I have 2 IDE HDD's that I would like to completely blank out for use in my MAME cabinet project. Is there a way to hook them to my spare IDE connection on my PC and completely delete all information so as I can reinstall XP on one of them? Is there a program that can help me do this ( one that will delete all info and then reformat)?

On a side note is there anyone here that knows a bit about MAME and MAME cabinet projects?

Thanks all.

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Here you go buddy:
http://www.xtreme-source.com/show-of...abor-love.html

It's still not finished...lol - no money or time. Funny you should post this now. I have been planning for a couple of weeks now to make tomorrow an all day MAME affair. I'm gonna wake up at 5am and get back into it - work on it ALL day. Have to fix some wiring issues, get the PC back in the cabinet, etc....

PM me if you need anything. I have tons of info and useful tools I can up to rapidshare for you.

In answer to your original question, I personally use Paragon HDD manager boot CD. A lot of members use different software. Boot off the CD, go into HDD manager, choose the drive you want to wipe and re-format to NTFS. Switch connections to reboot with the wiped drive as your new primary and the Windows install CD in the CD drive. Then you are good to go. If you are using an arcade VGA video card, then you will have to use an on-board graphics card, or a spare one you have to install windows with. Then after Windows is configured, install the arcade VGA card. I did a custom build and didn't realize the issues I would have with the arcade VGA card during installation. Fortunately I had an on-board graphics card.

Also, what size HDD's are you using? Why would you need 2? The MAME romset is only just over 15GB (v.116). CHD's are only 40GB or so. I have a single 80GB HDD for my MAME cabinet and that is adequate. Unless you want to use a frontend that supports console emulation. PSX is fun to emulate on a cabinet. Anyway, I'd be interested in checking out your specs and ideas for your cabinet.

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I am not really sure that I will need 2 HDD's but I have one that is 40 and on that I beleive is smaller at around 20gb. I want to runs several emulators using the MAMEWAH frontend such as NES, SNES, N64, PSX, Sega, etc. so I am not sure how much space I would need. Would it be better to buy another HDD say 100gb or 120gb for this?

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Well, SNES is about 500MB, N64 is approx 7GB. Genesis and Master System ROMS are about 3.5GB combined. Add in the mame romset, and you are somewhere between 26 and 27GB. And leave some room for Windows. The PSX collection will be the big space hog, being that most games are the size of a full CD or 2. Don't even bother with Dreamcast. There are only a few games that actually work 100% with Chankast.

Then you have all of the video preview files that you might want for your frontend. Also titles, marquees, control panels. These things all add up quickly. I doubt those 2 HDD's will let you do everything you want to.

I never used mamewah. I use gamEx. It's just incredible. Great support too. You can even create your own themes with the built in editor.

http://tomspeirs.com/gameEx/

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I think I will just buy a new HDD, probably 80gb or so. Not sure if later I may want to add a few GBA games or something else to it. So is gameEX (?) a user friendly frontend for a complete noob? I may be interested in it. I was also wondering have you seen much info around on adding a "gun" to the cabinet to play games like (I know very sad) duckhunt, Area 51, and some other PSX shooters? I was just interested in reading something about that. I already have my designs ready (based on several cabinets out there) for a two player system with trackball and spinner and am hoping to order all my parts within the next few weeks from Happ and Ultimarc. :flex:

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An 80GB should be fine for you. It's what I decided to use. I'll bump it up if I need to, but I don't see a need to yet. Most CHD games do not work well yet. You need an uber PC to play them, which I don't have. I think I've only gotten Killer Instinct 1 and 2 to work perfectly.

ACT Labs is well known. I did not get a light gun yet, but I did the research and determined that I would go with ACT when I am ready. I still have to pay for the custom artwork :-P Here is the link to the site:

ACT Labs Link

Here is a review for you to read to get you started.
ACT Labs Light Gun Review (retroblast)
(retroblast does some great reviews)

gamEx is a great, feature rich front end. The forums are very helpful. Tom Speirs did a great job and is still active in updating it. It's "free" in the sense that there is a popup when you start it and you have to wait a little while before the program starts. But you can donate $18 or more to get a key that eliminates that. It's well worth it IMO. It emulates Windows Media Center, and in may ways is better. You can do so much more than just play arcade games. It takes a little while to get it installed. You have to have framework 1.1 installed first. And then you may have to work out issues with configuring it correctly to run MAME, but it's really not that hard. Especially with the active forums. I was a noob in November 2005 when I first installed it, and was able to get it up and running relatively quickly. There is a thread in his forums where people have posted their configurations with various emulators, so if you grab those, you should be all set with all the console emulators you want to run. I haven't used the theme editor yet, but from the work of some users, it can churn out some incredible themes. Plus, a lot of users post their themes for anyone to use.

So what are you doing for the cabinet? Buying a used one, making one from scratch or buying a pre-made one (mameroom.com)?? I purchased the UA II from mameroom.com because I didn't have the resources to build my own frm scratch. How about your monitor?

Happ is the place to go. Get your joystick from them if you can. I bought my joystick and buttons from Ultimarc and wasn't hapopy . I did get my AcradeVGA card from them, and that turned out good. But the joystick from Ultimarc was poorly assembled IMO. Kept jamming, not making connections to the microswitches during gameplay. And the buttons weren't situated right in their cyllinders. When I replaced my joysticks with Happ joysticks, the difference was like night and day. The motion was just so much more fluid. And the clicks are not heavy. It just feels good.

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If you're gonna run PSX games, a lot of games run varied plugins, so you may need to tweak the audio, visual, and CPU plugins for them to work. ePSXe and PSXeven are both very good emus with full support for PSX plugins. There is a newer PSX emulator which doesn't use the plugin system, it's supposed to be very good, at least from reviews I've read. It's called PSX Emulator. http://ngemu.com/psx/psxemu.php

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I use the psx emulator LS. It is very good. It actually ran more games for me than the other ones. I actually started using it over a year ago. It's very easy to use and does support many games. A lot of games that I couldn't run on ePSXe and PSXeven, ran on psx emulator without tinkering. I can't remember which ones though. It's been a while since I tinkered with it. The developers forum actually has a thread stickied of games that are not compatible yet. At least the last time I've looked. The latest version is also made for Linux ;-)

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Cool, I wonder if someone will port that for 360/Xbox 1 once homebrew is available on the 360. Probably not, but I can dream lol.

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Yo black.... long time since I have been on. Hey just wondering if you have seen any info on adding side buttons to the control panel for emulation of video pinball (I saw a couple pictures of someone who adapted the buttons and some how even adapted a plunger to the front of there cabinet)? I am seriously interested in doing something like that.

Also I was interested in knowing if you have any links to using an arcade monitor with the PC (i see that you used one in your project). Ultimarc has a converter for that and I was trying to find out how well it works. I am trying to buy an old Miss Pacman machine that does not work with a good monitor that someone is selling locally so that I can do my project.

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