thinking about building mame dual stick

[osis32]

so I bit the bullet and bought the control. now to buy all the buttons and sticks. got my artistic buddy gonna make me an aliens vs predator themed vinyl wrap. I'll update much later when that is submitted.

[UEDan]

Eh, doesn't work for me, too plain. I thought about my design for a good while and laid it out on a "blueprint" several times before actually building it. I tried to think about all my favorite games to play when I was young and how the controls were configured. I like to have the Neo Geo layout on the bottom row, hence the 7th button in the lower left corner. The middle joystick is a dedicated 4-way, for the Pac-Man type games, which are miserable to try to play on an 8-way stick.

Since I'll be building a new cabinet, I'm not going to worry about T-molding and paint until after that's done. It'll give me a chance to correct a few things I am not happy with on the current cabinet.

Ohh button layout is fine, I did an 8 button layout for mine. I meant the P4 stick "angled" orientation, I and most others would agree it doesn't work. Look at TMNT and Simpsons 4 player layouts. The joysticks are aligned with the screens.

osis32, rPi won't run half those games. Your Atom would run those most Street Fighters just fine. Area 51 is pretty simple. But Time Crises on PCSX2 will be needing extra oopmh. So which panel did you end up getting?

[osis32]

well I have two computers I can run this with. one is an older amd dual core with 8800gtx which should handle anything I throw at it (i used to run it as my simulator computer. I may dual boot it with roms on one hd and Windows/flights Sims on the other). the other is a micro itx I think with some crap atom processor that will still be more lawful than an rpi3. I'll have to screw around see what it can run but since I'm not doing anything with it that's no problem.

he only offers one control panel but there might be a seven button lay out I'm gonna request that if it's possible. my friend is going to design an aliens vs predator vinyl overlay to go under the plexiglass. right now I'm in the hurry up and wait stage. my friend is a professional graphic designer but very busy and he said it'll be a couple weeks before he gets a couple put together. I sent him some pictures and have a general idea of what I want but it's not really my forte. I'll post pictures of the graphics when I get them.

[pepsi2451]

This thread has inspired me to finally try to fix a cabinet I got for free a while back. Its a Mortal Kombat II cabinet that has been converted to NFL Blitz. When I first tried to power it up there was no video and I noticed the flyback was arcing. It has a 25" K7000 monitor. I replaced the flyback and it lit up but I got no real picture just a kind of grey color. I tried to test the colors by grounding the pins and the red color was super weak. I figured that it was probably the red gun in the tube so I started looking for a replacement. I unsuccessfully searched craigslist for a possible donor TV but I kind of gave up for a while and got distracted by other things.

After reading this thread I decided the cabinet has been just taking up space for way too long and it is time to fix it or get rid of it. So I tried swapping the color transistors on the neckboard and while I was at it I reflowed the solder on a couple pins that didn't look that great. I now have red! I have transistors on the way and my cap kit just got here. I didn't notice any burn in so I am hopeful I can get the monitor working.

I don't know if the game board works but I never played much NFL Blitz anyway so the plan is to make it a MAME cabinet. It has two 49 way joysticks with only 3 buttons each so I will need to add buttons. I guess I will need a couple of the GP-Wiz49 MAX controllers for the joysticks or I could swap them out. I haven't decided yet.

I really like SheepDog78s cabinet with all the different controls for different games. I'm just not sure if I want to put that much into mine but if I get it working and find myself playing it a lot, who knows?

[osis32]

why do you need two of the wiz boards? That board should be able to handle 2 sticks and the accompanying buttons no problem. unless there's something special about the 49 ways that they need more inputs. good luck with your project. I'm starting small but I'd love to build a cabinet eventually.

[pepsi2451]

why do you need two of the wiz boards? That board should be able to handle 2 sticks and the accompanying buttons no problem. unless there's something special about the 49 ways that they need more inputs. good luck with your project. I'm starting small but I'd love to build a cabinet eventually.

Well I noticed the website I was looking at has 4 different "usb device numbers" for the gp-wiz49. So I guess I need 1 per stick. The 49 way sticks are a little different than the 4 or 8 way. 49 way sticks have 8 directions * 6 positions per direction = 48 + centered = 49 different positions. So for most games that needs to be translated to either 4 or 8 directions. I'm not exactly sure how the gp-wiz handles that. I was thinking of making my own adapters for fun but I will probably just order the gp-wiz49s for convenience.

[osis32]

interesting. I'm not sure if those pcbs will work or what to be honest. I did learn more about the 49 ways here though:

http://www.seanriddle.com/49way.html

maybe you can decipher it better than I can. it's kinda late so I'm not firing on all cylinders.

[osis32]

so I got it almost finished. it's all wired up and I have to say the ipac is giving me trouble. I'm really happy with how it looks and function test on single player is awesome. I'm still waiting on the ball tops to come in from China. I didn't know that's where they were coming from when I ordered them on Amazon. I may get a different usb encoder because emulation station sees player 1 and player 2 as the same keyboard and when I program one it negates the other. works fine in mame though. been playing street fighter alpha 3 and I'm still horrible....