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February 23, 2000
I sat down tonight to take inventory of the many replacement components I need for my MAME cabinet monitor and Space Invaders power supply. I also added a few new pictures and re-organized some pages.
February 21, 2000
I was a bit down this evening after working on monitor adjustments. I had some success in getting a still image when suddenly the image shrunk to a single horizontal line. The next thing I knew the monitor had no power. I sat down for about 20 minutes and dreaded this setback. There turned out to be 2 problems. First I had a pin slide out of the monitor power connector. Second I had a variable resistor fall apart while I was adjusting it. Now I have to locate a 200 ohm varistor.
February 20, 2000
After setting up my PC and connecting it to the arcade cabinet, I was quite disappointed to have no picture. Grounding the chassis fixed that problem (duh!). The only problem I have with the picture now is the horizontal hold, which appears to be too sensitive.
February 17, 2000
Today I received some boxes of old "junk" which included a Commodore 64, tape drive, disk drive and printer. There's also an Atari 400 in there somewhere and a composite monitor.
February 16, 2000
Today I bought an ATI Ultra 128 video card to figure out if it can sync up to my arcade monitor. I didn't get around to connecting everything up and trying it out.
February 15, 2000
I managed to get my monitor working by looping back 2 leads from the transformer (MAME Cabinet). Finding the right wires was purely luck. I failed at getting a picture on the monitor but I wasn't using a video card known to be compatible either.
February 14, 2000
I finally wrote a program to fix all the web page links. It converts all links, files and directories to lowercase. I still had to create a new web in frontpage and copy everything over. Frontpage keeps the filename case internally.
I tried connecting a PC to my cabinet today. Unfortunately I didn't get any power to the monitor. I think I need to loop some wires back into the transformer. If you know anything about Defender transformers and which lines to loop back - please let me know!
To keep you entertained (and myself) I decided to connect MAME up to my home theater. It's still not quite big enough for me but 8ft x 6ft is a lot more interesting than a 19" monitor.
February 13, 2000
I installed the control panel today with quick release clamps. I also installed the power supply, a new power cord and power strip and a PC power supply. The front bezel was trimmed with pieces of black foam board, and the front plexi-glass, speaker panel and marquee were installed. I worked on setting up a PC to run ArcadeOS with cabinet settings. I have no new photos to post at the moment as I've spent too much time working on my cabinet!
February 12, 2000
I finished assembling the coin door and installed it. The monitor placement was located and I brought the cabinet inside the house to work on it.
February 11, 2000
I sanded my MAME cabinet inside to remove the paint splatters and finished assembling the control panel. I also wired the control panel to a keyboard encoder.
February 10, 2000
My evening was spent painting the coin door and return cups, control panel and monitor border. After I finished painting, I started assembling the control panel and coin door. I have no photos to post as the links to them would probably be messed up anyway.
February 9, 2000
You may notice that some of this web site is missing again. This is due to my being scolded for updating this site from work. In transitioning site maintenance to my home, I had some problems with links and filenames changing (NT to 98). I should have everything fixed over the next couple of days.
February 8, 2000
I built a fluorescent light fixture for the marquee in my MAME cabinet. I ended up tossing out the old lamp sockets, ballast and starter. I posted some photos and a "how to" on making your own fixture.
I re-worked the MAME Cabinet pages a bit to make them look nicer (I think). I put up some more photos of the paint job as it stands. I'm not sure if I'll go for another coat or not. I spent some time last night cleaning the coin return cups.
February 7, 2000
I think I'm becoming too fanatical about completing my MAME cabinet. I slipped home at lunch today, sanded down my cabinet and put on another coat of paint. This might end up being the last coat because the color is nice and even. I just hope that the paint doesn't stay soft and pliable like it is now.
I'm also shopping for a new motherboard. I have a 233 PII MMX processor that will go into the cabinet. I also have 128mb worth of DIMM's. If I don't end up buying the motherboard soon enough, I'll just put a Pentium 100 in it. I have several of those lying around.
February 6, 2000
Today was extremely frustrating. I sanded the first coat of paint and started putting on a second. The foam brush still didn't cover well and kept leaving lines/brush marks. The brush advertised "no brush marks" but I don't believe them anymore! Next I tried a paint sprayer that I had. It didn't work so I went out and bought a very expensive sprayer. It too kept leaving blotches here and there. I ended up going to a short nap roller. It covered most of the previous damage and saved my paint job!
February 5, 2000
I sanded the primer on my cabinet to make it smooth and put on a first coat of paint with a foam brush. It didn't cover too well but I figured it was due to the white primer. I also painted the coin door and control panel black. The cabinet inside (around the monitor) was also painted black so that it matches the bezel.
February 4, 2000
I went to Lowe's to try again at getting some paint. They didn't carry the same brands so I made a quick decision on the color, called "Red Red Wine". The color I picked the previous day was sort of a raspberry. Anyway, the paint was mixed by computer so it turned out fine.
February 3, 2000
I went to Home Depot to get some paint mixed for my Defender/MAME cabinet. It took about 1 entire week to decide on the color! The guy at Home Depot decided to train a new girl to mix paint - my paint! After several mistakes which they tried to hide, the paint turned out purple. Several attempts to correct to color just made it a brighter, lighter purple! I gave up and left!
February 2, 2000
I spent a couple of hours upgrading the hard disk on one of my computers so I could use the old 2-gig drive in my cabinet. I put Mame and Arcade OS on it, along with all the 36b15 ROMS. I forgot to include DPMI and of course 36b16 is now out.
Does anyone have advice on how to make my cabinet hard disk easy to update? I'm thinking about running an old DOS TCP/IP stack and an FTP server. I'd probably be limited to 10MB though, which is quite slow to be moving a couple gig every 2 weeks. I don't want a keyboard on the cabinet and won't be capable of running windows. Any advice is appreciated!