http://www.thebasementscientist.com A chronicle of my projects and wacky experiments. Sun, 17 Aug 2008 23:48:12 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en I just got a new scooter.  A beautiful Avocado green Stella with white wall tires.  It's basically a modernized Vespa PX150.  In fact, they're made in an old PX150 factory.  The only big difference between the Stella and it's Vespa brother is a slightly improved engine and breaking system. So why ... http://www.thebasementscientist.com/2008/08/17/stella-i-love-you/ 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 ... http://www.thebasementscientist.com/2008/06/12/arcade-cabinet-phase-2/ 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 ... http://www.thebasementscientist.com/2008/05/15/snes-flash-cartridge/ 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 ... http://www.thebasementscientist.com/2008/04/24/gp2x-my-dream-come-true/ 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 ... http://www.thebasementscientist.com/2008/04/18/arcade-depot-review/ 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 ... http://www.thebasementscientist.com/2008/04/13/phase-1-complete/ 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. ... http://www.thebasementscientist.com/2008/04/04/the-cabinet-has-arrived/ 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 ... http://www.thebasementscientist.com/2008/04/02/ray-wilson-adsrs/ 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 ... http://www.thebasementscientist.com/2008/03/31/mikes-arcade/ 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 ... http://www.thebasementscientist.com/2008/03/27/juno-60-midi-mod/