12/22/01 Oh shit, I just killed the monitor. Just a reminder that it's bad to let the vsync get too high for the screen, sigh. I was playing with the 24khz settings to see how that compared to 15, and something in windows managed to set the refresh rate much higher. Small popping noise, picture vanishes, and now my monitor controller board just makes a little clicking noise near where the flyback transformer is. We'll see if it's worth replacing it :(
Too bad, wah. The Atari Anniversary Edition (commercial emulators from Infogrames) were working like a charm too. I've had it go out of sync before nearer to the 15khz mode (I wasn't using a J-pac to protect this one, oops), but it took only about 2 seconds on the wrong mode to kill it before I could hit the button. RIP
10/6/01 Added a lot to the layout page showing much of my "final" layout. I'm working a lot better with new Arcadeos Dat files (2.47) and new Advancemame (.55.1), though some vector games broke in the .55 versions.
09/12/01 Basically completed cabinet setup, now tweaking the mame binaries. Trying to get cross-compiling of dos binaries from linux working with advancemame, but getting stuck quite early on (building allegro!), if anyone out there has done this, please email me! Now working on getting advancemame 54.1 working.. didn't realize I was using the earlier version, heh
09/10/01 Figured out my faulty buttons problem, simple bad wiring on my part compounded by bad tests.
09/09/01 Debugging some wiring, looks like I made some bad molex pins. Programmed I-Pac to have some extra buttons in shift mode, notably f2 for cps2 test mode. Need to get windows happy with 384x224 graphics so that mode works fullscreen with nebula. Updated several roms using clrmame, nice utility.
9/5/01 Back from vacation. Cabinet basically done (all I-Pac wiring,
advance mame working without adjusting Vertical Hold). Added Nebula19 to
the emulators available on the system, using the super-groovy -blade15
command-line flag. Thanks to ElSemi the author for including this feature!
Also of note in this picture are the brand new joysticks & buttons (no
more hot pink on the P1 side :)
8/17/01 big night. Windows working at 640x480 on the cabinet using the blade15khz utility from vsycmame (hooray, now I can surf the web, run dvds, etc on my game machine!). Advancemame providing perfect, all centered, zero-adjustment video modes now for mame. Dos sound drivers and the final wiring of the I-Pac (cut the jamma harness!) to go!
8/16/01 replaced the mainboard to a 900mhz duron when I noticed the local Fry's was selling chip + heatsink + motherboard for $89. Duh? also mounted speaker, power/reset buttons to the breadboard with adhesive and attached the I-Pac to the board, so now all I have left are the dreaded jamma molex connectors + new control installations. Another trick I decided to use was bending the little metal tongues at the ends of the pci slot covers on the expansion boards to keep them from falling out. As an afterthought, I realized that I could be making shorts on the underside of the mainboard, so I covered them in electrical tape :)
8/12/01 I-Pac attached to wiring harness, but I've been kind of paralyzed trying to figure out if I should attach to a jamma fingerboard (pros- easy to switch for the jamma board.. cons- a lot more soldering and careful detail work to avoid frying anything vital). Probably going to use a 24-pin molex connector. In fact, I already have that attached to the I-Pac, it's just going to be a royal pain to cut wires and do pins with my torso stuck inside the game cabinet.
When I wasn't locked up trying to decide what the hell to do next, I came up with the idea to use the drill holes for the cupholder to mount a couple extra buttons for credits & pause (perhaps the mame menu when both are pressed). They look like this on the underside of the cabinet. I also got the PC mounted in a nearly finished/ permanent position, which looks like this (with annotations describing what's what!).
8/5/01 Sold the SF3 boardset this cabinet came with for $209 on ebay, making my net price $200 for this cabinet :). Did some more fiddling, found out about the unofficial 2.46 build of arcadeos that fixes the game list for mame 37b16. Also found out about the J-PAC, a new piece of hardware from Andy Warne who makes the remarkable I-PAC. Information at Andy's site (J-PAC announcement due soon I believe). I'm tempted to not wire up the full I-Pac + molex connectors and wait for the J-Pac (it's a jamma fingerboard + I-Pac + circuit to only send RGB out when the sync is correct, clever!) to save on all the wiring time, and perhaps build the RGB amplifer in the meantime. Hmm :) I'm also trying desperately to find good information on setting modelines up for linux, with an eye towards switching my cabinet to run linux + svgalib mame (I should get a slight speed-up + have better control of my modelines and timings so I won't have to always adjust the picture), and finally I'm hemming and hawing about ordering a Trident Blade3d card (which is what vsync mame is developed around) to make things work better (tnt2 in there now has an annoying limitation that it won't boot "headless" (ie no monitor plugged in).
8/03/01 CrashTest, a good friend I know from #cps2shock on efnet is sending me some 100 Yen coins. I want to be forced to put in coins to play games :) Thanks CrashTest!
8/02/01 Success! Video connector works, I tested quickly with pacman
using mame pacman -monitor arcade. Signal pretty good, decently
bright. Might not even bother with the RGB signal amplifier. I used the
street fighter zero3 test screen to calibrate the colors pretty well. Bad
news was that I was on frameskip 4 for sfz3 (this is a 450mhz), but this
is an untweaked build and probably using the wrong blitter (I think I had
scanlines on). Might be pushing it to try to get full frames on sfz3.
Added a picture to my Mame Layout page.
8/01/01 I-Pac arrived today, hooray! this is what it looks like :) Pulled out the breadboard and have been pondering layouts. I might just remove the motherboard from the pc case entirely and mount it right onto the wood. This will save some space, but will lose the stability that the pci/ISA cards get from the case frame. Hmm...
7/30/01 Picked up some parts- a bag of different molex connectors (two 24-pin pairs for the controls, two 5-pin pairs for the monitor connection). A shame I can't find the exact same type of connectors already in the cabinet, would save me 1/2 the wiring work. Also have a re-wired VGA cable ready that tested successfully on another cabinet using arcadeos + mame. THe picture was slightly dimmer than normal jamma board output, so I hunted around and found a nice RGB signal amplifier circuit design at the pc2jamma page. I've never made anything like this before but it isn't too daunting, time to harrass my friend Eric at work to help :)
7/29/01 Cabinet has been moved to a slightly less conspicuous part of the living room, but I'm not sure it has fully survived the scrutiny of my wife, fingers crossed! Also decided to get new japanese-style sticks & buttons from the guy who sold me the cabinet. Though the current sticks are worn, I've grown fond of the extra responsiveness to them. Also scouted the monitor connectors, will be very easy to access with the PC for the signal from the emulators.
7/28/01Street Fighter Alpha3 placed inside the cabinet to "test" it properly. All good, in fact the CPS-3 kicks harness that came with it for Street Fighter 3 is the same one I need for CPS-2, hooray. Also noticed that the monitor is made by Hitachi. A quick cleaning and adjusting the monitor knobs (gains, focus, brightness, contrast) and the picture is really sharp & bright, woohoo!
7/27/01 Cabinet arrives, heaven! Everything works (marquee, both speakers, con mechs (!), operator switches, all keys present, and the setup looks great for mame-ing. I created initial pages showing the features of the cabinet, and some crazy warnings in the manual. Don't let godzilla step on it!
First Impressions:
