Arcade Move

Well, thanks to Steph, the arcade so far and the materials have all been moved from Martin's house to my brother's apartment. I owe you lunch, Steph.
Whenever I have time, I will work on the arcade over there. The wiring and encoder installation is the next step, so stay tuned!

Back! And With More Freebies!

Ok! Yes, I am still alive!
After a long break from this project and blog it's time to update a bit. I've been busy travelling, moving into a new apartment, starting work, going to school and doing a whole bunch of other activities. Busy, busy, busy!

So, first, some info on additial items that have been added to the list. All of these were actually obtained before I left for Berlin but I never posted about them so here they are:

SVGA Monitor cable:

The 21" monitor Jean-Philippe purchased for me (the 75$ deal..) in Toronto didn't come with its own SVGA cable. So I spent some time here and there looking for a good deal on SVGA cables but most of them cost about 15 friggin' dollars. I dunno why, but I didn't feel like paying that much for a cable I'm used to having included with a monitor. Anyhow, I ended up "acquiring" one from a computer lab.


Sidewinder USB Game Pad

Jean-Philippe gave me this gamepad. He bought it for me as a gift while he was in Toronto going crazy on all the price matching that was going on in Staples. Thanks Jean-Philippe! I can't wait to try it out on my arcade's USB ports.

The best thing is I got these two items for free! More freebies! Freebies are great!

Ok, so here's the status of the project so far. The fall session has started at university and Martin's really busy with school. School being more important than fun (duh...) he has decided not to work on the project whilst in the middle of his studies. Something I respect a lot and support at 100%. Now, I have to dedicate a weekend (preferably before it really starts getting cold) and go get all the equipment and arcade from his place and bring it to my brother's rather big apartment so we can finish the job over there without disturbing Martin. I have been talking with my friend Jason to see if we can fit everything in his huge car and, if it's not a problem with him, he can help me out with the pickup. My brother is in Cuba for the week so we won't be doing anything until the end of this month or the beginning of the next one.

And that's it for now!

Gotta Go To Berlin.

I have to go to Berlin for a month. I'll be back by the end of next month (August 27th). But before I leave, here are pictures of Martin doing what he does best:

Late, Very Late Update.

Okay! First of all I want to point out that this update on the project is extremely late. What I'm about to discuss about is work accomplished on June 25th. That's almost a month ago! School has been getting in the way with all the assignments, projects and finals... So yeah, it's been a horrible month, full of hard, long and annoying work. But all of that is coming to an end now and I finally have time to update the blog.

So, on that very productive day of June 25th we mainly worked on two things: the top part of the arcade and the console (a.k.a the "command center", as I like to call it...). Oh, and Dominique, a friend studying in Civil Engineering, joined us that day and turned out being of valuable help. Once this project is done, it will have the seal of approval of Canada's three finest engineers... Well, students in engineering that is.

Here's a picture of me looking like I'm actually working hard:



And here's another one showing what I do most of the time while my team is working; goofing off with cool and dangerous power tools:



I'm sure you've noticed how the arcade now has a full body. Martin's lousy job on tracing the "where-to-cut" lines on the board was compensated by his fathers excellent sawing skills. (No hard feelings, Martin!).

Let's have a closer look on how the bottom and top part of the arcade are held together:



As simple as that. At first we were thinking of doing some elaborate wood work inside the cabinet but Dominique was quick to find a faster and easier solution: the use of those small metallic thinga-ma-jigs (I have no idea what their names are...). So, after a quick ride to Rona in order to purchase these metallic thinga-ma-jigs, we were ready to stabilize the top part of the arcade with the main body.

Okay, now let's have a look and see what's behind this baby:


That's Dominique's rear end on top of the ladder, by the way. BUt other than that, there are two important things to point out here: I was convinced that the monitor was simply not high enough. It was ok for an average sized bloke but not for me. I measure an imposing (yeah right...) 1.90 metres and I don't want to have to bend my back in order to properly see the monitor while I play. Since we had already installed the monitor support we simply decided to build another support on top of that. As a very cool and unexpected bonus, we ended up with some space in between the old and new monitor support. This space is going to be ideal for cables, hardware and whatnot.
Finally, we added a support bar on top of the monitor. It has two roles; it decreases wobbliness of the top part of the arcade and also serves as a support for the monitor by stopping it from falling down in case it somehow "slides" backwards. Let's have a closer look at it, shall we?




Let's now have a look at the console:





Pretty nifty, huh? I love it! Can't wait to get those buttons and joystick all wired up.

So, this is what we got by the end of the day:



And it came to be that, after a hard days of work, we sat back and admired what we had achieved. We were very satisfied and concluded that the accomplished work deserved none other than an Official Jorge & Dominique Two Thumbs Up of Approval™:

MameWah.

I have chosen the frontend that the arcade will be using: MameWah.

From the website:
"MAMEWAH is a customisable multiple emulator frontend capable of running countless emulators, including everyone's favourite arcade emulator, M.A.M.E. MAMEWAH is primarily intended for use with real arcade controls, including joysticks (digital or analog), trackballs and spinners. MAMEWAH hides the Windows environment which makes it ideal for use in a home arcade cabinet."

Here's a screenshot of MameWah with a custom skin and layout design:

More screenshots here.

And here's a demo video:
Roberta's Mamewah Demo

I had previously made my mind up for AdvanceMAME with AdvanceMENU. I have changed my mind because AdvanceMame is just a mere MAME emulator whereas MameWah does not limit itself to MAME only. It's an application that supports a practically unlimited number of emulators all linked together into one single frontend. It also supports PC games, which is cool.

Most importantly, this means no annoying switching in between emulators. Everything can be quickly and simply accessed through a single interface.

Here's the list of MameWah's main features:
- windows appearance fully hidden
- fully customisable appearance using supplied Layout Designer
- support for up to 10 types of artwork (images)
- movie preview support (& intro / exit movies) (avi / mpg / mpeg / wmv)
- event sound effects (wav)
- background music support (mid / midi / rmi / mp3 / wma)
- fully customisable keyboard, mouse & pc joystick device support
- practically unlimited multiple emulator support
- pc game / application support
- various list generation methods & emulator launch properties
- catver.ini support
- nms file support (for displaying real game names from short filenames)
- multiple lists supported (per emulator)
- ability to create lists using filters
- auto-generation of favourites lists (most played / longest played)
- various built-in screen-savers
- keyboard led control
- built-in IPAC programming (WinIPAC) support
- support for (serial port interfaced) lcd screens
- much, much more...

Of course, this implies that the arcade will be running Windows XP as an OS. This won't even be noticed since MameWah hides the windows environment, all to make it look more arcadish.

Yay, Button Holes!

More on the console box! Martin and his father have worked on it again today:



As you can see, all the holes have been properly measured and placed.

Here's a view on the side, you can get a glimpse of the usb ports in front on the console box:



And of course, the official father and son's thumbs up of approval for a job well done:



Man, work on the cabinet is going great. If it keeps on going like this, it'll be done before I even get a chance of showing up!

Cabinet status, as of June 08/05

As you might have noticed from the last pictures posted, things haven't evolved too much for a week. In fact, due to the intense heat last weekend (call me a whimp), we didn't touch the cabinet at all neither Saturday nor Sunday. So anyways, here's a short summary of what was accomplished nonethless in the meantime:


Friday, June 03/05
Time: 6:00PM - 9:00PM
Location(s): My garage, Home Depot, Canadian Tire
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We started Friday's work session with some shopping! When we made the holes on the side panels for the pinball buttons, we realized that the holes should have a diameter of 1 1/8" - a bit size we didn't have. At the time, we simply drilled a 1" diameter hole and used a Dremel to sand the interior until the buttons fitted. Naturally, we didn't want to repeat this lengthy process for all the 18 other holes left hence the shopping. We started with Home Depot but found their choice of bits unsatisfactory. We did however jump on the occasion to buy some masonite for the non loadbearing elements of the cabinet (PS: Jorge, you owe me 8$). We then headed for Canadian Tire and found a complete set of drill bits for as low as $14.99 (w00t!). The reason we wanted the bit was that we planned on doing the control panel... in facts things went a bit differently. Jorge came to visit me at work during the afternoon and gave me the USB hub so we therefore decided on making the hole in the front panel for the 4 USB ports. By the time we came back, it was already past 7:30PM and we didn't immediately put ourselves to work. What followed however was a series of trial and error sanding/grinding to reduce the thickness of the front panel around the opening so as to have an easy access to the hub. Anyways, by the time this was done, it was 9:00PM and I called it quits.

Estimated worktime involved: 01 hrs 15 mins.
Cumulative worktime involved: 11 hrs 30 mins.
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Tuesday, June 07/05
Time: 7:30PM - 9:00PM
Location(s): My garage
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So yesterday we finally got to work on the cabinet after this 3 day long hiatus. We determined the size of the control panel and cut it in some good old particle board. Until then, we had the bottom board, the side panels and the front panel with none of them being fixed in place. We therefore decided to glue and nail the side panels and the front panel together. The result is the frame you can see me hold in one of the pictures of Jorge's previous post. I must say we also lost quite a bit of time discussing the location of the hinges and how we would lock the board so it wouldn't open every time you jerked on a joystick. The results can be seen in the pictures of Jorge's previous post. What do you know? This cabinet starts to look like an arcade cabinet!

Estimated worktime involved: 01 hrs 15 mins.
Cumulative worktime involved: 12 hrs 45 mins.
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More On The Console Box.

The top of the console was made today by Martin and his father:







All that needs to be done to it is add the holes for the buttons and eventually stick in the joysticks and buttons. Also, the top part of the console will be installed following a "car-hood" model. So that we can easily open the console box and meddle with the wires inside whenever we have to. This will end up being very useful when time has come to replace a broken/jammed button or two due to extremely wild arcade playing.

Martin has the Power!!!: