On top of the bar...

Steve X2

Myrddin wrote: »

Ah cool, sure I'll drop you a pm maybe at some stage when I'm ready to drop a few vids into the installation? You can use up some of that new google drive space they gifted you Cheers dude

Yeah no bother.
Speaking of drive space, all this talk of arcadey stuff i decided to download the latest MAME 0.152. It's 357GB for the full thing!!

Myrddin

Steve SI wrote: »

Yeah no bother.
Speaking of drive space, all this talk of arcadey stuff i decided to download the latest MAME 0.152. It's 357GB for the full thing!!

Jebus H....not far off half a terabyte :eek:

Myrddin

So, the final bits arrived this morning



If I tilt the bartop forward, the bottom panel will remove bringing the whole pc with it. This way I could easily put the motherboard onto pcb feet



Coin button wired



Everything back in, this is more or less the finished innards. Small problem with the audio amp, but the seller is kindly sending me a replacement one so fingers crossed that one will be ok. It'll be handy to swap that out too, no dis-assembly required.



All done with the hardware now. I have to say, it was a ton of fun assembling it, deciding what to put where, how to do the wiring etc...hopefully playing the thing will yield as much entertainment One final hurdle though, Hyperspin...coming soon.

Looks tidy!
well done!

MrVestek

Myrddin wrote: »

Short woodscrews in from the underside maybe?

That's how I mounted mine. The bartop has had it's fare share of abuse since it's been built including being taken apart a few times and it seems to hold up fine.

The Last Bandit

Great job on it !!

Having a awesome base to work from helps

MrVestek

Forget my last post, I wasn't fully caught up on the thread.

That looks excellent. I have a vague memory of sending The Last Bandit those speaker yokes at some stage as they were too big for my build.

Does a little bit of MrVestek Arcade live on in this machine? :-)

Seriously excellent work so far mate. Mine was tidy on the inside once like yours but I'm constantly adding / removing stuff to and from it so it's a bit of a mess in there right now.

Good call on the coin chute buttons, they look excellent don't they?

How did you power that if you don't mind me asking? Did you just shove bare wire into a molex like I did or was there a more elegant solution?

*edit*

I have emu movies for a bunch of systems if you need them.

Myrddin

MrVestek wrote: »

That's how I mounted mine. The bartop has had it's fare share of abuse since it's been built including being taken apart a few times and it seems to hold up fine.

Yep working perfectly on mine too, keep it simple et all

The Last Bandit wrote: »

Great job on it !!

Having a awesome base to work from helps

Cheers dude. Absolutely, hats off to yourself for making the base unit...everything was well thought out & made the assembly a pleasure.

MrVestek wrote: »

Forget my last post, I wasn't fully caught up on the thread.

That looks excellent. I have a vague memory of sending The Last Bandit those speaker yokes at some stage as they were too big for my build.

Does a little bit of MrVestek Arcade live on in this machine? :-)

Ha, it's possible!

Seriously excellent work so far mate. Mine was tidy on the inside once like yours but I'm constantly adding / removing stuff to and from it so it's a bit of a mess in there right now.

Good call on the coin chute buttons, they look excellent don't they?

How did you power that if you don't mind me asking? Did you just shove bare wire into a molex like I did or was there a more elegant solution?

*edit*

I have emu movies for a bunch of systems if you need them.

Cheers dude The coin chute button was something recommended by your good self. Definitely glad you did, they look amazing. Very hard to get them right in a photo, as the light doesn't look right...but in person they're so very similar to the real thing.

Powering it was easy enough. As it happens, the audio amp I have needs 12v & a ground. The coin chute button needs 5v and a ground...the exact pinout of a floppy connector (12v, 5v & ground x2). So I snipped off the floppy connector, wired the connections to the appropriate device, & soldered/insulated them

Cheers on the emu movies stuff too. Between yourself & Steve I should be well sorted

Myrddin

The Hyperspin myth is once again busted. There's nothing to it, really. It is an example though of "you really do have to rtfm", as parts of the setup are essential but not apparent. About half hour after starting the install tutorial, I had it up & running playing a game. I was going to outline some of the steps to setting this up, but tbh, there's a comprehensive setup guide here which is pretty much idiot proof - http://www.hyperspin-fe.com/forum/showthread.php?29481-How-to-install-HyperSpin

The latest Hyperlaunch has a bug in it which is causing Mame validation errors & minimized gameplay. A small edit to the Mame ahk file in the Hyperlaunch modules folder do resolves it.

Steve X2

Myrddin wrote: »

The Hyperspin myth is once again busted. There's nothing to it, really. It is an example though of "you really do have to rtfm", as parts of the setup are essential but not apparent. About half hour after starting the install tutorial, I had it up & running playing a game. I was going to outline some of the steps to setting this up, but tbh, there's a comprehensive setup guide here which is pretty much idiot proof - http://www.hyperspin-fe.com/forum/showthread.php?29481-How-to-install-HyperSpin

The latest Hyperlaunch has a bug in it which is causing Mame validation errors & minimized gameplay. A small edit to the Mame ahk file in the Hyperlaunch modules folder do resolves it.

Yeah, it's not so bad to setup.
But if you start adding emulators and systems and custom wheels it can be a little bit of a pain. Still, it's not rocket science :0)

TechnoFreek

I never understand what mame benefits out of using hyperlainch.

It always worked out of the box with hyperspin

The Last Bandit

Hyperlaunch is more of a benefit with other GUI based emulators that aren't cmdline friendly.

MrVestek

Myrddin wrote: »

The latest Hyperlaunch has a bug in it which is causing Mame validation errors & minimized gameplay. A small edit to the Mame ahk file in the Hyperlaunch modules folder do resolves it.

The exact same bug that I had to contend with when showing it off to people at my birthday party, heh.

Link to fix please? Thanks.

Myrddin

MrVestek wrote: »

The exact same bug that I had to contend with when showing it off to people at my birthday party, heh.

Link to fix please? Thanks.

Post #24 has the answer - http://www.hyperspin-fe.com/forum/showthread.php?30728-After-update-HLHQ1-0-12-0-Validity-error

You have to edit the Mame.ahk file located at HyperSpin\HyperLaunch\Modules\MAME\mame.ahk & there's a few lines of code that describe "If Error Level..." or something like that...remove them all & replace them with just this "If errLvl" without the comas

There's a fix coming in the next update, but it's not live yet on the Git, so this is the manual way of doing it.

MrVestek

Myrddin wrote: »

Post #24 has the answer - http://www.hyperspin-fe.com/forum/showthread.php?30728-After-update-HLHQ1-0-12-0-Validity-error

You have to edit the Mame.ahk file located at HyperSpin\HyperLaunch\Modules\MAME\mame.ahk & there's a few lines of code that describe "If Error Level..." or something like that...remove them all & replace them with just this "If errLvl" without the comas

There's a fix coming in the next update, but it's not live yet on the Git, so this is the manual way of doing it.

Excellent. I was getting tired of hearing 'uh ohhh' or 'wah wah wah wahhhhh' every time I launched a game. :-)

Myrddin

MrVestek wrote: »

Excellent. I was getting tired of hearing 'uh ohhh' or 'wah wah wah wahhhhh' every time I launched a game. :-)

Indeed, it's a frustrating little bug isn't it

Just noticed you need to be a Gold or Platinum member over on the Hyperspin board to access their ftp. What's on their ftp nowadays, please tell me it's not all the themes?? I see there's some themes available in the download section...

Steve X2

Myrddin wrote: »

Indeed, it's a frustrating little bug isn't it

Just noticed you need to be a Gold or Platinum member over on the Hyperspin board to access their ftp. What's on their ftp nowadays, please tell me it's not all the themes?? I see there's some themes available in the download section...

Themes and loads of other good stuff :0)

MrVestek

Myrddin wrote: »

Indeed, it's a frustrating little bug isn't it

Just noticed you need to be a Gold or Platinum member over on the Hyperspin board to access their ftp. What's on their ftp nowadays, please tell me it's not all the themes?? I see there's some themes available in the download section...

I'm not a gold member so I wouldn't know but as far as I'm aware it's themes and some other good stuff.

Each user gets their own space too I believe. I have a multitude of themes on my bartop though so if there's any one in particular that you're after then let me know and I'll host it on my mrvestek.com ftp space for you.

Myrddin

MrVestek wrote: »

I'm not a gold member so I wouldn't know but as far as I'm aware it's themes and some other good stuff.

Each user gets their own space too I believe. I have a multitude of themes on my bartop though so if there's any one in particular that you're after then let me know and I'll host it on my mrvestek.com ftp space for you.

Gentleman, much appreciated. I've more config work to do first before looking at themes so will get to that stage first & drop you a line. I might sub depending on how funds are but I'm pushing it at the mo...could have done without National Hallmark day this week though...

MrVestek

Myrddin wrote: »

Gentleman, much appreciated. I've more config work to do first before looking at themes so will get to that stage first & drop you a line. I might sub depending on how funds are but I'm pushing it at the mo...could have done without National Hallmark day this week though...

Ahh just do what I do. Few candles and a home cooked meal with a weepy on the TV.

Usually works for me. :-)

MrVestek

MrVestek wrote: »

Ahh just do what I do. Few candles and a home cooked meal with a weepy on the TV.

Usually works for me. :-)

A weepy eh?
I prefer a bluey

o1s1n

Myrddin wrote: »

Gentleman, much appreciated. I've more config work to do first before looking at themes so will get to that stage first & drop you a line. I might sub depending on how funds are but I'm pushing it at the mo...could have done without National Hallmark day this week though...

Wrap the bartop up and hand it to her on the 14th. Remember to set up a camera so we can all witness the ensuing hilarity.

For extra points, you could have it switched on already running one of those dodgy 'Fantasia' games :pac:

Myrddin

o1s1n wrote: »

Wrap the bartop up and hand it to her on the 14th. Remember to set up a camera so we can all witness the ensuing hilarity.

For extra points, you could have it switched on already running one of those dodgy 'Fantasia' games :pac:

"I made this, for you "

Myrddin

Got a chunk of roms running today. I added them to the favourites text file manually, as browsing all the roms in hyperspin for the ones you have to add them to favourites just isn't my idea of fun. Editing the text file instead meant I was done in a few mins.

It's running flawlessly anyway, hardware & software. It's amazing how smooth & fast windows can be when not weighed down with antivirus etc. I;ll continue choosing roms etc until I'm satisfied I have what I need, then I'll set about with themes & preview vids. And that's just for Mame! Though I don't envisage I'll add much in the way of console emulators on it

Steve X2

Myrddin wrote: »

Got a chunk of roms running today. I added them to the favourites text file manually, as browsing all the roms in hyperspin for the ones you have to add them to favourites just isn't my idea of fun. Editing the text file instead meant I was done in a few mins.

It's running flawlessly anyway, hardware & software. It's amazing how smooth & fast windows can be when not weighed down with antivirus etc. I;ll continue choosing roms etc until I'm satisfied I have what I need, then I'll set about with themes & preview vids. And that's just for Mame! Though I don't envisage I'll add much in the way of console emulators on it

Huh? Not even the full 3DO catalogue?

Myrddin

Steve SI wrote: »

Huh? Not even the full 3DO catalogue?

How is 3DO emulation these days? Not sure I'd bother anyway, easier to plug in the aul FZ-1 & use the real thing

The Last Bandit

Its probably better suited to 16 bitters really, I used to love the PCE shooters on mine. And having Streets of Rage on a cab is always great if Ciderman drops by

Steve X2

Myrddin wrote: »

How is 3DO emulation these days? Not sure I'd bother anyway, easier to plug in the aul FZ-1 & use the real thing

Yeah the real deal is what you want. But the emulation has come on loads in the last year or so.

CiDeRmAn

The Last Bandit wrote: »

Its probably better suited to 16 bitters really, I used to love the PCE shooters on mine. And having Streets of Rage on a cab is always great if Ciderman drops by

Kill it with fire!

Actually, I quite liked Gameboy emulation on the cab given the controllers are digital and the GB gameplay is built, in the main, around short bites it's perfect.
Some messing needed with filters though, it can look a bit funky with the standard PC video filters on.
GBA emulation used to be fine, but seems to have gone peculiar.
Dotstream in particular looks fantastic on a large arcade monitor, as does Astroboy.

Myrddin

CiDeRmAn wrote: »

Dotstream in particular looks fantastic on a large arcade monitor

That & everything else

The Last Bandit

Any pics of the finished cab or are you still tweaking it ?

Myrddin

The Last Bandit wrote: »

Any pics of the finished cab or are you still tweaking it ?

Still a way to go in terms of themes, & vids. Making progress all the time though, so hopefully it'll be done soon enough. Testing games are working can be quite time consuming, because, eh, games are awesome & stuff...and you end up playing them rather than testing them. Plated a lot of shmups yesterday, got me thinking about a dedicated bartop with a tated screen to go beside this one

One other thing, are there any cheap solutions for hardware scanlines generators out there? Who was it that had the mame.ini that curled the screen & added scanlines too?

Steve X2

Myrddin wrote: »

One other thing, are there any cheap solutions for hardware scanlines generators out there? Who was it that had the mame.ini that curled the screen & added scanlines too?

I've been working in getting the MAME HLSL settings to look as good as I can get them. That's what your talking about. Don't just grab the code and settings you see online. Most people who post their code online seem to have no clue what they are doing with said code and have just copied it from someone else.

MrVestek

Myrddin wrote: »

One other thing, are there any cheap solutions for hardware scanlines generators out there? Who was it that had the mame.ini that curled the screen & added scanlines too?

Por vous:

http://mrvestek.com/hosted/mame.ini

Steve X2

MrVestek wrote: »

Por vous:

http://mrvestek.com/hosted/mame.ini

Sorry to say, that looks just like a copy and paste of the same stuff that people get wrong online.
Have you modified the shader fx files ? With the settings you've linked to it's going to look like quite blurry rather than emulating a CRT.

If you don't modify the fx files then mame will apply a linear filter over the whole lot which is not what you want. Disable linear, and apply a slight defocus.

MrVestek

Steve SI wrote: »

Sorry to say, that looks just like a copy and paste of the same stuff that people get wrong online.
Have you modified the shader fx files ? With the settings you've linked to it's going to look like quite blurry rather than emulating a CRT.

If you don't modify the fx files then mame will apply a linear filter over the whole lot which is not what you want. Disable linear, and apply a slight defocus.

I dunno it looks decent enough to me. I don't really have alot of time to be messing about with it to be honest with you.

If I've uploaded the correct file then you get a decent amount of rainbow banding and stuff with that too.

If you have any suggestions for improvement though I'm all ears!

These days when I get home from work the last thing I want to do is mess with scanlines in Mame... I'd rather put my feet up and watch some TV or fall asleep on the sofa as seems to be my daily routine. :-)

Myrddin

MrVestek wrote: »

Por vous:

http://mrvestek.com/hosted/mame.ini

Top man, will take a look

Steve SI wrote: »

Sorry to say, that looks just like a copy and paste of the same stuff that people get wrong online.
Have you modified the shader fx files ? With the settings you've linked to it's going to look like quite blurry rather than emulating a CRT.

If you don't modify the fx files then mame will apply a linear filter over the whole lot which is not what you want. Disable linear, and apply a slight defocus.

What's involved in this Steve? Is it complicated graphics work kinda stuff?

MrVestek

Myrddin wrote: »

Top man, will take a look



What's involved in this Steve? Is it complicated graphics work kinda stuff?

http://youtu.be/KZJ8eeALWH4?t=13m44s

Look at that clip in 1080p. That's the same .ini file that I posted earlier. I'm no expert or anything but it looks good to me!

Steve X2

Of course it comes down to personal choice. But what I recommend is:

open prescale.fx and disable the diffuse linear settings, then open the main mame ini and set a defocus of say 0.1 which will give something close to the colour bleed of a real arcade monitor. Also, I disable the scanline jitter (0.00) but that’s a personal choice as I think it looks better without it(unless you want to emulate an much older arcade screen).

As always, backup the files before making a change so you can revert back if it all goes wrong

I've been meaning to put together a much more detailed article and video for retrovia on these hlsl settings but just haven’t had the time to get it all together yet.

This is all from memory, I can share the actual files later when home.

MrVestek

Steve SI wrote: »

Of course it comes down to personal choice. But what I recommend is:

open prescale.fx and disable the diffuse linear settings, then open the main mame ini and set a defocus of say 0.1 which will give something close to the colour bleed of a real arcade monitor. Also, I disable the scanline jitter (0.00) but that’s a personal choice as I think it looks better without it(unless you want to emulate an much older arcade screen).

As always, backup the files before making a change so you can revert back if it all goes wrong

I've been meaning to put together a much more detailed article and video for retrovia on these hlsl settings but just haven’t had the time to get it all together yet.

This is all from memory, I can share the actual files later when home.

I might just give that a go. Currently busy hacking my own bartop to bits.

I hope you're not a perfectionist like me Myrddin! Otherwise you'll never stop making tweaks and changes to the thing.

Myrddin

MrVestek wrote: »

I hope you're not a perfectionist like me Myrddin! Otherwise you'll never stop making tweaks and changes to the thing.

Ha, I don't really intend on making any changes to it once it's done. I did like your idea of adding in a wall mount usb panel at the back, as currently I have zero connectivity options (all the config work is being done with the back off & a bog standard usb kb & mouse connected). I might add one of those cheap kb/mouse wireless bundles thingies, but tbh I'm not sure how awkward they are for big file & folder work.

I also want to mount a large, low rpm fan in there somewhere too...even with the back off it I can feel the heat building up from the screen & pc. I also want to add a wireless nic too, transferring things over by usb is awful awkward. I was testing a bunch of roms yesterday & I must have went back & forth between systems half the day over missing bios files etc. Would be a lot easier if the bartop had its own connection. I hardwired it for the Hyperlaunch git setup, but removed it then asap as it's runnign with zero in the way of malware/virus protection.

The replacement amp arrived today...I have sound! Yus!

Steve X2

MrVestek wrote: »

I might just give that a go. Currently busy hacking my own bartop to bits.

To me, the difference is night and day so definitely at least try it.

MrVestek

Myrddin wrote: »

Ha, I don't really intend on making any changes to it once it's done. I did like your idea of adding in a wall mount usb panel at the back, as currently I have zero connectivity options (all the config work is being done with the back off & a bog standard usb kb & mouse connected). I might add one of those cheap kb/mouse wireless bundles thingies, but tbh I'm not sure how awkward they are for big file & folder work.

I also want to mount a large, low rpm fan in there somewhere too...even with the back off it I can feel the heat building up from the screen & pc. I also want to add a wireless nic too, transferring things over by usb is awful awkward. I was testing a bunch of roms yesterday & I must have went back & forth between systems half the day over missing bios files etc. Would be a lot easier if the bartop had its own connection. I hardwired it for the Hyperlaunch git setup, but removed it then asap as it's runnign with zero in the way of malware/virus protection.

The replacement amp arrived today...I have sound! Yus!

I didn't want to hijack your thread so I posted some pics of that back panel install over in Arcade 24/7 just there a few minutes ago.

The Last Bandit

Run a usb extension lead out of the air holes, will do as a temperary solution till everything is configured nicely.

Myrddin

The Last Bandit wrote: »

Run a usb extension lead out of the air holes, will do as a temperary solution till everything is configured nicely.

Yep might just do that. Not overly pushed yet as again, tis still in the config stages

Myrddin

When looking to create custom genre xmls', is it a case of downloading the official one first from the HL site...& editing it by removing the games you don't want displayed? Or is there a better way of doing it?

The Last Bandit

Probably a million different ways of doing it but I just edited a stock "greatest hits" list to suite myself.

Hypertools can create XML lists based on the ROMs in a particular directory and a bunch of other neat stuff.

http://www.hyperspin-fe.com/forum/showthread.php?20141-Don-s-HyperSpin-Tools-3-0!

Steve X2

Myrddin wrote: »

When looking to create custom genre xmls', is it a case of downloading the official one first from the HL site...& editing it by removing the games you don't want displayed? Or is there a better way of doing it?

http://honerbrink.com/?page_id=14

http://www.waste.org/~winkles/ROMLister/

MrVestek

I haven't bothered setting up custom lists yet but you'd probably use something like rom2xml to generate the XML file.

Myrddin

Sweet. Tonight's reading sorted so. Thanks for all the help guys