What am I getting myself into ?

[Litltn187]

Hey all. I am coming off of a traditional jamma arcade background and thinking of getting into the Arpicade world. However, Honestly I have 0 idea what I am doing.
My current machine is a dedicated 4 player jamma cabinet, I am purchasing a 4 player arpicade from highscoresaves which I understand is mostly “plug and play” into my current Jamma /kick harnesses. The confusing part for me is seeing people talking about “making backup images, memory cards, using keyboards to access and edit menus and software updates .... how the heck does a keyboard get into the equation ? I do not have a personal PC at home, just tablets and smartphones. In the near future will/ Do I need a PC or seperate keyboard to work menus on my setup ? I am used to controlling everything either from my menu option using the cabinet joystick and buttons or dip switch settings depending on the board

Again a sorry for being so raw with all this and basically asking to be spoon fed info. I just want to make sure I know what I am getting myself into.

Thanks for any and all help.

[dee2eR]

This is a good question... the board may or may not suit you. It should work fine for the cab but it is a computer at heart and can be more complex than the average multiboard. It is not necessary to have a USB keyboard to use the board but they can be very useful to have if you like tweaking things to suit your tastes. Most things can be done using only JAMMA controls without a keyboard but not everything, it is a computer after all.

If you don't have a PC of some sort you won't really be able to get the most out of the system, unless your tablet can read SD cards you won't be able to copy roms onto it or backup the software (just in case). Also true if you want to update to a newer version of ARpiCADE (the software part) in the future. If your tablet can work with a SD card reader it will probably work in place of a PC for this setup although I don't have any experience with tablets to be 100% sure.

RaspberryJAMMA/ARpiCADE is meant to be turned into whatever you want it to be. It may not be setup just how you want by default. For example, different 4 player cabs often had different joystick and button setups - some had start buttons (eg NBAJam) while others reused an action button as start (eg. TMNT), some share one coin mech some have one for each player - there's not really a standard 4 player setup so depending on your cab (and tastes) you may want your 4 player cab software setup a little differently to mine even if we both play the same games.

I hope that helps clear it up, feel free to keep asking questions. I'd rather accidentally talk you out of purchasing one than have you buy something that won't suit you.

[Litltn187]

Thanks so much for the insightful reply. To be totally honest, I don’t plan on adding any games (Roms) to the Arpicade board I plan on purchasing. It has all the 4 player games I want so I am more than content with the selection. And as long as I can get all 4 joysticks and controls to function as intended I’m not too concerned with startup options. My main concern is that everything I read tells me to make a backup of “the image” in case something gets messed up along the way so I can have it act as a factory restore. This is where I start to get worried I believe this is primarily what I will need a computer for but I have absolutely no idea what it entails in regards to downloading and formatting. My computer skills are downloading and that’s about it lol. I don’t know how to “zip and unzip” files, or do anything with an sd card for that much. I think I will be ok with the purchase as long as I can edit basic settings from the cabinet.

Also as far as the usb keyboard is concerned, how would I make use of it ? do I plug it into the arcade cabinet somehow ?

Thanks again for all your help

[dee2eR]

USB keyboard plugs into the RPi directly. It needs to be plugged in prior to power up to be usable, hotplugging it (probably) won't work properly without a reboot.

The backup image is indeed meant to act as a just in case restore point. It's possible you won't actually need one but having one certainly makes restoring easier than not having one. Looks like it may be possible from an android tablet though: https://www.tomshardware.com/how-to/and ... i-sd-cards (I have no experience with this software to know if it is good or not).

[Litltn187]

Thank you so much for all of your help, I genuinely appreciate it. Luckily for me, (unuckily for you) I got my old desktop up and running which means more questions are sure to come lol. For starters, what size SD card do you suggest I purchase and what program(s) should I use. All I am looking to do is backup the card, so should I make an error with the raspberrypi I purchase, I can have it restored

[dee2eR]

Often 16gig is a large enough SD card but it depends what you want out of it. If you want mainly your favourite games, say a few hundred of your favorite MAME titles 16gig should be good. If you want to be able to have thousands of games, especially if you want to run a bunch of stuff that was originally on laserdisc or CD, 64gig is probably the way to go. I don't generally recommend larger than that as it can make booting slower and backup images will take up a lot more HDD space etc. Given the prices these days 64gig is probably sensible. Whatever you go with don't get a generic or knockoff SD card, crap SD cards can cause issues on an RPi. I've had good luck with SanDisk Ultra and Extreme variations.

The software to use for backup/restore imaging will vary based on your OS. This guide has examples for multiple operating systems: https://pimylifeup.com/backup-raspberry-pi/

[Litltn187]

Thanks a million for all your help, that link was also extremely helpful in helping me understand the entire process.

So In addition to the Arpicade I’m purchasing I will purchase a sandisk 64gb SD card and an SD card reader that I can utilize in my computers Usb drive.

If I understand correctly, upon receiving my new equipment, I will use the card reader with the formatted SD (which already has the games on it upon purchase), and copy that onto my computer using a program like Win32diskimager to copy, edit and restore the files before inputting the Ss card back into the raspberrypi