August 22, 2007 at 11:54 pm (Linux, MAME)
My wonderful wife decided, for my upcoming birthday, to give me the thumbs up to get the parts that I needed to finish my MAME cabinet! I’m so stoked!
So I have been busy trying to bring things together. My good friend Anton just happened to have a set of extra buttons that he so graciously donated. I ordered the remaining buttons, 4 Mag-Stik joysticks and a I-PAC4 from Ultimarc.
While waiting for the parts to get here, I have also pulled together some old computer parts, installed Ubuntu Feisty with the Radeon frame buffer kernel driver (radeonfb), and AdvanceMame. In theory, this should allow me to run MAME on the original arcade monitor (*crosses fingers*) using my old Radeon 7500 card. I have also prototyped the control panel layout on card board.
No new pics yet, but I promise to post some as soon as I get the parts in. I’m really excited that everything is starting to come together!
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May 16, 2007 at 11:55 pm (General, MAME)
Angie hits the nail on the head when she talks about how much I love technology. I have what seems to be an endless array of projects. So many things that I would like to do, and so little time. So what does one do? Add another project! Why not? 
A couple of weeks ago Angie and I went to a community wide garage sale. Angie and I have been perfecting the art of garage saleing. Its all about the hunt, the possibility that you might find that one thing that makes getting up at 5:00 in the morning and driving all over the place worth it. Sometimes you find it, and sometimes you come back empty handed. This time I struck gold.
For the longest time I have wanted to make an arcade cabinet that is actually a computer that emulates all the old arcade games. I never really got started, since making such a cabinet from scratch is quite a task, and I have just never had the time.
As we drove down one of the streets, it was suddenly like one of those scenes from a movie, where everything goes into slow motion as a girl walks by and looks at that guy. I glance over into a garage and see an arcade cabinet! We quickly pulled in, and I almost fainted when the guy told me that I could have it for $10! But we had a problem. The morning had already been quite successful, and the car was quite packed with junk. It’s not every day that you have an opportunity like this, so we totally unpacked the car, put the arcade in and re-packed the car again. I couldn’t believe that we got everything in there. I would have taken a picture but my camera was somewhere in the middle of everything. I have to thank Angie for being such a great wife for not just letting me get it, but for finding a way to make everything fit — even to the point where she had to ride all the way back with a child’s couch sitting in her lap.
So now I have a Rolling Thunder arcade cabinet that is in pretty good shape. The game even works thanks to a friend at work giving me a power supply and a little tlc. And now my next project begins! The plan is to turn this cabinet into a MAME cabinet. There is still a lot of work to do, and a lot to figure out. Off to the drawing board!
Before I go, here are some photos of the cabinet in all of its glory:
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