MAME Cabinet
When I first interviewed at Tumblr, I recall taking the area in. I remember sitting on a sofa, waiting for the staff recruiter, Sean, to come get me. A woman was laying on her stomach on an opposite couch, working on her laptop. The wall was covered in awesome graffiti style art, each area representing a different Tumblr blog (still a shame that got destroyed when we renovated the 6th floor). A back area had a ping-pong table, and behind it a MAME cabinet, all hooked up, the screen in attract mode luring people to play it.Â
For those who don't know (not sure how you ended up on this blog though), MAME stands for Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator, and basically it means it's not just a single arcade game, but it can play all of them (well, most - some games have issues). It turns out that this was actually hand built by a couple of Tumblr employees, who donated it all to the company.
After I was hired at Tumblr, I saw the machine move from place to place as the company kept growing and room was becoming a scarce commodity. Even as we expanded to additional floors, and opened a new cafeteria, the MAME cabinet moved along trying to find a spot that it could still be used - but sadly it was not getting much playtime. Eventually it was disconnected once and for all and moved completely out of the way...Â
So here we are, about a year and eight months since I started, and a message gets sent out asking if anyone wanted this beautiful machine and cabinet - I instantly jumped on the opportunity and luckily was the first to respond. After a 8 avenue walk, pushing the cabinet on a handcart, avoiding potholes and garbage covering the entirety of the sidewalk, it now stands proudly in my apartment.
Sadly, the poor cabinet had been neglected - a drawer and door don't really close properly. There are a few nicks and scratches. Worst of all, there were issues with the computer, like controllers not working or corrupted hard drive partitions and an unknown password on the Windows XP install...
And that brings us to this blog - due to many circumstances, I will be reinstalling all of the software and reconfiguring the system - easy right? Well, as it turns out, the hardware and software setup that I will be using doesn't seem to have adequate documentation on getting it all working together properly - there are plenty of articles and forum posts, but it's a mess and so many details are missing. Each post on this blog will cover my step-by-step actions in returning this machine to its former glory. I will cover the hardware configuration, as well as installing and configuring each emulator.
Note: I will not be providing any links to roms etc - this is meant as a resource to help get everything installed and configured properly - not as a resource to pirate games. Buy copies of the games you want and retrieve the images in legal ways.