Who has built a mame pinball cabinet ????

[dealers choice]

LMAO this phone spells however it likes anyway.

[soundasleep]

The price is the first thing that shuts most people down with video pins. Assuming you use quality components (decent screens and powerful enough PC) you're not going to come in much under $3.5k just in parts. Add in labour time, support, liability insurance, etc and yep, retail cab ends up $5k to make it worthwhile.

Took us 6 months of prototyping and 7 builds to work that out ;)

Sure you can cut corners of the PC, score a cheap old junker cab or use Kogan screens but a video-pin is an expensive toy no matter how you cut it.

The people ask me about a real DMD or force back, which just adds even more to the build cost!

Now that the Infinity base cab is "out" I'm looking for an affordable forcefeed back solution. The big trick for us is to keep it at 12v if possible. Been looking at the U-HID boards too.

[dealers choice]

Yes I agree Liability is something that everyone has to factor into anything they intend to sell these days. People just don't have the she'll be right attitude any more. They seem to have taken on the sue first attitude. What a shame really. I also agree not to use certain screens ,another area that you need to be carefull (naming companys) as it can be read into so many different ways.

[Sinbad79]

Throw in decals, paint, component shipping costs etc....

The only REAL benefit of these machines is that you can learn rule sets of various tables without having to go buy them or chase them down at different onsite locations.
And while the technology is always improving - they will never replace a real machine.

For me - its something that I am hoping will eventually lead my kids into the hobby - and i enjoy building things that are over the top.

[swinks]

For me I believe not including time the costs will be $2.5k with a new computer and high end 100hz Samsung tv that happens to be 3d capable so might be beneficial.

As for making more than one, highly doubt it though the apple store want to see it finished as it will be running via a mac mini so who knows they might want one or a few to show off in their shops 

I just want it as an alternative to play some of the tables that I will have no hope of owning and also then kids can play other arcade games as well.

[swinks]

can anyone tell me a good place if any to get those retro caroma arcade stools from?

also anyone know the height of a caroma arcade stool (ground to seat)?

[dealers choice]

Check out e bay jady but many sellers wont post them. just google for supliers. They are 440mm high.

[Sinbad79]

You can get repro style ones from Kmart.

[howzat]

Hi Jady
Your post has really taken off.  The videos of Pinsanity and Dozers games  looks great   quite real
 
Ive been having trouble getting mine going     and we have changed to Pinball X as a frontend   To me it seems more user freindly     we just need to work out how to install the games   Its been a step learning curve            Howzat 

[howzat]

Dozer and Soundasleep   Question

When installing Pin X are the games coming from Pinball X or visuale pinball.  I did see a list on pinball X  but this is the stage Im at    Howzat

[soundasleep]

PinballX is just your front end menu software - it doesn't actually play pinball, just load it :)

It's best to get Visual Pinball and/or Future Pinball working first, then setup PinballX to work with it.

[pinsanity]

The learning curve on building a Virtual Pinball is quite steep, and many times you will be tempted to just give up when you get an error you cannot isolate.

"Why does this table work, but this one gets an error?" 

Like soundasleep said, leave the frontend you end up using (Hyperpin/PinballX) as a separate task until you have VP and FP setup fully running and configured for the cabinet you are using.