worry! 

Getting Arcade machine Games working to right resolultion.

First of all set the actual graphics card to 640X480 using Quikres otherwise some of the front ends. Gameex in my case bomb out with no menus.

When I firs tried my serrings Gameex would work but only certain games would play properly e.g 

JJ SQUAWKS Worked fine

But Altered Beast would look like this .....
This only happened on Arcade Monitor on LCD played fine.

I tried lots of different things and all versions of mame I tried mame , Mame32 and MameUI did the same. But then ....... MAMEUIFX worked fine and ran altered beast apart from when launched via GAMEEX. This proved it was a configuration issue, rather than a monitor or catalyst issue. After some help from  members on other posts 
http://www.jammaplus.co.uk/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=35624&title=gameex-j-pac-cant-see-menus-resolved
http://www.jammaplus.co.uk/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=35553&title=mame-cab-radeon-9200-nightmare-resolved-yipee

This is what I did to resolve it.....

Deleted Mame.ini
Then went into DOS and typed "MAME -CREATECONFIG"

Then edited any setting in the mame.ini to how it is explained on 
http://www.ultimarc.com/avgainst.html

#
# VIDEO OPTIONS
# 
video ddraw
numscreens 1
window 0
maximize 1
keepaspect 1
prescale 1
effect none
pause_brightness 0.65
waitvsync 0
syncrefresh 0
#
# DIRECTDRAW-SPECIFIC OPTIONS
#
hwstretch 0
#
# FULL SCREEN OPTIONS
#
triplebuffer 0
switchres 1

I ran mame outside of Gameex and ran fine for altered beast and rtype. Robocop the screen presented was really small  though ?

I started gameex and told it to launch Mame and then just a black screen ? 

I went into the Gameex and found settings for the Arcade VGA Card and instead of saying Yes I have one, I said NO in case there was a conflict.

Gameex ran fine and loaded the games fine, yipee.

I then decided to try and fix robocop resolution by running AVRES

http://www.ultimarc.com/avgainst.html

However after doing that Robocop was still only in a small part of the screen and Rtype would no longer work monitor would not handle the resolution.

I will delete the associated files and put it back to how it was, I can live without  robocop being full screen !

Then I ordered an arcadevga card and did this instead and it fixed robocop and al the other games, ! I.e they displayed as they should do on an arcade monitor.

SOUND

Because I want to keep my neo geo speaker in the cabinet and keep my jamma sound seperate I am going to take the sound directly out of the PC. 

This involves buy a usb powered Speaker, stripping the amp out of it, a small bit of soldering.
You then connect the + and  - of one of the original speakers to a special speaker + and  - in on the J/pac itself.

Basically unpackage the amp cut and isolate the speakers wire that was in the amp/speaker speaker (the red and white wire). Then find the line in and solder right and left line in together. Then wire the big long speaker wire into the J.pac + and - 

My bad soldering 

Finished I am suprised it still worked ...

The following posts are useful, the top one shows how bad an amateurs soldering can be !

http://www.jammaplus.co.uk/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=28180&KW=sound&PID=247348&title=simple-speaker-amp#247348

http://www.jammaplus.co.uk/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=35513&title=jpac-sound-question-sorted

I bought these for 6.99 delivered

http://www.maplin.co.uk/sweex-2.0-usb-powered-speaker-set-624478

Although you can build a project box to host the amp. I just drilled a small hole in my cabinet shelf and screwed it down within the speaker housing itself. Bit lazy but did the job "

CAB FINISHED YIPEEE  

To get rid of the keyboard in the cabinet and save lots of scrolling for gamess create a favourites list in your front end.

Here's mine....

Pacman
Donkey kong
1941 counter attack
Galaga
Mortal combat
Bubble bobble
Street fighter 3rd strike
Killer instinct 1.5d
Altered beast
Alien vs predator
Shinobi
Green Beret
Golden axe
Robocop
Caddiliacs and dinosaurs
Double dragon 2
Last blade
Pang
Outrun.
Phoenix
New Zealand Story
Galaga 88
Gradius/Nemesis
Salamander
720
Ghosts and Goblins
Gryzor
Rolling Thunder
R-Types
Willow
Hyper Sports
Tron
Space Harrier
Afterburner
Paperboy
Choplifter
Gauntlet
1943
Ghosts and Goblins
Marble Madness
Star Force (the number of 10ps this ate in the SU could bail Greece and Spain out)
Afterburner
Paperboy
Kung Fu Master
R-Type
Terminator 2
Commando
Hyper Sport

Edited by venom - 20 December 2015 at 11:52pm

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