ROMS
OK. I had a couple of hundred ROMS, but as the MAME engine has been moving on, more and more of them have been marked as "not working" so I've bit the bullet and bought an eBay auction for a set of DVDs with 6500 ROMS. Nice :-)
The disks arrived yesterday and I spun disk 1 for the first time today without issues - I'll make the assumption the rest are OK and get round to playing them when I have some time.
INTERFACE CONTROLLER
If you scan back through the history of this blog, you'll see the fun I had hacking a keyboard to serve as an interface controller. I thoroughly enjoyed that experience, not least because I discovered a lot more about how they all work, but I suppose I get a kick out of that kind of stuff. Sad. I know.
I did occasionally experience a problem with my homebrew controller that I've spotted in a couple of google searches, that there's a limit to the amount of simultaneous keypresses on a standard keyboard controller - I think it's 6. I could have built 2, or I'm sure USB doesn't suffer, or 2 USBs. UPDATE: more searching reveals this is a hardware issue with almost all keyboards.
But, I've decided to buy a proper interface controller, so I've plumped for the I-PAC VE controller from Ultimarc. I looked at these carefully last time round, and back then couldn't justify the 30 quid for the little clever box, when I could crack open a keyboard and build my own for the cost of a bit of wire and a strip of block connectors.
Ultimarc have several versions of these gizmos - I've picked this one because I only need 2 players - I did think about 4, but know full well it'll never be used enough to justify it. The VE version has a couple of minor limitations over the standard version, buy I don't need them, plus it currently has a free shipping offer, which makes all the difference in price.
It's on order, and could be the best part of 3 weeks before it gets here. Watch this space.
BUTTONS
Back in Blighty, we have Gremlin Solutions, who I purchased my sticks and buttons from last time. They're not cheap (about 35 quid for my needs) so i've got my eye on an eBay auction of someone who, just like me the first time, bought the kit and never even unpacked it. I eBayed my parts last time for a pittance, so I'm hoping the Karma fairy pays me a visit and let's me win this auction for a reasonable outlay.
Cost so far = £35
Rom DVDs - £5
Interface Controller - £30
I have been using an j-pac for years. works great.
ReplyDelete