MAME OVER Arcade project

When I was about 16 I was part of the Everyman Youth Theatre. We used to go once a week and practice being trees. It was great. I left, and soon after Mersey Television came in and plucked a handful of people for a new soap called Brookside. Talk about missed opportunities. The theatre has a foyer where people used to congregate in intervals, and after our tree practice we used to hang round in there underage drinking.

This was the time that Space Invaders ruled the world. The infamous cocktail table lived in the corner. If we were flush we'd pay 10p to play. Being from Liverpool we soon found out that balancing a match in the coin mechanism and spinning a 2p piece in fast it would be accepted :) 10 plays for 20p. I've always wanted a space invaders part 2 cocktail table from whenever I can remember, and had an interest in commercial gaming machines, probably due to my interest in electronic devices and the fact that at the time owning something like that was completely impossible and expensive. Because the 80's was the golden age of arcades these machines have become highly collectible, and still overly expensive. They show up on eBay for about £1000 or up depending on their quality.

So I'm building my own.

The old machines are truly authentic but the repairs on these are costly and the internal components are very old so we'll have to look for alternatives.

Enter MAME. MAME stands for Multi Arcade Machine Emulator. The machines of the 80's and even up to today can be emulated on a computer for free. The PC basically takes the game's programming (called roms) and runs the game on the PC. It's a bit technical, but once you've got the hang of it, it's easy enough to do. The actual roms are 'illegal to own' unless you own the game itself, but Google is your best friend in this case.

In the past I'd ran MAME on most of the PC's I'd owned and twiddled about with it on and off. Recently I discovered a frontend for MAME. A frontend is a skin that sits on top of the main program and - well - looks pretty fantastic. Undoubtedly the best frontend is called hyperspin.

Have a look at it here:

http://www.hyperspin-fe.com/

(more on this later)

Scroll down and play the opening video. This is what you see when the program runs. Hyperspin emulates pretty much every game console available (with the emulator running behind) including MAME and is totally free.

So... I've got the games, I've got the frontend, but I'm still sitting in front of the PC playing them on a keyboard. It's time to put them all in a box and make my own cocktail table. Amusingly I stumbled across the perfect table in Ikea whilst browning the web. Ikea is cheap, so it was the first place I looked. I wasn't the only one with this idea. I soon found a number of people had done this. Turning their RAMVIK table into games tables and media centres. One person has even turned one into an LCD pinball machine. Crazy.




The one above is a small ramvik. I wanted something bigger so went for the table below, although mine isn't white, it's black.




I'll be sitting to the side of my table so will be mounting the monitor vertically. I mostly play vertical games like space invaders and scramble etc. I will be playing the odd horizontal game like missile command and carnival etc.

The first purchase after the table was an x-arcade joystick. This is a programmable stick made for MAME amongst other games and emulators. It's brilliant, but it's also big. I'll be adding a number of USB connections to the side of the table, and adding the x-arcade to the equation for when I play horizontal games. I did consider cutting the x-arcade down and fitting it to one end of the table so I could reach in to play. I may reconsider this in the future when the project is finished if the ergonomics are bad. For now it can stay on USB.

x-arcade:




As I said I'll be mainly playing vertical games so I need a joystick and some fire buttons on the side of the table. The buttons are easy enough to find but the joystick was a bit harder to research. Most people who build these machines use a jamma connector or i-pac. This is fine, but it means a load of soldering skills, and if I'm honest I couldn't be arsed with all that. I found the Ultrastik 360 at Ultimarc.com. This joystick is USB so connects straight to the PC easily and includes a harness which allows up to 8 buttons to be connected and configured via software. This is important so the stick can be changed to suit each game individually.



I began the project by building the table and changing the whole living room to suit :)

Pen and paper at the ready!...



You can't use the drawers from the table as you need the space for the internal components. This means you need to attach the drawer ends to the table without them looking crap and also to give you access if needed. Over the course of building I considered a few ways and settled on magnetic door catches as they give a good flush finish. I'd suggest at least 4 to give a good grip.



The table comes with a central strut which we also cannot use (unless you are very good with woodwork and can cut it to suit the monitor shape. I decided to deal with the support problem later as you'll see.



I wanted two USB connectors for ease of use and connection to the x-arcade joystick for horizontal games. This is what they looked like. They were a little hard to find. I had to have a good root round the arcade cabinet and MAME building forums to track them down. Here they are in position.



The first thing to do was cut the hole for the monitor. This was quite easy. Using a 'board' marker (one of the water based white ones) I measured the exact centre of the table and drew a line. Next I measured the exact centre of the monitor and laid the monitor on it's front drawing round it to get the correct size. I slightly jigsawed outside the line when cutting to allow for monitor positioning. Here's the installation below.







Previous to cutting the space for the monitor I tested the viewing angle of the Samsung monitor. I think you'll agree it's more than adequate from this picture.





I used the central strut from the table as a tri-square to adjust the position of the monitor and make sure it was square. I then added some sticky-back sponge to the sides of the monitor to keep it in position. This was done after I'd adjusted the mounting brackets which you'll see later.




The Samsung monitor has a flat area at the base. This was a touch too thick, but a quick bend of the bracket, and the use of a spirit level it was soon in the correct position. the brackets are just aluminum straight ones used to attach kitchen drawers to doors. They should be easy to find.



The top end of the monitor is rounded so I used angle brackets and bent them to suit roughly, and used some more of the sticky back pads for minute adjustments. Here you can also see my added support for the centre of the table. These are kitchen cabinet legs and should also be easy enough to track down. This will help with strengthening the central area around the cutout where the strut should have resided. There's one at the other side too.

Time for a quick test! (used laptop)



Obviously we need some cooling through the table so I fitted the entry/exit holes and fans as below. The fan has 3 speeds, and on the lowest setting it's silent and the exhaust air is quite cold :)






The exit fan was fitted to the drawer end opposite the entry hole to let the air flow in the correct manner past all the components.





I then fitted the joystick and buttons to the side.







Added the silver 'coin insert' button, one and two player, fire and secondary button (used for scramble/space chaser etc).







It's starting to come together :)

The last part of the job was to fit the intellipanel sockets, speakers and PC.






The Logitech speakers came with a small subwoofer which you can't see. It's positioned behind the intellipanel and gives that proper bass on the invaders DUN DUN DUN DUN.

The Intellipanel is a socket set that uses a master device (PC) and slave sockets (other peripherals) Choosing sleep on the PC cuts power to the other sockets after about 15 seconds. So whilst having a great time, I'm also saving the planet! A simple press of the keyboard and it all comes back on. This wouldn't be necessary if you use an old PC as you can connect a button to the power switch on the PC causing the same effect. I couldn't do this as the PC is still under warranty.

Custom overlay designed by Todd at arcadeoverlays.com. Thanks!

Most people begin these projects because they already have an older PC lying round waiting to be converted. I’d also like to include thanks to arcadeoverlays.com for their custom space invader overlay for the table. This cost £60 including postage for a custom design which I thought was brilliant. Anyone with more experience would be able to omit the x-arcade joystick too, fitting the missing buttons to the cab, but I wanted mainly vertical games that use only 2 buttons like in the original invaders cocktail table.

Conclusions:

I was going to use hyperspin as the frontend as it's ultimate eyecandy. However, either this acer aspire is a bit slow (possibly graphics card or windows 7). It was far too clunky and slow to use properly on this table so I used MALA instead (will return to hyperspin over the next month or so when I've tweaked the bloatware on this Acer. Format C:?) . I found MALA easy to configure and am in the process of creating my own layout/skin for my table. Most of the frontends support horizontal screens and mine's vertical.

This machine is also a wireless computer for browsing the web, and a multimedia PC for music. It basically does everything a computer can do as well as be a kick-ass MAME machine. Go see Kick-Ass by the way, it's fantastic.

I'll post some final pictures when the overlay arrives.

The overlay arrived this morning :) Here's the final product.

Here's Tombo thrashing Sonic!

Off to play some games now. I have 8000 of them to get through.

Bye! :)

02 Rant

I've done an awful lot of research over the last two weeks regarding mobile networks (pay as you go) and have made some surprising discoveries! I have a jesus phone, which whilst I love it for the majority of things it does, I also hate it for the restrictions apple imposes on it's customer database. That's an argument for another time though.

My interest is in the forthcoming technologies of the 3G signal and the upgrades the networks are implementing. 02 are abysmal for 3G coverage, compare the following pdf info and you can see '3' have the best coverage. I'm going to concentrate on 3 and 02 for this as this is where I've done tests. Using 2 iphones, one on 02, and the other on 3, I have them side by side next to me.



As you can see the 02 handset has 4 bars signal strength, but it's not got a 3G signal, it's reverted to Gprs. The 3 handset has 5 bars 3G signal. This is a bit of a no-brainer really isn't it. Add to this that Dyl cannot get a decent signal on either 3G or edge/gprs while travelling and you get the idea that the handset becomes useless unless you're sitting on a mast. So out of interest I ordered free sims from all the major networks to compare tariff's and signal strength. I stopped at '3' because the signal is far superior and the tariff is pretty amazing compared to 02. They have imposed a tethering bolt on, even for contract users which starts at 3GB for £14.68 per month, 10GB for £29.36. That's literally taking the piss. I stuck a tenner in the '3' payg account and got the following:



I then deducted £5 from this for unlimited internet usage for the month. That's 16p a day. Again, the above speaks for itself, and looks good to me. Voice calls are 20p a min to all networks and landlines. I don't use voice much, so that suits me.

Last night I tried a t-moble & Orange sim. They both locked directly to 3G, although they weren't as good as 3. I'm now wondering if I should get my pac code and ditch 02, even though I have 11 months free data connection left. But what's the use in that if you can't use it. Hmmm

Ahhh the memories...

We've just bought the whole 4 seasons of Blakes7 to watch. It seems that this is one of the few sci-fi franchises that isn't being rebooted. I remember watching it as a kid, and really loving it most of the time. Especially orac the perspex computer in a box. My Dad is an electrician and used to repair TV's, radios etc (the talent passed to me too thankfully) and we used bits of old Philips G8 Televisions (the ones with the lovely orange valves in the back) to make an orac for my bedroom. The other bits were from our neighbour who made traffic lights. It took pride of place in my bedroom for ages. Anyway Blue Peter showed us how to make the Blakes7 bracelettes out of cardboard and an orange drinks bottle. Seeing this again on the DVD brought back memories of doing it, along with everyone else at the time. I've upped it for all you die hard sci-fi fans. Enjoy



Bliss.

P.S I think Morrissey is a little shit for cancelling more gigs than he's done. Still going to London though.

The Girl & The Robot

I love this record, been playing it for the last week or two. Nice to stumble across the official vid at 7.am with your morning coffee :) Some people are saying it's a bit Bobby 'O round the edges, but I can hear chords from the beginning that's more like 'I'm So Beautiful' by Divine.

Royksopp



Divine



I'm gonna fire up Fusion later and mash these two up. Watch this space.

V The reboot

Space ships are back in fashion again. I really hope they don't destroy Kenneth Johnsons original story (again) BUT I'll still be watching.

Interesting media whoreing

Obviously like everyone else, I don't give a toss whether these two live or die in the media, however the following article was actually an interesting read.

Is Katie Price and Peter Andre's split all a publicity stunt?

About two weeks ago, Katie Price started to talk about making a 'massive comeback'.

She felt anxious, she confided, because she thought that she was simply not earning enough. Indeed, she had dyed her hair a plain brown because she said she was 'fed up' with paying to have her highlights attended to.

Gary Cockerill, her great friend and regular make-up artist, was told that she was reducing his hours because she was feeling the pinch.

Even her mother Amy could not cheer her up - Katie was in a miserable humour. But having been in America for months, paying rent on a house in Malibu but not earning any money, she felt broke and forgotten, and fretted that she had been eclipsed by Jade Goody.

And there is nothing which annoys Katie (who has built up a £30million fortune) more than the threat of obscurity.

A source who spent time with her during this period recalls that she was grumbling about the 'thunder thighs' she had built up training for the London Marathon, and was even more bad tempered than usual with her husband Peter Andre.

Katie told the source that she was going to reinvent herself in some spectacular way - which she did not specify - and confided that she was going on one of her juice-only detox diets to try to shed a stone to be ready for the blaze of publicity she was about to attract.

These are the sort of meanderings to which the 30-year-old former glamour model is prone, and nobody took much notice, as she often talks about wanting to be the nation's biggest star again.

Now, of course, things look rather different. For although she insists that this week's separation from Peter Andre was his idea, and that she is 'devastated', some people suspect that the whole affair could be a tawdry publicity stunt cooked up by Katie herself.

She's got her fourth autobiography coming out and he is about to release an album full of gut-wrenching ballads about losing the woman he loves. It's hard not to smell a rat.

We now know that the pictures which are supposed to have ended the marriage are harmless. Katie was snapped cuddling up to international dressage rider Spencer Wilton, who is openly gay.

He and Katie are friends through their shared interest in riding and her recent commercial ventures with equestrian clothing. Indeed, the two of them are so close that it's hard to credit that Andre did not recognise the 'mystery hunk' whose face his wife was licking at the Syndicate Club in Bristol.

So if they have not split up thanks to those pictures, have they truly split up at all? The couple looked perfectly happy as they exited the trendy London restaurant Nobu on Saturday night, hand in hand.

And hadn't Katie been talking only last week about her plans to have a third child with Peter gladly concurring with the idea in his most recent magazine column. It hardly sounds like the warning rumblings before a marriage implodes.

Several well-placed sources insisted to me yesterday that Katie Price is, in fact, already in the arms of OK! magazine and planning to do a full talk - for money, of course - about the 'end' of the relationship.

We can expect to pay £2.95 to read all about it next Tuesday. The theory is that this moneyspinning interview about her heartbreak will be followed by a reconciliation with Andre - again sold to the highest bidder.

More lucrative interviews about their renewed love would follow, topped perhaps by a renewal of their wedding vows (it would be their second renewal), yet again sold to TV and magazines.

Perhaps £1.5million could come her way as a result - not bad for a few weeks' work.

'That is certainly what I have heard,' said a senior source in the magazine world. 'I'm told she is with OK! already and that it [the break-up] is all just a sham.'

In the past, Katie has proved her razor-sharp business mind, raking it in not only with her modelling and autobiographies, but also a series of children's books, novels and a lingerie line.

In contrast, new company accounts lodged at Companies House reveal Peter Andre's minuscule earnings.

In recent times, records show that Andre has owned and dissolved three colourfully named companies - Aqua Blues Music Ltd, Future Flava Ltd and Neutral Colours Ltd.

He currently is sole director of a single company, with older brother Michael Andre undertaking the role of company secretary. According to the most recent accounts lodged for the company, PJA Promotions Ltd, it is hardly is flush with funds.

In 2007, it made just £14,189 and had total assets of £72,262. However, it also owed £58,073. The thought of all those magazines and TV companies clamouring to pay for the next instalment in the Peter and Katie life story must be very appealing.

But is that really what is planned, or are we all being a little too cynical?

Her representative at the agency CAN Associates swears it ain't so. 'This is categorically not a PR stunt,' said the spokesperson. 'We would never be involved in something like this if it were. And Katie is not overseas with OK! magazine.'

Why, then, is this separation so hard to believe? After all, anyone who has watched their more recent TV programmes, or read any of their interviews, knows that their three-and-a-half-year marriage has been somewhat turbulent for a long time.

Price's bitter and bitchy put-downs of Andre have made the various instalments of Katie & Peter on ITV2 gruesomely compelling viewing.

Katie is habitually unpleasant to, and jealous of, her spouse. In their latest televised row, in a shop in LA, Katie branded her husband 'an old f*****g singer no one knows about', before taunting him about his earning power, saying: 'I'm the one making money, Pete, so course I can have it how I want.'

He fired back 'Don't ever f*****g talk to me like that, understand?', later concluding: 'You are really, seriously, a psycho.'

In Katie's various books - and there have been three autobiographies to date - the phrase 'We ended up having a massive row' rings out on almost every other page.

She seems to be permanently annoyed - and Peter is always the one who gets it in the neck.

She rowed with him over his desire for a Greek name for their firstborn. Peter wanted to call the boy Savva after his beloved father, but as Katie recalled in her own deadly prose: '"Look!" I screamed back, having lost my rag, "I don't f*****g like the name Savva!"'

They rowed massively during the run-up to their wedding at Highclere Castle, Hampshire, in September 2005, with Katie deeply jealous over the possibility of any of Peter's former girlfriends attending.

'I don't care,' she shrieked at him. 'You shouldn't have s****ed her.'

The glamour model said that at the time she had been prescribed antidepressants for post-natal depression, and that they came close to splitting up.

Although they were reconciled and had their daughter Princess Tiaamii in June 2007, her depression returned.

She said in Pushed To The Limit, the third volume of her autobiography, that Peter threatened to leave at this point. He said that he wanted a separation, but she stood her ground and told him: 'No, Pete. You either want to be with me or you don't. And if you don't, then I'll divorce you.'

In the end, Peter apologised to her. It has been claimed that he has said 20 times or more that he will walk out on her.

Last year they renewed their vows, again with the cameras rolling. But before and after the ceremony, in South Africa, they were bickering about whether or not she would take the surname Andre. She said that she would - and then did not.

There were also serious disagreements about her breast reduction, rhinoplasty and tooth veneers which left her in serious discomfort.

Peter felt the operations were unnecessary and Katie refused to touch him, saying she was in too much pain to contemplate any intimacy.

This is a running problem in the relationship, with Peter once claiming they had not had sex in months and Katie routinely denigrating his abilities as a lover.

It is said she refused to have sex with him in America, claiming that she was too tired from training for the marathon.

Earlier this year, Katie said she had been convinced her husband was having an affair because she caught him deleting texts on his mobile phone, and she threatened to walk out.

In every instance, their discord has been sold to TV viewers or magazine readers - making money being the main priority in Katie's life. The couple were paid £2million by OK! for the rights to their wedding.

Even her children have been exploited in the pursuit of her commercial interests. Last year, for instance, they did a Halloween cover for OK!, dressed in trick-or-treat outfits; the Christmas cover featured them dressed up as if in a Nativity play.

It's no surprise we are left wondering what is real in Katie's life and what is just soap-opera posturing.

Julian Linley, the editor of Heat magazine, thinks this is precisely why people are so cynical about this week's split.

He said: 'The problem with Jordan is that she has contradicted herself so many times that you no longer know what to believe about what she says. In the same week, we have had her announcing that she wants a baby this year and then saying that she is getting a separation.

'She has been brilliant at parcelling up little parts of her life and selling them one by one. Everything which happens to her gets sold.

'But she has been doing it for so long that people are starting to question her motives. You believe there is nothing that she will not do, and nothing that she will not sell. And people are questioning what she says because some of it is so contradictory.

'Also, you see Peter on TV being bullied by her. It makes you tend to believe the worst of her because you know what she is capable of.'

In recent months, her media sellouts have included a bizarre 'exclusive' with OK! magazine that Peter was cheating on her - which he was not; the whole thing was a 'joke' apparently - and another very odd 'political' interview in which she gave her view on possible punishments for rapists.

Industry insiders says that both of these issues sold very poorly, as did last week's which featured a cover picture of her in the bath with her children.

This is said to have sent her into a panic that if she loses her power to shift copies of OK!, then she really is sunk.

What's more, those who know her say that her relationship with agent Claire Powell has come under pressure, with Jordan growing impatient about Powell's management style and fed up at having to pay her a percentage on media deals.

One source said this relationship could be heading for the rocks. Maybe Jordan doesn't want to share the money which will come rolling in for the dramatic new 'divorce' chapters she will be able to write in the next instalment of her autobiography.

And there is more planned. She is in the throes of putting together a style guide about how to look like her, and she is thinking about releasing a 'popera' crossover song because she wants to compete with Peter, whose comeback album is released in six weeks.

Less cynical souls, though, say this is a genuine break-up and that the relationship, while exploited to the max, has been the real thing. One friend, who worked on one of the couple's early TV programmes, said he was disturbed because they kept on nipping off during filming to have sex, noisily, off camera.

It seems clear that Andre, who put out the first statement announcing their separation, had no idea his wife was preparing one of her own, saying he had dumped her.

But Katie likes to be in control and is said to be 'paranoid' about being cast as the villain.

Yesterday they were half the world away from each other, with Katie holidaying on the exclusive Conrad Maldives resort and Peter believed to be at his parents' home in Cyprus.

Sources at OK! say they believe the separation is for real. No negotiations have been entered into and she is not talking at the moment, they say. But they do believe the couple will be back together soon.

'The feeling is that this marriage, which allowed her to build up a £30 million fortune, will not be allowed to go up in smoke quite so easily,' said a source.

'They row all the time. We think they will be back to normal before the end of the year.'

The only question is whether the magazine-buying, TV-watching mugs who bought into this drama will have switched off in disgust before it happens.


What amazes me the most is why people buy into this. Are our own lives so mediocre that we wish to be more like these two? I know I'm of a certain generation and am partially out of touch with the kewl kids ideals, but when something os so blatantly transparent I can't believe these kids don't see it. And how on earth can anyone write 3 biographies!? Pff! whatever, it'll all be gone like a fart in the wind in a few months. Oh! I've just thought of something...well two things:

Celebrity Big Brother and
I'm a Celebrity get me back into here.

Mark my words.

Northern Kind

Buy this album!

Myspace
Website
Buy The CD
NK Blog

NK will be supporting Kajagoogoo on their comeback tour starting this September 17th@02 Academy Liverpool. Me and Dyl will be there, and we'll leave when NK have finished their set. I'm going to buy a signed CD, and even a t-shirt. I wasn't a big fan of Kajagoogoo first time round (White feathers was ok) so I can't see any reason to stay unless NK murder Kajagoogoo and gig for the whole evening. :p In my haste I bought the download from itunes, a mistake when I should have got a signed CD from the site. It shows up as Northern Kind - Purchased on the mp3 tags, and after seeing the packaging I will definitely be getting a hardcopy on 17th. One of the few CD's that I want to hold in my hand.

Hopefully they will do the whole album, other than that I want these tracks. Are you listening Matt & Sarah!

PLEASURELY THAT MACHINE
ELECTRIC TO ME
AUTOMATIC
INTO THE BLUE
CRASH
TEARS&TINSEL

Actually just do them all. Twice. Ok? Good.