Day 1150

Been a long time since I posted. I couldn't get the button disc to work again so I got rid of it and went the simple route:

Since I wanted to pretty up the tabletop for the joystick and mouse, I made a shelf with a couple of hinges, along with some angled wood pieces for the shelf to rest on. Then I installed another shelf along with a bracket taken from a plastic keyboard drawer for the keyboard to sit on which can retract into the cabinet.

The keyboard was an old one I had that still used a PS2 connector, but it had an analog dial for volume control.

Now it doesn't look quite so ghetto. For the escape function, I took a modified mouse on a pedestal that my Dad used to control the movies he watched and reprogrammed the mousewheel to act as an Escape key. It'll do temporarily.

Day 469

My first summer with the cabinet and I'm finding out a few issues.

1. We've gotten two new kittens and they've taken to crawling inside and messing with the wires, particularly the 3 buttons for controlling the volume and exiting the games. Now I've got to reattach them and put the controller high up, as well as closing up the two holes with mesh so they can't get in again.

2. With the old-style CRT monitor it's getting quite roasty-toasty in there. Since I can't afford a new flat panel monitor yet, I'll have to install some small fan to blow the air to the upper vents in the cabinet itself.

3. I'm going to keep my eyes open for an analog steering wheel game controller for some of the driving games, especially for Spy Hunter. Driving with a digital joystick doesn't quite work the same. Which brings me to where would I set the controller if I had one. I'm going to have to work that out, perhaps a stackable shelf over the joystick. I'm also toying with the idea of using the Bluetooth dongle to communicate with a Nintendo Wii stick, that also might do the trick.

Day 360

I'd forgotten how much I hated doing soldering. I spent a whole afternoon last week trying to get one wire to stick to the circuit board and got frustrated in the process. So last weekend, I picked up a ten-pack of micro alligator clips from Radio Shack and simply crimped the wires and clamped them in place.

Now where to attach the buttons. Whilst rummaging around my garage, I came across the metal endcaps that attached to our old closet doors. So I grabbed one and tested it in the holster hole of the cabinet. The hole was just a *tiny* bit too small. Then I grabbed the Dremel tool and started sanding out the hole and made the whole house smell like a lumber yard. Then I drilled three holes in the endcap and attached the buttons in place and clamped the other end of the alligator clips, fed the whole thing through the holster hole and voila!

Now the left button escapes from any game and the two in the center control volume up and down. Now I can disable the special keys on the X-Arcade Solo so I can stop accidentally exiting a game I'm in the middle of.

Day 351

 After several months of playing games with the X-Arcade Solo, I realized that the buttons I set up for changing the volume control weren't working too well and I was accidentally hitting the escape button too many times.

So I found several instructables and videos on Youtube for hacking (modifying) a regular keyboard to make a custom button set. I went to Radio Shack and purchased a bag of 4 momentary pushbuttons and spent this afternoon disassembling and tracing the button lines to the control board. I had to take it slow as the tightness of the lines make it difficult to follow. I'm pretty sure I traced them correctly.

Now I have to get some wire, solder them to the control board and solder the other ends to the buttons. If the test works, then I'll attach them to a board and attach the board to the left hand hole on the cabinet. Then I can pretty that up, disable the custom buttons on the joystick and everything should be good.

Day 314

Today I thought I'd try a different frontend. The reason for this is that I wanted to incorporate Internet radio and I was having a great deal of difficulty. I spent all this morning installing a program called GameEX (http://www.gameex.com/) from scratch onto its own partition along with all the emulators for all the games. I discovered today that after 6 hours, I accomplished more with it than I had with Hyperspin in the last 8 months. On top of that, ALL of my emulators are working with little trouble.

There are some pros and cons.

Pros: First, the program was intuitive and simplistic. It self installs and it self updates. It gives you a list of all the emulators you want and installs them and organizes the folders for you. All you have to do is drop in the game ROM files into their proper place and that's it.

Next, it has its own built-in jukebox program and reads your library from Windows Media Center. This is a pro and a con, but I'll cover that later. It also has its own built-in Internet radio which you can drop in the URL of any radio station you like.

It also has newsfeeds, weather, Hulu and Youtube access, etc. You can enable and disable these to your whim.

Everything is customizable, including the themes, backgrounds, startup videos, sounds and so on.

Now the cons:

First the jukebox reads the library from the Windows Media Center. Now that is only a pain because I couldn't add my jukebox DVD to the library because "Microsoft knows best" and doesn't think anyone would want that. Basically, I just moved the individual mp3's from the DVD and dropped them into the My Music folder, which sucked up an additional 4 GB of hard drive space. Feh on Microsoft. Once that was done, the Jukebox filled right up.

Next, GameEx, while it is free, does have a nag screen with a wait time when you first fire the program up. The nag screen is to encourage people to donate for the program's development, which is a good thing. While I was trying to keep the expenses to a minimum, I believe the program is a good investment and well worth the measly $17 donation for the quality. The bottom line is the nag screen isn't really a con.

While GameEx may not be as flashy and colorful as Hyperspin, it also doesn't create the incredible jigsaw puzzle atmosphere of putting a cabinet together for having fun. Unless you're into that sort of thing.

Day 311

Well, for awhile it's been a matter of adding more decorations to the side panel:

 Atari 2600 Superman (needs one more sprite).

Galaxian

 Boss Cat from Mappy

Recognizer from Tron. (This one I had to create the pattern myself.











I added a new wireless card to the minitower and I'm now working on adding an internet radio feature next to the Jukebox. I did find a radio program called Screamer, but I'm still working out how to get it to work properly in Hyperspin. It should be a simple command line reference, just the program name and the URL of the radio station website. Passing it through Hyperspin has proven to be a bit more difficult or perhaps I'm not thinking of how the program passes data in the first place.

Almost forgot: I replaced the intro video for Hyperspin when I fire the cabinet up:

Day 290

For the past couple of weeks, I've been working on the side art in Perler fuse beads. I got my Niece Amanda and my wife to help me. It's still a work in progress, but I like it so far.













I've been asked by a couple of people how my set up works. It's not easy, but it plays out like a jigsaw puzzle. Getting so many game emulators to work under one environment and to get them to act seamlessly is quite a trick.

To begin with, you need a central control program. This is where Hyperspin comes into play.  It's freeware and can be found here: http://www.hyperspin-fe.com/ . It's highly recommended that you create a free account there as it gives you access to the forums where you can locate tips and tricks as well as ask for help.

You will need the following:
Hyperspin
Hyperpin (if you want to include virtual pinball machines).
Hypertheme (to edit and create new themes for each game console / game.
Hyperlaunch (This creates a universal control for each emulator that you use. You can also use pre-written scripts for each emulator that is supported. make sure you get at least version 2.0 as this simplifies how each emulator is handled).

* I highly recommend reading the wiki, especially about Hyperlaunch as this will save you a lot of heartache. They also have video tutorials on how to get started.

Now, here are the individual emulators that I'm using so far. Always make sure you use the latest version you can get.

Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator (arcade games):
MAME: http://mamedev.org/
Note: This is the reason that Hyperspin initally exists. This emulator works extremely easy with the hyperspin front-end. Each game can be configured to your controller as well as doing so globally across all the game roms you have.

Atari 2600:
Stella http://stella.sourceforge.net/
Note: One of the easiest to set up. Very straightforward.

Super Nintendo:
Z-Snes http://www.zsnes.com/
Note: Also very easy to work with, but the configuration for emulation setting hotkeys are very particular. If you use an Arcade-X Solo, you will have to disable all of the hotkeys that you don't need, as it uses keyboard presses rather than Joystick functions.

Sega Genesis:
Fusion http://www.emulator-zone.com/doc.php/genesis/fusion.html
Note: This one was a dog to work with in terms of exiting the emulator. A lot of people had trouble with it. Otherwise, it's a top-notch emulator.

Laserdisc games (Dragon's Lair, Space Ace, etc.)
Daphne http://www.daphne-emu.com/site3/index_hi.php
Note: This is a very good emulator. However, the agreement they have with Digital Leisure is that you must own the DVDs of the Don Bluth games. I also had trouble getting it to recognize Dragon's Lair II. Very configurable keyboard-wise, but for some reason I had to edit the .cfg file by hand as the program wasn't writing to it properly.

This one isn't a game console, but I wanted to use my arcade cabinet as a jukebox.
DWJukebox http://dwjukebox.com/
Note: Very easy to work with, though I have had a few crashes out of nowhere. Other than that, it works just fine.
___________________________________________________________________________
Now, these are the emulators I'm using with which I'm still having trouble:

Nintendo Entertainment System:
Nestopia http://nestopia.sourceforge.net/
Note: Works really well. The only trouble I'm having with it is that when you select a game from the main wheel, you have to make another key press in order for the game to actually start. Haven't figured this out yet. Ditto with Fceux http://fceux.com/web/home.html .

Nintendo 64:
Project64 http://www.pj64-emu.com/
Note: Works just fine, however I'm still having trouble getting it to exit.

Vectrex:
ParaJVE http://vectrex-emu.blogspot.com/
Note: As the manufacturer release all of the games into the public domain, this emulator actually contains all of the game carts in the emulator itself, so you don't need to download the game rom files individually. This one works really well, but I'm still trying to figure out how to launch the game without using the onboard navigation.

Pinball machines:
Virtual Pinball: http://www.vpforums.org/
PinMAME: http://www.pinmame.com/
Note: You need both of these programs to play pinball and getting them to cooperate with hyperspin is still beyond me. There is also Future Pinball http://www.futurepinball.com/ which works better, however will only work properly on your system if your monitor is turned to portrait mode. Meant for full-on pinball cabinets.

__________________________________________________________________________

Now, some of the issues I'm still having so far:

Response delay: When you hit the selection button for some games in a particular console (Sega Genesis for example), there's a time delay and if you have an impatient player or if you're not sure it detected the button press, the selection button may be hit a few more times, ending up with multiple instances of the emulator running at the same time which tends to completely mess up the game play. What I need to enable is a key press trap (meaning allowing one key press of the selection buton and allowing no more), along with a "Please wait" screen to at least let you know that the press was detected. This is especially true for the laserdisc games which have a long start up time (about 30 seconds) before the game is playable.

Universal volume control: I'd like to have a background program running that controls the volume for everything, from Hyperspin to the jukebox program to the games themselves.

Windows XP needs to be more transparent: It's not really a problem per se, but I'd like the arcade cabinet to be more seamless.

Autorecovery: If there's a crash in a program, I'd like a background program to detect this and basically click on OK for those annoying crash windows. That way I don't have to plug in a keyboard to fix something.
_____________________________________________________________________________

My hardware is as follows:

Shuttle SK43G minitower with an Intel processor running about 1.2 Ghz.
512 Mb RAM
30 Gb hard drive (divided into three logical drives. C for Windows, D for Laserdisc games and E for everything else).
Geforce 8400 PCI video card.
______________________________________________________________________________

Day 273

Not much to report, but I had three arcade tokens and set them on the left-hand side of the marquee. As we all from the golden days know, that is proper arcade etiquette meaning that you have the next game.

Day 268

Today since it was getting so close to Christmas and I wanted the unit to be operational, I decided to disable the emulators that were still giving me trouble. Most of them were working fine, but it was always some small detail: Can't start the game without some extra step, can't exit, etc. This included Turbografx 16, NES, Nintendo 64, Vectrex and Visual Pinball.

I also enabled the shutdown feature of Hyperspin so I wouldn't have to quit the program and then shutdown in Windows. Now if I can just make Windows XP more invisible in the startup / shutdown procedure, it'll be just fine.

I also wanted to add a wireless network card to the unit, so I could also add internet radio. Unfortunately the Linksys card I had lying around didn't support the security in my network, so that was out. Odd since that card was way newer than the old Airlink 101 cards we had. But that's Cisco for you.

Day 258

One Game, One Button, One big pain in the butt.

Today I spent the majority of the day trying to get one game emulator to work properly in the cabinet. Kega Fusion which plays Sega Genesis games. Everything thing else in the program works just fine except for exiting the emulator and returning to Hyperspin.

Nothing I tried worked. Consulted with people in the Hyperspin forums, Fusion forums, you name it. The emulator just simply refused to acknowledge what Hyperspin was telling it to do.

So I thought, I'll hack an old keyboard and make one big button that represents the escape key and that should fix it. But I'm too lazy to go through the trouble.

So I found this link:
http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windo...dows-xp-vista/

So I told Windows that one button on the X-Arcade Solo will represent the Escape key forever. Done.

Now Fusion behaves itself.

Day 249

Today I worked on the marquee.  I could have had it done professionally by a website that specialized in this sort of thing, but I was looking at least $30 for the size I needed.

I tried the local Kinko's, but I was looking at about $22 to get it done. But for now, I was still working on keeping my expenses low.

After leaving Kinko's, I went to the library to pick up a DVD I'd ordered on their website and I decided to ask the reference desk if they did color prints.  They said yes, so I grabbed a computer, dropped my flash drive in and opened the graphic image in MS Publisher (yes I know, but it was the only program they had that could print banners).

So after fiddling with the sizing a bit, I sent it to the color laser printer, paid my $2.25 and took my pages home. I had to stretch the image across 3 sheets of paper, so I knew I'd be doing some arts and crafts for this thing.

So I got home, took the remaining plexiglass I had from the bezel, cut and fitted it. Then I cropped and pasted the three pages together and attached that to the back of the marquee sheet and settled it in place and attached the metal bar to hold it up.

Not bad. You can see the seams between the pages, but I don't mind it. Maybe later if I find twenty bucks floating around I'll get it redone, but for now I'm quite pleased with it.






I've been fussing with the Hyperlaunch program to get all of the emulators to exit properly and I almost messed it up completely. My joystick can be reprogrammed to represent any key on the keyboard, so I tried to set up one of the keys to represent the Escape key and did the rest of the buttons as they were before.

It worked out all right, but there was a problem. For some reason there was about a 1 second hesitation between pressing a button and having the action executed. That's no good for video games. The response should be instantaneous. So I set it back to the factory default and left it there.

So I'm back to learning the script code for Hyperlaunch to get all the emulators to work. It's going to be tedious, but as soon as I get the whole thing working, the hard drive is going to be backed up and stored on DVD's in case something catastrophic happens.

Day 228

Today I got up the courage to do the bezel. I'd already had the plastic sheeting and I just needed the spray paint to finish the job. My biggest fear was that I'd screw this up completely and have to buy another sheet (around $20). I spoke to the guy in the paint department at Home Depot and he suggested a brand of spray paint that has a nozzle that isn't supposed to drip, run or spatter, and provides a nice wide spray.

So I cut the plastic to size and after a few trial and error tests of trying to put the bezel in place, I had to take the Dremel tool to take off some of the edge. Better to cut too little than too much, as my old Wood shop teacher used to say.

After finally getting it to fit in place, I took a china marker and marked the left and right sides and placed tick marks where the monitor shone through.  Took the sheet back out, masked off the area where the monitor should be and spray painted the rest of the inside.

After it dried, I took the mask off and put the sheet in place. Not too shabby, says I.

Now I have just enough plastic left over to do the marquee along the top. I still haven't established who will print the marquee art I've made up, so I'll do that today.

I also want to find some plastic stickers for the arcade control layouts. I'm hoping I'll find static cling stickers so I won't mess up the bezel.

Day 225

Well, today I finally got my laser games to work. My problem was that there were two instances where I would have to press the escape key in order to progress into and out of the games. I fixed one of them by upgrading one of the modules within Hyperspin, called Hyperlaunch. Hyperlaunch is a sub-program which allows certain emulators and PC games to work within Hyperspin.

Once I had that in place, I got rid of one of the little windows that would pop up whenever I tried to run either Dragon's Lair or Space Ace.

The other issue was I couldn't get the key settings to stick in the Daphne emulator itself. So I went into the configuration file and made the changes manually.

I also (with the help of other users on the Hyperspin forum) fixed the onscreen theme that shows the available games. One of the graphic objects sat in front of the game wheel so you can't see which game you're selecting.

I got the plastic sheet from Home Depot for the front of the cabinet and I need to lay out where the monitor is located so I can paint one side and get it placed. I also need to print out and place the controller layout for the buttons depending on which emulator or jukebox program you're using. I want to get this sucker finished before Christmas so Amanda can help finish decorating the side art.

Day 211

Last Saturday, my X-Arcade Solo Console finally came in the mail. It seems that the post office didn't like the label the seller put on the package and they sent it back. So he had to resend it, this time in 2-3 Day Priority (like that means anything, the Post Office just sends it when they feel like it).

Anyway, setting it took no time at all. Windows XP recognized it immediately. The only thing is that it doesn't show up like a game controller. The movements of the stick and the buttons represent keyboard keystrokes. Not that it's a bad thing, it just took me by surprise.

 

So far, most of the games are working just fine. Just got some fine-tuning to do and include a small program that will control the main volume via the stick and buttons. I'll have to get a trackball to sit alongside for some of the games, such as Centipede and Missile Command. 

I got some new cable staples to replace the ones that came with the rope lights. The ones that are there now have a bit of a gap between the rope light and the surface of the cabinet edges. I'll get that done when I have a chance.  I also need to resubmit my marquee to this banner company in Colorado. I didn't hear anything at all from them and I'm starting to think my submission got lost for whatever reason.

Day 201

Well, I spent the last few days filling in the blanks in Hyperspin and making the game menu wheels look nicer. I added Vectrex to the mix, but I'm still having difficulty getting the emulator to work within Hyperspin.

Anyway, last Sunday I was in Fuddruckers with my wife and they had wi-fi, so I thought I'd check my email. As soon as I connected to their internet, my Ipod Touch pinged me that an auction I'd been watching on Ebay was close to ending. Now this auction was for an X-Arcade Solo game panel.

X-Arcade's products are tough and they can withstand a lot of abuse. They're solid and well-made, which is why they command such a high price. When I saw this one on Ebay, there was one bid and it was going for $50 with free shipping. I figured I'd keep an eye on this and put it on my watch list.

Anyway, when my Ipod pinged me, I clicked on the view button and it opened up Ebay. It was going for $52 and there were two bids and there were two minutes left on the auction. So I put in my bid of $65 and it came up with me as the highest bidder.

So I waited, knowing full well that someone was going to snipe me and bid at the last second. But then the timer ran out and popped up with "You are the winner". So I paid the auction and now I sit....waiting...for the bloody Post Office to update their "Track and Confirm" web page. Hasn't been an update since this whole thing began. I realize that last Monday was a banker's holiday, but jeez. On one hand, the seller used Economy shipping, but on the other hand, he's only one state away.  I hate waiting.

Meanwhile, I've been working on my marquee art. Not having used the graphics program Gimp in awhile, I had to re-learn a few things.  But it doesn't look too bad...

Day 187

One thing I'd realized, is that with the power strip in the back the rocker switch that controls the main power is unreachable. This meant that while I could shut down the mini tower, the speakers, the monitor and the marquee light were still lit. I looked at the extension cords that were used for Christmas lights that had the foot switch, but those were two-prong outlets and all the equipment were three pronged.  So I found an extension cord at Fry's with a rocker switch near the outlets and I mounted it in one of the gun hardware holes in the front panel. It looks nasty now, but that will change when I pretty up the cabinet.

Now to the audio switch. Opening up the switch box, I found that there really wasn't a way to attach it to the left-hand side with the way it was configured.

So I thought, maybe the upper speaker grill would be large enough to reach through.

Came to find out that the rocker switch that controlled the speaker and headphone audio was the same size as the grill slots. So I opened up the marquee and attached the audio switch enough so it wouldn't slide around. Now I can reach up with my finger into the grill and press the switch.




Here's a small demonstration of the cabinet startup:

Day 176

Today I finally got the second side background done. I think I'll make a mental note to *NOT* ever mess around with contact paper again. I'd also started working on the Space Invader sprites and put a few of them up to get me started.

I also got my audio switch in the mail the other day. Now I can mount this somewhere and I can switch from the cabinet speakers to headphones. The problem is, where. I don't want to drill any new holes and I want the switch to be reachable without any bending or stretching. The only logical place would be one of the two holes in the front panel where the gun hardware used to be mounted. I'm also looking into the possibility of putting in a USB hub in the other panel hole so I can plug a flash drive in (or perhaps a 2nd-player joystick). But considering the PC is located where the coin box used to be, that may be a moot point. Oh well, I'll blow up that bridge when I come to it.

I'm still working on the marquee art and I'm not quite happy with the font I used, so I went to 1001freefonts.com to get something a little more appropriate. The next step is to get the acrylic sheeting from Home Depot and get that prepped and mounted so the cabinet doesn't look so ghetto.

The hard part is getting the arcade controls. My wife isn't too thrilled with the idea of spending a lot of bucks on that, so I'm going to keep my eyes out for a pre-made panel with a USB connector for a price that won't make her give me stink-eye about buying it.

One other thing I need is power control. I have a power strip which provides power to everything inside the cabinet, but it's difficult to reach. I need to see if there's a power strip with a separate rocker switch that I can mount in the recessed part of the top of the cabinet where the old switch now resides. Kind of like those extension cords for Christmas trees with the foot button. I know I could wire the current rocker switch up to the power strip but I don't know how and finding tutorials on that are proving difficult.

Day 159

Found a good Jukebox program called DWJukebox. Since I'm running low on hard drive space, I copied our music from the server onto a DVD and left it in the drive. The program has an unattended radio feature and I haven't explored that yet, but I do like the interface.

Yesterday was a test in patience as I started to work on the side art. I got two rolls of black contact paper and I worked on the side that would normally faced the wall, in case I really borked it up. But it was quite forgiving and didn't look too bad once I finished it. I'll post pictures once I've gotten both sides done. I decided to do the artwork based on this idea I found at the arcadecontrols website (http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=102621.0).

I also decided on a name for the cabinet. Whilest Googling for information on what other people did for side art, I kept seeing that same phrase: "I want my quarters back". So I decided to call it, Quartersback Arcade. At least it'll do until I come up with something a little more catchy.

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.