So why buy a scooter that was state of the art in the 70’s?  Here’s where the “science” comes in.  While electronics and computers are very familiar to me, I know next to nothing about engines.  However, I have always been interested and have performed several minor acts of vehicle surgery in the past.  The Stella, like the Vespa, was designed with the intent of being 100% user serviceable.  Theoretically, all you need is a little mechanical aptitude and a copy of the Haynes manual to keep one running.  It also helps to have a brother that’s a certified 2-stroke mechanic.

So while my new Stella should give me a few years of trouble-free service, I’m actually looking forward to my first mechanical problem to solve.  I definitely can’t say the same about my car.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.