Build Your Own Arcade Controls FAQ

Build Your Own Arcade Control Center FAQ

OLD CHANGE HISTORY

4/29/99

Lots of things happening in the world of arcade controls lately ... let's get to it :)

Tom is soliciting opinions on his intent to sell a "Build Your Own" kit. He's contemplating about $65.00 for a kit including 2 Happ joysticks, 18 buttons, keyboard hack matrix and layout of the keys, and more... You can email Tom your opinion, or preferably answer his message on the message board :)
Richard announced on the message board a photo tour of the building of the ArcadePC. They are going to have 5-10 of them at the E3 show on the 15th of May. They'll be giving one away at the show so if you're going be sure to stop by!
Did you put your entry in to Arcade Solutions' Trivia Contest? I did! If you're the lucky winner of the free joystick, be sure to send us a review :)
Remember the $11.95 trackball from Happ Controls I mentioned a few days ago? Either they or I committed a big typo - they're $110 dollars :) Thanks to Darren on the message board for the info.
Do you have a link to this site? I sure appreciate it :) However, I've seen several links that still point to the old www.crl.com/~saint/arcade.htm URL - that one is going to go away very soon. Please update any link you have to this site to http://www.arcadecontrols.speedhost.com - thanks :)
The PC2Jamma web site has updated both of their excellent programs for arcade cabinets - ArcadeOS is up to version 2.07, and CabMAME is up to version 0.35 beta 11 to correspond with the latest MAME source.
Added the MAME Cocktail Table Project, and Paul's MAME Arcade Machine to our list of linked arcade projects. This brings us up to 47 linked projects :)
Speaking of linked projects. Does anyone use the Other Projects link? It's a bit redundant with the list of projects on the links page. It's going away unless someone emails me they find it useful.
Interested in classic gaming? Atari? Intellevision? Apple II? Check out the Classic Gaming Expo 99!
There's been a lot of people wondering about a good way to mount a monitor in an upright arcade cabinet so that it could rotate from horizontal to vertical rotation. I ran into this one quite some time ago, but didn't think to post it until now. Mark's Combo Cabinet has some good closeup pictures on how he did it - it's a bit funky looking, but it looks like it works great and really isn't that hard. Added to the final assembly section.
Want to build a simpler arcade control or game pad hack, but still want the flexibility of more than a few buttons? Check out the Joystick Control Centre. "The Joystick Control Centre is powerful new software that enables you to program the buttons on your joystick, throttle or yoke connected to the games port of your computer. Each joystick button can be programmed with up to 6 keystrokes." Using a "mode switch" you can have up to 20 button assignments easily accessible. New is a bit relative, as it hasn't been updated since 1997 :) Added to the alternatives section. This is for Windows 9x.
I'm not sure how I screwed this link up - I added this page a while ago, but didn't link it properly. Mark wrote up an article on how to interface a VGA PC to a real arcade monitor. Thanks Mark! Added to the Final Assembly page.
*Gack* I've got a ton more to sort through, but mortality strikes again. More updates coming soon, including a few surprises :) Stay tuned . . .

4/22/99

Ordered my Twisty Grip blueprints ($19.95) on the 18th, got them today. Excellent :) See a review of the blueprints on the reviews page.
Speaking of TwistyGrip - they have announced on their web page they are sold out of spinners and yokes. No further information on when they anticipate sales again. I do not have any reason to think this means anything dire for the future of TwistyGrip - hopefully they will find a way to produce the yoke for less money than previous - however, the prudent gamer might think about purchasing the blueprints now while it's still available :)
By the way, the picture being used for the link on the shivaSite was created by Jason for our use - Thank you Jason!
Well this was a dinky update :) Bed time.

4/20/99

DirectPad Pro version 5 is out! New in this release:

Multiple N64 Controllers! (Don't forget Stephan's page)
Functional Saturn Analog Controllers
VirtualBoy Support
Calibration option for analog pads
More force feedback control
Nihongo ga wakarimasu ka? DirectPad Pro Does! (Which I believe means Japanese support)

Thanks to the several people who mailed me about it :)

Tweaked the alternatives page a bit. Added a to any section that highlights a dead/dying/suspended site. There were a depressing number of them.
We are the shivaSiteSite Of The Moment! Our first award! :) shivaSite is a fairly spiffy emulation/arcade/video games/pinball/starcraft site. Stop by and take a look :)
Voodoochile put up a web site with his "Radical" arcade cabinet. He is the one who told me he used the fact that my web site was up as justification to his wife for doing his own project. "Honey, this has GOT to be a good idea, there's a whole web site devoted to it." She replied, "There are also whole web sites devoted to Farm sex too . . ." Sorry Ray, I had to post it, I'm still laughing about it. That brings us up to 45 projects now!
Well, since Ray's wife let it out of the bag, introducing yet another sister site from Build Your Own Arcade Controls... Build Your Own Farm Sex Implements.
On that note, I'm going to bed. :)

4/18/99

Build Your Own Arcade Controls has moved. Effective immediately, we are now hosted at www.arcadecontrols.speedhost.com. Update your bookmarks!
Probably one of the biggest pieces of news lately comes from the folks at HotRod. They are now selling the HotRod ArcadePC - a mini-arcade cabinet for around $800 (limited time). This is the surprise I was hinting at earlier. 19" Wells Gardner SVGA arcade monitor, hidden pullout keyboard drawer, speakers, lit HotRod marquee, and many options available such as the HotRod classic or SE joystick control panel... It looks awesome! Richard has announced he hopes to present both the HotRod joysticks and the ArcadePC at the E3 show in LA on May 15th!
Tom has announced his intent to sell "Build It Yourself" kits for those who want to put together their own arcade control systems. Read more about it on the message section - this looks like a fairly convenient way for those who want to build their own controls but want to avoid the tedium of tracking down all the components.
Added the Big Boom Box page to the list of arcade projects ongoing. His project has striking similarities to two others - 1) Mine, in that it's presently vaporware :) and 2) Roswell 80210. Good luck Hamish! I'm not sure if that brings us to 44 projects or not :)
News (? I think this has been for a while now) from TwistyGrip. From their web site: "We have temporarily stopped production of the yokes. We're trying to get a well-known toy manufacturer to produce the yokes for much less than our original $150 price tag." They're also selling their remaining stock of Spinner controls and will halt sales until October. Good luck TwistyGrip! I ordered my TwistyGrip StarWars Yolk blueprints today - I'll let you know how that works out!
Arcade Solutions wants to remind everyone that there are less than two weeks left in their trivia contest to win an Arcade Solutions Joystick! Have you entered yet?
Want to hook up a Nintendo 64 controller to your PC, but don't want to build the interface yourself? Stephan Hans is now selling Nintendo 64 controller interface adapters on his web site. The price is $25 for adapter and cable, $10 for adapter without cable. Stephan has been helping the arcade control community for a long time so I hope this goes well for him :)
HappControls is now selling a Trackwheel Control (read that as a spinner) for $11.95 as a replacement for Arkanoid machines. This would make an excellent spinner for do-it-yourselfers interfaced to mouse guts. If you do this and have pictures please let me know! Thanks to William for the news!
Arcade Solutions is now selling do-it-yourself kits! Details can be found on their web site, but in a nutshell they'll sell you everything you need in a kit you design - pick what you want, don't pay for what you don't.
Voodoochile passed on to me this tidbit from Hagstrom. They are going to start selling a connecter that connects at the I/O header and terminates with leads that you can attach to a barrier switch... That should make things easier.
Speaking of Hagstrom ... None other than David Hagstrom of Hagstrom Electronics emailed me the other day. He passed this on:

"We have noticed an increase in the number of people calling in with arcade applications. We would be very interested in obtaining some feedback as to how we may modify the KE24 to be even more "friendly" to the arcade application (ex: create a special "gamers" model). We have some items on our list, but would be interested in feedback from knowledgeable people in the gaming application area."

If you have any suggestions for them, please email them, post it on our message board or email me, and I'll make sure they get them.

Well, once again there's so much more to update than time in the day :) A 2.5 year old daughter and a handful of neices and nephews sure takes the wind out of your sails, not to mention studying for your MCSE! I will make an attempt at more frequent but smaller updates instead of infrequent big updates. Most of my updates are coming from you folks now, so please keep them coming! --- saint

4/3/99

Added Roswell 88201 to the Arcade Cabinets section. Roswell 88201 has got to be one of the all time most impressive projects I've ever seen. WARNING: This page is close to 900 KB due to the graphics, but it's well worth a visit. My intentions for my own project have changed after seeing this one. This now makes 43 various control panels and arcade cabinets!
PC2JAMMA Controversy ended. This is old news by this point, but Brian and James have come to an understanding and the PC2Jamma page is back in business. Good news! Brian has updated ArcadeOS to 2.05 and cabMAME to .035 beta 8! Perhaps one of the most wanted features, horizontal screen centering has been added to cabMAME and ArcadeOS. Several folks have built or are building their dream machine based on Brian's work, so if you haven't visited it lately, take a look!
I have been in touch with several people regarding Retrostik, including Brent Geery himself. I asked Brent if he'd like to give an "official" statement as to Retrostik's status, and here is his reply:

Yea, I'm hanging it up after the 4 units left to be completed. In the last 5 months, over 100 units have been shipped. It's been fun, but I simply can't build them fast enough to keep up with demand, and I refuse to lower the quality of service of RetroSTIK like some companies. Hiring help is really out of the question. As soon as you hire even one employee it's unbelievable the amount of additional cost and paperwork. Of course if anyone wants to buy RetroSTIK and continue to grow the market, they can contact me, but that's not where I want to go to. It just wouldn't be fun anymore.

I'd like to thank Brent for the contributions he's made to the hobby and the free advice he's dispensed on the message board. Brent's indicated he'll still be around. Good luck Brent! Thanks to those of you who emailed me.

Looking for the Hot Rod? They moved a while ago, but somehow I missed posting the change. HotRod's new web site can be found at http://hotrod.aceisp.net.
Want to try two-player N64 controller support? Stephan Hans informed me that he's added a schematic on his N64 controller page for a Y-adaptor allowing you to use two N64 controllers at the same time through a single parallel port! This requires an updated version of DirectPad to function (I don't know which version # or if it's available yet). Stephan's also once again dropping hints of good things to come. Ask me no questions and I'll tell you no lies. Thanks Stephan!
Wondering how exactly to use one of the Hagstrom keyboard encoders? A lot of people have been asking for some details on this, so a while ago I asked for volunteers to write something up. Several of you wrote in to help, and I sure appreciate it. Arcade Solutions has written up I think the easiest to understand explanation. You'll find it on the Inputs page. Thanks guys!
New sections I'm thinking of for the future with no promises or time frame... Comments or help welcomed!

A step-by-step guide for building your own cabinet or controller. Not so much a "here's how I or someone else did it" thing, but a "First thing to decide and do is this. Second thing is this. etc..."
Marquee artwork (similar to the control panel section)
Side/miscellaneous artwork and techniques
Results of the survey
A bit of a writeup on Benji York's SNESKEY arcade controls interface
... ? :)

Almost 1 AM and the brain is starting to fog . . . More later :) I ran out of energy long before I ran out of updates. --- saint

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