Sunday

Sunday afternoon has been productive, but not as much as I'd hoped.

Here's another sketch of the control panel section.



[caption id="attachment_142" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="control panel sketch"][/caption]

I've been back to B&Q today to look at their MDF - I think I used 12mm last time, and had an issue when it came to mounting the joysticks. I remember that the screws that mounted the joystick underneath the panel started to come through the top surface ever so slightly.

So I'm going to go with the 18mm - more expensive, and the final product will be significantly heavier, but I think it's the tight thing to do. I've recalculated the sizes based on 18mm and I think I've got it right. Apologies for mixing imperials and metrics, but it's how I work.

I have sourced the piano hinges for the control panel and the main computer section today - £2.19 each from Wickes is an absolute bargain.

Also, I've picked up a pack of 50 corner brackets for £1.99 from Screwfix to connect the MDF panels together.

[caption id="attachment_147" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="angle brackets"][/caption]

Last time, I used 1" sq. strips of wood along each face, which contributed to the lack of space inside the case for the controls - plus it was a lot more cutting and drilling, etc. These little brackets should save a lot of time and effort connecting panels.

Tomorrow I hope to pick up some MDF and if I've got time, cut the panels for the control section.

Cost so far = £61.38
IPAC VE - £30
ROMS - £5
Buttons and Joysticks - £20.01
Piano Hinges - £4.38
Corner Brackets - £1.9

A good start to the weekend

Not a bad weekend so far. The IPAC VE arrived this morning and I just won the eBay auction I had my eye on.

2 x joysticks, 17 buttons and all the microswitches for £20.01 - not bad, as new from Gremlin would have been about £35 to £40. Just hope I don't find myself on the wrong side of some eBay karma.

Might go and buy some wood tomorrow, and start making the control panel - round the weekend off nicely.

Open Sesame...

THE CONTROL PANEL

Two things are on my mind this time round.  Last time, I positioned the controllers way too close to the edges of the panel, and it made it quite difficult to fit the micro-switches and cables on the buttons near the edges.  Also, because I built the whole arcade machine as one unit (two sides, one top, one bottom) it made it quite tricky to get in and around inside the control panel - if a connection was loose, I had to start unscrewing things to fix it.

So I'm going to make a stand-alone control panel (7 panels, top, slope, bottom, front, back and 2 sides) and have a single USB cable coming out of the back or possibly bottom (you'll see why when I get to the PC bit at a later date)

Something like this:

[caption id="attachment_128" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="control panel design"][/caption]

To slope or not to slope?

Surely slopes on the control panel surface is contrary to good ergonomic design, but every image of every machine I can find shows a slope.  I toyed with the idea of a flat surface so I could rest my beer on it :-), but I've gone for this little touch of authenticity.

Access to the gubbings

That problem of accessing the wiring and stuff without unscrewing the panels has got me thinking.

I am plagued with insomnia, and a night or two ago, an idea came to me that should solve this problem, and offer some opportunities to make the control panel a little more functional this time around.

This all hinges on something special - did you see what I did there?



If I add a hinge to the front lower edge, I should be able to pull up and out on the sticks, and have the whole underneath of the sticks and buttons exposed for maintenance and upgrades.

And the cream on the cake? I can stash a keyboard and a mouse in this discrete control panel unit for those tricky "if only I had a keyboard and a mouse, I could fix that little problem easily" moments.

Good, eh? Well, let's see if I can build it, then I can say whether or not it was a good idea.

And for those attention-to-detail types of you, the single USB coming out can be achieved by a little cheap hub in the control panel that has the IPAC, the keyboard, and the mouse connecting in, and one usb coming out.

Genius!

Thinking in Boxes

I have some different ideas about construction this time round.

Recently, I'm thinking very much modularly than I ever have - it's been useful at work, and I find modularity spilling out into all facets of my life.

For example, with the arcade machine, I'm thinking of building the core parts in a modular fashion, so that the control panel is an independent, discrete unit, the monitor panel is an independent discrete unit, and the PC (or whatever it may become) is a discrete part.

Last time, I tried to build one overall unit, and trying to hold monitors and control panels in place whilst I screwed the sides on was tricky to say the least.

The advantages of modular are many, but primarily I'm thinking about:

1. ease of construction - each part can be made and tested separately then all bolted together at the end


2. ease of maintenance - I can pop out a part, replace / upgrade / repair and pop back in


3. ease of transport - breaking it into parts and shipping it between locations is easier that hoofing a 6'x3'x3' box into and out of vans


4. and so on...

The Overall Design

I'm still trying to save a bit of space in the house - where I live isn't a massive place, and I'm still as keen this time to produce something that will fit on a wall or in a corner without looking like it needs a quarter of a room all to itself.  With that in mind, I've got some rough ideas about dimensions that I'd like to try and stick to.

Height - 6' - I'm several inches shy of 6' myself, and my recent memories are all of machines that are "a bit" taller than me - six foot seems about right - it's not overbearing but will have a presence.

Width - 30" - most interior doors are little wider than 30", so I'm happy that I'll be able to get it in and out of rooms without needing to take doors off hinges.  30" seems to be about right for two people to stand fairly close to one another and player 2UP games - just need to make sure the deodorant is to had for those friends who over-indulge in Street Fighter II.

Depth - 16" (at the widest point) - now I know what you're thinking (or what you should be thinking) - that's very slim for an arcade machine.  Well I did say that I didn't want it to dominate a room.  The 16" is at the widest point of the control panel, so when you think that the monitor and PC bit shouldn't be much deeper than 8", this machine will look like it has an eating disorder.  I have some ideas about the PC construction that should make this very conservative estimate realistic in terms of depth usage.  I do have some "tipping over" concerns, but with some weights and perhaps wall attachments, this might just do the trick.  This is what I'm aiming for - maybe I'll need to put a little weight on later in the construction, but I'm hopeful that this'll be about right.

The story so far...again...

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

We're going again!

So...

We're gonna go again!

A couple of years later, a little older, a questionable amount wiser, and a completely new life. I've always regretted not continuing the last attempt. But there's a different woman in my life and all the things that were important to me, that I never started or never finished, are important again.

As most everything in life, my renewed interest in this came entirely by chance. My son is now 5, and he's as addicted to all things computers as much as me - a good thing or a bad thing - I can't yet tell. We were on the laptop together a few weekends ago - he stumbled across my mame roms and said "what's this, dad?".

Yes - you're absolutely right. A five year old asks you THAT question when browsing your laptop and you panic.

We spent the next while (I'll claim 20 minutes, but it probably was a couple of hours) cracking open the old games and bashing away on the up, down, left and right, ctrl and alt buttons until they nearly came off.

I asked him if he remembered the last attempt (from here on in, referred to as version 2.0) and he didn't. Shame. We used to play the Work In Progress together, but he was 2 or maybe 3 at the time. They're too young to remember the stuff you'll cherish forever.

So, I'm going to have another go at this arcade machine thingy. I'm sure I'll try and kid myself that this is as much for him and his sister as for me, but the jury's out on that one.

Version 3

The new one's called gMame 3.0 - might knock up a marquee at some stage with that on. Not sure, but I think I should mark the passing of those that came before.

Ubuntu

I'm still a massive Ubuntu fan (haven't used windows for a few years now - Windows 7 - that was NOT my idea) so we'll keep the Operating System, but obviously the later version - 10.04 is round the corner.

The interface

I'm not as keen on Java as I was, and I've been playing around with a little Python lately - not 100% struck but there's a lovely little environment in Ubuntu called Quickly that has a great Interface editor, source editor and it all packages up nicely, so when I get round to coding my own interface again, I'll likely pick this. Coming to a sourceforge near you soon.

So that's the new start. I'll let you know where I'm up to in the next post.

Wish me luck?