what are peoples opinions on this?

Hygro · 08-02-2011 6:59pm #1

http://www.gremlinsolutions.co.uk/products/blueelf.htm

Snazzy_Chazzy · 08-02-2011 7:04pm

er what is it? A games cartridge ,,, so you put this in a sega?
oh cool just looked around this forum, i didint realise you could buy these machines!

Myrddin · 08-02-2011 8:00pm

Salvage on old pc/laptop & buy a jpac - at least you get to choose the games, the frontend, & configure everything to your personal liking. My experience with multi-boards like that is the software interface is far from amazeballs.

o1s1n · 08-02-2011 8:09pm

That site won't load up, but I see it says 'Blue Elf' so I take it that it's a blue elf jamma multiboard?

There's an Irish website that sells arcade hardware and they stock them. Might save you a few quid on postage -

http://www.arcademachines.ie/shopping/index.php?cPath=40

LoGiE · 08-02-2011 8:53pm

Im with Enternow these things can be complete rubbish. They may not even have the capability to run the games at full speed and generally you cant add games either.

Retr0gamer · 08-02-2011 9:09pm

If you are going through the effort of making a full jamma compatible cabinet you're not going to waste it on anything less than real arcade boards.

CiDeRmAn · 08-02-2011 9:16pm

They are similar to my 111in1 cart for the MVS and yes, the fact that I have a ton of games is great but whats not so great is the muck frontend and the number of hacks on the gamelist.
And for that money you could build an Ikea Cab! Hooray for Ikea Cabs!

o1s1n · 08-02-2011 9:29pm

Retr0gamer wrote: »

If you are going through the effort of making a full jamma compatible cabinet you're not going to waste it on anything less than real arcade boards.

That's pretty much the way I think..but to be honest, it's a dangerous road to go down. CPS2 Alien Versus Predator cost me €130 delivered. Which is a good price for the game...but it's at the lower end of the scale..but feck man, it's still €130!

Myrddin · 08-02-2011 9:40pm

Retr0gamer wrote: »

If you are going through the effort of making a full jamma compatible cabinet you're not going to waste it on anything less than real arcade boards.

Being someone who had both original pcb's, & the option of a mame cab...let me tell you Mame running through a low res CRT Arcade monitor is a different kettle of fish to a standard pc screen. The differences between the two, were so minute, that I sold off all the pcb's. This is coming from someone who never sells game related stuff. A Jamma cab running a nice frontend & a 15Khz screen will stand up to the best of them :cool:

Retr0gamer · 08-02-2011 10:16pm

Ok maybe I'm being a bit elitist but I don't see how this would work since all those games run on different boards and it seems to be just a flash rom.

Hygro · 08-02-2011 10:28pm

Retr0gamer wrote: »

If you are going through the effort of making a full jamma compatible cabinet you're not going to waste it on anything less than real arcade boards.

Well the cabinet I have is already Jamma. I was thinking of converting it to MAME, but this seems to be the quick fix solution (I know quick fixes aren't always the way to go though).

If I did buy it though I'd still have to put in a whole new set of joysticks and buttons, along with the wiring (which to be honest scares the crap out of me in case I fuk it up). What's in it at the moment ain' great, tight as bedamned.

Any of you that live near Cabra are more than welcome to check it out.

benagain · 08-02-2011 10:30pm

blahhhh

Hygro · 08-02-2011 10:41pm

actually I've just dome some more investigation into this BlueElf and it's supposedly poison ... should be called the BrownElf!!

Back to the drawing board again

Retr0gamer · 08-02-2011 10:46pm

Think a mame cab with a monitor is what you'd be after. Kind of see the errors of my ways. I find it a pain in the arse changing component cables, I can imagine changing jammaboards are much more of a pain.

Hygro · 08-02-2011 10:49pm

Retr0gamer wrote: »

Think a mame cab with a monitor is what you'd be after. Kind of see the errors of my ways. I find it a pain in the arse changing component cables, I can imagine changing jammaboards are much more of a pain.

Yeah, most of the time you need a pair of chainmail glves just to hold the spikey little feckers!!

o1s1n · 08-02-2011 11:03pm

Retr0gamer wrote: »

I can imagine changing jammaboards are much more of a pain.

Lies! It's a holy ritual to the gaming gods that must never die out.

Spiking your hands on PCBs is just your way of knowing how hardcore you actually are. :pac:

Hygro · 08-02-2011 11:20pm

Spiked? I've grated my knuckles like cheese on them! :pac:

o1s1n · 08-02-2011 11:29pm

Ouch! Don't think I've ever done that. I do spike them a lot though. Picking up a 6 slot Neo Geo board usually results in multiple spikings.

At this point I just pretend they're PCB kisses.

Jack burton · 09-02-2011 1:24am

I really want to play pass the pcb with ye now, just like hot potatoe but we use a really good game pcb, last person to bleed their own blood wins the pcb!

o1s1n · 09-02-2011 8:16am

Jack burton wrote: »

I really want to play pass the pcb with ye now, just like hot potatoe but we use a really good game pcb, last person to bleed their own blood wins the pcb!

Is there nothing you wont try to Jack Burton? :P

Myrddin · 09-02-2011 9:28am

Retr0gamer wrote: »

Ok maybe I'm being a bit elitist but I don't see how this would work since all those games run on different boards and it seems to be just a flash rom.

As in a mame pc in a cab? All I can say, is if there was any noticeable difference, I wouldn't have sold my pcb's.

Don't tell me you think there's differences between playing a rom from a flash card and playing the actual cart? The cart contains just a bunch of 1's & 0's, which is directly dumped as a file. This file is then loaded onto a different storge medium & then played & processed on the original hardware. I've done the comparison between real carts & flash carts...there's no difference in the real world (special chip carts aside).

Jack burton · 09-02-2011 10:10am

o1s1n wrote: »

Is there nothing you wont try to Jack Burton? :P

Hey dont hate the player, hate the game

Hygro · 09-02-2011 12:42pm

EnterNow wrote: »

As in a mame pc in a cab? All I can say, is if there was any noticeable difference, I wouldn't have sold my pcb's.

Don't tell me you think there's differences between playing a rom from a flash card and playing the actual cart? The cart contains just a bunch of 1's & 0's, which is directly dumped as a file. This file is then loaded onto a different storge medium & then played & processed on the original hardware. I've done the comparison between real carts & flash carts...there's no difference in the real world (special chip carts aside).

I suppose it depends on the flash cart, that BlueElf 2 that I was looking at seems to have some pretty bad ports onto it, namely CP2/3 - dodgy frame rate and audio.

(here's a review here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pf-bgvqjdjU )

As for MAME, I have to say they look pretty close ... the only difference is usually in the visuals which ya get by playing it on a tft monitor as opposed to an old type monitor. I'd say if ya ran a board and a mame game side by side on the same type of old cabinet monitors I wouldn't be able to tell the difference.

Myrddin · 09-02-2011 1:24pm

Hygro wrote: »

I'd say if ya ran a board and a mame game side by side on the same type of old cabinet monitors I wouldn't be able to tell the difference.

Trust me, they're very close. Changing pcb's is a pain in the @rse indeed, so upon seeing the accuracy of mame via 15khz, I decided to cash in.

o1s1n · 09-02-2011 1:35pm

The one thing I like about having just 1 PCB in the machine/having to change them is that it stops that whole 'game hopping' thing everyone does in emulators.

If I had MAME installed in a machine there's absolute no way I'd dedicate any time to one game. I do try to but the moment there's a sniff of bordom I'd changing to another.

This way though I find you do appreciate each game individually more. Well you kind of have to given the price of some PCBs!

Retr0gamer · 09-02-2011 1:42pm

Someday I'll own an arcade cab with a bubble bobble PCB

Myrddin · 09-02-2011 1:45pm

o1s1n wrote: »

The one thing I like about having just 1 PCB in the machine/having to change them is that it stops that whole 'game hopping' thing everyone does in emulators.

If I had MAME installed in a machine there's absolute no way I'd dedicate any time to one game. I do try to but the moment there's a sniff of bordom I'd changing to another.

This way though I find you do appreciate each game individually more. Well you kind of have to given the price of some PCBs!

I can only counter that with, given the size & weight of my cab, I'd need to take the morning off after changing a pcb. I generally find I don't game-hop (I havn't used the cab since last summer I'm just realising) as I have only my personal favourites listed. If/when I play enough of them, I can ad more, remove them etc.

Sorry purists, but this purist compared both & found the difference too insignificant to matter

o1s1n · 09-02-2011 1:51pm

Eeek, I forgot you had a monster cab. It's a Tekken 3 one, right?

You can literally spin this candy around on its castors with one finger. It's pretty amazing.

What I was thinking about doing was running one of those JAMMA extension harnesses out of the back for quick PCB changing. Not a 100% clean setup but it would save a lot of grief having to climb inside. Especially as it's low, so you need to get down on the floor.

Myrddin · 09-02-2011 1:57pm

o1s1n wrote: »

Eeek, I forgot you had a monster cab. It's a Tekken 3 one, right?

You can literally spin this candy around on its castors with one finger. It's pretty amazing.

What I was thinking about doing was running one of those JAMMA extension harnesses out of the back for quick PCB changing. Not a 100% clean setup but it would save a lot of grief having to climb inside. Especially as it's low, so you need to get down on the floor.

Yep it's a behemoth. Thats sweet re the Candy, so nice those things.

What people also should realise is that since the release of the ArcadeVGA card and/or soft15Khz, a jamma cab is no longer converted for mame. It's the pc that's converted for use on a cab. The pc only acts as the game pcb, you can disconnect the pcb from the jamma harness & plug in a real pcb if you wish.

Hygro · 09-02-2011 2:00pm

o1s1n wrote: »

Eeek, I forgot you had a monster cab. It's a Tekken 3 one, right?

You can literally spin this candy around on its castors with one finger. It's pretty amazing.

What I was thinking about doing was running one of those JAMMA extension harnesses out of the back for quick PCB changing. Not a 100% clean setup but it would save a lot of grief having to climb inside. Especially as it's low, so you need to get down on the floor.

Yeah, that sounds like a good idea alright ... wouldn't want to have the pcb exposed though!

Retr0gamer · 09-02-2011 2:00pm

Will that set up display things in the proper resolutions as well enternow? I could live without that but would be nice to know since some old games have weird resolutions that only work on CRT monitors.

o1s1n · 09-02-2011 2:04pm

Hygro wrote: »

wouldn't want to have the pcb exposed though!

Good point!

Thankfully most of the games I have at the moment are in cartridge form (Neo Geo/PGM/CPS2 etc). Always a bit worried about bare PCBs and things like static.

Hygro · 09-02-2011 2:05pm

EnterNow wrote: »

Yep it's a behemoth. Thats sweet re the Candy, so nice those things.

What people also should realise is that since the release of the ArcadeVGA card and/or soft15Khz, a jamma cab is no longer converted for mame. It's the pc that's converted for use on a cab. The pc only acts as the game pcb, you can disconnect the pcb from the jamma harness & plug in a real pcb if you wish.

The best of both worlds I guess!! Though as O1s1n said, he price of some of the games out there are outrageous. To be honest, as the Cabinet I have is out in my parents shed I don't think the prospect of having a couple of games to choose from would draw me out there in the cold weather, as opposed to hundreds of games to choose from! :pac:

o1s1n · 09-02-2011 2:08pm

How do you find your cab is holding up being out in a shed? Is the monitor alright?

My parents wanted to put my old one in the shed before I got rid of it. Had to plead with them not to on the promise that I'd take it out to my apartment 'in the near future'.

I'll be hearing the same about the candy soon enough! I'll cry if that's banished to a wooden shed.

Hygro · 09-02-2011 2:17pm

o1s1n wrote: »

How do you find your cab is holding up being out in a shed? Is the monitor alright?

My parents wanted to put my old one in the shed before I got rid of it. Had to plead with them not to on the promise that I'd take it out to my apartment 'in the near future'.

I'll be hearing the same about the candy soon enough! I'll cry if that's banished to a wooden shed.

It's grand. The shed itself is pretty solid. Was intended to be used as kind of a rec room, we've a jukebox in there also (unfortunately there's something wrong with the arm that selects the records so that's kinda useless till we get it fixed), but now the shed is just full of junk!!

Tried the cabinet out a few times after the big freeze and she's still working. I'd take it up to my house, but don't think my parents are up for taking their hall door off it's hinges again anytime soon!!

Myrddin · 09-02-2011 2:46pm

Retr0gamer wrote: »

Will that set up display things in the proper resolutions as well enternow? I could live without that but would be nice to know since some old games have weird resolutions that only work on CRT monitors.

Provided your monitor is actually capable of displaying them, all you have to do is add the info to the softkhz ini file and it will load the appropriate resolution when the rom calls for it. Such a sweet little proggie :cool: That or an ArcadeVGA card are the real secret to an authentic display.

what are peoples opinions on this?

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