LosLocos !! » Mame

We build an arcade joystick (pt. 1)

dafdaf — Thu, 17 Feb 2011 17:12:53 +0000

One of the little side projects Andy and me did when in Argentina was to build an arcade-style joystick as a christmas present for Gioco.

All the necessary ‘high tec’ parts I brought with me from Berlin (I bought them at the arcade shop). Those included: buttons, controller and the joysticks themselves. The idea was to build a wooden case, paint it and put the parts. The interesting thing about this was that there were no tools available except for a drilling machine. So we went to the diy-shop and got a saw, some screws and three pieces of wood.

All the wood parts were cut by hand, the wires for cabling came from old computer power supplies. That’s a really interesting way to do this thing. I didn’t have a chance to finish it but Andy should be painting the case this weekend and then it’ll be done. I’m gonna put pictures, I promise.

A weekend of Peng!, Vulcan Venture and Scramble

dafdaf — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 22:19:06 +0000

Friday night I got the new controls (buttons, joysticks, etc.) for my Arcade cabinet. And just in time – thanks to the really nice owner of arcadeshop.de !!
I didn’t yet build the new wood panel for the control panel, so I used some old piece of art(1), I found in our cellar and tried my first layout of joysticks and buttons to give it a little testrun. The panel doesn’t really fit right – as I cut it in quite a hurry, but it made the first really cold weekend a nice one. And playing with two joysticks can be quite some fun (Tala and Gui would agree, I guess).

1) I can’t find a picture of it right now, but it had a huge white ’6′ painted on it. People from Berlin will now what I mean…

Mame News: First milestone achieved !!

dafdaf — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 00:21:22 +0000

After a weekend of working on (and mostly in) my new and shiny (actually old and still pretty dirty) Zaccaria cab, I finally played some first games on the prototype setup.The PC components running Linux and AdvanceMame are installed and the arcade monitor was (for the time !) replaced by an old Iiyama CRT. I removed most of the inner parts and disassembled the control panel. The new parts – mostly buttons annd two new joysticks still haven’t arrived yet. But tomorrow, I think, I will start with the layout, while Gui finishes the restoration and new arrangement of the grafics on the control panel.Some pics from my weekend experience:

My arcade cab got delivered today !!

dafdaf — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 12:40:33 +0000

After searching for sooo long and a final waiting period of a seemingly endless week, today my arcade cab got delivered. It’s quite dirty and I didn’t even have time to try and start it yet. I’ll post another update in the evening or tomorrow with more details.

Here are the first photos:

Project started: Mame

dafdaf — Sun, 21 Oct 2007 11:10:25 +0000

After searching the Intarweb for nearly two months I finally decided to buy an old Zaccaria cab. The plan is to put in two new joysticks and lots of buttons, a cheap pc system that can boot off an usb stick, and maybe an iPaq. I’m gonna order the parts right now and hopefully I can start working on the project next weekend. Yay !! Cold winter nights, I’m happily waiting for you !