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Mame vs Jamma pcb on arcade cabinet

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    Mame vs Jamma pcb on arcade cabinet

    I'm getting an arcade cabinet and i'm trying to decide, wether to go down the pcb or mame route.

    I'm tempted with the mame route, but i want to know if i will get the same quality i will get with pcbs. I've noticed on my pc that games don't look as defined as they do on an arcade machine almost blurry, i suppose this is becuase the monitor is working at a higher resolution.

    Will i still have this problem on a arcade monitor and mame, and are there any other disadvantages of having mame?

    #2
    DISADVANTAGE: Loading times on larger rom's

    But seriouslly whats to decide ? just use both, plug in the game PCB's when you feel like playing originals or plug in the PCB connected to the PC when you feel like playing Mame.

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      #3
      If you get a J-PAC and use that with a PC in a arcade machine then it looks more arcade like but it's not perfect as...

      A lot of Graphics Cards won't sync down to 15Khz, I had to dig up some old Geforce 1 cards to find one that would... ^_^;

      A lot of games have funny sync rates, do remember that the NTSC sync rate is 59.97Hz rather then 60Hz and you will get tearing if you look closely at most games. Some games have weird syncs like 57Hz and 61.61Hz which on an Arcade monitor are fine as the monitor can take this into account. Sadly your graphics card generally won't so some games like Scramble jutter along.. ^_^;

      Best off buying arcade PCBs cause at least you own the real thing... ^_^;

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        #4
        Of course, if you're building a PC specifically for Mame, then there are cards around that support 15kHz output, and versions of Mame dedicated to working with them as well as possible. Unfortunately I can't remember the name of the site that has all the stuff on this you'd want - can anyone help?

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          #5
          There's MAME cabs and MAME cabs... and then there's this





          Built from scratch by a mate of mine in the US... god knows what it cost him, probably close to $3,000 but it's a complete beast 8)

          Oh and it glows in the dark
          Lie with passion and be forever damned...

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            #6
            Nice - what kind of monitor did he use; it looks pretty big. Or was it a telly?

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              #7
              wow.

              the stick layout is kind of goofed for Robotron though.

              needs a steering wheel and star wars yoke too

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                #8
                Originally posted by MD
                A lot of Graphics Cards won't sync down to 15Khz, I had to dig up some old Geforce 1 cards to find one that would... ^_^;
                Ultimarc (who also produce the J-Pac kit) make a specialised vga card that can work with arcade monitors, which would be ideal to work with J-Pac, ArcadeOS and AdvanceMame (to set the refresh frequencies correctly):



                With a setup like that you should be able to replicate the original video modes of arcade games near-perfectly.

                Originally posted by MD
                Best off buying arcade PCBs cause at least you own the real thing... ^_^;
                Absolutely. I wish I had a PCB collection.

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                  #9
                  Nothing beats the original boards, but thats expensive and could be tricky to locate all the games you want.

                  MAMECabs are great, here's mine:

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                    #10
                    Originally posted by mid
                    Nice - what kind of monitor did he use; it looks pretty big. Or was it a telly?
                    Wells Gardener D9200 arcade monitor - measures 29", 27" viewable which clocked in at around $500.00 so he says
                    Lie with passion and be forever damned...

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                      #11
                      Ah - That sits nicely with the AdvanceMame, which I couldn't remember the name of earlier.

                      My only concern with those, though, is some of the modern games that need a higher res presumably wouldn't work, no?

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                        #12
                        Nigel, when you says games look 'blurry' on Mame, I reckon you need to turn off the 'hardware stretch' option. On Mame32 its Options > Default Game Options > Advanced then untick 'Stretch using Hardware'. Voila, muchos crispness!

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                          #13
                          Originally posted by McPastry
                          Voila, muchos crispness!
                          and slowdown, with many systems.

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                            #14
                            those ultimarc j-pac thingies are just ATI cards though, which, from what I've read (including emu readme's) can handle 15khz no probs. There's an emu called SmoothMame which I heard about and judging by the name maybe it's designed for this refresh rate issue although I haven't tried it out (i've migrated to xbox mame now as it's less hassle although no virtual memory yet for bigger roms - i use final burn and kawaks for those).

                            hey that's an idea - instead of a pc running mame etc, why not an xbox? although it most likely wont work with the monitor, what about building a cabinet and sticking a normal grb scart telly in there and rigging the lot up...sounds silly doesn't it?

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                              #15
                              The j-pac video card has a special bios to run arcade monitors without any special tweaking.

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