Maker - Mayhem

Oh well time to start a new project log for a new system i’ve been working on in the shadow of C-Macc’s. This one will be a lot slower than my Project C-Macc’s as the build is still under development (if you can call it that). The frame for this System I-Macc’s is being made from a fresh. There is no pre bought frame being used (that means i am not using a cab i am making it from scratch) and it is being fabricated locally by DGF fabrications here in Darlington. All the designs are my own and have some very unique points to them but again these will not be shown for some time as i don’t want the ideas stolen or copied.

So what is I-Mac’s

I-Macc’s means’s Integrated Multi Arcade Computer Console System. The idea is to do a complete new Build of a arcade system making it possible to house any console or PC. But only 1 system can be used at a time. All So I-Macc’s is being built so it can be flat packed and retailed off. The proto type that we’ve been working on will be a full system based around a Powerful PC. More will become apparent as we move along with the project.

I-Macc’s will be a completely different look to C-Macc’s and will fit in any modern home or office or venue and will have the ability to hold any screen from a 19″ up to a 52″ plasma or LCD. The control panel will be 4 player compatible but with a 2 player option as well. Again the control panel will be customized and again different from any thing on the market right at this moment in time.

Every thing i have learn from C-Macc’s is being ported across to I-Macc’s with some subtle difference in the way it works.

Ill post up photo’s of the build process as i go along but this may not be for a few weeks until im happy with the frame work and the CP (control Panel).

Ill post details of each section as i work on it but for now this is just my teaser post to start you off.

All so im after sponsorship for this prototype to help towards the build costs and if any one knows how i go about this let me know in this thread.

So here are some early concept drawing done on old fashioned paper and pencil,

***Images removed as Ive used up my bandwidth sorry)Any Comments are welcome and ideas are welcome. Any one willing to sponser me please let me know.

Small update -

***Images removed due to bandwidth problems sorry)

this will you a better idea of my goals….
-=M@Yh€M=-

Well here is the frame its not complete as there is still a hell of a lot more work to do but you can see the progress so far.

As you can see its quite a big frame but then again it has to hold quite alot. Still got to add the TV mounting as of yet and various other thing but its getting there.

———

Project canned started a new build will post a new log once frame has been made but to view more info goto -> C-Macc’s - Version 2

http://www.custompc.co.uk/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=297806&start=15

Some pic’s to tempt you to read the logs

A Video has been uploaded to you tube here ->

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=L6-9kRb7JEU

It wasnt to easy getting these photos but it will give yu a idear of just Some of the electronics with in her…

Since c-macc’s showed up on engadget and Hackaday and many other tek site’s they killed my account for photo hosting. so here just for cpc users is the direct link to my pictures.

hmm for thouse of you who would like to view the pics here is a direct link to my photos -

http://s135.photobucket.com/albums/q134/tactcialmayhem/Arcade%20Cab/
and

http://s135.photobucket.com/albums/q134/tactcialmayhem/

sorry about this buy 25 gig worth of bandwith in less than 36 hours killed it.

Allso spent more hours updeating the software and various other things.

C-Macc’s is now finished and fully working.

Its Taken me 3 hours to work out a total cost of C-Macc’s and well ill let words Speek for them selfs

Total Build Cost £ 3911.20

Specs of PC are

Intel quad core q6600
3 Gb Ram
6.5 Terabytes of Hard Drive Space (inc PS3 and Xbox)
Geforce 8800GT
Blue Tooth
Wireless
Xbox 360 to PC Wireless adapter
2 x Light Guns
2 x Wireless Xbox 360 Gutars
32″ Touch Screen Film Overlay
12 x 120mm Fans (to keep it all cool)

The system has quite a few roms (approx 85% Working)
2.5 Million Videos
Vast array of images
and Emulates Virtulay Evey know Console / Computer / Arcade System it possably can

The only thing Missing from whole Setup is the Xbox 360 Console Due to RROD Problems.

Final Pictures will follow once art work is layered On.

Hope You enjoyed reading About my Small Project.

C-Macc’s - If Carlsburg did Retro it would probably be like this ????

-=M@Yh€M=-

At the moment C-Macc’s is not fully working as it is Stripped down for new hardware to be installed and new cableing installed but here are some pics of some of the games running.

(miss Pacman with custom bezzel)

(My son Playing Gutar Hero on the PC version we now have 2 Wiress Gutars fitted using a USB Xbox 360 to PC adapter)

(Xbox XBMC being setup)

(Acorn Electorn Booting in and running Chucky Egg (my fav game of all time))

(Daphine Emulator Running Dragon’s Lair)

(Sega Mega Drive Emulated and showing Sonic The Heghog)

(Nintendo 64 emulated and showing Didi kong Racing)

(R-Type Leo)

(this is the new logo i have made for C-Macc’s and the bezel art work)

And Just to finish off this quick post update of some of the hardware im installing and running)

(Jamma 6 in one)

(gutars up and running & speekers ready)

(back door Veiws)

My Web sites for more updates

www.loreenadiver.co.uk or www.stinkingoffish.co.uk

Other software installed includes GameEX with is a just pure gold front end that allows you to play virtually all emulators or programs from its easy to use interface. The software is fully customisable and will allow Videos and info on each game this includes Pic’s of box art and games. There is a vast array of features that blow most of the other front ends away. One of the best thing is the built in plug ins for things like the LED Interface that allow you to map each and every game to specific LEDS and Buttons on the control panel.

Another good feature of GameEX is the ability to have favourites and random games. Also it will connect to the net and update the most popular games being played at the moment.

This is a List of features of GameEX here:-

Standard Features:

• Supports nearly any emulator
• Advanced support for MAME
• No other front end has as many options for configuration of MAME and emulators.
• Works with Vista 32 and 64 bit.
• Media Centre Plug In
• Windows 98, 2000, XP, Vista
• Arcade Controls (X-Arcade, Slik-Stik, JPAC,IPAC)
• Works with Gamepads
• MCE remote
• Specific ArcadeVGA support
• Widescreen and HD support
• Completely customizable controls
• Highly polished interface
• Jukebox supports all formats with visualisations
• Play the Jukebox while playing games
• Advanced all formats Video Player
• DVD Player with support for choice of codec and FFDSHOW
• Picture and slide show viewer
• Internet Radio
• News Reader
• Advanced multi process based attract mode/screensaver
• Multiple languages, custom languages
• Theme Editor offers skinning
• Both advanced configuration and easy setup wizard
• Emulator and MAME databases
• Plug-In support including LCD/LED
• Play random background sounds.

Registered Version:

• No nag screen. Fast loading
• Game manual PDF viewer
• Game Extender networked display
• Various MAME lists including on line lists
• Advanced configuration with key and gamepad remapping
• Karaoke
• Search feature. Easily find all games and media
• Play DVD’s from hard disk
• Good merge 7-Zip support
• Play emulators in the screensaver
• Zip support for emulators that don’t natively support it.
• Rotated monitor support
• Mouse control emulation
• eBook and Comic Book reader
• Play separate music based on emulator list
• Over 1,000 additional radio stations
• CD-Ripper with album lookup
• Automatic updates
• Export games to windows media centre
• Automatically create all game snaps as images or video
• Game Statistics, available online through Game Extender and from the interface.
• Media Library. The Media library brings all your pictures, videos and audio together in one place. It can also be used as an alternative to the jukebox by allowing you to view your music by folder and filename

As you can see it’s a bit of amazing software

GameEX is available from here > www.gameex.net

And at only £14 it a worthwhile buy.

Some of the main emulators installed on the PC is as follows:

Mame: to emulate Arcade games

Mess: to emulate Consoles and Computers

In fact instead of typing the many emulators I have just go to

http://www.emulator-zone.com/

And have a look for your self

Now the legality of all of this. The law says if you own a system then you can play the game (or so you would be led to believe, well is not true at all. Here in the UK you are not legally allowed to backup your games if you own them UNLESS you can do a perfect 1 on 1 Back up of it and you cannot do that and never will be able to do unless you own a industrial machine to press the CD / Rom’s ). The problem is some of the old stuff is no longer for sale and no one’s making profit off it. Let’s take the Acorn electron. I owned and had nearly all the games for the system and I still own the system and tapes. So I can run the Acorn Electron emulator without any problems. But even if I didn’t own it no one buys games for the system any more except on eBay were they are not sold buy the original developer. So it’s not making money for any one is it?

Now let’s look at Mame. It’s says unless you own the Rom or arcade board then you are not legally allowed to play it, or are you. The latest Version of Mame has some real gems and even some developers are allowing you to play their games as long as it is not for commercial gain. Now Mame also take a stance that as a developer if you would like a game removing they will remove it without question on their next release.

So where do we stand in all of this. Look on eBay and search for 48 in 1 and 101 in 1 ECT ECT Jamma arcade boards. Now would you believe it but these boards are totally illegal as they are being sold for a profit without the rom’s and games owners consent. These boards are Chinese boards and contain an Illegal copy of windows XP or Windows 2000 that has been shelled (why MS haven’t stepped in I never know). Then they have an emulator such as Final Burn Pro which has been skinned to hide it and then to top it off they are filled with Un Licensed rom’s yet EBay still let these past their own strict rules of no copy right material without the owner’s consent. Go Figure.

The law at best is Sketchy when it comes to this so called abandon ware and yet TV programs over here in the UK and in USA all show Mame and talk about emulators with out for any for thought what so ever.

Now C-Macc’s is a project that contains many game rom’s but it is not for commercial gain and is my representation of the History of Gaming in all its glory. If I was ever to sell C-Macc’s It would be sold with all the emulators but no rom’s and no Bio’s as I do not have the right to sell these at all. How ever i down own most of the games all ready. (thats because i have been collecting form my childhood)

More later on this subject of software….

PC Hardware

• · CPU Pentium Quad core Q6600 Go Stepping Over clocked
• · Ram Ocz 2GB Kit (2×1gb) Ddr2 1150mhz/pc2-9200 Reaper Memory Hpc Edition Dual Channel Cl5
• · Motherboard - Gigabyte GA-P31-DS3L
• · Graphics - Xpertvision 1 GB 8500GT DVI TV PCI-X
• · Sound - Sound blaster Live Gold Edition
• · Hard Drives - Different Types and sizes (upgrade to 4 x 1TB eventually)
• · Raid - Silicon IDE Raid Card
• · Wireless Keyboard and mouse
• · Wireless Lan

Connection Jamma Hardware and other stuff

• · 5 x Jpac ( Jamma interface cards)
• · Xbox to Jamma Cables & Converter
• · Dreamcast to Jamma Cables & Converter
• · Play station to Jamma Cables & Converter
• · Wii to Jamma Cables & Converter
• · 6 to 1 Jamma Board Remote Controlled
• · 2 x Sanwa 4 way / 8 way Joysticks
• · 14 x Clear Led Buttons 5V
• · 2 x standard Buttons
• · 1 x Led to PC Interface board
• · Lots and Lots of VGA leads and USB and PS2 leads
• · 200 meters of cable
• · Fully working Coin Systems
• · Coin Counter
• · 100+ Cable Connectors
• · 80+ PCB Board Mounts
• · 200+ Cable ties
• · Lots of solder
• · 6 x Stereo leads
• · 2 x PC guns
• · 1 x guitar
• · 1 x LCD read out display (yet to order)

Console Hardware

• · Microsoft Xbox upgraded
• · Microsoft Xbox 360
• · Sony Play station 3
• · Nintendo WII
• · Sega Dreamcast

Sound System

• · Technics Amp
• · Technics Speakers
• · Speaker Stands (once I find something that fits the look and specks)

There is more hardware but this is the basics that I’m using to build C-Macc’s Some of the stuff hasn’t arrived Just yet or I haven’t ordered it just yet as I’m taking my time. All so as can imagine this system hasnt been cheap to build so it takes time.

Some shots of the hardware :

(part of this article was written by Andrew Welburn who runs http://www.andys-arcade.com which has a impressive array of retro arcade and hardware)

Right First off C-MACC’s is a Jamma Based Arcade machine. So Every thing i do has to be able to interface with a Jamma connector. So a Little history lesson for the uneducated is in order.

{quote from net}

Jamma stands for ‘Japanese Amusement Manufacturers Association’ but you don’t really need to know that. Back in the early 1980’s there were lots of video games being made by lots of different companies. The progression away from dedicated cabinets and the manufacture of ‘kit’ games caused real headaches for everybody because there were so many pin outs and standards. The Japanese had a very good idea and gathered up the main companies involved and decided to come up with a standard connector that would interface the circuit boards with the cabinets. This way, if everyone stuck to the standard, it would be a lot easier to sell these new kits and games to operators because the operator knew that they could change the game over in minutes instead of spending a couple of days re-wiring the cabinets. The standard was agreed upon in 1985, but the first game did not appear made to the jamma standard until 1987 i believe (Double Dragon).
Standardization was a good idea, but its shortcomings today are apparent. Its not really fair to blame the JAMMA people for not being able to see into the future at what technology would bring, and what it would mean to a universal standard such as the one they came up with. In actual fact, i bet the JAMMA people thought ‘well, if we make a standard, maybe it’ll help everyone for the next 5 years or so’ which in economic terms is a good idea, if the idea lasts that long, then its worth doing. 20 years later, and there are still games being made to the JAMMA standard, which is pretty good going, along the way though, the standard has been re-interperated and mis-interperated and its a good idea to know a few basics that are accepted as ‘the norm’ in collecting circles from games people collect.

The JAMMA standard uses a 56 pin 0.1″ pitch connector, 28 pins on the top, 28 pins on the bottom. So, JAMMA is a standard connector, this means if you buy or own a JAMMA cabinet, you can buy any JAMMA board, plug it in and it will work, and you can play it. Well, thats the theory anyway, 90% of the time this is true, but as time progressed, the games got a bit more advanced, and they needed more things to interface with parts of the cabinet. These mainly being an extra speaker for audio to give stereo, and the advent of 6 button games. Companies tackled these additions in different ways unfortunately, or they fudged the ’standard’ jamma in such a way that with only a small mod to a cabinet you could get it working properly. It seems tha tthe JAMMA people never re-convened to think about how to tackle these issues, so once again, it was up to individual companies to make up their own ’standards’. For the extra buttons, they usually supplied a ‘kick harness’ for operators to hook to the extra buttons on the control panel (these were usually the Kick buttons on Capcom games, and hence the name sticks today). This would then run those inputs to a little connector that plugged onto the game PCB in addition to the jamma connector. The JAMMA standard did allow for a few extra buttons on top of the standard 3, they left some blank pins on the connector, this means that if your cabinet had buttons wired to these pins, it gives a maximum 5 buttons per player while still conforming to the jamma standard. This was fine for Mortal Kombat for example, and bootleggers of this game ran the buttons there (the originals used their own kick harness). SNK brought out their Neo Geo system which used 4 buttons, they simply used one of the unused pins for their 4th button, making integration into a jamma cabinet fairly easy.
Audio is a funny one. While the original jamma standard dictated 2 pins on the connector for audio, this only allowed for one speaker which was ok back in the day of ‘85. Simply hook the two terminals of a speaker to these two pins and you’ll hear sound. When stereo games came along though, most manufacturers still wanted to stick to the jamma standard, so the extra audio was available on yet another additional connector on the game pcb itself, while still running mono to the jamma connector. Later on, some people thought why not put the two positive speaker signals to those two pins on the jamma connector, and instead instruct the operator to run each of these to the two speakers, with the other side of both speakers hooked to ground. et voila, stereo sound through the jamma edge. Problem is, plug one of these pcbs into a regular jamma cabinet and you wont hear a great deal apart from fuzz as what you are hearing is the difference between waveforms on the two channels, audibly this is just ‘noise’ and nothing else. Bootleggers are probably more responsible for bastardizing the standard, or for mis-interperating it than anybody, an example of this is where the positive speaker signal on the jamma connector should be on the top pin as the standard dictates, but some bootlegger swapped this round. Not usually a problem if you just have a speaker wired to both pins, but if you have a cabinet that runs just the audio signal from the top pin to a speaker and the other side of your speaker runs to ground, you wont hear anything.
So manufacturers and cabinet makers alike did things that they thought wouldn’t matter too much, but can easily catch you out if you collect pcbs and don’t understand the different ways in which they messed with things.

In the 1990’s it got a little silly, and manufacturers figured that they might as well base their pcbs on JAMMA as that is the type of cabinet that the kit game they were making was likely to be put into, so the connector might say JAMMA, it might fit right into a JAMMA cabinet, but it certainly isn’t JAMMA standard. I’m talking about games that used controls other than regular joysticks, like trakballs for example… Even later on, the standard was retained for games that used a different frequency of video display (medium resolution) the rest of the controls and power and stuff works, but the video runs at a higher rate, it was again, a way of retaining semi-compatability with existing cabs, and forced a upgrade in monitors..

Pic of Jamma Edge Connector :-

Jamma Harness :-

First off hello and welcome to my Blog for my project C-Macc’s

Now the idea behind C-Macc’s is quite Simple and it’s to build an Arcade Machine that will House every known working Emulators and ever Un-Emulated System in one system.

Hence the Name C-MACC’S meaning - Complete - Multi Arcade Console Computer System.

The hardware has changed allot from its first idea and basically it is taking a while to complete.

The Simple Basic outline of the hardware is as follows though.

1 x Jap Style Candy Arcade cab

1 x PC

1 x Xbox

1 x Dreamcast

1 x WII

Lots and Lots of wire and PCB’s and some other fancy gear to make it all work together.

To start with first I bought myself a Jap Style candy cab and this is it below:-

THE CONTROL PANNEL -

The first thing was I hated the Buttons on the system as they didn’t give the arcade feel and were very spongy so I replaced these with some nice Clicky Buttons with chrome Edging Pics below :-

Now over time I also added the Light to the System to allow the Buttons to light up. Now not only do they light up they also tell you which buttons work for which games as Pictured below :-

Now Basically using Software called GameEX it helps load up a game / emulators and tells the user in words and lights which button does what. Not only is that also does some cool looking strobe effects to music and various other things.

Here is some Pics of Underneath the control panel.

This is the Pic of the Buttons and Leds wired up. I’m using something called a USB Output Driver Board. Basically I am using software installed on the PC to control the board and this in turn controls the LEDs. Now each LED is 5V so they are all run directly from the USB drive. There is enough room for 16 LEDs but I’m only using 14 of them as there is no need for 16 at the moment. I can add as many LED Driver boards I like but if I do to many it could look a little on the silly side.

This is a Pic of the LED Driver board which has now been moved and I’m using small diameter wiring.

There is also Extra Side Button’s that I added to the Control panel and these are for pinball games and all I did was drill a couple extra side holes and installed the new arcade buttons again a Pic below showing this.

There is a Red and Black buttons on top of the control panel and these are to turn on and off the PC. These were very easy to install and don’t get in way of any game play.

So to finish off here is a Link to a VID of the control panel working.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yrx3hOzHbHM

-=I’ll Update This Blog Soon with more info on the hardware im running and still working on=-