Day 28

This is the third test for the best OS for the cabinet.  Windows 2000 was a bust (the no-fun version), Linux Mint was good, but the emulators are hit-or-miss, so after thinking about it, I came to realize that the time when all the emulators ran well and the OS didn't get on my nerves was Windows 98.

So after testing two 15 Gb drives I had in the garage and found both of them were totally trashed due to the master boot record being corrupted and unrecoverable, I pulled the secondary hard drive from my primary computer and used it. The nice thing was that the drive was already partitioned into three drives, the other two already being used for the games I've had on for years.

I decided on "Game Launcher", which is a nice, simple, DOS-based front end for all of the emulators and plays well with joystick control, eliminating the need for a keyboard and mouse.  After a few trial and error attempts, MAME was working with no trouble.  As soon as I have the screenshots for each game pasted, that'll be done. After that, I can add the Nintendo SNES, Vectrex, Turbografix 16, PinMAME, and so on and so forth. I'm also hoping to get the Daphne emulator running so I can incorporate the laser disc games.

Meanwhile, I found someone in Oceanside giving away two old-fashioned CRT monitors. One of them being a 19-inch, which should do nicely.  Now I just need to build the shelf for it to sit on inside the cabinet, something strong as this sucker is heavy.




This weekend, we moved the cabinet from the garage to the family room and moved the exercise equipment to the garage to set up a work-out station. Three pieces of equipment were too big for the room anyway. It went better than I expected, as the arcade cabinet weighs a ton and we had to walk it in.