so i said that i’d finished the marquee. i had. demons in the intertubes, however, prevented me from uploading (long story involving DHCP and a stupid way of keeping track of my internal addresses — now resolved) to share with… well, me, since this ‘blog’ is hardly public consumption. :) anyway.

work has been… interesting. a higher-up has announced that he’s leaving, causing a lot of rumour and consternation in amongst the masses. certainly doesn’t do much for the feeling of job security. scary, actually. i’ve never been worried about my job before, at least not here.

in other news, my friend jude has left for india for 6 months — i wish her well, but sara and i are going to miss her a lot. from what’ we’ve heard so far, it sounds like she’s already having a blast. good luck, jude!

okay, lots of massive animals to set up and prelight. back to work.

good god, i still haven’t finished the marquee. i’m a total slacker.

not much to report. production on A Night at the Museum got really crazy, and the MAME project kind of ground to a halt for a while. the cabinet is in good working condition, people enjoy it, and it’s pretty much rock solid. a nice touch would be if i got up off my lazy ass and finished the marquee for it, and i keep meaning to. maybe i will tonight.

and, like so many other casual blogs, this one doesn’t get updated often enough. “i promise i’ll try harder” is my official campaign pledge. to me, really, because who else reads this thing besides me?

daphne‘s up and running under mamewah. for those not in the know, daphne emulates the old laserdisc arcade games. we just have space ace and dragon’s lair right now, but i fully expect that other such gems will make an appearance later on.

the trick is in setting up the daphne.nms and daphne.ini files correctly in mamewah. more details later as i have type to post them.

embrace your inner pizza,

-tony.

subwoofer’s working now @ 100%.

“What’s that John?”

“Beat it.”

“You wanna start a rumble?”

hi-scores are working, thanks to mame32FX’s save states. MAME now automatically saves the machine state when exiting a game, so that when you launch it again, it picks up right where it left off. obviously, this keeps persistent high scores, and lets you make it all the way through a game if you want to, in multiple sessions. that is, if no one else plays it while you’re gone.

the potential downside is that if someone else leaves a game in the middle, you might have to wait and die in order to start over. i think that this is outweighed by the fact that you don’t have to wait for the machine to boot and check its roms and do video tests and all that.

party for your right to fight,

-tony.

we’ve switched emulators. we were originally originally using plain ol’ vanilla MAME, but i like the occasional autofire button, so a flavored build was in order. for the past couple weeks we’ve been using mame32 plus, which is a nice little emu that features some nice things including autofire. here’s where the problems start. our romset is .105, the version of mame we were usin’ is .105, but the mame plus we had was *gasp* .105u5! i wouldn’t have worried, except that some games like gauntlet weren’t running. so i tried and tried (and still i can’t find / a lollipop that’s halfway refined…) to find an older version of mame plus that was .105. no such love. i could only get .106, and while i know i’m going to have to update the romset eventually, i have no desire to do so right now. so.

say hello to mame32FX, featuring autofire and high-score saving, among other things. we hope you enjoy it… we know we do!

less filling, tastes great,

-tony..

i came in to work early this morning. i was going to just stay home and get my WoW on (i’m lagging behind the rest of my guildies by about 20 levels, thanks to much overtime at work), but i just couldn’t do it. i got here about an hour early and opened up the back of the cabinet. i carefully pulled out sega’s model 2 hardware and harness, and in its place… a cambrige soundworks subwoofer! muaaahahahaahaaahaaaaa.

i know, i know. probably don’t need a subwoofer. not authentic. not reaaaaally necessary. overkill. you know what? i don’t care.

so i cleaned up some of the wiring, adjusted the positioning of some stuff, etc. i think it’s in good shape. i have to grab a y-adapter (at lunch today) for the sound output (going to both the regular speakers and the sub now), but other than that, i think we’re in business. i tested the sub a little, and dear lord, it’s loud.

enjoy fatty foods,

-tony..

so i stopped in at the hardware dept real fast to drill the holes for 8 more buttons on the current control panel. simeon had bought the 1 1/8″ bit that we needed to drill the right size holes, and jeff down in hardware was nice enough to let me use their more highly powered drill for the job. i’d measured the center holes this morning, and so the actual drilling was quick work. in, out, done. then i came back up and bolted everything back together, made sure we had enough extra microswitches, and tomorrow simeon and i will come in early and wire everything together.

well, maybe Pacifico instead.

so i went to the electronics shop around the corner, only to find out that they don’t make the 6-pin kind of molex connector that i need anymore. *sigh*. so i bought some crimping pins and connector blocks anyway, and jury-rigged a new video cable together. it took most of the lunch hour; i was tired and i wasted a block because i put the damn pins in the wrong direction. duh. but i got it together, and it works GREAT. the monitor still isn’t the best monitor in the world, but by god it works.

i invited people by to check it out, and there was pretty much a constant stream of people from about 4:30 until 8 when i left the office. almost every person who came by flipped through the list of games, and inevitably found The Game. the one game that had captured their imaginations when they were kids. the game that they had plugged the most quarters into. the one that they kept coming back to. a grin would creep up on their face as they read the title, and as the game started, they would inevitably say “oh, man, i remember this game. i put so many quarters into this…” and the waves of nostalgia emanating from the cabinet was just awesome.

okay, more later. g’night.