Hey everybody!

Not much happened today on the arcade front.  Here’s the lowdown:

Today I received this power strip.  This power strip is really unique because it senses if a specific plug is active.  If it is, it turns on all the other plugs.  This means when the computer is awake it will wake up everything else (monitor, lights, etc).  When the computer goes to sleep, it will cut the power to everything else.  Well, at least that’s the theory!

 

This is The Big Kahuna!  The arcade cabinet arrived.  Now I get to start the process of drilling, painting and wiring.  Wish me luck 😉

 

 

 

 

This also came in the mail today….it’s my replacement PC keyboard!  Now I can actually start setting up my PC.  But first…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Home Depot!  I expect I’ll be spending a lot of time here.  The first thing I wanted to buy here is the primer for the cabinet.  I know a couple of things about the cabinet now that I’ve received it.  First, it’s not that big so it shouldn’t take a ton of primer or paint.  Second, the finish is melamine, which is a type of plastic that’s coating the pressboard.

 

The nice lady at Home Depot turned me on to a type of primer called Glidden Gripper.  Apparently this stuff sticks to anything.  That and a box full of sandpaper sponges and I should be good to go.  She did warn me that it would take a lot of sanding to get that finish worn down to a point it could take paint.

Before I start painting the sides of the cabinet (the only thing I’m going to paint), I need to drill the button holes.  I want to have buttons on the side of the cabinet so I can play pinball games.  So the buttons need to arrive, then I can drill the holes, then I can sand and primer.  What the hell did I get myself into here?

Now back to the PC setup.  I decided to use a dedicated frontend called Hyperspin.  You can check it out here:  http://hyperspin-fe.com/

Hyperspin looks like a really good looking frontend for all my emulators.  It looks like it can seamlessly transition between games, game systems, and everything else — they even boast they can support a media center.

With all that power comes a lot of configuration.  I’m a few hours into trying to set this up, and man is it a pain!  To be fair, MAME (which controls the old-school arcade roms) set up perfectly and very easily.  But trying to set up Atari 2600, Atari 5200 or Daphne is a complete pain.  I’ll have to come back to that later after some research on the interwebz.

I think that’s enough arcade machine talk for today.  I’m beat!

Thanks
Robert.