Setting Up The Software For Your MAME Cab

Here's a breakdown of what we're gonna do:

• Installing an OS
• Installing/ configuring a frontend
• Setting up your control panel

*Reasoning behind the software I use*

 For an OS we'll be using the now very outdated Windows XP, because it takes little space, boots fast, runs on basically anything with a x86 or x64 architecture and is dirt cheap these days. We will also be using MaLa as our frontend because it also runs on almost anything, is free and very customizable. 

    1. Installing the OS

 First, get yourself a copy of windows XP and burn it to a cd or a USB drive (which I prefer). If you're going to use a USB drive, download Rufus, select NTFS as your file system, make sure your partition system is MBR and then click on the little disk icon and select your windows xp iso.

 Now that you have a bootable windows xp device, insert it into your computer and go into the BIOS(it's different for every pc/motherboard, check your manual) and in there select boot device/boot order or however it appears in your BIOS and put your USB drive or CD in the first place. Remember to put this setting the way it was after you installed Windows XP(put your Hard Drive in the top of the list)

 Get out of the BIOS and your pc should boot into the windows xp instalation screen. Press enter to install, read the licensing agreement, select your C:/ drive and press D to delete the current partition (warning, if you have anything on your hard drive, it will be erased)- Now you'll need to press L to confirm the deletion of the partition. Select the now empty partition and then select the option to format it in NTFS, press enter and then windows will install. It'll reboot your pc a few times and then it'll take to a few menus to choose your language, keyboard, user definitions etc. Windows is now installed.

If you have any trouble installing windows, try this guide.

    2.Installing and configuring the front end

 The frontend is the program which will lauch all your emulators and ROMs using your control panel, think of it as an OS whose only purpose is launching games

 Start by downloading MaLa and then extract them  Mala174 folder into your desktop or wherever you want it. Now you'll want to download and install MAME, which is the program that runs the arcade games.

 After you've installed MAME, run MaLa and a windows should pop up asking for some basic configuration. On the field that says MAME executable, click the three dots and then find the mame.exe file which will be in the folder where you installed MAME. A window will then pop up asking you to create an .ini file and then a .xml file, say yes to both.
 Now is a good time to get a few ROMs which are the actual arcade games. Go on emuparadise, and download a couple of them. After you've downloaded a ROM, take the zip file and put it in the folder called roms which will be inside the folder where you installed MAME. Remember, never unzip the ROMs.
 Now that you have a couple of games, you can now set a ROM path in MaLa. To do this, Click on the three dots next to the ROM Path field in the MaLa configuration window and select the roms folder where you put your previously downloaded ROMs. Press ok at the bottom of the page and then yes on the windows that pops up. Wait a bit and MaLa will open, displaying all your games. If any windows pop up, just press ok, as they are not essential.
 MaLa is now set up, and will launch your games. It looks ugly, so you'll probably want to download a few layouts and set thing up a little better, but for that you'll have to consult the MaLa wiki over at BYOAC

    3. Setting up your control panel

Assuming you've already wired everything and have it connected to your computer open up MaLa, right click anywhere and then select the controller and then joystick tab. On the joystick tab go to the check tab and make sure every button and joystick direction is working. Go back to the basic tab and configure your controls however you like. Remember to check the "check" tab to check your button numbers. After that's done, load a game and then press tab on your keyboard. Using your keyboard select Input(general) and from here configure your controls. Remember to set a coin and start button, which are in the the "Other Controls" menu. 

If you've done everything right you should now have a very basic MAME cabinet running