John's Arcade Forum - Classic Arcade and Pinball Collecting and Restoring Discussion Forum - RETRO MAME - Nintendo Vs Forum

Hi all

I'm starting my second MAME project cabinet. It's a vertical cab, so I'm downloading John's vertical MALA frontend. I just got a Dell Optiplex GX620 to use as my brain.

I've never used MALA (my horizontal cab has Hyperspin, but I did it a few years ago, so it'd probably be impossible to remember how I did it). I have an ArcadeVGA and Jpac, and am going to install two joysticks with 4 buttons each and a spinner (spintrak), because the cab is an Arkanoid II. I've got all the parts, and am going to redo the control panel over spring break.

Any helpful hints before I get my hands dirty? Any other software or anything I should download? Are there any good MALA tutorials (I'm probably going to keep it very much like John already has it)?

Thanks guys!

really nothing to do. Just download the mala game list editor, john's theme and start making lists.

I am still using hyperspin in a vertical cab though. Mala is not that great if you have a lot of games on a singe list.

I was thinking about doing it in Hyperspin but it seemed pretty daunting getting it to run properly vertically. Do you have a video of your cab that I could see?

I don't have my cab set up vertical at the moment. But since hyper spin can't rotate just imagine it sideways.  I've thought about making a kit for hyperspin but my current setup is almost 1 TB in just mame.

UPDATE: I've got everything working except the videos... i can hear them but I can't see them. the box just goes black once the video starts. Dang it!

I just got hold of another universal cabinet last week, and this will be a dedicated vertically orientated monitor. I  use "Groovy Arcade" under Linux (it installs very easily from the all-in-one ISO). From what I've read, changing orientation is as easy as it is using normal command line MAME. Not sure if you want a nice looking front end, or juat plain stable and quick functionality, but Groovy Arcade works very well for me. Not very fancy looking though, but worth a look if you havent seen it before. Good luck with your vertical cab...

Where are you getting the videos for your hyperspin setup?

I bought a membership and got access to their FTP site.  Actually, I got a membership to there and one other one, but the name escapes me at the moment.