I recently decided to completely revamp my cabinet. Prior to that I had a switcher in there with 8 real arcade boards all hooked up, but I decided to rip that all out and put a PC in there instead.
I have the following emulators all setup in there, as well as some native PC games:
- MAME (groovyMAME)
- Teknoparrot
- model2 emulator
- Flycast
- PCSX2
- Hypseus Singe
- Chihiro (Xbox)
It's using all original parts for the CRT monitor (320x240 standard CGA monitor) and the arcade light guns (Happ 45s) that interface with an I/O board called USB2GUN that allows windows to see those guns as analog joysticks. Think of it as when you are aiming at the center of the screen, the analog stick is neutral. And if you shoot the top of the screen, it's as if the analog stick is being pushed all the way up, etc. If you shoot on screen, it registers button 1. If you shoot off screen it registers button 2.
It took me quite a long time to get everything setup but here is the end result in a showcase I put together.
Here's a pic of the guts with the PC and other parts. I still have my switcher hooked up so that I can connect an actual arcade board externally without going inside the cabinet.
And then I have an HDMI cable hooked up to the PC that I can pull out of the coin box in order to hook it up to an external monitor in case I have to do more setup, because doing "real" work at 320x240 isn't really feasible lol.
I just wanted to share this cause it was a fun and cool project. If you have any questions feel free to ask.
I have the following emulators all setup in there, as well as some native PC games:
- MAME (groovyMAME)
- Teknoparrot
- model2 emulator
- Flycast
- PCSX2
- Hypseus Singe
- Chihiro (Xbox)
It's using all original parts for the CRT monitor (320x240 standard CGA monitor) and the arcade light guns (Happ 45s) that interface with an I/O board called USB2GUN that allows windows to see those guns as analog joysticks. Think of it as when you are aiming at the center of the screen, the analog stick is neutral. And if you shoot the top of the screen, it's as if the analog stick is being pushed all the way up, etc. If you shoot on screen, it registers button 1. If you shoot off screen it registers button 2.
It took me quite a long time to get everything setup but here is the end result in a showcase I put together.
Here's a pic of the guts with the PC and other parts. I still have my switcher hooked up so that I can connect an actual arcade board externally without going inside the cabinet.
And then I have an HDMI cable hooked up to the PC that I can pull out of the coin box in order to hook it up to an external monitor in case I have to do more setup, because doing "real" work at 320x240 isn't really feasible lol.
I just wanted to share this cause it was a fun and cool project. If you have any questions feel free to ask.