HELP: Building a stepmania machine

[WooDaddy]

So my gf and I are DDR nerds... It's kinda scary. If you live in the Chicago area and you see this 30-something (african american) couple pushing little kids out of the way to play DDR or In the Groove at D&B, Gameworks or Enchanted Castle or random movie theatres, that's me and my woman. We play so much at home (DDR, DDR Konamix and DDR Max) that my pads are getting busted up. We also are tired of the same old songs and I hate swapping out discs just to get to one song at a time.

Enter my goal to build a stepmania box.

Fortunately, Stepmania doesn't seem to have huge requirements on hardware, but I want to know if anyone has built a dedicated ITX or SFF system for Stepmania and possibly emulated games. I'm just looking to avoid any pitfalls that other have gone through. Also, I'll keep this as a log once I start working on it if anyone's interested.

Here's my estimated setup:
VIA EPIA M10000 Via C3 1Ghz
256MB
20GB 2.5" notebook harddrive
USB->PSX2 adapter
LG DVD-ROM (slim)
Morex Cubid 3688 Case (or I'll make my own)

Let me know what you guys think.

Stepmania link

 

[AmberClad]

Wow, what a coincidence. My DDR Dance Pad and Playstation->USB adapter just came in the mail today. For whatever reason, it's hard to find a PC dance pad, so I had to go with a PSX one ($5 one from Geeks during their free shipping sale). Works just fine with StepMania though and I managed not to kill myself testing it out in my cramped room.

 

[LiekOMG]

I ended up building my own pad which I hook up to my PC and play through Stepmania. Its been a while since i've played but the pad has worked perfectly for 3+ years now.

 

[Lonyo]

Originally posted by: DOACleric
I ended up building my own pad which I hook up to my PC and play through Stepmania. Its been a while since i've played but the pad has worked perfectly for 3+ years now.

How did you make it?
I was going to hack apart an old joystick, wire up the switches to pads and try that, but I never got round to it.

 

[PingSpike]

Update OP? I'm thinking about doing the same thing. I have enough old hardware lying around that the only things I'm going to need are the pads and maybe some speakers or something. Probably an adaptor for the pads.

I've got a best buy gift card so I think I'll pick up a pad from there...can anyone recommend a pad for me? I've never really played the game. But I'm starting to get kind of fat and it seems like good and fun exercise that I can do in the winter. My cousin, who was always a total fatass lost a TON of weight on it so it seems like a good idea.

I've got a p3 1ghz, be6-II motherboard, 384mb of ram...and a geforce2 mx400 lying around. I figure an old 10gig hard disk will get the job done? I'll need to dig up some kind of sound card though. I was thinking of doing TV out to a 13" set that I have and am not using. What resolution does this need?

Do you end up...jumping very high with this? The ceiling is pretty low in my basement...but I'm only 5'9" so hopefully I won't kill myself.

I feel like I'm investing a lot in something I'm not sure if I'll like...but between the gift card and the parts I have lying around I doubt I'll drop more then $20 to get this going.