Arcade 1UP cabinets

[Harrison]

Have any of you seen these Arcade 1UP cabinets? They have been around for a couple of years
Now. They are about 2/3 real size arcade cabinets, using emulators and an LCD screen, with proper arcade controls and the livery and artwork from the original arcades.

Each machine costs about £399 and comes with 12 games to choose from connected to the cabinet theme.

There are Pacman, Mortal Kombat 2 and Street Fighter II versions. They do make more on their website, but these 3 are the standard ones you see in stores.

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I decided to post about these because I went into one of the Smyths Toy Stores (so Tom could give me some idea about what he wants for Christmas) and they had the Pacman and Mortal Kombat versions running in store. Tom instantly saw the Pacman one and dragged me over to play as he knows it's one of my favourite games, and we ended up playing it for ages. We then gave the MK2 cabinet a play, but I rebooted it to see what other games were on there and we ended up playing 2 player Rampage. Tom hasn't played that before and really enjoyed it.

Are they worth it?

Not sure really. The cabinets feel well made, and whilst the controls didn't feel like anything top end like Sanwa they felt robust and well made with good response.

A limitation is they only coming with 12 games. Also the Pacman cab has a vertical orientation screen and only 1 joystick and 3 buttons, whereas the MK2 is a more traditional horizontal screen with 2 joysricks and 8 buttons each side so is more suited to more games.

I need to do some research into what hardware these actually have in them. If they can easily be altered to add more games or completely change the OS and frontend then they could be quite a bargain. They are well made cabinets. And only being 2/3 size don't take up as much room. They do come with a riser so the cabinets are a more natural height to play standing up.

[Harrison]

A quick Google and find this link.

https://hackinformer.com/2018/12/26/how-to-upgrade-the-arcade1up-cabinet-to-a-full-on-arcade-system-with-1000s-of-games/

This guy took an Arcade 1UP and replaced the main board with a RPi3, had to add a display board to interface surg the screen, and used a USB control board similar to an iPac encoder.m to cinnect up the controls. So he basically replaced most of the cabinets insides.

I still want to find out what the cabinet is using as standard and if that can be hacked.

[J T]

Do they come flat packed and need assembly?

[Harrison]

No, prebuilt and ready to go. They even find with the black riser to make them taller to play standing up.

[J T]

Looks neat in the pictures, but hard for me to gauge the size without seeing one in the flesh.

The kids recently went to a birthday party at an arcade - there were a lot of pinball machines, a few racers, and a bunch of arcade cabs that were clearly just running an emulator..... Part of me now wants to get an arcade cabinet even though I know I'll end up spending more time scrolling than playing.

[Harrison]

I used to have an arcade cabinet that I had converted from a real one into a MAME cabinet. But after moving house a couple of times it started to fall apart and when I had a good look it wasn't worth trying to save as it was mainly chipboard and very heavy with the CRT. So I stripped out the controls, wiring and boards with the intention of building a new one, but haven't ever got around to doing it. These cabinets interest me interested if I can customise them to add more games. Far cheaper than buying the custom emulation cabinets you can get. Those, even flatpack, can cost over £1000.

[Demon Cleaner]

That ship has sailed for me, no space and also not real interest anymore, just playing my retro stuff lying on the couch is much more comfortable. And I know about the retro feeling of a cabinet but nah.

[Harrison]

I know what you mean, but there is something special about playing arcade games on a real cabinet. More so games from the 80s where a real joystick and buttons make the difference.

[J T]

There are some things in life that I want, and have looked at before, and could possibly acquire, but know that they'd likely get used so rarely that it'd be almost a waste of time, space and most certainly money.

An arcade cab (with joysticks and buttons) with a whole selection of games
A proper sized pool table
A big surround sound system
A fancy gaming PC set up
An outdoors swimming pool
A nice mountain bike
Proper 5-a-side style football goal posts with nets
Full height basketball ring

(in no particular order)

[Demon Cleaner]

You have to consider something else too, setting the whole thing up.

What do you want to run on it, solely MAME? Or other retro systems too?

Do you wanna make a RetroArch installation only, running EmuELEC or Batocera?

RetroArch is fine, runs a lot of systems but is a complete pain in the ass to set up. Not only game wise, but mostly controller setups and configurations. That's where in my opinion it lacks the most. Setting everything up takes hours only to notice that 1 week later it's not working anymore already and you restart the whole procedure. Not talking even about setting hotkeys which you definitely need.

Do you plan to add games or to make a ready setup and never touch it again? That is the best option of course, as like I mentioned, fiddle around too much with RetroArch and it ****s you over.

Best would be to install a RPi4 inside, which is powerful enough to run retro games, I have mine completely set up with 1TB SD card with around 30.000 games and it runs almost everything fine, even Daphne, which is obviously nice on an arcade cabinet. You don't even need the computer stuff, just concentrate on consoles, skip also DS and 3DS due to the dual screens.

Getting arcade stick controls working properly is probably the biggest issue, also not easier on Linux.

Just get a ready MAME cabinet, pay the triple, but it works out of the box ;)

[Harrison]

If you didn't want to setup an emulation front-end then there are preconfigured setups available. Some romburners now sell preconfigured HDs, and I know of at least 2 people in the emulation scene that create preconfigured RPi4 setups ready to go. So options exist for those without time, or can't be bothered to do it all themselves.

Obviously if then putting a preconfigured setup in an arcade cabinet you might end up having to redo the control configuration.

I would probably opt for a full PC build though with a full cabinet setup just to have the best emulators and options.

[Demon Cleaner]

Stay away from those preconfigured HDDs, they're a mess. Had one once, was very expensive and everything was just thrown in, several emulators existed multiple times, really annoying if you wanna change something, ROMs were a disaster, choice of games horrible, plus super unorganized, like the complete chaos, CPC464 f.ex. only had spanish versions of the games.

It's perhaps fine to buy and never touch if you don't have any clue, but it made my work double or triple. From that point on I stayed away from that crap.

Download one from Arcade Punks, they have many, and just unpack it on a disk and you're fine to go, not even spending money. They have builds fo 256GB, 512GB, 1TB and more. They're even a Launchbox one called [3tb]-Loaded.Launchbox.BigBox-Wolfanoz which includes already some good stuff, although no images, videos and stuff are included, if you don't need that than you're fine.

You can find that download here: https://www.arcadepunks.com/launchbox-big-box-front-end-download/

Only thing you need to do is to sign up at Arcade Punks, but you don't need paid membership. The site is a bit a mess to navigate but other than that it has some very cool stuff.

[Harrison]

Most of the preconfigured HDDs are a mess, that's true, but one guy with a Facebook group creates really nice custom RPi4 setups that are very well configured and organised.

Personally like you I do all my own rom configuring and building sets. But for many they don't know where to start or don't have the time to learn.

I've never bothered with the Arcade Punks downloads though. I might download them anyway to have a play around. Always useful to have another source. Most of my collection has been built up over the past 25 years of downloads so is custom to me. But I also have full rom sets, but tend to only include games in actually ever going to load, but everything for the sake of it. My only exception is MAME, where I do like to have the whole set.

[Harrison]

The facebook group I commented about is called Retro Realm, where you can find good preconfigured setups.

One guy in the group called Kenny Shand sells 1GB USB drives that are plug and play PC setups that boot from the drive directly into the frontend, bypassing Windows. So ideal for those wit any knowledge.

[Harrison]

Obviously the issue with any preconfigured setup you buy from someone else is that they have set it up and not yourself. Even a 1TB drive cannot fit everything on it, especially if it includes newer systems, and you can't guarantee they have only included one version of each game and not every clone or regional variation.

The big advantage of spending time building a setup yourself is personal preference. You can cherry pick just the games and systems you want, and the versions of each.

[Demon Cleaner]

The big advantage of spending time building a setup yourself is personal preference. You can cherry pick just the games and systems you want, and the versions of each.
Very true, but a lot of people don't want to take their time, which I completely understand as it is VERY time consuming. It is my hobby, like other people build cars, work with wood or play with Märklin.

I can send you a copy of my 1TB RPi4 setup, which will only cost you the price of an SD card ;)

[Harrison]

That would be cool. PM me.

[Demon Cleaner]

Only have to figure out how to make a copy :dry:

[Harrison]

Raspberry Pi OS has an SD Card Copier app.

[Demon Cleaner]

I’m just gonna send you my card, you make a copy and send it back. PM me your address.

[Harrison]

OK. Cool.

[Demon Cleaner]

I just cloned the SD with Win32 Disk Imager and that worked fine :thumbs: Took 3.5 hours though.

[Harrison]

That's good. That's a long time though. I suppose the number of small files would slow it down greatly.

[Harrison]

I was thinking it might be good to consider making SD card images we could store on the server for members to use. And also a good backup for ourselves.

I keep saying it, but with the state of social media these days and the difficulty for many to find and setup rom sets and builds for the ever increasing number of emulation handhelds, and things like RetroPie, having configured SD card images that can just be downloaded and written to SD card would be a great solution.

Would need to be kept under the radar and not openly advertised though. Just offered to specific people looking that we trust.

One area I don't see often, or all the information in one place, is a rom building discussion place since the demise of places like Bitgamer and Pleasuredome, for setting up and building rom sets for emulation. I would really like to try and get that going somehow. That could be a direction to try and get more activity back on these forums and wouldn't need too much work or time dedicated to the site to initiate to get interest from new members or returning old ones. Will have a think about this over Christmas.

I still want at some point to create a centralised site directory dedicated to emulators to bring all the information scattered all over the internet into one central place.

[Demon Cleaner]

The image I created from my SD card is 973.340.672 KB.

The problem with different setups is that you have to create one for each size, 32MB, 64MB, 128MB aso. Which is again a lot of work. Which games to include? For some smaller systems you can just add everything, but bigger ones? You will f.ex. notice that on my SD card there's a lot of sports and racing games, my favorite category when it comes to retro, but some people might not find the game they are searching for, but you cannot start creating different games setups, that would be huge.

[Harrison]

I had the idea of created themed images, with busy one genre of games across multiple emulated systems, so just fighting games or shmups f.ex. not sure anyone done that yet. Or even single games studios, so all Sega, Nintendo or Square Enix.

I got that idea from playing this 1upArcade cabinet where the included roms were only in thy same genre and theme as the cabinet.

[J T]

Themed images does sound like a good idea.

Not knowing how long it takes to build / do, what about a periodic thing like a 'collection choice for this month'?

[Demon Cleaner]

You have to create playlists. In LaunchBox f.ex. I can just create a playlist let's say with soccer games, and all the games that include the soccer genre in their metadata will automatically be included. Sadly enough not every single game out of 30.000 has the correct metadata.

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Yesterday I wanted to write my image back to my new SanDisk Ultra microSDXC 1TB card. After around 13% it failed, as it was already a bit later I didn't run it again, wanted to start then this morning. So far so good.

Then I switched to TV, leaving the PC on for later, and we watched the football game. After the game I switched back and I had a blue screen. Wtf? So I restarted the PC, I was checking what could have caused it, 3 minutes later, bam, blue screen again. I then detached all USB devices, rebooted, and after that it was working fine. Still wondering why it happened but got the idea that it might be hardware related (Wdf01000.sys)

This morning I wanted to start my copy again, 2 minutes later, blue screen. Ok, now I knew. Something is wrong with the card reader or the card itself. I removed the card reader and it was fricking hot. I put another SD card in the reader and it was still working fine after 10 minutes, reader was cool. I took another reader, 2 minutes later, blue screen. I removed the SD and almost burnt my fingers.

At least I will get it replaced, mainly thanks to you Dave :) Because I ordered the card 1 month ago and it was still wrapped, it was meant for the Loki Max, which will probably arrive in the first month of 2023. Then only I would have noticed that it is defective but would not have been eligible for a replacement anymore because the last date for returning it back was the 31st of January.

Definitely tells you not to order stuff in advance!!

[Demon Cleaner]

:o Amazon send me already a new SD card although I did not even send mine back. I will only send it this morning together with yours.

[Harrison]

I never would have thought an SD card could have such issues. I've never encountered them getting hot or causing a complete system crash. Do you know what the exact system errors were?

It might be worth seeing if there is a way to fully test new cards when we buy them.

As you mentioned, I also tend to buy extra SD cards in advance. I got a few 128GB and 256GB cards earlier in the year when they were in offer in Amazon. They are all still sealed so never used. I just assume they will work when needed. I only need them that size or even smaller for things like cameras and handheld systems most of the time so keep a few spare.

But larger capacity cards are still more expansive, so if there is some way to fully test them when purchased works be good. I will have a look about. I'm sure there was a Lonux tool that could fully test them. And if so a small Linux distro on a memorystick would be all that's needed. That could bypass Windows and just boot into Linux for small overhead and no BSOD issues.

In fact I'm going to look into this properly. If we could find a small USB stick installable Linux that has SD card testing, duplication and image making built in that could be very handy. I will let you know what I find.

For smaller capacity cards it's not really such an issue though if a card is faulty as they don't cost much these days and are nearly throw away items when they fail. Anything up to 256GB is now fairly cheap. Even brands like Sandisk can be picked up for under £20. But 512GB cards are around £50 for a decent make, and 1TB cards are still around £100 or more which is still quite a bit to lose. So testing and getting them replaced soon after purchase would be good to start doing.

[Harrison]

A very quick Google and I think just a default setup bootable USB stick with Ubuntu is all that would be needed. Using the built in Disk Utility or
gnome-disks depending on OS version it has benchmarking built in that can fully test an SD card. I will try it out over the weekend on a Ubuntu install I already have setup for my RPi4.

Here's some info about the tool.
https://askubuntu.com/questions/69932/is-there-an-sd-card-diagnostic-utility

Why Linux and not Windows? Easy. Stability and no bloatware. I was a loyal Windows user for most things for years, but have more recently been using Linux far more for non gaming or design stuff. It's far faster, lightweight and stable. And file copying is far faster. That's why servers use it and why most emulation setups run on Linux. And you dunt need state of the art hardware either. I couldn't use it as a full desktop replacement though as even the best ones are a it clunky compared to Windows. But they are getting there.

[Demon Cleaner]

Btw I send your card this morning, what a hassle because of the UK. Had to sign papers and tell them what's inside of the package because it will go through customs. I also had to give a phone number or email otherwise they won't send it. So I just gave them dave.watts@gmail.com as fake.

Like I said the error was wdf01000.sys:

If you have wondered what exactly is wdf01000.sys, it is a Windows driver that helps your computer to communicate with hardware and other connected devices.

What failed wdf01000.sys?

A few users have complained of this BSoD error. It is triggered by a few factors, including:

Issues with Windows Driver Frameworks – If the WDF fails to work, you may run into this error message.

File issues – The wdf01000.sys error and other blue screen errors can often be due to corrupted or missing system files.

Hard drive issues – Hard drives, especially bad and defective ones, have triggered this error for many users.

Compatibility issues – If some programs have compatibility issues with the OS, it can lead to an error. This, in many cases, could actually be your antivirus software.

Defective drivers – Users have encountered this issue when drivers are outdated or defective.

[Harrison]

I've been asking on other forums about copying larger SD cards, and a lot suggest the DD commandline tool in Linux as it is the fastest by far. The only downside is it clones the whole drive, block by block, so whilst it's an exact copy it even copies blank space. But this would mean it would still compress smaller if there was a lot of blank space.

The other tool suggested a lot was Clonezilla.

And other suggestions include:

Winimage

Just another portable tool for win: https://odin-win.sourceforge.net/

HDD Raw copy tool

https://www.balena.io/etcher/

https://rufus.ie/en/

https://sourceforge.net/projects/win32diskimager/

[Demon Cleaner]

I usually use Balena Etcher or the Win32 Disk Imager like I did the copy of the card.

[Harrison]

Talking to some on other forums the instability and slow speed of imaging or cloning a large SD card is due to USB. And failure is due to USB buffer cache size issues. That's why when performing it in a large card they say to not perform any other action on the system whilst it's running. It's almost like the old days of early CD burning.

Have you seen mass SD card duplicators? I was looking around to see if there existing alternatives to USB based SD card readers and came across these duplicators. Some can clone over 100 SD cards simultaneously which is quite mad. They do cost about £1500 though.

An ideal memory card copier would be one that didn't use USB. Maybe proprietary PCI-E or SATA.

I want to find out what those that offer SD card setups for sale use to clone their cards. Such as those selling RPi retropie setups.

[Demon Cleaner]

Balena have one too https://store.balena.io/products/etcher-pro?

[Harrison]

That a really nice design.

[Harrison]

This looks like a nice solution to use a RPi in a one player arcade cabinet build.

https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/picade-x-hat-usb-c?variant=29156918558803

And the next one, called Controlblock sports 2 player inputs, and can be attacked to support 4 joysticks.

https://www.petrockblock.com/controlblock/

[Demon Cleaner]

OMG, just saw this posted by one of my favorite retro stuff tester, what a beast!!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KqdOV5kpyz4

[J T]

It was my eldest's 10th birthday, so we did a laser tag party. I hadn't done that for ages, it was really good fun.

Around the edges of the waiting room they had about 4 or 5 arcade 'devices'. By devices, I mean proper arcade sticks (1P and 2P), 6 buttons, mounted into a small table top box which had the emulator inside (I don't know exacty what was running it) and hooked up into a TV. The kids loved it, and ended up playing a lot of random old tripe but the one game that seemed to be most popular was the Simpsons arcade. At one point almost all the devices were playing that.

It almost tempted me to go for something like this at home but I know that it would either lead to fights, or go unused, so I don't think I'll bother really.

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The splash screen said 'pandora 95' or 'Pandora 9S' and I am just googling those. Seems they can be bought for not all that much money. I was assuming they were a kit / assembly required type of thing but it turns out they are much more of a 'plug in and play straight away' item. Seems like there's a lot of variety and some are crappy but others are decent. Hmmmmm.

[Demon Cleaner]

You can buy one of those Retro Arcade Pandora boxes on Aliexpress, not the motherboard, the ready 2 player which look like arcade controls. From what I know they seem to be quite good, didn't test one out myself though. It's easy to hook to the TV and doesn't take much space compared to a whole cabinet, and obviously a lot cheaper.

[Harrison]

This is probably the one you saw

https://pandoraplatinum.com/

They are a US company specialising in making emulation arcade controllers. The hardware running it is a bit like a Raspberry Pi but not as powerful. Their latest versions seem better than before with even an SD card shot to add your own games without having to hack the hardware.

And as DC said AliExpress sell knockoff copies of their setups. There are other similar setups from many other companies to.

The other route is to use a RPi and connect up seperate controllers.