ArcadeCab

1/27/06

VolumeTray
I have found a very useful application to control the volume from without the games on the cabinet.  I wrote up a page on VolumeTray in the Projects section.

Store going on Hiatus (again)
With as much going on around here as there is, I've had to prioritize my projects.  At the moment I do not have the blocks of unfettered time that I need to make the quality products in my Store.  Rather than stress about where to find the time when an order comes in, I've decided to shutter the store for a while.  I do not have any idea when it might be reopened and I apologize to those people who have been waiting patiently for the Single-player panels to become available again.  I will continue to update the site and respond to questions; only the Store is impacted.

   

1/21/06

Dream Arcades Cocktail Cabinet Kit Review
Steve Welander (aka GadgetGeek on the BYOAC forums)  has finished his writeup on construction of the prize he won in December.  For those that don't know, Steve won the grand prize in Retroblast's series of drawings.  He has written up his thoughts on the kit itself, as well as including discussion of the PC he included.  Mamewah, my favorite, is being used as the frontend.  It is a very thorough article that you'll enjoy with plenty of pictures.  You can find it on the Projects page. 

1/19/06

New cabinet added
Another visitor, Curtis G, has sent in pictures of his
finished cabinet. Curtis has communicated with me during
his design and construction phase this last month, and
made several tweaks to personalize the cabinet. One
improvement was instead of standard glass or plexi he chose
tinted Plexiglass which he feels works very well. The
monitor is nearly invisible when off but displays a great
image when gaming. Another alternative to give thought to
when building your cabinet. Great work, Curtis, and happy gaming.

1/13/06

Lightable Arcade Pushbuttons
Discovered GroovyGameGear has released some new lightable pushbuttons.  From their news release:

"Electric ICE™ pushbuttons have been custom made to our specifications and were designed to look great on your CP whether they are lit or not. When un-lit, they are a polished, shimmering white button with all the classic arcade style you remember. When lit, the entire button takes on the color of your bottom mounted high-output LED. The special material captures and diffuses all the light of the LED, sending vibrant color to not only the plunger, but the bezel as well. Even in a well lit room!

• No light wasted on the ceiling or shining in your eyes
• No multiple LEDs required just to light a single button
• No special rings or other LED mounting gizmos required.
• Extra long body for easy mounting into thick panels.
• Includes Pre-drilled press-fit hole for a 5mm LED
• Includes Pushbutton Nut.
• Microswitch is optional.
  

A full line of LEDs will also be available. These LEDs have been specially selected for maximum performance with the Electric ICE™ pushbuttons."

These look very, very cool. These might be a nice upgrade for me at some point in the future.

1/11/06

A useful link
Occasionally I have need to get some files to other people that are too large for email to handle. Generally this means anything more than 10 meg. Burning a CD and delivering via sneakernet doesn't always make sense. What I normally do is upload the file to my website and provide a link to the recipient. But not everyone has that ability. There are a number of free sites that allow you to upload files and let anyone download them (with the correct link). One such site that has received high marks from fellow hobbyists is http://www.savefile.com/. They allow you to upload files up to 60 meg in size to their servers completely free. You may upload as many as you want and they stay up on the site as long as someone downloads the file at least once every 14 days. Not a bad deal. This provides you with an additional option the next time you need to get files to someone remotely.

1/4/06

Mame Cabinet Plans now available as a PDF
I have now added a PDF document that includes all the webpages/pictures for my cabinet plans. It is basically just the pages pulled into Acrobat and saved, without any additional formatting or text. I get an occasional question about whether the docs are available in a single document and until now have had to say no. I have added bookmarks and thumbnails for each page to make searching for a specific page easier. The order is: cabinet text pages, cabinet photos, controller text page, controller photos. The entire document is nearly 250 pages so you might not want to just click print right away. I hope this provides an additional resource to make your cabinet-build a success.

Free weekly comic link
My brother-in-law's free weekly strip began Sunday.  Click on the banner to check the first installment out.

1/1/06

Happy New Year!
Hope everyone had a safe and enjoyable New Year's eve.  We took it easy, crashed early, but were awoken at midnight by neighborhood fireworks.  2005 brought us a lot of joy and we are looking forward to 2006.

Updated Mame version on cabinet
I have been running version .62 on the cabinet since it's creation and have been quite happy.  I was alerted yesterday by my cocktail-cabinet-winning buddy that I might want to check out .63 since it added two new switches: skip_disclaimer and skip_gameinfo.  These two flags, when set to '1' in the mame.ini file (in c:\mame\), keeps the info about the game from showing when you start up the game, as well as skipping the 'OK' prompt.   I made the change last night and my wife immediately commented on how she had disliked the info screens before.  Tested a bunch of games and all ran fine.  It is possible I might run into an issue down the road with inconsistent Roms but rather doubt it.  If you hate the startup screens but like the older mame versions, give .63 some consideration.  Thanks, Steve.

Nice stained oak cabinet
I discovered a small site a while ago that a gentleman put up to show construction photos of his first MAME cabinet.  Natural wood cabinets are rare and interest me as they are, in my opinion, many times more "wife-friendly" than the typical black cabinets.  The more furniture-like appearance allows them to fit in better on the main levels of homes.  My father, who loves playing my cab, eventually wants one of his own.  However, most every piece of furniture in my parent's  home is of oak.  Many beautiful pieces.  He has decided the cabinet will go in the corner of his family (TV) room and the cab will need to match the furniture, hence oak. So I am always on the look-out for nice examples of this cabinet style.  I share this site with you in case a similar situation arises for you.  The construction photos on the site are very large and show the details well.  Anyone interested in building a natural-wood cabinet should give the site a look.