rydin4life

Hi all - I've been running LaunchBox/BigBox in a cabinet specifically built for MAME with an LCD display for a couple years now. I'd like to move the PC over to an arcade cabinet that I have already wired for JAMMA with a CRT and use a jPac for controls. From what I've read so far, it seems that I need GroovyMAME and CRTemudriver for this to work. I first thought that GroovyMAME was a front end product that would replace LaunchBox (bummer), but it seems this isn't the case and that it's a matter of layering MAME with GroovyMAME then CRTemudriver and finally launchbox which leads me to two questions: 1) Do I need GroovyMAME to use CRTemudriver? I thought it was another front-end, but if not then I'm not sure what the point of using it is (unless CRTemudriver can't be used otherwise) 2) Right now I'm using the default BigBox theme and have the bezel art courtesy of Bezel Art Project. When I move to the CRT, I won't need the bezel art nor would I want the image shown in that ratio. Is there a good simple theme that works with a regular 4:3 arcade CRT? If there's anyway to make this easier, or use something other than CRTemudriver that works better with LaunchBox, that's fine - I'm jsut trying to figure everything out ahead of time. Many Thanks!

I'm new to this, but I don't plan to update MAME every month. More than likely, I'll update on a much less frequent basis, maybe once a year or every 6 months. I'll do it to stay current and keep things running the best I can, but not every month.

NIce! Mine should ship in a week or two..can't wait to get it! Did you put external speakers in it, or just using the ones from the TV? I always like seeing other people's builds and idea...very cool!

Thanks guys...Bezel project worked great...such an awesome source of knowledge here...love it!

Thanks again all. I just set this up last night and it works great!

I'm very new to all of this, so I have a lot of questions, but this is great information! I honestly have no desire to play any casino games, slots, fruit games..anything like that. I just want the games I grew up playing in the arcade...the fighters, beat-em-ups, etc. I still like to learn about things though, which is why I asked about how all this works and all the games that are skipped by default when importing. Good to know and thanks for all of the info!

I've Googled adding some bezel artwork to my MAME build using BigBox, and inevitably came to this forum. I have an account with emu movies, but I'm not sure exactly where to go to download the bezel artwork. I'm on MAME .209 and have BigBox as I mentioned. Can anyone point me to exactly what I need to download? To confirm, I'm not using Rocket Launcher...just straight into MAME

Nice, thank you!

Cool, good information to know! That Street Fighter II menu is crazy! If I don't right click and just launch it in BigBox, which version do you get by default?

Interesting! What is the point of having it all then? I guess you could use it to re-create a board for a broken game or in a "build your own" project??

Thanks @neil9000 It's pretty crazy that there are that many files that aren't used. Are the fruit, mechanical, etc. games actual arcade cabinet games or are they just random stuff that people have made over the years? Also, may sound dumb, but what's the point of including non-working roms? Are they just files that people are working on and may be working files in upcoming releases?

As funny as it may sound and as overwhelming as ALL of this was at the very beginning, I think the controller mapping is the biggest hurdle and probably the most frustrating. With my Recrom Masters cabinet, I'm only running MAME Arcade games, no console systems so that does make it easier on my side.

Thanks @CDBlue That makes perfect sense! I was going to get one of those external power buttons that many people use to shut down their PCs, but since I can shut down with BigBox and then turn off the power strip I don't think I need one. I could just shut down with BigBox, flip the power strip to off, and then flip the strip back on to power up the PC. I'll need to turn the power strip off anyway since I'll also have a speaker amp and marquee light going into that. Appreciate your reply, think I know understand how I'll set things up when the cabinet gets here!!

This isn't a LaunchBox specific question, but I know a lot of people do this so wanted to get some thoughts. I'm still a bit confused on how to power on and off my cabinet. I plan on plugging everything into a power strip so I get that I can set my PC to turn on as soon as it receives power. Turning the power strip on will also turn on my speaker amp and then I can just press power on my remote to turn on the TV. I can then either turn off the PC by usign the Shut Down menu option in BigBox or wire in an external button. What I don't understand is either way, the PC would still have power coming in from the power strip until I flip that switch. Wouldn't it just auto power on as soon as it shuts down and sees that it has power? Also, since BigBox has the option to shut down the PC, I'm not sure that adding an external button is much of a benefit. I'll still turn off the power supply so the speaker amp, marquee, and TV aren't getting power.

I'm a bit worried about this myself, but if I understand things correctly as @Lordmonkus says, you can go into MAME and set the General mappings and then into each game to make some tweaks....but I suppose you really won't know which ones to do until you play it for the first time, and hopefully may will work OK right from the start.

I have a romset of nearly 13,000 zip packages, however when I import into Launchbox, I have less than 3,000. I leave the defaults checked when importing so I skip hacked games, broken games, and all of the categories like fruit games, casino games, mature games, etc. Are there really 10,000 games in those categories that are excluded? I don't need to add a bunch of stuff that I'm never going to play anyway so I'm happy with what I have, just more of a curiosity question. Also, are there examples of what games fall into those categories..like what is considered a fruit game or casino game for MAME?

Thanks...called the company I ordered from and I'm going from the small form factor case up to a larger case...also adding something for HDMI out, but I'll figure that specific piece out later. Just can't wait to get it and get things up and running...although my cabinet won't be here for a few weeks anyway!

Any suggestions on a card for a Dell Optiplex 790/990 series? I have a PCI-e 16x connector..but it's a small form factor so I want to be sure I get something that fits.

Thanks @neil9000 and @Retro808 . I've only created one playlist which is my Favorites, but the others are all of the autopopulated ones from when imported my full romset. I am going to go with the Dell because I'm only in it for about $230, it has the SSD and a fresh Windows install, I can add additional hard drives easier, it should be better for cooling, and I can modify it easier than my laptop. I can also add a cheap video card to give me hdmi out if I decide to....otherwise I suppose I'll need a VGA to HDMI adapter of some sort to go into my screen.

Thanks @neil9000 and @Retro808 Thanks again guys. I'm just setting things up prior to the cabinet getting here so I can just plug in, map my controller, and . I was planning on using an older hp laptop that I have, maybe 6-8 years old. It has a lower speed i5 processor, 8GB RAM, and integrated graphics. The screen resolution is not great and the boot time takes over 2 minutes to load directly to BigBox. I'm concerned that this will become frustrating to me and that the laptop may get hot and not be the best fit. I was looking at upgrading to a SSD, but now looking at a refurbished Dell desktop with a fresh install of Windows, better processor, and SSD. I could also throw a cheap video card in it for HDMI out that would be better. I could put the SSD in my laptop for around $80 or just get a new machine with the SSD and better cooling/performance for $200-230. Opinions on this?

Thanks @Retro808 ! Much appreciated. I'm loving BigBox and Launchbox so I was really hoping to stick with that! I was initially leaning towards the Raspberry Pi like I mentioned, but I'm now pretty much full MAME PC. I'll be setting up my PC to only run arcade games with MAME, so as long as I can exit a game with a button combination back into the BigBox frontend, I'm happy! Thanks again for all of your help here, much appreciated!

As I've mentioned in some other posts, I have a Gameplay edition 32" cabinet coming from Recroom masters. I went with this as I was going to run a Raspberry Pi in it, but now will alternate between the Pi and a MAME PC. I know I'll need to use the keyboard to go through control mapping on each, but I have a question about exiting games. On the RetroPie setup, I press Select+Start on a controller to exit back to a previous menu. I assume I can set-up some type of configuration within BigBox to do this as well, like holding the coin 1 button and pressing start or another combination to exit out of a game and back to the main menu in BigBox without pulling out the keyboard to hit the escape button. Am I correct in that?

Perfect...thank you!

I'm working on configuring my first MAME PC and have Launchbox installed. I just paid for the premium license and plan to use BigBox when I get my cab built. I downloaded a version of MAME and corresponding romset and imported the entire set accordingly. When I go into BigBox and have the menu set to display Platforms, I only see Arcade which makes sense since that's all that I have (and all I want on the cabinet). When I go into display by playlist, I only see Favorites and the games that I've added. In Launchbox there are the other automatically generated playlists, but no games in them. I thought that would happen automatically during setup, but am I wrong or did I do something incorrectly when setting this up?

Spent a lot of time in the settings tonight and got some things set-up, just trial and error and some time...can't wait to get the cabinet and go from there. I did buy the premium license so I'll run Launchbox on my office PC and BigBox on the PC that's going in the cabinet.