serene02

No 80’s/90’s seaside arcade would be without their bingo area. Usually pretty Skanky affairs truth be told. 1 ticket per win, 50 tickets for a can of beans I loved the cheeky old school bingo lingo . I can hear it now... any way up 69. J

Wow, nice update, really looking forward to have a dabble, looks very user friendly orientated J

Yeah, I was thinking that you could make your own, looks fairly simple. J

Is it possible to add a snap function so people with OCD can get all machines perfectly aligned J

I very nearly bought a Pac-Man pusher, I love those units, so much fun J

The memory will just run at whatever your system can run it at, it shouldn't cause any issues. Or go for DDR3 1066 instead. J

Wow, yes the Morgina machine used to creep me out, I was scared of it but also very inquisitive to how it all worked. I’d always been interested in how the video machines worked, I remember watching Williams Star Rider, it really blew my mind, I couldn’t understand why it was so much better, graphics wise, than everything else, I wondered what kind of a magic was behind it. Same with Dragon’s Lair. J

Doh!!! https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/8GB-Memory-Kingston-2x4GB-DDR3-1Rx8-PC3L-12800S-1600MHZ-204-Pin-For-laptop/294016466357?hash=item4474bf3db5:g:odIAAOSw3j1gKvLB J

Here is compatible memory. Not sure on the slots available, but this is 2 x 4GB DDR3 ram, if you already have 4GB stick you could just buy a single, but this kit will cover you, as long as you have 2 memory slots available, it's usually the case but just check. J

So, the chip is compatible but cooling may be an issue. However further investigation shows that these CPUs run at the same speed in single core mode. MFME doesn’t take advantage of multi-core CPU’s so it seems ultimately pointless to carry out this upgrade. I’d suggest upgrading ram to 8gb and installing an SSD. The extra ram should boost GPU video memory and give the system a memory boost also so it should improve the overall snappiness of the system. J

The motherboard does support this CPU but it all depends on whether the heatsink can keep this CPU cool. Because it run at a higher wattage it might create too much heat. I’ll take a look at the model and see if there were available upgrades to these, there could have been an i7 version of this laptop released but I’ll see if I can find some info for you J

Yeah an animated prop would be fine or even a static model. Not sure if they would be emulated as they are electromechanical, well used to be. J

I’d love to see some old coin pushers, I wouldn’t usually play them but I can’t imagine a retro arcade without them. They were an integral part of the arcade aesthetic. Well they still are, though they don’t play as fairly as back in the day. J

I would love to recreate an arcade layout. What an amazing prospect to be able to do this, who would have even imagined that this would be a possibility. Great work as usual J

No worries. The trouble will be the GPU, I'm not sure what you have onboard your laptop. I'm not sure if that gen i3 or i7 have embedded GPU. What is the model of your laptop? J

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/264217614645 It all depends whether or not there are version of the i3 that are soldered in. You might want to check yours. Remove the cooler etc and see if it can be removed. The CPU above 'should' be compatible but don't take my word for it. I'd hate for you to purchase one only to find it's a no go. Also, it looks like you can have a max capacity of 8GB of DDR3 ram. Again depending on the config of your current memory slots. Maybe worth looking for your exact model and seeing info on any upgradability. I will say though for the price you are spending to upgrade old tech you could just buy some more up to date components that are somewhat future proof as well, the cost isn't that much higher but the machine will perform far better than any upgrade to your older machine. I quickly priced up a 10th Gen intel with onboard GPU, motherboard and 8gb DDR4 memory and a power supply for less than £200. That would be all new and all up to date kit. You have a good upgrade path from a newer system. I'm sure you would be able to build it up, it's quite a simple process. People will be able to help you if you run into any problems. J

MFME now uses GPU acceleration, not sure whether these early Core i3 have an embedded GPU, might be worth checking your laptop to see what the actual graphics specs are. I think the i3 might be fine for basics mfme layouts but without a decent gpu it will certainly struggle with the higher resolution DX layouts. J

That’s the hard drive fella. It’s a standard mechanical one, very slow compared to even an entry level SSD. Though an SSD will be a huge upgrade for general desktop use it won’t help MFME perform any better unfortunately. The i7 720 quad core could potentially be fitted to this laptop, it would require an almost complete laptop tear down to perform the upgrade, doubling up on memory would also be a good move. It’s a lot of messing about to be fair, probably cost around 40-50 for those extra parts but then you’d need someone to fit them for you. Probably bit of a task depending on your experience. J

Wow, this is awesome stuff J

I just got a 480gb one for my MAME box. J

Yeah and SSD is probably one of the best upgrades for an older system, you will see a massive difference for sure. J

Been tinkering with one of these bar top ultra wide screen, usually used for advertising etc, I found this one that came with 5 point multi touch, it’s an awesome bit of kit that I’ve started to use as a touch screen for the fruit machine buttons. It’s only 19cm wide bit decent for buttons. I plan on sourcing a bigger one but they aren’t exactly widely available so can be fairly expensive as a result.

We often switched off after a jackpot for 5 mins then back on to factory reset For 14-15 year olds we were well on our way to fraudsville!! Arcades didn’t really have cameras, especially little seaside arcades. J

Also a lot of these machines ended up with flat batteries so you could ‘take’ them as most would leave either jackpot on line after reset or a certain reel sequence. You knew you were in a safe profit zone J

Yeah pretty much all of these BWB machines you would just gamble out. Great machines. You could make some decent money on these back in the day in busy arcades, they didn’t need 100’s of pound back in to have some profit in them. My favourites were Lucky Lady, Fruit Swop, Step n Skip, but there were so many decent variants of pretty much the same machine J