Hello, I have been planning on making a mame cabinet for some time now. I bought a NFL Blitz cabinet ( 2 player). It is a Jamma+ cab. I was hoping that someone might be able to help me out. I would like to know where to start from this point. everything is working on the cab but I would like to modify it into a mame. Which way would be the most effiecint and cost effective way to have this project started. I want all games 4 way & 8 way controller games and will also need to add additional buttons.

J-Pac.

Go and check out the hardware at http://www.ultimarc.com

And you may want to skip over to BYOAC. Oceans of information to be found on that site, especially within the wiki:

http://arcadecontrols.com/arcade.htm

So if I understand clearly the Jpac will allow me to use the Jamma monitor? but what about buttons. Will it allow me to have a 6 button config per player?

Yes, the J-Pac will let you run a 2-player 6-button setup with your current wiring setup.  For a video card, for ease of setup, order a AVGA card from Ultimarc as well, then you can run windows w/a front end and windows mame on your arcade monitor. Or you can do like I am and use a standard video card, dos, AdvanceMame and ArcadeOS for my front end.

And what kind of games you want to play will dictate how fast of a PC you will want.

Hey Grauwulf, I noticed you also have an arcade mame in NFL blitz cab... can you send me your specs and what games your playing on them?

scrap the cabinet and buy a pinbal instead ... you won't regret it !

wa never really into the pin thing... I like vids more

Keep your control panel simple.  There's an eligance in a simple well laid out control panel which far above and beyond a control panel that will play every control specialized game.

I actaully sold the Blitz cab and am using a Smash TV cab because it has a smaller footprint. I only got rid of it recently so I haven't updated my page yet. My system specs right now are AMD Athalon 1700+ (1.5ghz) 256 meg ram, SB128 PCI sound card and a Geforce MX-200 64 meg video card. I've also been playing around with a ATI Radeon 9200 series card as well. I'm happy with it so far, I'm sure I'll want more power later, but for now it's all I need. It looks like it will run Shuffleshot, World Class Bowling and Golden Tee Golf up to 2k, but I won't know for sure until I get it all in the cab and play around with it.  One of the other members here ended up with my Blitz cab, and is doing a 4-player setup with it.

Quoted from djquilk

wa never really into the pin thing... I like vids more

that's an even better reason to buy a pinbal !!

Quoted from Grauwulf

I actaully sold the Blitz cab and am using a Smash TV cab because it has a smaller footprint. I only got rid of it recently so I haven't updated my page yet. My system specs right now are AMD Athalon 1700+ (1.5ghz) 256 meg ram, SB128 PCI sound card and a Geforce MX-200 64 meg video card. I've also been playing around with a ATI Radeon 9200 series card as well. I'm happy with it so far, I'm sure I'll want more power later, but for now it's all I need. It looks like it will run Shuffleshot, World Class Bowling and Golden Tee Golf up to 2k, but I won't know for sure until I get it all in the cab and play around with it.  One of the other members here ended up with my Blitz cab, and is doing a 4-player setup with it.

Everything I've heard is that mame is almost entirely processor dependant.  Chances are you're not going to see a significant impovement by upgrading your video card.  It could be heresay though.  Let me know if you know otherwise.