AGP Motherboard Replacement

I finally got the brand-new AGP Motherboard to replace my damaged one.

Here is the PC up and running (AMD Athlon 64 3200+, 2GB RAM, ATI Radeon HD 3650 AGP 512MB, 500GB SATA Disk).

XP64 and Maximus Arcade booted up, and I tried a few games in Virtual Pinball (that uses PinMAME). Here is a couple of shots of the machine running Pinball games ("Mr. & Ms PacMan" and "Back To The Future").

PCIExpress GPU Arrival

Good Afternoon,

CPU Upgrade Project in the making...

Here is my first problem. AGP is dead... I'll need a PCI-Express solution for the Video Interface if I buy a new motherboard (I'm still trying the recover the previous setup with an new AGP motherboard).

ArcadeVGA 3000 from Ultimarc is a very good solution, but a little bit expensive (around 80€).

I was using Calimity's Drivers (CRT_EmuDriver), 64bit version in XP64, and it worked great with a PowerColor Radeon ATI HD 3650 512MB AGP! I remember asking Calimity in BYOAC for the 64-bit driver, and after a few supporters of my idea posting the same wish, Calimity kindly compiled this version. Calimity, thank you so much!
It should also be Ok with Soft15Khz, a great piece of Software created by SailorSat, that I used on previous setups.

So, I bought from DealExtreme a Brand-New-Chinese ATI Radeon HD4350 (less than 29€, ports free). The reason I chose this board is because Calimity developed the 32 and 64-bit drivers using similar Hardware (GPU HD4350).

I'll try this card during the weekend and post the results here.
Here is a photo of the Board (it says nVidia on the BOX, but it's an ATI Radeon :-) ).

UMSA Testing

The Cabinet's original PC (AMD Sempron 3000+, 2GB RAM) died a few weeks ago, so I tested the UMSA with an old MAME setup (Pentium IV 1,5 GHz, 384MB of RAM and an old ArcadeVGA2 AGP from Ultimarc), running Windows XP 32, using advanceMame 0.106 (I still have this great Rom Set!). 

The system disk is a 16GB Compact Flash with Windows XP32, connected to the motherboard with an IDE-CF adapter. The ROM set is inside an USB Flash disk. Here is a picture of the hardware inside the cabinet, and the UMSA.

I see a better image with UMSA than I saw with my old VGA->SCART cable. All the horizontal games I tested sync great with my BEKO TV (NTSC/PAL60), using their original resolutions. Here is a picture of XP (640x480@60Hz).

Here is a snapshot of Altered Beast (Great Picture in 320x224!).

This hardware is not the best for recent builds of MAME (>0.106). The hardware was gathered for a Small (maybe BarTop) Cabinet project, dedicated to 4-way vertical games. I have a few SCART TV's that are great for this project, i'm still in the planning phase. 

I'm waiting for an AsRock K8F3-VSTA Motherboard (a friend that as a retail shop had one lost in the warehouse, I'm getting it next week), to replace my burnt one.

I ordered a new AMD 64 3200+ CPU from eBay (5 USD), that already arrived. I hope that the RAM (2GB) is still OK...

After assembling everything, I'll try to recover my previous setup (Windows XP 64, with GroovyMAME and Maximus Arcade), and give a try on GroovyArcade Linux Distribution.

UMSA Arrival

Hello,

Just arrived from http://www.arcadeforge.de/ two UMSA (Ultimate Scart Adapter). My home-made Scart VGA cable stopped working after 2 years, and I'm going to give this a try. I'll post the results later.
Another great product from Arcade Forge is the SLG3000 (Scanline Generator), it produces the scanline effect on newer LCD screens, giving that retro-look.

Yesterday I tried MAME4Droid on my Galaxy Note N-7000 with the 0.37b5 complete ROM Set. All games work great, but the controls on the touch screen aren't the best for Arcade Games... I'll need something like the iControlPad 2 (see preview in http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1703567677/icontrolpad-2-the-open-source-controller/widget/video.html ).

Blog opening

Hi Everyone!

I'm starting this blog so that I can share and document some ideas and projects related to classic games, namely MAME stuff and other useful IT resources.

I'm planning to upgrade my MAME cabinet (see picture below) with a new CPU and want to try PIMAME on Raspberry Pi for a second cabinet.

See you soon!

Cheers!