ClassicGMR Posted January 22, 2011 Share Posted January 22, 2011 OK - my MAME setup is coming along nicely. I haven't started a cabinet yet because I want to settle on the hardware and get everything up and running. What I have so far in hardware: Pentium 4 2.4 GHz tower with 1GB RAM TWL541P 54M Wireless PCI Adapter Radeon X1050 Agp 256MB DDR2 VGA Dvi-i Tv Out HDtv Acer X183H Bb 18.5-Inch Widescreen LCD Display - Black Cyber Acoustics CA-3080 Three Piece Flat Panel Design Subwoofer and Satellite Speaker System (Black) USB Highspeed 7 Port Hub w/ AC Adapter (Silver) Here's the software: Windows XP SP3 GameEX frontend (which I absolutely love by the way) MAME 0.137 (I don't think I need to bother keeping up anymore. Everything I want to run is running fine.) Stella - Atari Nostalgia - Intellivision VColeco - ColecoVision Mednafen - Gameboy, Lynx, NGPC ZSNES - Super Nintendo Fusion - Genesis, Master System Nestopia - Nintendo pSX - Playstation Magic Engine - TurboGrafx-16 RealityBoy 0.84 - Virtual Boy Gaming equipment I have now: 15th Anniversary Street Fighter II Joystick connected via SMARTJoy USB adapter Street Fighter IV PS3 joystick Top Gun Thrustmaster USB Generic USB Playstation-style controller (looks like those but is only a single) Coming soon: Intellivision USB controller - courtesy of bah's soldering skills. X-Arcade Tankstick + Trackbally girlfriend has already said this will be my birthday present... awesomeness! OK - with all this I'm feeling really good. The tower will become a 3.06GHz system with 2GB RAM as soon as I get my tax returns. I'm upgrading my business tower and that will become my new gaming station. There's a couple of things I'd like to know though and I'm hoping some of you can suggest a few things. 1) What is the best way to get an Atari joystick for emulation? Something like this joystick or wait until the AA store reopens for a Stelladapter? 2) Any other NES emulators that would work better with GameEx? FCEUX and Nestopia work ok but won't go fullscreen properly even with settings saved correctly. 3) Is RealityBoy the only good VB emulator or is there another I haven't found yet? (I had Red Dragon but that's VERY old and no sound) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HatefulGravey Posted January 22, 2011 Share Posted January 22, 2011 While I don't have answers for your questions I feel the need to give you some helpful advice. First though, if you already have a MAME cab start ignoring me now. If you are going to build a cab for all this start thinking of how you want to control switching between emulators now. Also, start thinking about how you are going to play your arcade games. Are you going to use those xbox sticks or a IPAC set up and make what you want, or what? Also, think about how you are going to hook all those controllers up to the machine and where you are going to store the ones you aren't using at the time. All these things can be tricky and can be sloppy without proper planning. In the end I just use the arcade panel I built for everything and the result is great. Using a wide screen for these games can also be tricky. Many games don't scale right. This is something I'm working on with my machine now as a modern screen would be a lot easier to use them the older style tv I have in my cab right now. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ClassicGMR Posted January 22, 2011 Author Share Posted January 22, 2011 Thanks! Though I haven't started a cabinet yet I had considered some of these already. The USB hub will be mounted with the 5 ports on the front accessible - probably on a small cutout on the side. This way I can plug the different controllers in when I want and then store them in the drawer I plan on having on the bottom. Right now with the GameEx front-end my primary controller is the Street Fighter II Anniversary stick. The PC boots right to GameEx and all my controls are through that stick. It works flawlessly as it sits right now. I pull out the keyboard drawer on updates or other non-gaming uses. With GameEx all emulators should be set up before you add them so I did that. Every emulator is already configured for the SFII stick also. When/if I get the X-Arcade tankstick that will run all the menus. The monitor is great for this. Everything I run(including FCEUX and Nestopia) look great. I don't have everything set to a true full screen... some are full screen but with the borders on the side. The ONLY problem I have is FCEUX and Nestopia won't run full screen when using GameEx as the front-end. It doesn't pass the parameters for some reason and pops up as a tiny window in the corner. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HatefulGravey Posted January 22, 2011 Share Posted January 22, 2011 (edited) NEVER MIND, I'm DUMB! Edited January 22, 2011 by HatefulGravey Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Trebor Posted January 23, 2011 Share Posted January 23, 2011 1) http://www.retrousb.com/product_info.php?cPath=21&products_id=70 2) Odd. I use Nestopia with Game Launcher http://www.dribin.org/dave/game_launcher/ and I have no issues with Nestopia starting full screen on startup. Make sure under Options --> Perferences you have 'Autostart emulation' and 'Full Screen On Startup' checked. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ClassicGMR Posted January 23, 2011 Author Share Posted January 23, 2011 1) http://www.retrousb.com/product_info.php?cPath=21&products_id=70 That looks very promising! Does that also work with paddles by chance? 2) Odd. I use Nestopia with Game Launcher http://www.dribin.org/dave/game_launcher/ and I have no issues with Nestopia starting full screen on startup. Make sure under Options --> Perferences you have 'Autostart emulation' and 'Full Screen On Startup' checked. I checked and they are. I was reading up on Mednafen and I noticed it did NES as well - I guess it is all consoles like MESS? - and I tried that. Works awesome so I may stick with it instead. Thanks for your input! I'm going to be ordering the kit from them for the Intellivision so I may as well get the Atari one too! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mbd30 Posted January 23, 2011 Share Posted January 23, 2011 BSNES with the "Performance" profile might be a good substitute for ZSNES. "Performance" is incompatible with maybe 1% of games, but the majority that do work will be much more accurate compared with ZSNES. More accurate speed, much better sound. I think "Mortal Kombat II" is the most significant game to be unplayable with it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ClassicGMR Posted January 23, 2011 Author Share Posted January 23, 2011 BSNES with the "Performance" profile might be a good substitute for ZSNES. "Performance" is incompatible with maybe 1% of games, but the majority that do work will be much more accurate compared with ZSNES. More accurate speed, much better sound. I think "Mortal Kombat II" is the most significant game to be unplayable with it. How well will BSNES run on a 2.4GHz system? I read in a few places it's a better emulator for better performance systems. I'll have to give it a go. A few people have told me that. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mbd30 Posted January 23, 2011 Share Posted January 23, 2011 BSNES with the "Performance" profile might be a good substitute for ZSNES. "Performance" is incompatible with maybe 1% of games, but the majority that do work will be much more accurate compared with ZSNES. More accurate speed, much better sound. I think "Mortal Kombat II" is the most significant game to be unplayable with it. How well will BSNES run on a 2.4GHz system? I read in a few places it's a better emulator for better performance systems. I'll have to give it a go. A few people have told me that. The "Performance" profile should run most games fine with a 2.4ghz system. Actually, you shouldn't replace ZSNES. You should keep both, and stick with ZSNES for games that are still incompatible or too slow with the other. You might also want to stick with version .70 of BSNES. It's what I use. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bah Posted January 26, 2011 Share Posted January 26, 2011 ClassicGMR, I'm also using GamEx and Nestopia. No problems starting full screen. If you wish I could see what versions I am using and get a copy of the setting I'm using. Also you should try Project 64. I also have a USB to N64/PS2 controller adapter because I like N64 on the original controller best. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+wood_jl Posted January 26, 2011 Share Posted January 26, 2011 I want to know if they still make monitors (LCD) that can rotate into portrait mode, and if MAME will support that feature? Remember, back in the days of 1600 x 1200 in a 4:3 aspect ratio, you could rotate DELL and SAMSUNG flat panels in to portrait? Have they given up on that feature, since everything "went widescreen?" Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hatta Posted January 26, 2011 Share Posted January 26, 2011 I was reading up on Mednafen and I noticed it did NES as well - I guess it is all consoles like MESS? - and I tried that. Works awesome so I may stick with it instead. Mednafen is the best. Notice that it also does TG-16, so you can skip Magic Engine. Also, they're working on including the BSNES core, Genesis, and virtualboy emulation in the new WIP. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mbd30 Posted March 11, 2011 Share Posted March 11, 2011 Just want to add that the latest SNES9X (vers. 1.52) is comparable in speed to ZSNES, but has much more accurate sound. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CRTGAMER Posted March 11, 2011 Share Posted March 11, 2011 (edited) Looking great. The only thing I question is why have a wide screen monitor when your are emulating 4:3 images? Fat street fighters will look horrible. This is the reason why I'm sticking with 4:3, a CRT VGA at that. This also gives me an option for Dreamcast VGA Lightgun auxiliary input. Edited March 11, 2011 by CRTGAMER Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mbd30 Posted March 11, 2011 Share Posted March 11, 2011 Looking great. The only thing I question is why have a wide screen monitor when your are emulating 4:3 images? Fat street fighters will look horrible. This is the reason why I'm sticking with 4:3, a CRT VGA at that. This also gives me an option for Dreamcast VGA Lightgun auxiliary input. Most emulators such as MAME will run games in the proper aspect ratio. You just get black bars on the sides with a wide screen monitor. But yeah, you might as well use a 4:3 CRT to emulate those games. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ClassicGMR Posted March 11, 2011 Author Share Posted March 11, 2011 I am using the GameEx front-end. It puts up "MAME" bars on the side and keeps the aspect correct. I like the widescreen monitor for almost all the emulation. I recently bought an arcade lightgun for my MAME station that I'm not sold on. It's ok and I can use it on any LCD (hence the lack of need of a Dreamcast gun) but it's not the best. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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