OLD CHANGE HISTORY

5/27/99

HotRod news!
 
Good things are happening for HotRod! A couple of people have asked me if I know what's up with their web site. I haven't heard from Borg yet, but Hanaho, the commercial vendor who is going to market his products, has a web page up with the HotRod featured. Visit them here! Visit hanaho's main site to learn more about them :)
Look and feel changes
 
As you can see, more changes to the "look and feel" of the web site.  I do have some real content oriented updates to make, but this has been bugging me for some time.  Look for an information oriented update this holiday weekend.

5/20/99

New Projects Added
 
Added Jason's Arcade-Style Joystick and Skibby's Make Your Own Joystick to the standalone joystick projects section.  Also added Brian's MAME Cocktail Project to the arcade cabinets section.  This puts us at 51 projects now :)


WICO The Source
 

Wico has been going through some serious ups and downs in the past year or more.  Their web site has undergone a redesign, with perhaps a new attitude?  "We are a new team at WICO and we have new visions."  I ordered a catalog, we'll see how the response is.


Build Your Own Arcade kits
 

Tom61 wanted me to mention that you need to email him before sending any money when you order one of his kits.


More bad links squashed
 

Tried to download any of the themes from the Eye Candy section of the downloads page?  Those bad links are fixed now.  Seems putting a " " (space) in the directory name was fouling up the links :)


Control Panel Button Layout
 

There's been a message thread on the message board about the ideal spacing/layout for buttons on your arcade panels.  Michael Bobroski has a curved button layout that has proven popular with his friends.  He was good enough to send me a to-scale scan of his layout for people who want to duplicate it, which now has its own page.


How to build a spinner
 

Barcade has put up a section showing how to build a spinner from the guts of a mouse, with several nice pictures.  Added to the Controls section.


Jim Arcade Joystick hosted here
 

Jim emailed me with his joystick project which has been added to the standalone section.  His project is fairly well documented and has several very nice pictures.  You can download the zipfile with an MS-Word writeup and the pictures if you would like as well.  It's the same information that's presented at the link above.  Thanks Jim!  This brings us up to 52 projects!


More HTML tinkering
 

Obviously I've been tinkering with some of the look and feel of the page.  Comments good/bad/ugly? Please let me know :)

Well, I've got a bunch more to add, but old age and sleepiness have caught me again.  More later!

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• Tom61 sent me an email that he is now taking pre-paid orders for his build your own arcade kits. A temporary page can be found here with Tom's message and details.

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5/15/99

Didn't get a chance to update this weekend like I'd wanted to.  However, I did get this blurb from HotRod.  ZD net took a gander at the HotRod offerings at the E3 show, and liked them so much they wrote up a nice article.  Congrats HotRod, looking forward to the release date. Just one question - whose Hanaho? :)

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• The graphics and other new things should all be uploaded now.  I've added 40 megs to the faq in the past two days. :)
• Got a very interesting email from Alex today.  There's an auction on ebay for an item called the Smart Joypad.  The auction can be found here, a picture of the item here.  The auction is headlined "Use your Playstation and Nintendo 64 controllers on your PC" and is for an adapter that looks machine/professionally made.  I've emailed the seller to ask for more information, but if you're interested in bidding, hurry - it ends on 05/14/99, at 02:19:28 PDT.  Thanks Alex!
• Wasn't intending an update today, but the above item seems timely :)

• Linked the Definitions page to the Technical page - did most of you even realize I had a definitions page? :)  Currently the definitions page only has microswitches and leaf switches on it.  Added pictures to the definitions which are worth a look.
• Added a monitor section with a guide to discharging monitors on the technical page.  This is dangerous and you are advised not to muck with your monitors at all.
• Removed the monitors section under advice that it was a good way to get sued in today's sue-happy society.  Comments or ways to protect myself are welcomed.
• HELP!  I've noticed in my log files some bad links showing up lately - problem is, I can't for the life of me figure out where the bad links are listed on my web page.  If you get a bad link, please notify me, tell me where the link was from, and I'll squash it ASAP.  Thank you.
• The message board was up to 4 pages.  Deleted a chunk of older messages.  Added archived copies of the message boards to the top of the messages page.
• Added a page with a collection of marquees for eye candy or reference on the Final Assembly page.  Warning, this page is over 2 megs with thumbnails, and opens in it's own window.  Not for the impatient or slow connected.  Links may not work for the first couple of hours after I upload this page (midnight eastern) while the graphics are still uploading.
• Moved the Control Panels page off of Geocities to my new home.  Should load faster now.
• Soothed my hurt feelings over giving up my monitor discharge page by creating a downloads page.  Uploaded 30 megabytes of various drivers, utilities, eye candy, and miscellaneous files.
• Been trying to finish this update for 3 days :) Gonna post it while I'm still awake!  More later.

• Have you visited the message board lately?  Although not terribly voluminous (is that a word?) there have been some excellent technical questions/answers and discussions there lately.  Have a question, or think you might have an insight to share?  Please take a look :)
• If you had been checking the message boards, you would have known about the newest arcade cabinet project, Barcade.  Barcade is the brainchild of Intensify, who after much debate finally went with a monitor instead of a tv.  Why?  Check out his page :)  This brings us up to 48 linked projects!  Added to the links page.
• The "Other Projects" section is no longer linked or updated.  Instead it points to the same section on the links page.
• Here's a handy link I found on one of DavesClassics message boards.  This site is a collection of pinouts for just about everything it seems.  Of particular interest is the joystick/mice section.  Added to the links section.
• TwistyGrip has moved back to the AOL account, and the twistygrip.com address will no longer be good.  They wanted to make sure no one was alarmed by going to the old address and not finding anyone home.
• Thanks to VoodooChile for straightening me out re: the various items at Happ Controls.  It's an $11.95 spinner and a $110 trackball.  Two separate items.  This is what I get for updating at night :)
• The owner of Gratton's MAME Machine pointed out to me that his project (previously linked) has a rotating monitor in it.  He's planning on taking some new pictures with some better closeups, and when he does we'll mention it here.  Thanks Mike!