Archives for 12 / 2003
View my past ramblings
Eve
Wednesday, 31st December 2003 at 3:03PM (2899 days ago)
what a day. decided today that we'd do some grocery shopping seeing as most things are closed on new years day, etc. boy what a mistake. it was sooooooo busy at coles it's not funny.
anyways i did a little bit more work on the control panel today and managed to mount the second joystick and put the wiring harnesses on all the buttons.
i'm loving this canon eos300d, it takes some wicked shots, and i love being able to see everything through the viewfinder instead of the lcd.
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Areyouken?
Tuesday, 30th December 2003 at 4:22PM (2900 days ago)
well after a long days work it's finally starting to come together. all the buttons are in, and the joystick for player 1 is mounted and looking good (for a test unit). big thanks to renae for putting up with me and helping me out.
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It's Alive!
Tuesday, 30th December 2003 at 1:00PM (2900 days ago)
started working on the demo control unit for the mame table today, renae helped me draw up a grid on the craft wood that i bought. i've spent most of the day drilling and sanding, going back and forward to the hardware store.
it's slowly coming along :)
after i've drilled all the button holes i need to route out pieces for the controllers which will be the tricky part. will post some more photos as i progress :)
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Arrival!
Monday, 29th December 2003 at 4:33PM (2901 days ago)
this morning a package arrived with my joysticks and buttons and ipac controller! big thanks to ultimarc for the quick shipping.
here's one of the jstick joysticks with the red top (taken with my new camera!)
the arcade buttons, including start buttons, coin insert buttons and general player buttons. there's 2 black buttons, 12 red buttons and 2 start buttons all up.
then there's the ipac, which is the smartest thing i've ever seen. you wire the joysticks and buttons into this little baby and then plug it into your pc/mac via usb and it will convert all the buttons and controls to the default configuration for mame! how awesome is that??? it's got an inbuilt controller which will stop ghosting and other problems you get when you hack a keyboard to do the same thing.
i am going to start building a prototype control panel and hook it into my g5 to start testing out the controllers and getting the wiring down pat.
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Back Jack with a Black Sack
Sunday, 28th December 2003 at 2:22PM (2902 days ago)
nelson bay was great! had a really nice and relaxing time up there. i was surprised how easy the drive back was, hardly any traffic. although on the other side of the freeway, people going the other way were bumper to bumper for about 40 km! quite frustrating i'd imagine.
today i bought myself a new toy. will post more later :)
hope everyone enjoyed their xmas.
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Still maming
Sunday, 21st December 2003 at 9:15AM (2909 days ago)
well looks like i've struck a bit of a wall. i can't use the bootable cd as i realised the high scores, etc won't be saved, so it looks like i'll need to go back to a hard drive based setup. i think i've found the screen i'm going to use, it's an LG 17" CRT, about $200, but it's a flat tube and has the smallest back out of all the monitors i've looked at. it's 411mm deep so it should be ok to fit in a standard sized coffee table.
yesterday was my grandmothers birthday and we all went over for lunch, it was great, we had lobster, steak, prawns.... mmmm :)
stef and henry also left for the uk for 5 weeks, and we drove them to the airport. well i drove my car to their place at about 7am, then we had breakfast, then i drove henry's 4wd to the airport as my car won't fit his snowboard, then i had to drive his car back to their place and then drive my car back to our place! :)
we're officially closed for the year, so now i've got 3 weeks of time to kick back and just be a lazy ass :)
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MAME
Thursday, 18th December 2003 at 11:55AM (2912 days ago)
so i've started looking into the various bits and pieces that i'll be needing for my mame coffee table. i've ordered my joysticks, buttons and various controller chips to interface them with the computer inside the table. one thing i'm currently playing around with is the software itself and what the table will run. i've decided freebsd since it's what i know and love, but i'm looking at my various graphics options with the port of xmame: sdl, x11, opengl or svgalib.
anyone had any experiences running xmame on freebsd?
update:
i found something else a hell of a lot easier than setting up bsd, etc. it's a bootable advance mame linux cd. it's only 16MB!!!!
update 2:
had a bit of a play with the advancemame bootable cd today, it works pretty well, needs a bit of tweaking, but it's definitely a good start. i have decided to try seeing if a bootable dvd-rom would work as the g5 has a superdrive, this should solve some heat issues as the coffee table wouldn't require a hard drive, only a slot loading dvd-rom drive which i can mount vertically.
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Back :)
Tuesday, 16th December 2003 at 2:33PM (2914 days ago)
still haven't got around to a redesign, so i thought i'd put the site back anyways :) things have been a bit busy here so i didn't really have time to post anything. we're in the midst of wrapping up everything for the year, we'll be closed from monday, which will be a nice break for us.
i ordered a bluetooth headset for my p800 a couple of weeks ago from a big auction place, saved about $150 and it was brand new, can't complain! :)
i've decided to start on a little project which should be very interesting, and i plan to thoroughly document it here. it's a mame based coffee table. i've started to order a few bits and pieces to test out the control panel i'll be rigging up. it's going to be a 2 player setup with 6 buttons to a player. i've got joysticks imported from japan and genuine arcade buttons. very exciting little project :) but the even cooler thing is that it will be a proper coffee table when not in use, everything will be hidden nicely :) i've called in renae's brother and dad to help me out :)
hope everyone has a great christmas and new year.