Finally! After years of searching (not very intensely I might add) I have accidentally found my arcade screen. The do say you find love if you stop looking for it.
It's a Bang & Olufsen Beovision MX7000 which I am planning to pick-up later tonight. Once received I'll be ordering the much talked about UMSA Ultimate SCART Adapter to avoid all the pain, time wasting and possible component damage of VGA to SCART hacking to get that beautiful arcade quality output we are all chasing.

In the background I have also been acquiring various PC component to use as the guts behind my MAME cab as everything that I was planning to use is now so old it's obsolete or no longer working. I have been 'planning' to do this since 2004 remember. More on the hardware later.

I am still alive!

This project is not quite dead yet, merely in a semi-permanent hiatus.

I'm relocating in the next few weeks and came across my Happs order from waaaaay back in 2004. Still all packed away as new.

Hopefully once I settle into a new house things can get back underway.

Never say never! I will have my own MAME machine one day!

not much to report...

Well, spring is here, which means my shed will get a chance to dry out. The winter rains have made a bit of a mess of the floor, making it a bit difficult to work. Well, that's my excuse anyhow :)

My second excuse is a monitor. I've looked everywhere for a suitable TV to use. And I must say, there is pretty much bugger all around that are 68cm with S-video and no speakers on the side.

I have found something that may be OK. Dick Smith have a 68cm TV with a pretty small chassis for just under $400. It has S-video and doesn't look all that bad. This is the real show stopper right now, as I had planned to build the unit around the screen.

Just need to get off my ass and go buy one.

test control panel

Here are some piccies of my test control panel as promised. The blue buttons are actually purple, but I took these in low light.

On a side note, it looks like my camera is still playing up. It eats through batteries like there is no tomorrow. But according to Fuji, there is nothing wrong with it. *sigh*

just popping in

I've been a bit slack lately, so bugger all has happened with my arcade project. I've still been playing around a bit with my test control panel, so much so that I've put a crack in the wood from all the heavy bashing.

My main excuse for being a bit behind in updates and progress on this project, is that I've just bought a new house and started a new job. As you can imagine, things are quite hectic at work and at home. However... I now have weekends off, so once I've sorted my shed out I will get back to work. Currently, I'm having trouble even keeping up to date with the current .97u3 MAME release. Thankfully the devs have slowed down with the releases, but still, I'm starting to fall behind!

My camera has also been repaired, or not as the case may be, but I will get some more photos up very soon..... maybe.

testing, testing 1... 2... 3...

I spent a few hours mucking around in the shed today in an attempt to build a control panel to test out all these parts I've bought. I ended up building a 2 player control panel with 7 buttons each. It cost almost $14 in wire to build this although I was pretty economical in the lengths I used.

A few hours of NBA Jam, Metal Slug and Street Fighter later, I think this little baby has proven itself worthy of being developed into a production controller. I couldn't have imagined it would be this much fun having the real thing in front of me. It's quite a dodgy setup right now, propped up on some blocks on my desk, but it works great and has so far kept a friend and I entertained for quite some time.

I will follow up with some pics as soon as I can, as my camera is in for repair.

coin door

For the sake of consistency I've dug out some more hardware that I plan to use for this project. I mean, after all, what is an arcade machine without the sound of your hard earnt money dropping down the slot so you can have some serious fun?

This first pic is of a Taito coin door that I picked up from Ebay for $25, which was taken from a Space Invaders cabinet so I'm told. It needs a little TLC, but I think it is going to look great once cleaned up.



The 20c coin mechs and chutes that came with the door.



These, are the electronic coin mechs that I plan to use in place of the mechanical mechs as they are adjustable to any denomination, using a reference coin or token.