Day 114

 Today's been a good day. My niece Amanda has been helping me with removing the rest of the old side art and I've gotten two of the laser games Dragon's Lair and Space Ace running with the emulator Daphne working within Hyperspin. The transition was a lot easier than I thought. I just have Dragon's Lair 2 to add.

I covered the edges of the monitor in black electrical tape to better disguise it when I put in the bezel. I'm planning on getting a sheet of acrylic from Home Depot, which I will cut for the bezel and the upper marquee.  I found the two wires which light the coin return and I just need to figure out how much power to supply it in order for the coin slots to light up.

Day 112

Well, I spent a good part of last night and this morning going through each and every entry in Hyperspin under the MAME section removing bad game entries and prettying-up the ones that worked. A lot of my favorites need to be replaced and that shouldn't be any problem.  I'll post a video on YouTube when I get a chance.

Amanda was my Beta-tester. So far, everything is working, but the controller is frustrating to use under these circumstances.  Oh well. Eventually, I can get to the point where I'll have proper controls and can hide the keyboard and mouse.

I need to find a better jukebox. It's simple to use, but some features just aren't there. I may just have a program running in the background that can be controlled by the joystick and buttons. The old Winamp program might do nicely. I'll have to see if the screensaver can kick in on its own. Anyway, I digress.

Now I've got to replace the games that went bad and start adding the other emulators. I think I'll work on the Super Nintendo next. The ones that worry me are the laser games like Dragon's Lair and Space Ace. Those can be huge and I'll have to see if I have enough hard drive space left. 30 Gigabytes don't go as far as they used to.

Day 109

 Part 2

I found that I could not insert the monitor while the riser was in place, so I attempted to wrestle the 50 pound monitor into the cabinet whilst placing the riser underneath. The effect of which is like trying to add a floor on a house underneath the first floor. So I asked my mother to place the riser while I held the monitor up. Almost didn't make that either, but with a bit of coaxing and swearing we managed to get them in place.


After that, I got the brackets in place to keep it from swaying about.

The result wasn't too bad after I got it where it needed to be.

From here, I put in the mini-tower and the rest of the guts.  I removed the marquee and uninstalled the speakers and put the two satellite speakers in their place.

The results weren't to shabby. I've got some work to do so I can use remote control. This way I can get rid of the keyboard and mouse altogether. After that, I'll order the arcade parts and wire them up to the mini-tower.

That should get it to an operational state. After that I'll start the process of prettying-up the cabinet with new side art, a marquee and the bezel to hide the monitor and the interior.

Day 108

After much searching and and thinking, I found a way to build a riser for my monitor to hoist it high enough in the cabinet. And I only spent $12 in wood screws (I was fresh out).


Now I just need to add the monitor and get the thing settled into place and bolted.  I'll have to wait till tomorrow at least. Too much to do this evening.