(The hardware/software configuration described on this page is not up to date any more as of September 2005. I needed the PC for my new baby, the reVA+MPed Cab - check it out!)

fully working VAntAGE in a Gigant universal cab

Description:

"VAntAGE + MODPlayer" in an arcade cabinet with a vertical monitor. It was intented as a technical demonstration of how a full functioning arcade/jukebox system can be set up on cheap (diy) hardware. I hear you ask: Why not use MAME and an MP3 player? Well, first of all, I had done that before so I wanted to try something new. Secondly, the PC I was using this time was too slow for the latest MAME versions, and third, I did not have enough hard disk space for ROMs and MP3s (and I was too lazy to buy another disk). You see the system can easily be ugraded by adding a larger harddisk and a DOS mp3 player like MPXPlay. I guess I just needed a reason to listen to the good ol' mods again.

I wanted the whole thing to be as modular as possible in order to still be able to play my arcade pcbs. This was accomplished by mounting the interface directly below the cab's socket (an Austrian equivalent to a JAMMA socket). The solution leaves a lot of space for pcbs and also makes switching between emulator and regular pcbs very simple. You now just have to switch on the PC in the back of the cab and plug in the connector coming from the interface.

VA+MP in Action:

Switching to the emulation system:

Like a normal pcb the fingerboard has to be inserted into the cab's pcb socket and the PC turned on. The power switch is accessible via the coin counter door. Could be the screen size, hold or the colour input level of the monitor need to be adjusted to get a good picture (if there was another pcb in the cab before).

The boot process:

After the PC is powered on it takes 15 secs till the bootlogo is displayed. Before that there's a scrambled screen. Sorry for the bad picture. Taking photos of nearly black screens is not too easy.

If you were to watch the boot process on a normal VGA monitor you could see the MConfig boot menu (in German) which after 2 seconds starts the arcade monitor configuration by default.

The above picture is from a very old Escom EM-14LR 14" VGA monitor. Btw this thingy is pretty interesting: when connected to a NTSC / arcade signal, it displays the picture without flicker but some kind of overlapping and still recognizable. This makes the monitor handy when testing all the programs.

The bootlogo remains 11 secs on the screen (the whole startup process is hidden from the user) then the main menu shows up.

Main menu:

Now by pressing either a button on the control panel or a key on the keyboard - whatever is connected - you can manually enter the menu options. "1P Joystick" means pushing the joystick in any direction.

After 10 sec the main menu automatically launches A. - ArcadeOS/VAntAGE.

A. ArcadeOS / VAntAGE:

The picture shows ArcadeOS. It displays screenshots of the current selection in the background. The menu is controlled via either 1P or 2P joystick and the fire buttons. Fire button 3 brings up the configuration menu of ArcadeOS. The menu is left with the cab's "Game select" button (normally for the NeoGeo) between the two "Start" buttons.

Pushing 1P or 2P fire starts VAntAGE with the selected game:

The game controls need not be explained. The "Game select" button exits the emulator. Credits are inserted either via the credit button on the credit pcb or by triggering the coin switch manually or with real coins (only old Austrian 5 schilling coins accepted).

B. MOD Player

DMP32 2.89 in 25x80 textmode on a vertical arcade screen. The controls are mapped as follows:

By default the player starts up in shuffle mode and reads any .MOD, .S3M file in the mods folder. The player can also handle playlists.

The mods I listen to are from classic PC games: Jazz Jackrabbit, One Must Fall 2097, Pinball Fantasies, P. Dreams, P. Illusions etc.

I also wanted a TSR modplayer for the menu but I haven't yet found one with real TSR support.

C. Test Screen

This picture shows up for the purpose of testing VGA mode 13 on the arcade monitor. Pressing any button brings back the menu.

D. Exit

Yep, the DOS prompt on my TAB Gigant.

Normal arcade PCBs:

Just as a proof, (vertical) PCBs still work perfectly:

Here's Driftout (Visco) connected via a JAMMA to System Austria harness.

Hardware:

The cabinet:

for a detailed (till now only in German) description check out my TAB Gigant page. I fit the system into an unmodified version of the cabinet. The normally horizontal screen had to be rotated 90° clockwise (ROR). You can rotate the screen also to the left (ROL) but most of the vertical arcade PCBs I own are ROR by default.

PC:

When I got the Escom big tower, it was missing only a harddisk. Fortunately I found a 120 MB disk in a heap of old hardware in my basement. After reformatting there were only 70MB accessible (BIOS issues I think). That's not much but still enough for this humble project.

One thing that was really annoying was the height of the case - it didn't fit in the cabinet. So I took a rather radical measure and chopped it. The power supply had to be repositioned and there is now no more space for a CD-ROM drive (not needed anyway). Of course I could have taken all the parts and mounted them on a board of wood but I think that shielding of PC components is definitely advisable (especially in a cab).

On the left photo note the power switch (a grey thing sticking out the gap between cover and front). The right photo shows the slot side (forgot to cut out vent holes for the power brick..). The 5V / 12V from the PC's power supply is needed for the AdvKH.

The PC is supplied by the same 230 V as the cab. I tapped the power connection by inserting some Y-split flat connectors. This construction is not very well isolated so please do not try this at home. Instead use an extension cord if necessary.

The interface between PC and cabinet:

I used my own Advance Keyboard Hack (AdvKH). I recommend using a dedicated keyboard encoder like the keywiz for the input. For the video output I included Tim's Simple Circuit without enable on the AdvKH. Check out Tim's site - it features very useful circuits with thorough explainations.

This picture shows how the AdvKH is mounted on the cabinet's slide out.

Audio:

I have not yet managed to build an amp module to drive the cabinet's mono speaker, so until now the sound comes out of plain external PC speakers.

Possible additions:

It would be very easy to add an enable circuit from Tim's page to the adapter. This would mean that the screen only tried to sync when the enable line was switched to high. I think the version for the parallel port makes most sense for this project.

Software:

here's a list of the programs that make this system special:

• McAfee's MCONFIG v1.00 (1992, boot menu)
• pure MS-DOS 6.22 (1994, german)
• AdvanceCab 1.1.3 (for modifying the video modes and PCX displaying)
• a DOS batch menu written by myself (nothing special about it)
• ArcadeOS 2.52 (2004)
• VAntAGE 1.12 (2004)
• Dual Module Player 32 2.89 (1994, DMP32)
• DDKey 2.03 (1999) as a keyboard remapper for DMP32

Setting up the software (some general recommendations):

First of all you need a functioning system. For emulation on a low-end PC single-task OSes are better suited. I used my old MS-DOS 6.22. I won't explain how to set up the drivers, MConfig and the network connection (not really needed if you have a CD-ROM drive). Be sure to have a couple of functioning boot modes. You will probably be using the one with sound support and no EMS.

Next step is to configure all your programs. Some notes on VAntAge and ArcadeOS can be found here. To be able to choose between games and the jukebox you need a main menu. Here's a copy of the batch menu I've created, just to give you an impression: menu.bat

Warning: The whole setup procedure is very time-consuming. If you are new to DOS better leave your hands off this. Perhaps someone else can help you.

Note on PCX displaying with AdvCab's video.exe: don't try to load PCXs saved with the MS Photo Editor (video.exe then produces a reading error). I used Corel Photo Paint for editing my pictures.

MOD Players:

After having tried around 30 (no kidding) mod players for DOS I found the DMP32 to be the best suited for my purpose. Since the keys can not be configured in DMP32 I used the TSR program DDKey to remap the keys. It is only loaded when DMP32 is chosen in the menu and it is unloaded after exiting the player. DDKey is a very powerful program - you can use it to remap the keys for other simple programs or the DOS command line too, it supports definition files for different programs. This version of DMP32 is an early version - newer versions of DMP failed to start. Other players that you can try: OpenCP, XTCPlayer.

The main problem of choosing a mod player was that the screen of the cab is rotated to vertical - this is to get the best out of VAntAGE. I tried many players with graphical output which is rather neutral regarding orientation (scopes or disco flashers) but these players didn't support automated playing (ie reading a directory with wildcards or loading playlists or shuffling) how I wanted it. Some of the better players which had the features that I was looking for had their own special keyboard handlers so the DDkey TSR didn't work. Some had high resolutions or tweaked textmodes which the VGA.exe could not handle. Some simply didn't sound good and some others did not support enough module formats.

Personally I find the textmode on the vertical screen not so bad after all. If you were willing to live without the information that mod players usually show you could use vga.exe and video.exe to disable any visual mod player output and have displayed instead a picture with instructions how to control the player with the joysticks and buttons. The same holds true for MPXPlay on a vertical screen.

Another thing that could be added is LFNDOS. Use it for long filenames in MPXPlay and DOS in general.

Links:

This is where I found a lot of info and software which I used in this project. Big ups to the respective authors.