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#1 2009-09-05 7:34 pm
- Funkey Monkey
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- Registered: 2003-01-27
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Building a G3 Macintosh Arcade Cabinet
I have an old 500 mHz G3 iBook, which I turned inside out last year and made into a photo frame.
I decided that this year I'd rebuild it into a tabletop cabinet with a joystick and arcade buttons and use it for some casual gaming.
It's running Tiger, and has 640 MB of RAM.
So far I have Nestopia running fairly well on it, and NES emulation works well on this 8-year-old machine.
Does anybody have any suggestions or warnings for me in building this project? What about software?? I don't think I'll ever get MAME to work very effectively -- at least not beyond PacMan or asteroids. In any case, most of those old classic games have some sort of NES equivalent.
What else do you think I could do with this?
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#2 2009-09-05 7:42 pm
Re: Building a G3 Macintosh Arcade Cabinet
Have you tried Mame OS X? It's not perfect, but in most cases, it'll run the games you want to play.
The following site has been helpful when I've had problems:
http://www.bannister.org/forums/ubbthre … amp;page=1
Heck, all of Richard Bannister's emulators are pretty much golden:
http://bannister.org/software/index.htm
"It's better to be a pirate than to join the Navy."
--Steve Jobs
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#3 2009-09-05 11:12 pm
- Funkey Monkey
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Re: Building a G3 Macintosh Arcade Cabinet
Yes, I'm running MAME OS X on my Core Two Duo iMac, but it really doesn't work on the old G3. (For example I audited the games on the G3, and it took over 14 HOURS to complete the audit.) I've thought about switching to OS 9 and running some older version of MacMAME, but decided against it -- too much trouble to locate a copy of OS 9 and install it and all that junk.
I'm thinking the final project will essentially be Nestopia (which is a Bannister emulator...) for NES games, plus maybe one or two of the fun old pinball games for the mac (Crystal Caliburn, etc.)
I'll probably have a four-way joystick, Start, Select, A and B buttons, two buttons on the sides for pinball, and some sort of "get me back to the main menu" kind of button.
Does anybody have any idea what I could use as a frontend for this system? If I setup the joystick on the arrow keys, and maybe the start button on the Enter key -- is there some way I could use those five keys to select a program and start it? (Or maybe make a short-list of games which I could select, thus opening the program.)
It'd be nice if I could use something that'd hide the OS X interface and menu bar -- not that I'm against them, just that I don't want this to obviously be a computer sitting on the countertop.
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#4 2009-09-06 7:44 pm
Re: Building a G3 Macintosh Arcade Cabinet
MacMame doesn't require OS 9 to run; I still use it under OS X all the time, when I want to play certain ROMS whose compatibility is "broken" under Mame OS X.
"It's better to be a pirate than to join the Navy."
--Steve Jobs
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#5 2009-09-08 6:43 am
- Funkey Monkey
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Re: Building a G3 Macintosh Arcade Cabinet
Well, OK - I got MacMame running pretty well on the iBook. MAME OS X doesn't run at all. I suspect it's a Core Image issue, since the old machine can't do core image.
In any case, I'm still not completely certain there's anything in Mame that I really want but can't do with NES games -- except maybe Gauntlet™.
... And MAME is going to make me install more buttons on this thing!
Anyway -- any ideas for a FrontEnd interface? Ya know -- something like Front Row, but for applications? That'd be sweet!
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#6 2009-09-08 8:00 pm
- Bat
- Flawless Cowboy
- Royal Wombat
- From: Björk, Björk
- Registered: 2001-05-14
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Re: Building a G3 Macintosh Arcade Cabinet
Does anyone even maintain either nowadays? IIRC one or both were mostly Brad Oliver's, who used to post here; but he gave up on it/them years ago AFAIK.
If all economists were laid end to end, they would not reach a conclusion - George Bernard Shaw
"Fire up a colortini, sit back, relax, and watch the pictures, now, as they fly through the air."
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#7 2009-09-09 7:00 am
- Funkey Monkey
- Il Maestro spettacolare
- From: On the podium.
- Registered: 2003-01-27
- Posts: 1467
- Website
Re: Building a G3 Macintosh Arcade Cabinet
Frankly, I'm not concerned if they're maintained or not, since the iBook is frozen in time with Tiger, and all the games it's running were frozen in time 15-20 years ago!
Seriously though, anybody got any ideas for a front-end launcher on this thing?
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