For my birthday my wife got me an old arcade cabinet surplused by Disney, so I can finally start my MAME project. It’s actually a generic cabinet built by The Fun Company that holds Virtua Fighter 2 right now. I really wanted it for the cabinet, but I was pleasently suprised to find out it had a Wells Dardner D9200 monitor in it, which as of right now I can at least connect up to my donor PC and start messing around although the picture is not very crisp.
I understand this monitor is supposed to be pretty useful in these types of projects, but I’m not sure what video card i really should be using.
Basically, I have a lot of questions about what to do next, and was wondering if any other dopers have expereince in building a machine if they could share thier expereinces, or if anyone knows of any good forums to post questions.
From what I recall, the D9200 supports standard VGA unlike traditional arcade monitors. Still, I like the Ultimarc ArcadeVGA which supports both traditional monitors and standard computer monitors (and yours, of course). Linky-poo: http://www.ultimarc.com/avgainf.html
Yeah, that site rocks. Although I “cheated” every step of the way - if you’re OK with 2 sticks and 6 buttons per, plus a few additional inputs, do yourself a favor and buy yourself a JAMMA Plus wiring harness rather than trying to hook them up yourself. Ultimarc also has a JAMMA to ASB adaptor for the controls.
Bob Roberts sells parts cheap, is easy to buy from, and has a wealth of knowledge, most of it posted on his site:
Don’t spend a lot of $$$ on a high-end video card - MAME does not benefit from 3D acceleration or anything. If you’re going to beef up the machine, spend your cash on the fastest non-multicore CPU you can find, and RAM.