After building MAME01, years went by. My interest in games went downhill - most new games you see right now in the arcades are ultra-modern fighting or racing games. I guess I just can't let Pacman go.
One thing that did attract my attention though, was Sega's Naomi system. Virtua Tennis was the first game I ever saw on this hardware, and it was housed in a beautiful cabinet called a 'Naomi Upright Universal Cabinet'.
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In 1999, Sega released the Dreamcast game console, which was based on Naomi. Lots of Naomi games were converted to the Dreamcast, and at home my wife and I played hours of Puzzle Bobble, Virtua Tennis, Tetris, Confidential Mission, 18 Wheeler and Shenmue. Wouldn't it be fantastic to have our own, original Sega Naomi cabinet? Unfortunately, they were not available on the second hand market at that time, and prices for new models begun at 2500 euro...
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June 13th 2006 - I was browsing eBay today, and I noticed a Belgian guy who was very active in the 'Arcade and video games' section. He bought lots of Naomi hardware and software. I contacted him and I could convice this guy to sell an empty cabinet (since lots of Naomi cabinets run at 110V with a high-res 31Khz monitor it would be useless to pay for these items). The idea was to replace the original monitor with a television set, just as I did with MAME01, and play MAME games on it. I have looked around on the internet, but as far as I can tell, I'm the first one in the world who has used a Naomi cabinet to play MAME (contact me if this is not true).
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June 15th 2006 - In the mean time, I have ordered an ArcadeVGA graphics card. This is easier to work with on a television monitor, because AdvanceMAME only starts outputting a correct tv signal after booting up. The card costs 105 EUR including shipping. Furthermore, I have ordered an LP24 encoder + keyboardcable for 76 euro including shipping and an Athlon mainboard+cpu and power supply for 132 euro including shipping.
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June 16th 2006 - The Naomi cabinet was delivered today. 'As good as new' according to the seller. Well, the good news is that there are no cigarette marks, but there are several (small) broken parts and cracks on the cabinet though. The coin mechanism is missing. And there is sticky dirt all over the place, but nothing that can't be taken care of. And who has put that Star Wars sticker on the left top?
The cabinet was made by Sega Ltd England, build in the summer of '98 and originally housed Virtua Striker 2000. This means the original Sanwa ball-joysticks are missing. Furthermore, all action buttons show signs of severe football-crazyness.
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July 4th 2006 - Once again, dad came to the rescue and promised me to help with the technical stuff. Since he had not much free time in his schedule until August, I decided to start cleaning the cabinet.
I completely removed the control panel from the cabinet, deconnected the wires and removed all buttons.
Just look at the pictures to see how much dirt I found between the joysticks.
Now this is probably something you have never seen before: the control panel was cleaned... in the sink!
.
July 5th 2006 - Dad mounted the motherboard on a wooden surface, ready to be put at the base of the Naomi cabinet. The ArcadeVga card has been fixed onto the wood with a screw at the bottom.
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July 6th 2006 - I went to Namusco in Brussels today. Namusco is Belgian's largest supplier of arcade spare parts. I bought two Naomi joysticks, a set of 2x3 large buttons and 2 small buttons. Paid 100 euro, which is not cheap, but at least I have all original parts now.
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July 7th 2006 - Dad wired all the new buttons to the keyboard encoder and confirms (using his own pc) that everything is working!
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July 8th 2006 - More dirty work. I've used a hairdryer to remove the Star Wars sticker and the Naomi advertisement from the front. Removing Princess Leila was no problem, but the Naomi sticker did not come off. I had to use a professional sticker removal liquid to get the job done.
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July 9th 2006 - I have drilled three holes in the original control panel. Two on the left side, where I will be putting small white switches to insert fake coins (the coin box was removed by the previous owner), and one on the right, which will be fitted with a red 'exit' button to return to the menu.
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July 10th 2006 - I have ordered two picture posters measuring 40x60cm each at foto.com, containing some self-made MAME art. Cost: 16 euro including shipment. The prints arrived today. They look beautiful!
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July 11th 2006 - The marquee is ready. A professional couldn't make it better!
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July 13th 2006 - I have put the cabinet in our garden to clean it completely with the water hose. The side art, which is missing some letters, was removed.
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July 20th 2006 - The marquee light is ready! The tube wasn't working anymore, and dad has converted the original electrical circuit from 110V to 230V.
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August 7th 2006 - Bought a slimline keyboard for 16 euro and a keyboard cable for 10 euro.
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August 10th 2006 - Dad made a VGA to RGB SCART cable. This time we had to go for a different approach, because the Naomi cabinet is not JAMMA compliant. For those interested, the connection scheme looks like this:
male vga
male scart
1 (red)
15
2 (green)
11
3 (blue)
7
6 (red ground)
13
7 (green ground)
9
8 (blue ground)
5
13 (hsync)
16+20
14 (vsync)
16+20
SHIELD
21 (shell/ground)
Hsync and Vsync are twisted together to form a composite sync signal on pin 20. The same signal is used to put 1V to 3V on pin 16 to indicate that the signal is RGB (which probably means this scheme only works using the ArcadeVGA card!). Scart pin 8 should have 9.5 to 12V to let the television set jump automatically to 4:3 AV mode, but there is no 12V present on the VGA cable. We'll have to find 12V on the television chassis later on.
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August 14th 2006 - We drove to a television repair shop and bought a Philips 29PT5321/01 for 125 euro. When we opened the back of the television, we saw that the distance between the four bolts on which the tube itself has to be hung up is not the same compared to the distance on the Naomi cabinet. Major problem! We soon found out that a very important piece was missing in the cabinet: the metal frame that lets you switch the monitor in horizontal as wel as vertical position. This was probably overseen by the seller of the cabinet when the original monitor was removed. Bummer! This means we'll have to make our own braces to hang the television inside the cabinet.
.
August 15th 2006 - No time to lose. I went to a DIY shop and bought the bolts and screws we need.
.
August 16th 2006 - Dad comes over to see if the braces he has made, fit. A bit of tweaking is needed and work is postponed till tomorrow.
.
August 20th 2006 - Yes! The television is now hanging inside the cabinet. We have suspended the tv chassis under the tube by using two small ropes (when the back is closed, the chassis rests on the bottom inside). The original black backpanel of the Naomi cabinet still fits, even with the scart cable connected. Perfect!
.
August 21st 2006 - The big day. The motherboard and the audio amplifier (which I previously used in a unfinished project) are installed. All the wires are connected and hidden inside the side arms of the cabinet. We boot up the machine... Finally! The Windows logo appears and then... the image softly fades out. It seems there is a problem with the mass, since the television works when the marquee light is disconnected.
.
August 25th 2006 - The problem with the mass is solved. The Aquadag wire on the tube was touching the metal frame of the cabinet.
WARNING: since the Naomi Cabinet uses the metal frame as a mass, ALWAYS, ALWAYS, ALWAYS connect the machine to an earthed socket outlet.
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August 26th 2006 - The television works, but doesn't switch to the scart input automatically. We took 12V on the mainboard and fed the current to the correct pin on the chassis. Presto! When we put on the tv, the correct scart input is automatically selected.
.
August 27th 2006 - Yes folks, we've got sound! Luckily, the original loudspeakers are in good shape and did not have to be replaced.
.
August 30th 2006 - Today I've ordered GameEx (18,24 EUR). This is a very cool menu system, looking a lot better than AdvanceMenu. All work and no play? No way! So we've played a match of Tetris today to test the whole setup.
.
September 1st 2006 - Bought a 80 gig harddisc for 52 euro and a FANTEC LD-M35NU2 -2 NAS housing for 63 euro (including shipment) in order to share all games between MAME01 and MAME02. The Windows XP boot screen was replaced by a custom made MAME logo (can be downloaded here, you need the *excellent* TuneUp Utilities software package to install it). I've also used TuneUp to tweak XP and throw out all unneeded stuff.
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September 5th 2006 - Bought a 100Mb LAN switch (30 euro) to connect the NAS and two small wireless keyboards (one for MAME01 as well) for 40 euro each.
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March 28th 2008 -
I've ditched the old PCCHIPS 863 AMD sempron 2800+ motherboard and put in a faster MSI K9VGM which I had
previously used in another machine. Unfortulately this board uses a PCI express interface, so I had to
buy a new ArcadeVGA card ($131.61 including delivery).
MAME PC:
MSI K9VGM-V
512MB memory
Windows XP operating system
60 gig total hard disk capacity
ArcadeVGA graphics card
GameEx menu system
Arcade carbinet:
Sega Naomi Universal Upright Cabinet
width: 0,76m height: 2,23m depth: 1,47m
29 inch television screen
two joysticks
three buttons per player
two player start buttons
two small coin buttons & one exit button
After building MAME01, years went by. My interest in games went downhill - most new games you see right now in the arcades are ultra-modern fighting or racing games. I guess I just can't let Pacman go.
One thing that did attract my attention though, was Sega's Naomi system. Virtua Tennis was the first game I ever saw on this hardware, and it was housed in a beautiful cabinet called a 'Naomi Upright Universal Cabinet'.
In 1999, Sega released the Dreamcast game console, which was based on Naomi. Lots of Naomi games were converted to the Dreamcast, and at home my wife and I played hours of Puzzle Bobble, Virtua Tennis, Tetris, Confidential Mission, 18 Wheeler and Shenmue. Wouldn't it be fantastic to have our own, original Sega Naomi cabinet? Unfortunately, they were not available on the second hand market at that time, and prices for new models begun at 2500 euro...
June 16th 2006 - The Naomi cabinet was delivered today. 'As good as new' according to the seller. Well, the good news is that there are no cigarette marks, but there are several (small) broken parts and cracks on the cabinet though. The coin mechanism is missing. And there is sticky dirt all over the place, but nothing that can't be taken care of. And who has put that Star Wars sticker on the left top?
July 4th 2006 - Once again, dad came to the rescue and promised me to help with the technical stuff. Since he had not much free time in his schedule until August, I decided to start cleaning the cabinet.
Just look at the pictures to see how much dirt I found between the joysticks.
Now this is probably something you have never seen before: the control panel was cleaned... in the sink!
July 5th 2006 - Dad mounted the motherboard on a wooden surface, ready to be put at the base of the Naomi cabinet. The ArcadeVga card has been fixed onto the wood with a screw at the bottom.
July 6th 2006 - I went to Namusco in Brussels today. Namusco is Belgian's largest supplier of arcade spare parts. I bought two Naomi joysticks, a set of 2x3 large buttons and 2 small buttons. Paid 100 euro, which is not cheap, but at least I have all original parts now.
July 8th 2006 - More dirty work. I've used a hairdryer to remove the Star Wars sticker and the Naomi advertisement from the front. Removing Princess Leila was no problem, but the Naomi sticker did not come off. I had to use a professional sticker removal liquid to get the job done.
July 9th 2006 - I have drilled three holes in the original control panel. Two on the left side, where I will be putting small white switches to insert fake coins (the coin box was removed by the previous owner), and one on the right, which will be fitted with a red 'exit' button to return to the menu.
July 10th 2006 - I have ordered two picture posters measuring 40x60cm each at foto.com, containing some self-made MAME art. Cost: 16 euro including shipment. The prints arrived today. They look beautiful!
July 11th 2006 - The marquee is ready. A professional couldn't make it better!
July 13th 2006 - I have put the cabinet in our garden to clean it completely with the water hose. The side art, which is missing some letters, was removed.
August 14th 2006 - We drove to a television repair shop and bought a Philips 29PT5321/01 for 125 euro. When we opened the back of the television, we saw that the distance between the four bolts on which the tube itself has to be hung up is not the same compared to the distance on the Naomi cabinet. Major problem! We soon found out that a very important piece was missing in the cabinet: the metal frame that lets you switch the monitor in horizontal as wel as vertical position. This was probably overseen by the seller of the cabinet when the original monitor was removed. Bummer! This means we'll have to make our own braces to hang the television inside the cabinet.
August 15th 2006 - No time to lose. I went to a DIY shop and bought the bolts and screws we need.
August 16th 2006 - Dad comes over to see if the braces he has made, fit. A bit of tweaking is needed and work is postponed till tomorrow.
August 20th 2006 - Yes! The television is now hanging inside the cabinet. We have suspended the tv chassis under the tube by using two small ropes (when the back is closed, the chassis rests on the bottom inside). The original black backpanel of the Naomi cabinet still fits, even with the scart cable connected. Perfect!
August 21st 2006 - The big day. The motherboard and the audio amplifier (which I previously used in a unfinished project) are installed. All the wires are connected and hidden inside the side arms of the cabinet. We boot up the machine... Finally! The Windows logo appears and then... the image softly fades out. It seems there is a problem with the mass, since the television works when the marquee light is disconnected.
August 25th 2006 - The problem with the mass is solved. The Aquadag wire on the tube was touching the metal frame of the cabinet.
August 26th 2006 - The television works, but doesn't switch to the scart input automatically. We took 12V on the mainboard and fed the current to the correct pin on the chassis. Presto! When we put on the tv, the correct scart input is automatically selected.
August 27th 2006 - Yes folks, we've got sound! Luckily, the original loudspeakers are in good shape and did not have to be replaced.
August 30th 2006 - Today I've ordered GameEx (18,24 EUR). This is a very cool menu system, looking a lot better than AdvanceMenu. All work and no play? No way! So we've played a match of Tetris today to test the whole setup.
September 1st 2006 - Bought a 80 gig harddisc for 52 euro and a FANTEC LD-M35NU2 -2 NAS housing for 63 euro (including shipment) in order to share all games between MAME01 and MAME02. The Windows XP boot screen was replaced by a custom made MAME logo (can be downloaded 