This week I started the process of adding a M.A.M.E. PC to my cocktail arcade cabinet. The PC is a 3.33GHz Celeron D with 2GB of RAM and a 250GB hard drive. Probably a little overboard for a MAME PC, but I wanted some room to grow if I need it. I also wanted to make sure I had adequate horsepower to play games like Street Fighter II and the Metal Slug series, which can be problematic on slower MAME machines. The whole PC was under $300, but I also had to buy an ArcadeVGA card and a J-PAC from Ultimarc so that I could interface the PC with my vintage-spec arcade cabinet.

I decided to use Windows XP as the OS. I considered both Linux and DOS, but XP ended up being the best fit for my needs. I also installed a VNC client, an FTP server, and a wi-fi card on the box so I can administer and configure the machine remotely. That way I don’t end up elbow deep in arcade guts every time I need to make a simple software change. The arcade screen looks great with MAME, but using XP with a 640×480 interlaced screen is a nightmare…that’s where VNC comes in handy.

Finally, to handle sound I got a little unconventional and decided to modify a small car amplifier and an ATX power supply to drive the four 4″ speakers in my arcade cab. Most MAME builders just modify an existing set of PC speakers, but I wanted to try something a little different. Modding the ATX supply to work with the car amp was a lot easier than I expected and my bench test with a pair of junk speakers and a CD player sounded great.

Right now all I need to do is install the amp and tidy up the wiring and I’m done. I’ll post some pictures of the guts when it’s finished.

A few years ago I purchased an FC Twin and went on a NES and SNES cartrige buying spree, but a lot of the games I really wanted (RPGs, mostly) were incredibly expensive. I also wanted to play some of the Japanese RPGs and platformers that never made it over to the states, but those required a Japanese SNES and any ROMs that had been translated to English required an emulator.

As much as I love emulators, they just aren’t the same as playing on the real hardware. I have a PC hooked up to my TV that I’ve used with NES and SNES emulators in the past, but I’d much rather use the FC Twin or my SNES if I’m going to sit down and do some serious playing. For years I wished I could buy a flash cart for my SNES that worked the same way my Gameboy, GBA, and DS flash carts did.

It took some hunting, but there are a few dark corners of the interweb that provide just such a device. The one I found is made by Tototek. It works with about 90% of the SNES ROMs out there, and more importantly, works with homebrew and modded SNES ROMs, which includes the fan-translated RPGs. The device can also copy SNES carts for creating your own ROMs, and is capable of copying and writing save games to original SNES carts. The only ROMs it won’t work with are ones that required additional chips. Super Mario RPG, Mario Cart, Pilotwings, Star Fox, Yoshi’s Island, and the Mega Man X games are just about the only “good” games that fall into this category. I already own cartridges for all of these, so this really wasn’t an issue for me.

My only gripe is that the flasher requires a parallel port, so any laptop users are out of luck. Luckily I just switched from a laptop to a desktop, so this isn’t an issue for me. It might make using this thing a little tough in another 4 or 5 years, though.

A few years ago I purchased a Linux based gaming system. The GP2X was designed to be as powerful as the DS and PSP, but completely open source. There was a lot of buzz about all the emulators that would soon be ported to the system. I had always dreamed of having a portable SNES/NES, so I joined the pre-order list and was one of the first people to get my hands on one.

Unfortunately, the GP2X got off to a rocky start. The initial firmware was buggy and the company was slow to release an SDK, which kept all but the most basic software from being ported to the system. The only thing I ever found useful was the built in DIVX support, which I used to watch movies any time I traveled. After about a year without any decent software my GP2X was boxed up and forgotten.

Fast forward nearly two years.

While I was searching for some long-lost Magic: The Gathering cards in the attic I rediscovered my GP2X. I was curious to see if any progress had been made on the console I initially had so much hope for. After a quick check of the GP32X Site I was amazed at all the software that was available. Just about every gaming system you could think of has been ported over to the GP2X, with many emulators working with near 100% compatibility. My dream of a portable SNES/NES is finally a reality, but I was also able to install Doom, Duke Nukem 3D, emulators for the Sega Genesis and Neo Geo, and even LucasArts adventure games. Everything I installed worked perfectly.

The best part is how easy it was to install it all. I managed to get more than half a dozen emulators up and running in only a few hours. That’s probably less time than I would spend setting up the same software on my PC. The GP2X has definitely come a long way.

I thought I’d do a quick review of the company I purchased my cocktail cabinet kit from, arcade depot.

Packaging

Packaging was excellent. Everything was bubble wrapped and the outside edges of the box were lined with plywood to prevent any damage. Everything arrived without a scratch.

Quality

This definitely isn’t your average piece of Wal-Mart furniture. The plywood is very high quality and the staining and sealing is excellent. Everything fits together perfectly and has perfect right angles. Most arcade cabinets sold on the internet are MDF with a fake wood-like veneer. The arcade depot cabinets use real wood veneer over high quality plywood, which looks better and will probably hold up to more abuse than an MDF cabinet would.

Assembly

If you can put together flat-pack furniture from a big box retailer, you can build this cocktail cabinet. The instructions were fairly easy to follow, but there are a few things left to your own ingenuity and imagination. I would definitely recommend doing a dry run before gluing each part to make sure you know where everything goes. I would also recommend having some clamps, as there is quite a bit of gluing involved. I was able to assemble everything except the table top and vertical control panels in one evening.

I ran into a few snags with the Ultimarc joysticks I used, but that isn’t arcade depot’s fault. The mag-sticks fit in the vertical panels just fine, but they were too long for the horizontal panel. I ended up using a hole saw to put 2″ holes all the way through the bottom of the panel. The holes won’t be visible (unless someone happens to be lying on the floor) and the joysticks work fine.

Turnaround

For a product that is made-to-order I thought the turnaround was very good. I placed my order on March 15th and my shipment arrived on April 4th. A 3 week turnaround isn’t bad considering they built the whole thing from scratch, including staining and sealing the wood and installing the T-molding.

Communication

This is the one place I feel that arcade depot fell a little short. arcade depot is an online company and email is the only way to reach them. Unfortunately, they weren’t very quick in responding to my email inquiries. Most emails were returned within two or three days, but there were two emails that took almost an entire week and one email never received a response at all. I also didn’t receive a tracking number for my package, even though I requested one and got an email from arcade depot saying they would send it.

Maybe I’m impatient, but two or three days is pretty sad and a week is just unacceptable. My perception may be skewed because I work in IT and I’d probably be fired if I didn’t respond to an email the same day I received it.

Conclusion

Over all, I thought my experience with arcade depot was very good. I would definitely order from them again. It also doesn’t hurt that they’re the only game in town for cocktail kits that aren’t made of crappy MDF. If they improved communication a little I don’t think I’d have a single bad thing to say about them.

The first phase of my cocktail cabinet project is complete. I’ve got everything wired up and working with my 48 in 1 arcade board. The next step is to build a MAME computer so I can play horizontal arcade games. So far it’s been a lot of fun to play and the cocktail format is great for sitting down to some 2-player Pac-man or Galaga.

My cabinet kit from arcade depot arrived yesterday afternoon. I managed to get about 80% of the assembly completed last night and I’m hoping to have it ready to wire up by this evening. With any luck I’ll be enjoying a nice game of Galaga by Saturday afternoon.

A couple of years ago I built a modular synthesizer based on circuit designs from Ray Wilson and Ken Stone. Last summer I built an additional synth cabinet with the intention of adding a bunch of new modules from several other DIY synth gurus. For some reason it’s taken me almost a year to get motivated enough to start building modules, but the first two are finally ready. These are actually Ray Wilson circuits that I couldn’t fit in the first cab, but I’m short on envelope generators so I decided to build these first. I’ve also got a Ray Wilson sequencer that I’m hoping to finish next. After that it should be all new circuit designs, including quite a few of Thomas Henry’s circuits.

I’ve posted about all the main ingredients of my cocktail machine, but there are also a lot of odds and ends that you need to complete a project like this. Things like speaker grills, bolts, and wiring harnesses can be tough to track down. Luckily, I found a one stop shop for all these arcade odds and ends. Mike’s Arcade has almost everything you need to restore or build an 80’s style Midway arcade machine. The prices are pretty reasonable too. He even sells his own empty cabinets, so you could theoretically get everything you need in one place. I bought my Galaga artwork from him as well all the hardware I’ll need to mount the monitor, speakers, and controls.

I got a ridiculously good deal on a Juno 60 synth over the holidays. For an instrument that’s nearly as old as I am it’s in surprisingly good shape, but it’s lack of MIDI soon became a problem. I’m a fairly poor synth player, so I rely heavily on MIDI so that I can program parts that I’d never actually be able to play in real life. No MIDI left me stuck with my rather limited abilities whenever I wanted to use the Juno in a song.

The Juno 60 was released about a year or so before MIDI became the standard and instead has Roland’s own MIDI-like DCB protocol. There have been several DCB to MIDI adapters released over the years, but they’re all big clunky boxes. If I was going to add MIDI to my Juno, I wanted it to be built into the synth and not in some external box I would have to lug around.

After a little hunting I found Engineers@Work, a company in the Netherlands that had exactly what I was looking for. They sell an add-on board that can be soldered into the existing DCB wiring to convert the DCB signals to MIDI. It even fits into the same hole as the old DCB connector so I didn’t have to drill any new holes in the Juno.

I’ve been having a tough time deciding which joysticks to use. The “free” joysticks that came with my 48 in 1 board aren’t very good, so I’ll probably just toss them in the parts bin. You never know when you’ll need a joystick or two. I wanted to match the 80’s cocktail aesthetic as much as possible, so a ball top joystick was a must. I also wanted a joystick that can be switched between 4 and 8 way operation. Nothing sucks more than playing games like Pac-Man without a real 4 way joystick.

Ultimarc makes a joystick that switches between 4 and 8 way on the fly so I ordered a couple of those to try out. I also won an auction for a pair of cheap Seimitsu joysticks that are supposed to be great for fighters and side scrollers, but they don’t switch between 4 and 8 way easily. Both types have the same mounting plate, so once I get the cabinet I can easily switch them out and decide exactly what I want.

I’ll need a total of four joysticks (two for cocktail panels and two for the horizontal control panel), so I just need to decide if I want the same type of joystick on every panel, or if the Seimitsu sticks in the 8 way configuration will work in the horizontal panel. Most of the 4 way games I like are vertical, so the Ultimarc sticks will definitely be going in the vertical control panels.