Control Panel Started

Well I have finally gotten around to starting the Control Panel for my Arcade Machine and here's what I did this weekend.

I cut the Control Panel from a piece of MDF (8mm Thick) using a Circular Saw that gave me a nice clean line on the cut. Next I had to trim the Control Panel, as it was 5mm to wide for the cabinet, so I got out my trusty Jigsaw and trimmed away.

Now that I had my Control Panel cut to the correct size to fit into the cabinet, I applied my template to the Control Panel only to find it was to wide!!! I had made a BIG mistake, the width was out my 40mm. I scratched my head for a while and then realised that when I was originally measuring the Cabinet I had included the sides in my measurement (20mm each side), as I was going to do an extended Control Panel and not a fitted Control Panel as I am doing now. Anyway I got around this for now by just lining up the ends of the template to each end of the Control Panel with the center overlapping.

I clamped down the Control Panel on top of a scrap piece of MDF and drilled pilot holes. I drilled all the Button and Joystick Holes (except the top 3 Control Buttons: ESC, ENTER and PAUSE) using a 1 1/8 Inch Spade Bit. I was more then pleased with the results as all the holes lined up correctly, not like my Test Control Panel I made. I Sanded down the rough edges and then did some test mounts of the buttons and their placements.

Control Panel Plans Revealed

I have just finished my control Panel Plans for the Cabinet. The Plans where created in Microsoft Visio 2003 and are available for download from my Downloads section. I based the controls on a fighting game style layout that I felt comfortable with. I have a seventh button which is a thumb button and will be used as a block button in MK and the bottom row including the black button will be used for NEO GEO games. I also included two side buttons for the cabinet to play Pinball games using Visual Pinball, once I get this emulation up and running.

Mame on a Pocket PC

While I have been resting with my back (which is now nearly fully better) I have been playing around with a version on Mame that runs on a Pocket PC, its called MameCE and is based on the Mame Release 0.36. I have tried a few games on my DELL AXIM X5 and they work flawless at full speed with sound. So if you have a Pocket PC I would suggest you check it out at this address below:

http://www.mameworld.net/mamece3/

Here are a couple of photo's I took of MameCE3 running...

Software Update

With my back still hurting from the incident last week I decided to completed the computer hardware setup. I am using a AMD 2400+ on a ASUS Board (A7N8X Deluxe) with 512MB Memory and a GeForce2 MX Graphics card with SVIDEO and COMPOSITE out connectors. The Hard Drive is an 80GB Seagate to hold all the data with space for other emulation later on.

Installed Windows XP back onto the computer and setup MameWah and Mame. MameWah is working correctly and I now have the job of sorting out the Games into various lists like Favorites, Fighting Games, Platforms, etc...

I have had to re-install the Operating System as a 30GB IBM Hard Drive I had in the system as a slave failed over the weekend and somehow managed to corrupt my main 80GB hard drive. So I have had to do some re-setting up of software...