Who said we can just wire the TV?? @@

Yeah.. it didn't work.. I was right... the frequency is different between computer monitor and the arcade TV, first, is the frequency, second, the resolutions... so.. after spending hours of wiring @@ , now, i'm back to the old issue again. I think I prefer to use an monitor... all I need to do is figure how to mount it... We finally took the arcade apart... I'm more like a do-it person when there are not risk to take things apart. And oh.. yeah.. 5 mins works saved our few hours research, nice!


And so far, we've got 6 games for sure. I hope I can find more in the future.

Pinball: excellent
NeverBall: simple control, nice
Blobwars: mouse key works perfectly!
Raid'em(raidem) - perfect game!! 2 players, easy keymap, turn "eye candy" option to min
SuperTux(supertux) nice LUX game
frozen-bubble nice cute game, 2 players
Game List for our wiki page


Key mapping plan is done and test with games. All we have to do is wire the controllers and test it. That's what I'm gonna do after this blog.


After all, I've gotta say thank you to Stephen Liang. He's been putting a lot of affort on this project, working so hard quietly.

BTW.. why dose NEC use LG/Philips screen?? That's weired..

Regular CRT Monitor

Arcade Project Update

Naked Keyboard


Happy New Year!

During this holiday, Stephen, Mohak, Patty and myself went to school to do the arcade project. Mohak was doing the game search. Patty was taking care the labeling for some cables and Stephen was doing research on key mapping and he also started some soldering for the key mapping also. At that time, I set up a network for the arcade machine, so Greg can ssh there and install the arcade launcher. I had great trouble of installing the launcher since there are a lot of dependency to install for Perl.

It was a great fun day, we faced a lot of small problems and finally fixed. We spent a lot of time on researching. We found that when we actually start doing the arcade is totally different to what we expected.

Stephen and I went to college for the arcade project during the holiday, but it seems that the access card was disabled since it was holiday. So, Stephen did the rest of soldering in study area which is located in second floor.

Too bad that it looks like we are not going to finish this arcade project before Semester 2 starts. But for sure we'll arrange sometime to complete this arcade in the future. Currently the project is 60% completed. Here is the work load I would assume...

- launcher installation - 4 hours, Greg
- controller wiring - 6 hours, Stephen Liang, Nestor
- games and launcher integration and testing - 3 hours, Greg
- launcher, game, controller test - 5hours, Nestor, Greg, Stephen
- hardware installation - 5 hours

Although it seems hard, but I am still hopping we can finish it before semester start...


Installed Game List:
1. Torcs
2. quake3 demo - need to pair the keys well
3. Frets On Fire - no yum install, make failed, try rpm, may need to pair 2nd joystick also
4. NeverBall -
5. Blobwars
6. Pinball
7. LBreakOut2(lbrickbuster2)
8. Raid'em(raidem) - turn "eye candy" option to min
9. Dodgin' Diamond II (dd2)
10. Kobo Deluxe - nice
11. Njam - pc-man
12. Barbie Seahorse Adventures(seahorse-adventures) - an classic looking adventure game
13. Shippy - a nice old school classic shooting
14. Tecnoballz
15. XGalaga(xgalaxy) - a nice old school classic shooting

Keyboard logic board soldering

I did the soldering for the keyboard for our arcade machine. It has 27 wires and it's separated into 2 set, column and row. So, we have 18 columns, lets say column is A to R and Row is 1 to 9. When we press Y, it connect the row E and column 2 together, then the signal from the keyboard will be sent to the PC. Here is the photo of the keyboard chip.




We are planning to complete wiring the keyboard logic board to the controller the end of this week.

Research on soldering keyboard

I found a page about keyboard in wiki. Soldering is hard, very very small, but I think we can try it. The keyboard we have is very old. Maybe we can not press a lot of key at the same time. I found in keyboard, we can press 3 to 9 keys at the same time. I tried my laptop and 2 keyboard. But we have a lot of keys for our controller. We may have problem. Any suggestion?

I worry the old keyboard will only support to press 3 keys at the same time. And the keyboard is not ps2, we have to buy an adapter to try. Sometime I pass by my home, I see old computer with keyboard, if i found one, maybe we can use it.


Keyboard on Wiki

got another one for ps/2 port..

I found another ps/2 convert from my dad's "treasure box". Since I'm not sure what interface is for John Selmys' keyboard, i am not gonnna buy a adapter before john show it to me...

anyway, here is the photo of the ps/2 adapter..

ops.. not the right connector..

i just had a closer look of the ps2 keyboard converter.. just found that it's not the one we're looking for. it's for old computer to use ps2 kb.. so.. i guess i'll need to search my house again.. or buy one from store.. @@

It's time to actually face the problem...

I'm so excited about getting this arcade today. But then I was in deep thought also... Now, we got to box, it's time to start working on it.

I check out the hardware part that we're gonna connect to. Prof. Michal Heidenreich gave me some ideas how to change the monitor. And he suggests me to change all those screws also. Yeah.. those doesn't cost much, few dollars, i think. They're all rusted now and I would love to have some shiny screws in there. We were still thinking if we should use the original arcade monitor or to use a PC monitor. After I looked at the cabinet, I think it's easier to change the hardware instead of put an extra video card and configure a lower resolution, frequency monitor. And I've seen soem emulator has a function to make PC mointor look blur, make it looks like an arcade mointor.

Then next part is controller... 22 wires... sigh.. because it has 2 set of controllers, each set include 6 buttons, 4 way joy stick(means 4 switches/buttons) and one start button. So, it's 22 buttons in total. I was thinking to use game port, cos it's the usual way. But 22 wires... wow... So, the solution should be either using paralell port or solder wire into a keyboard. But if you have a look of those big desktop keyboard button soldering seems quite hard. Maybe some 10,20 years old key board uses lower end technology, which has a bigger switch and would be able to do soldiering. It's the best way to do, since all we have to do is taking care hardware part. And most emulation already support keyboard key mapping. And there are 3 wires for the coin box also. Looks like we'll go for keyboard for sure.

And the least thing is the speaker, I'm not sure how arcade sound system works. I assume it's analogue signal. Dose it needs a amplifier? And we're thinking to have ear phone jack on the arcade box some where to reduce the arcade noise in the lab. It could be easier to do with an computer speaker since some cheap $20 speakers support earphone output and sounds are amazing!

But of course, here are some good news... We may able to get a designer to handle the art work.. great! I was thinking to do the art work myself, haha.. good, so we can concentrate on the machine.

But anyway, time seems to be limited. One month before final exam, then it's holiday, and next semester will be more intense. I would like to work harder on the arcade project and leave less work for next semester. And I'm planning to write a little open source iPhone interactive game during semester break.

Hope we can make this arcade box running successfully. ^^

Finally.. the Arcade Box, ta ta.... ^^

YEAH!!! Finally, we've gotta it!!! oh.. yeah!!! I've got some photos about this trip.

First, Thank you Evan Weaver for donating $200 for purchasing this arcade box. And thank you Prof. Murray Saul for arrange this delivery. And also Varinder, Milton and Mohak.

Visiting Arcade Store today

Today, Milton, Mohak and myself went to an arcade store already. We were planning to visit another one, but too bad that I leaded them to the wrong address and our time was limited. So we decide just to contact them by phone or e-mail.

We were successfully had a deal with an arcade box for $200 that has nothing works and not suit our plan. Since we need it in Seneca. They said they may able to do free delivery or maybe just charge us for small amount of money.

But anyway, if we buy a box for 200 and we have to buy other parts, it's gonna be a $400 arcade box. I already had a better deal. Currently I have an offer for a working arcade machine with Mortal Combat loaded for $300, self pick-up. For the total price, the mortal combat sounds like a better deal to us.

I'm gonna do more bargaining with the guy who sell mortal combat. Maybe tell him about the donation idea. Hope he'll reduce the price to $200. Or, tell him that he can sell the board in the arcade box, so he won't lost any money.

I hope I can complete this deal within our budget. Right now, to us, this project is not just to pass the course any more, it's about helping people.

I know we can do it. Right, guys? ^^

Our baby - a desktop set for Arcard Project

Desktop that we are going to use, donated by Evan Weaver. Thank you very much Evan. It's a lovely machine, incrediably clean inside. Following is draft spec = Monitor: 19 inch CRT monitor with keyboard and mouse

= CPU: Intel Pentium 4 2.4mhz
= RAM: 1Gb, (512*2 Mb)
= Video: AGP ATI Video Card
= Network: PCI lan Card
= Harddisk: Maxtor 80Gb
= Media: DVD Rom, floopy
= Power Supply :300 watt

300 working arcade machine, 2 controllers, 5 buttons

i have already find a guy who sell for $300, willing to deliver with extra cost. I'm still bargaining with him.

Nes