fat blue » hardware http://www.tonyetienne.com How to talk your parents into parting with $1300 Thu, 26 Aug 2010 20:23:14 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0 woof http://www.tonyetienne.com/woof.htm http://www.tonyetienne.com/woof.htm#comments Tue, 01 Aug 2006 16:29:29 +0000 tetujin http://rhythmmame.homelinux.org/woof.htm subwoofer’s working now @ 100%.

“What’s that John?”

“Beat it.”

“You wanna start a rumble?”

]]> http://www.tonyetienne.com/woof.htm/feed 0 scalpel! scalpel. http://www.tonyetienne.com/scalpel-scalpel.htm http://www.tonyetienne.com/scalpel-scalpel.htm#comments Mon, 31 Jul 2006 18:01:44 +0000 tetujin http://rhythmmame.homelinux.org/scalpel-scalpel.htm 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..

]]> http://www.tonyetienne.com/scalpel-scalpel.htm/feed 0 six button action http://www.tonyetienne.com/six-button-action.htm http://www.tonyetienne.com/six-button-action.htm#comments Thu, 27 Jul 2006 01:19:14 +0000 tetujin http://rhythmmame.homelinux.org/six-button-action.htm 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.

]]> http://www.tonyetienne.com/six-button-action.htm/feed 0 it’s miller time! http://www.tonyetienne.com/its-miller-time.htm http://www.tonyetienne.com/its-miller-time.htm#comments Sun, 23 Jul 2006 07:24:29 +0000 tetujin http://rhythmmame.homelinux.org/its-miller-time.htm 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.

]]> http://www.tonyetienne.com/its-miller-time.htm/feed 0 nostalgia http://www.tonyetienne.com/52.htm http://www.tonyetienne.com/52.htm#comments Fri, 21 Jul 2006 00:27:06 +0000 tetujin http://rhythmmame.homelinux.org/52.htm so in a blinding flashback of nostalgia…
will mccown just came by with an oscilloscope, and showed me how to use it. as things turn out, i think that we need to split the signal. right now we’re wiring the V and H sync together into the monitor’s H sync input, which is ok because the input can actually accept a composite signal, but just wiring the lines together isn’t sufficient. we need to either:

a.) get a new wiring block and wire up a connector (should be easy at radio shack or similar), which is probably desireable anyway since the wiring is in bad need of cleaning up.

b.) configure the arcadeVGA card to output a composite signal to the H sync cable. this is tricky as it would require hooking up the computer to another monitor (probably at kurt’s house), and might not actually solve the problem.

so i am opting for a.), and will stop by the radio shack or equivalent on my way home tonight if i can (and if they’re open) and pick up the appropriate connection block.

hang tight, peeps.

]]> http://www.tonyetienne.com/52.htm/feed 0 wtf http://www.tonyetienne.com/wtf.htm http://www.tonyetienne.com/wtf.htm#comments Sun, 16 Jul 2006 01:04:06 +0000 tetujin http://tetujin.myftp.org/wtf.htm several hours later…
the monitor has now lost all ability to sync horizontally or vertically. i can almost get it to sit still, but it’s still moving around ever so slowly. it was fine, nay, perfect for half the day, and then after a reboot, it’s just lost. i don’t know how it happened or how to fix it. if it’s an “it’s been on too long” problem, then maybe on monday it’ll be better. if that’s the case, then we’ll probably need to buy a new monitor after all… because who the fuck needs a monitor that only lasts for a couple hours before you have to turn it off? hell, i may as well put batteries in it and call it portable.

]]> http://www.tonyetienne.com/wtf.htm/feed 0 gaming goodness! http://www.tonyetienne.com/gaming-goodness.htm http://www.tonyetienne.com/gaming-goodness.htm#comments Sat, 15 Jul 2006 21:05:57 +0000 tetujin http://tetujin.myftp.org/gaming-goodness.htm so it turns out that the microswitches were the problem, but not in the way that i thought. you need to have the buttons wired up so that the circuit is always open until the button is pressed. we had the wires running to the other pole, the one where the circuit is always closed. the poor ipac was sending start, button1, button2, button3, up, down, left, and right for player 1 and player 2 all at the same time. no wonder the damn thing was acting crazy! so i switched the connections and voila! we have gaming goodness. the monitor is not perfect, but it’s a damn sight better than nothing, so i’ll leave it at that and be happy. it’s got a big magnetic thing going on on the left side of the screen, i’m not sure what it is but i’m guessing a good degauss might take care of it. i’ll leave that for next week. anyway.

the only thing left to do for today is get a 1/8″ to RCA adapter to hook from the computer to the speakers in the cabinet (the cab has an amplifier! cool beans!), and we’ll have sound and video. it will be a multimediafest for the soul.

]]> http://www.tonyetienne.com/gaming-goodness.htm/feed 0 it’s aliiiiiiiive (mostly) http://www.tonyetienne.com/its-aliiiiiiiive-mostly.htm http://www.tonyetienne.com/its-aliiiiiiiive-mostly.htm#comments Sat, 15 Jul 2006 17:58:38 +0000 tetujin http://tetujin.myftp.org/its-aliiiiiiiive-mostly.htm well, koz discharged the monitor last night, we rigged it up and booted it. no video. as things turn out, the monitor picks up a signal much better when the computer is actually turned on. so we got a signal, played with the monitor controls, got a good picture, and now we’re cookin’ with gas!

kurt predicted that something would, of course, be wrong with the i-pac setup. he’s so smart, i could kill him. something is sending a jillion signals per second into the ipac, making it impossible to click or type when the i-pac is plugged in. so i’ve disconnected everything and we’re going to start from zero and find where exactly it’s dying. i’m betting it’s either the not-new joysticks or one of the old microswitches that’s causing the problem. we’ll see.

anyhow, we’re almost there. stay on target… stay on target…

]]> http://www.tonyetienne.com/its-aliiiiiiiive-mostly.htm/feed 0 success! http://www.tonyetienne.com/success.htm http://www.tonyetienne.com/success.htm#comments Fri, 14 Jul 2006 05:32:43 +0000 tetujin http://tetujin.myftp.org/success.htm kurt did a lot of digging recently, and discovered that our medium res monitor is actually, in fact, an early multisync monitor! by disconnecting a set of cables from one set of pins and reconnecting them to an identical set of pins nearby, we can run our monitor at 15kHz! we tore off the back of the cabinet to see if this was indeed the case. it is! now we just need to find someone to discharge the monitor, as neither of us are really brave enough to try and attempt it ourselves. once we do, we can have a working arcade cabinet in about… 5 minutes! w00tsters!

]]> http://www.tonyetienne.com/success.htm/feed 0 Sooooooooooooooooooooooo…. http://www.tonyetienne.com/sooooooooooooooooooooooo.htm http://www.tonyetienne.com/sooooooooooooooooooooooo.htm#comments Thu, 15 Jun 2006 17:40:08 +0000 tetujin http://tetujin.myftp.org/sooooooooooooooooooooooo.htm Kurt writes in:

We wired up everything last night. Expecting to have some games for everyone today.

Except for one… small… little.. tiny… detail.

Way back when we got the Dynamite Cop machine I made the comment that most 3D arcade games use medium resolution arcade monitors, and if its that kind of monitor it would cause us some problems for emulation. We found out that the arcade machine was a WWF Wrestlefest conversion so we assumed that the operator of the machine did a conversion but left the original standard resolution monitor.

And we never double checked the monitor’s model number.

Oops.

So now we got a perfect medium resolution monitor but we can’t run most games on it. To give you an idea how rare these monitors are, there are about 7000+ arcade games emulated. About 50 out of the 7000 games use these types of monitors.

Generally monitors come in 3 kinds for arcades:

  • standard resolution [15-16khz video aka. CGA 200-250 lines]
  • medium resolution [25khz video, aka. EGA 300-400 lines]
  • VGA resolution [31.5khz+ 480-1024lines+]

If the arcade monitor was standard or vga, we’d be fine, but it just happens we are left with a medium resolution monitor. Its a nice monitor, higher resolution to display 3d games without interlace flicker, but that doesn’t help our project.

So right now we got a few scenarios:

  1. Sell or Trade the monitor and sega model III Hardware to get a standard resolution arcade monitor.
  2. Get arcade OS/advance mame/powerstrip and fiddle with software and hardware settings to trick the pc into always outputting 25Khz video.
  3. Buy a used or new arcade monitor or use a pc monitor.

Right now I’m leaning towards #1, we should be able to get a even trade for the boards and monitor for another monitor, especially since our monitor is in very nice shape along with the sega model III Board. Dynamite cop, as a game, isn’t very desireable, but the hardware can also run daytona USA. Many arcade operators seek out model 3 boards for spare parts.

So right now the only thing slowing us down is the monitor, on the upside we got all new buttons and wiring on the control panel, hooked up the ipac interface card.

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