Enjoy!
- Aaron

SpiffMAME is my MAME-cabinet, which I have spent countless hours building/rebuilding. In this article I will try to write a little about the background for building SpiffMAME, and some of the choices in the early stages of the project.

Since I was young I have been very fond of computer games. In particular the older games where graphics and sound are limited by the hardware, and where the game developers have had to be really creative to get good gameplay. But I really think the gameplay of those games is so much better than most of the games developed today on multi-million dollar budgets.

Where I grew up there was no easy access to arcade games, so I cannot say that I spent a lot of time (and money) on this in my youth. I spent a lot of time on my Commodore 64, but only played arcade games when I ocationally found a machine somewhere. Still I have always been intrigued by these machines.

I first got the idea to build my own arcade machine after reading an article in a Danish computer magazine about a guy who built his own cabinet running an early version of MAME. At this time I had been playing a lot with various emulators (mainly C64), and I quickly got hooked on the idea to have my own coin-op machine. Having a machine with a single game was not an option, both in terms of the size, and in terms of the investment (being a student with limited financial freedom), but a machine running MAME could run a wealth of games.

Still, finding a suitable machine proved to be a little difficult. First of all, there was the limited amount of money that I was able to spend on this project. Secondly Denmark is a small country, so there are not too many sources of such machines (unless you are willing to import them yourself), and in my case I was even further constrained in terms of transportation, since I would need to borrow my parents car to pick it up (and I had to argue with them if it was resonable to drive that far to pick it up). Finally, although there are a few companies that work in this area, most of them do not want to trade with private individuals due to the mess of sales tax etc.

After a couple of years, in the summer of 2001, I started thinking about the project again. I decided to check out some webpages and found a guy in Denmark that was selling an old machine. For DKK 1000 (about $150), the price was right, even if the cabinet was not in the greatest condition. He sent me a couple of pictures, and we agreed that I should pay him a visit and take a look at the machine. So I borrowed my parents car and drove the 80 km (about 50 miles). A friend of mine came along for the company, and to help with the lifting.

The cabinet had a lot of cigarette burns, and one of the back panels were missing, but apart from that, the machine worked, including the coin units, control panel, ROM board and the monitor. It was an old Space Panic cabinet, that had been refurbished with a Gyruss ROM board. I decided to go ahead and buy it.

When we came back to the dormatory where I lived, a lot of people seemed curious about what it was I had bought. I spent the next couple of days gathering information and finding the service manuals for the Gyruss-game, as well as the monitor, which turned out to be a Hantarex MTC900.

The wiring in the cabinet had been soldered directly to the Gyruss-board's edge connector. I found a suitable edge-connector and re-wired the cabinet. Then I started doing various fixes to the cabinet itself. This included sanding down and painting the coin door, adding the missing back panel and installing a lock in it.

Then I decided that I wanted to build my own control panel. The original one was made of a metal plate with hinges on the front, and had already been re-worked once (presumably in the conversion from Space Panic to Gyruss). It only had one joystick and two buttons (apart from the one and two player start buttons). Also, the joystick handle was melted, and looked like it had been burned with a lighter. I decided to order a bunch of buttons and a few joysticks from happcontrols.com. When I got these I played arround with a suitable control panel layout that would allow me to have enough controls (two players, each with an 8-way joystick and 6 buttons, as well as buttons for one and two player start). With the limited size of the control panel there was not much choice in regards to the placement of buttons, but I managed to get it all crammed in. The control panel was constructed from 12mm plywood, and a piece of plexiglass. This allowed me to have the control panel overlay between the control panel and the plexiglass, and it looks very nice. It was difficult to get the plexiglass bent, though, but the result was very nice. The control panel is wired to an old keyboard controller (keyboard hack), as is the coin acceptors and service buttons inside the coin door.

Originally I had planned on using an old 17" monitor I had laying arround, but I discovered that it was possible to reprogram the video card to output a signal that was suitable for the arcade monitor. I immediately decided that this was how I would do it. Arcade games just look so much more "right" on an arcade monitor. Such a monitor has built-in hardware antialiasing. Later I also figured out how to get vsync enabled (with AdvanceMAME), which means the games can run on not only the right resolution, but also the correct framerate, which is essential to get the best emulation (otherwise you will notice tearing of the screen in many games with a scrolling background). I noticed that the monitor had slight burn-in with the text "ENEMY PLANE". I later discovered that this is probably from the game Zaxxon. The seller told me he had replaced the monitor, so I already knew it was not the original one that had been in the cabinet.

I also installed a cap-kit in the monitor. Before doing so, the monitor needs to be discharged. This can be dangerous, since the flyback voltage is arround 20-30 kV (yes, kilovolts), and the tube can store a lethal dose of this voltage, even long after the monitor has been disconnected. DO NOT attempt to do this yourslf, unless you know what you are doing. If you decide to do so anyway and hurt yourself, I cannot be held responsible in any way. That said, once the monitor has been discharged and the boards unmounted, the task of installing the cap-kit (replacing all the electrolytic capacitors) is fairly easy, and can give a lot of new life to a monitor. I must say that the image on my monitor got so much sharper after installing the cap-kit. I can highly recommend getting this done, especially if the picture on your monitor is a little blurred. But if you have no knowledge of electronics, you should probably leave this to a professional. I guess most TV repair shops could do this, since the electronics in an arcade monitor is very similar to a TV (except it dosn't have a tuner).

The computer I originally used for the cabinet was a 333MHz (half-brother of the beast) PII celeron. The motherboard, harddrive and power supply were mounted on a piece of particle board, which sits inside the cabinet with appropriate mounting brackets. The graphics card was a Riva TNT2, and for sound I used an old soundblaster AWE32.

On the software side, the machine was running DOS6.22, and later Windows98 in DOS-mode. I used the official MAME with ArcadeOS as the frontend. ArcadeOS is able to run the monitor at 15kHz, so it can be used with an arcade monitor, and can even hook mode 13 (320x200) so any emulator that can run this mode will also work on the arcade monitor. Later I found AdvanceMAME, which is a port of MAME with the main focus on being able to set the graphics mode to work with arcade monitors. This allows the games to run their native mode and even the correct refresh-rate. I also switched to AdvanceMENU instead of ArcadeOS. While AdvanceMENU is a little more difficult to configure, it is also much more configurable and can run all the video-modes that AdvanceMAME does. It now has support for MNG animations of the games (instead of static screenshots). The machine ran with this setup for quite some time, and was a great success in the dorm.

Then at one time I decided to upgrade the hardware. I bought a 1.7GHz duron. Since the new motherboard did not have any ISA-slots I was forced to abandon the trusty SoundBlaster. The new motherboard had onboard AC97-sound, but no DOS support. So I decided to make the switch to Linux (I had used Linux as my primary OS on my workstation and several other machines for several years, so it was about time I converted my arcade machine as well). Since AdvanceMAME and AdvanceMENU are actually developed under Linux (and then cross-compiled for DOS), there were no big surprises on the software side. I did have some problems with the TNT2 graphics card, but I had a Matrox G400 that has very good Linux-support (the kernel framebuffer is superb), so this was put in the machine.

That was the background story of SpiffMAME. Hopefully I find the time to expand the documentation of my cabinet here, and as soon as I get done with the boring introduction, I will try to give detailed information about the technical issues in regards to hardware and software (should be some good stuff if you want to make a cabinet running Linux).

But since I am also updating my romset, I thought I would share a little information about how I maintain my romset using the advscan utility. Way back I downloaded a complete romset (I think it was for version 0.70), and ever since, I have been using differential updates (one for each MAME version) and verifying with advscan. Let me explain how I apply one romset update at a time and check for any missing ROMs. Then I will give a few hints on how to fix it if it turns out some roms are bad.

For instance, today I see that the latest version of AdvanceMAME is 0.104, while the latest version of the official MAME is 0.105. Last time I upgraded my romset was for version 0.101, so I need the updates for 0.101 to 0.102, 0.102 to 0.103 and 0.103 to 0.104. I have already downloaded these, but seeing that there is a 0.105 of the official MAME, I might as well start downloading the romset update for that, since this process can take some time. The easiest way of getting the romset updates these days seems to be by P2P filesharing programs. I am not going to write long instructions on how to use different P2P programs, but it should be possible to find the updates. Try to do a search for "mame roms" or something similar.

The romset updates I get are usually packed up in a RAR-archive, so the next step is to unpack this. Updating from version 0.101 to 0.102 I unrar'ed the files (with full path - the x option) to a tmp directory. In some cases the RAR-archive contains the zip-files of the needed ROMs, but most of the time it is just the files (not zipped). Since advscan works with the ZIP-files, I need to make the ROMs into appropriate zip-files. I know there are easier (and more bulletproof) ways of doing this, but here is what I normally do (from the tmp directory where the rom directories are):

$ for f in *;do cd "$f";zip "../../$f.zip" *;cd ..;done

This is bash-script (so you need to be running the bash shell), and BTW the first $ is the prompt, so it should not be typed. If everything works out, you should now have the zips, one per game. Sometimes these are what is found in the romset update. Of course that only makes it easier, since you don't have to zip it yourself. For this update, I now have 50 ZIPs, which should be placed in a directory that is listed under rom_import in advscan.rc.

The other thing that is needed before we can start updating the romset is the information about checksums of all rom files supported by the particular version of mame we are upgrading to. This information is generated by running MAME (or in this case advmame) with the --listxml option (older versions used --listinfo). The size of the generated file is currently arround 25MB, so there are probably not many places where this can be downloaded (although it could most likely be zipped quite well). Also, generating the list from the version of MAME that you intend to run will ensure you have the correct list.

So to get the info, go download the version of MAME you are uprgading your romset to. In this case I downloaded advancemame-0.102.0.tar.gz from a sourceforge mirror. Extract the sources, do a ./configure and a make. This will take a while, so go fetch a cup/glass of your favorite caffeinated beverage.

When the compile is done, run
$ ./advmame --listxml >0.102-romset.xml
and then move the xml-file to somewhere handy (e.g. where you normally run advscan). I like to keep these xml-files arround, so I can go back and check my romset against them. When you have the xml-file you don't need the program anymore (for the romset update anyway).

Of course you will also need advscan. This can be found from the AdvanceMAME site

We are now ready to invoke advscan to update the romset. Make sure all the directories exist and are specified correctly in your advscan.rc:

• rom should specify the directory of the old romset


• rom_new is where to put the new (updated) romset


• rom_import should be where you keep the updates (the zip-files)


• rom_unknown is where to store the old roms (the ones that are removed by the update)

My romset is what is called a differential romset. This means that the files needed to run a clone of a game will be residing in two zips: the parent rom zip , and the clone zip. This takes up less space on the drive, but it makes it a little more complicated if you want to copy a particular game somewhere else, since you need to find out what parent roms might be required. Advscan supports the three different types of romsets, so if you want to use a different type, look at the documentation. The rest of this article will use a differential romset.

Run advscan and pipe in the contents of the xml-file:
$ advscan -Rtv <0.102-romset.xml

After processing, the updated roms should be in the directory you specified as rom_new. Move these files into your rom directory, and you have the updated romset.

Now, we can check the romset. This is also done with advancescan:
$ advscan -rp <0.102-romset.xml >0.102check.txt

Sometimes a rom is reported as missing/corrupt when it is actually not playable anyway. You can limit the check to only report games that should be working:
$ advscan -rp -f working <0.102-romset.xml >0.102check.txt

Afterwards, you can check the file to see if all files are up to date. If some are reported missing, try to find the roms. I will not list where to look, but look arround and you should be able to find them. If you find some roms, put them into the directory listed as rom_import, and run the update again. Then redo the list. In this way it should be possible to get the romset fully updated.

All there is to do now is to do the whole thing once more with the next version. I recommend doing the update step by step, since this will allow you to find out which version of the romset updates a certain game was in, in case there was an error in the rom. Sometimes, however, there is not a version of MAME for each romset update. For instance there is no AdvanceMAME 0.103, so I will have to do both update sets for 0.103 and 0.104 at once.

HOW TO: Make a Bob-clock

Congrats, Mikkel. :)

A friend of mine sent me this link yesterday about an iPod running Linux which, in turn, can now run MAME. I've run iPodLinux on an older iPod for fun, but not one with a color screen worthy of MAME. I suspect my wife would spaz if I did this to her iPod Nano.

Yesterday evening, though, I came across an even more amusing link: an iPod Nano MAME Arcade. This has to be one of the most amusing and creative things I've seen recently.

Enjoy!
- Aaron

After taking the computer out of my cabinet (I have the mother board, harddisk and power supply mounted on a piece of particle board - no PC cabinet), and hooking it up to my monitor, I discovered why the cabinet had taken so long to boot the last couple of times I started it up. Aparently there was a problem with my attempt to make LILO switch between maintenance mode and normal play. This resulted in a 60 sec timeout before the system started booting. This has been reverted back to a 5 sec timeout, until I come up with a better solution (perhaps something involving my new homemade keyboard controller).

When the system finally started up, there were a lot of errors. It turned out that there were errors on the filesystem (crosslinks), so the system was having a hard time even starting up. I assume (and hope) the errors were related to the system not being cleanly shut down (it has crashed on me a couple of times, most likely due to bad AdvanceMAME configuration etc).

After fixing the filesystem and rebooting, only one error appeared, related to some ALSA-library, so I hope this will be fixed by recompiling the ALSA subsystem (after I upgrade the kernel).

Right now I'm waiting for the emerge sync to finish. After that I can upgrade packages.

Then I will upgrade the kernel. The newest kernels support rotating the console on the framebuffer, which I want to experiment a bit with. It would be extremely cool with a readable console on a vertical monitor (avoiding the neck-breaking practice of using it).

/Spiff

To sum up the story of how I ended up writing stuff here, Aaron was kind enough to contact me after we had both posted replies to some questions about using matrox cards on the AdvanceMAME mailing list. At this point (november 2005), we realized that we had a lot in common, both in terms of our MAME cabinets, but also in various other respects.

I think the concept of a blog will be an excellent way to get a little more information about my cabinet written, and especially the ability for people to post comments is one I am looking forward to checking out.

So this category is dedicated to my cabinet SpiffMAME. Hope you find it useful. Drop me a note if you want to know more about it.

My aim is of course to help building a community of people building MAME cabinets, and sharing information about how to setup these beasts, in particular with the more intricate issues concerning configuration of Linux, and making the cabinet look as sleek and "finished" as possible. In my opinion this could be a nice addition to other valuable resources (such as the AdvanceMAME mailing list). So the focus here is on cabinets and some inspiration concerning solutions to various problems that may appear in the process of building and configuring such a cabinet. The mailing list should be reserved for issues related to AdvanceMAME and AdvanceMENU.

I have been discussing several interesting project ideas with Aaron, and hopefully some of them will eventually be realized as time goes by. For now, I will try to make some small blog posts about my cabinet, and see where that takes me (and the site).

First off, I've migrated virtually all of the articles and images from the original site and woven them into the more dynamic structure of a blog. This preserves all of the original information both for historical and reference purposes. I can now expand on that information with new entries that document changes to the original machine and illustrate its evolution.

Since the old site had a more static sidebar that allowed for quick, topical navigation, I've attempted to re-establish that by making a MAME'd Millipede Project Index that links to all of the same articles as before within the new site. The categories on the right sidebar will also take you to any sub-section of the project.

The last entries on the old site - almost two years old - alluded to the beginnings of a second MAME arcade based on a Marble Madness. I've finished that system in recent months but haven't documented the project yet. I wanted to get this new blog in place before doing the new write-up, so I'm pleased to say that will be coming over the next few days now that I've migrated all the old writing. The advances I made in that system led to some fundamental changes to my original machine, so I'll add follow-up pieces to show that upgrade process.

I'll be adding a lot of content to the site as time goes on and probably changing around a few things as I get settled with the new structure. I think the blog format will make adding content a far more fluid process compared to the monolithic, static nature of the previous site. The presence of a comment system also starts to open the door to more reader interaction. Depending on traffic, I might also add a forum system in the near future (though this is somewhat unlikely since there are so many good quality MAME forums already well established).

Finally, I hope to have some co-authors joining me here soon starting with a good friend of mine that lives nearby. Adding his project(s) will make the site more dynamic since we have two very different approaches to cabinet design, button layout and gaming preferences. Hopefully the site can gain some momentum and possibly pick up other authors with various viewpoints over time...

In the meantime, thanks for stopping by and I hope you find what's here useful. If you have any suggestions, spot problems or just have general feedback, don't hesitate to leave a comment or drop me an email.

Just ignore it all for the moment... it'll all make more sense once I'm doing futzing around. :)

- Aaron

Control Panel

Electronics

Software

Parts & Sources