Nat's Tech Corner

Freespace Cockpit start

2011-11-12T18:47:00.001+11:00

So Ive finially gotten around to starting the Freespace Cockpit. Ive grabbed some sheet metal, some offcut MDF from work (they were throwing out like $300 bucks worth of offcut sheets) and some spade bits for my drill.

So after the plannin stages of what dials and buttons would go where, i got started marking and drilling the holes from my plans. Ive marked out the targeting array of buttons (The biggsest set ill have) and got to it. As the steel can be wobbly when pressed in the middle, ive planned to have MDF backing behind it to increase its rigidity. Unfortunatly, i cant just put the buttons into the MDF as many of them have only a 3-4mm shank length.

Topside view of the targeting array, with a few buttons put into it.

Into the backing MDF i drilled holes larger than the steel, to provide wriggle room for getting wires in.

Top sheet folded up and away to show holes drilled into MDF.

I blame Mythbusters and James May

2011-05-07T16:25:00.005+10:00

So, as is usually the case, I just had to do some trials before I got into the finishing of the black and the clear coats. I just had to test out a few automotive products I had to see what effect they came up with in comparison.
This came about as the rubbing compound I was told that was magic for the job was a complete disaster on its first run - it clogged stuff up, tore lint off the cloth, and just got so sticky and messy that I literally had to sand it out. I had a feeling i was 100% to blame however.

I drew up a nice little testing area complete with control and worked in some of the products. I figured out how to use the compound in the process and it come up superb. Its the second panel from the left, the one that looks like a frakking mirror.

Black coats

2011-05-07T14:13:00.002+10:00

Well after another good weeks work I have nearly gotten to the end of the black coats. After a fair bit of painting and sanding and cutting through to the red I have actually come to the conclusion of doing multiple coats (3-4) before even attempting to remove orange peel. Its starting to look pretty good!

Unfortunately, there has been some fail crop up - lots of cracks like the ones below. After a lot of trying different things to remove it (and just having them re-appear when I re-painted), Ive narrowed it down to using a gloss paint. I have been using a flat black paint, but I ran out late one afternoon and decided to finish off with a black gloss I had (same brand/type/etc). I though id be able to paint over it OK, but those surfaces just cracked up. I lost nearly a frakking week trying to fix it - the only solution was to sand back to the red and start again.

Thankfully that has worked, and I'm back on track.

Tape down, operation black coat is a go

2011-04-25T10:36:00.003+10:00

Well, finally I have cracked the sads with the red and have taped it to move onto the black coat. Eventually, I got into a loop of not being happy with the result, sanding more, sanding through to primer, repainting, etc. Its not all perfect, but Its going to be good enough to hit with rubbing compound after I pull up the tape. It was time to boot my OCD and just get on with it.

This is what I've come up with and have started painting with. Once the black is sprayed over that and sanded back to a flat sheen, I will pull up the blue painters tape, revealing the red below.

I have come across my arch-nemesis, water. One of the screws kept popping up through the red (below, screw removed) which I had to de-bog, rip the screw out, drill the hole out bigger and re-bog. There was no choice - covering it wasn't a option.

Also, I had some issues with swelling on some of the joints. I had gone back to primer on these bits but I though 'well, they wont be seen and will be painted black, and it hasn't cut through to the wood, so I can keep wetsanding'. Apparently this WAS NOT the case, and there has to have been a gap of some sort (even though these joints have been worked and re-worked more times that I care to remember). Thankfully, they have shrunk back after a day in the sun (The below pic is after shrinking - it was popped out about 5 times as much when it happened). I suspect a hit with a rough grit, re-prime well and continue painting will fix this up. Frustrating, yes, end of the world, hopefully not.

Red Basecoat down

2011-04-22T22:46:00.003+10:00

Well, after a lot more work, I have coated the entire project with 2-3 coats of red spraypaint. I think ive gotten the hang of what I can and cant do with the paint.

This has taken another good 4 days to get to the point of having being pretty happy with the coats. The worst part is 95% of it wont be visible! The plan from here is finish sanding - I will give the whole lot a sand with 600 until most or all orange peel is gone (im ok leaving some orange peel where I know I will cover it with black), then 1200. Ill do this to give myself plenty of choice as to where to tape. When I decide on the locations, I will go over those parts with 2000 grit, dry, and then tape.

I did a good bit of work on the below peice - to the right is what it looked like all over after being worked on with 1200 grit. I was dissapointed with the result... So tonight I decided to give it a quick buff with some of the swirl remover stuff I had (not the rubbing compound Im going to get, but its something) juuust because I HAD to see if i was on the right track. Good news is, as you can see below, I am. I have buffed half of it to show the difference in colour and shine.

Bad news is, ill probly have to rough it back up to ensure the black spray paint sticks. But thats a bridge I will cross later!

Half Buffed, half left raw with 1200grit scratches in it. You guess which half is which.

Hopefuly tommorow I will have the whole lot sanded and taped ready for black paint!

Priming Progress

2011-04-10T00:36:00.003+10:00

So! Progress. I have been priming the case for.. uh.. 3 days now, and I have at least another day to go.

The case has gone from MDF light yellow to Primed Darker Yellow. Wheee! What sort of shenanigans are next?

Unfortunately, I have had epic amounts of problems with the joins. The bog just doesn't seal at all. I have seen lots of recommendations for using 2-part epoxy to seal joins, and i now wish I had a time machine to go back and follow the directions. I have bogged and rebogged and whatnot, and as soon as there's a few days of different temperatures, the bog either cracks or pops out of its joint. All I can do is smooth it out and lather primer on it ASAP, unless anyone has a time machine. My solution, for some of the worse joints, has been to f--king lather it with primer (massively against the rules, but whatever).

The section above the main buttons + joystick also gave me grief - I bogged it up again but when sanding it was hardly smooth - solution was to f--king LATER IT WITH PRIMER. It looks really smooth now - the surface tension has kept it rounded and a bit of sandpaper will smooth it out nicely!

As much as the rule is light coats, when I've run into trouble LATER IT WITH PRIMER has worked. This means a lot of sanding next round to remove the thick run off, but if you can do a good job of smoothing the runoff and do another coat and sand - its smooth again. The hope here is that the part just above the buttons ends up with a smooth curve up to the next piece of MDF and will paint + sand well (I'm sanding this bit by hand now) - so far so good.

I'm still scared of cracks showing up later but I'm well past the point of re-doing my joining method. Its time for suck it and see!

Above - the first coat of paint on the base bit. Here I really should have done a lot more light coast but I ran out of time (light dwindling). This is the first base coat of Red for the stripes, and the first base coat of colour on the entire damn thing!

Anyway, I did muck around on a scrap peice of wood and come up with the below results - with no priming or sanding or anything. Encouraging to say the least!

The Plan (Number Six and Eight Approved)

2011-04-09T20:20:00.006+10:00

So, the painting plan. Figured I might as well cover how I intend to paint this sucker for posterity (And if it fraks up you lot can learn from my mistakes).

Ive never done anything like this - so I've been working off a lot of research, forums. The 3 Ive read and re-read most are below:

So I've sorta amalgamated the above quite a bit into my own prefered way of attempting this.

Also, I had no idea WTF 'Orange Peel' was - HERE is a description. Basically, if a clear coat has a texture like the dimples on a orange peel.. Yeah, thats about it.

Also, at the very bottom of the post ive labeled what cans ive used for this job.

A picture of what im aiming for in this paint job (Not mine, from one of the tutorials above)

Prepwork (i.e. from base MDF)
Bog of some sort (I used Builders Bog), Good sanding block, and 60, 180, 400, 600 sandpaper (pref low-clog type)

Bog out all cracks in work
Sand progressively down 80, 180, 400, 60 grit sandpapers (Keep in mind, 60/80/180 grits are primarily for removing wood - if your woods already reality smooth skip right to 180 or 400. Even machined surfaces require prep. I used 60/80 for getting the two halves of my box in line - the top half was 5mm larger than the bottom in some places! This is where you use 60 grit - when its smoothing out you should be into the 400/800's)
Re-bog where necessary (this became much to frequent, and as Ive found later the bog Ive used just doesn't seem to work all that well for what I'm doing)
Finish with silky smooth MDF ready to paint (clean off with microfiber towels to ensure no grease or grit for priming step)

Priming
Spray can Primer Putty (Automotive), Sanding block and some 400/600 sandpaper from above (i used wet/dry), decent respirator
Somewhere to spray paint, lay down newspaper or preferable make up a spray booth. I made one out of plastic, some supports and a fan.

Give can of primer a good shake for >1min after hearing agitator
Spray 20-30cm away from case in thin strokes - starting and ending away from wood, thin coats.
Wait 5 mins
Repeat 2-3 times
After 20-30 mins (when touch dry, and only if required), flip/rotate to paint more (this is only a time-saver for me, if i left everything dry 200% properly id NEVER finish)
Leave dry for a hour or more
Sand with 400 grit sandpaper
Repeat 3 or more times as required (I often cut through to wood so some of the more tricky bits are 6+ times primed)
On the last round when I'm happy with results, sand with 400 and then 600 for silky-smooth finish for paint (and then clean off with microfiber towels to ensure no grease or grit for priming step)

As I'm currently aiming for a finish with red stripes around the case, I'm planning a basecoat of red paint, topped with black. Two reasons - all proper stripe jobs have the stripe colour first across the job, areas that want to remain the stripe taped, then the topcolour is the main colour. This means less frigging around with taping shit, and also seems to help with the edges of the tape (I tried it out, and this way works wonders for the edges, as pictures in my scrappy job below)

Paint coat
Spray cans for required colours, decent painters tape, newspaper, decent respirator

Spray multiple light coats onto wood, 2 light coats, rest for 5 mins, 2 light coats, up to 5 or 6 sets of passes
Let dry for 2 hours
Wet-Sand with 400 grit. Stay the frak away from the edge of the paintjob as edges come off like nobody's business
Repeat paint job until it looks good & flat
Sand second last job 600 grit
Paint again
Sand last coat 600, 1200, 2000
Let dry thoroughly (and then clean off with microfiber towels to ensure no grease or grit for priming step)

Clear Coat
Spray cans for required colours, decent painters tape, newspaper, decent respirator

Spray multiple light coats onto wood, 2 light coats, rest for 5 mins, 2 light coats, up to 5 or 6 sets of passes
Let dry for 2 hours
Repeat paint job until it looks good. I wont sand between coats, i will build up a LOT of coats and then sand out the orange peel.
Sand last coat wet 400, 600, 1200, 2000 - aim is to remove as much orange peel as possible.
Let dry thoroughly

Were not done! Get back to work!

Cut & Polish
Super fine cutting compound, swirl remover, terry cloth

Once clear coat is thoroughly dry, commence!
Put a bit of cutting compound on the terry cloth and rub into the clear coat
You want it to be a paste- keep going until its pretty much dissapeared into the finish.
After this has been done 6-8 times, break out the swirl remover. Change your terry cloth!
Apply swirl remover 4 or so times.
PROFIT!!!

After this, I will be letting it dry and looking into a strong wax protective finish. You know, just typing this makes me want to curl up into the corner and cry!

I have A new respect for Deulux - The clear coat has a clear lit, and the Matt Black has a dull black lid - my Glossy Black can (not pictured) has a glossy lid to diffarentiate it on shelf. Muchaso win, and shows good customer service IMHO.

Tip: Keeping aresol nozzles clean

2011-04-08T19:57:00.002+10:00

So, after toying around on a scrap peice of wood, I've gotten the hang of these spray cans. However I've had substantial problems with blockages, especially the primer putty cans (for obvious reasons)

After a bit of trial and error, I have come across a process that works for me keeping spray nozzles clean.

After use (With putty stuff, do it every time you put the tin down, trust me)

Remove nozzle from can and put onto a tin of WD-40
Give it a spray with WD-40 into a bit of towel/scrap/paper
Clean nozzle facing with wet towel
DONT STICK CRAP INTO THE HOLE. This is more than likely to stuff up the shape of it and it will change the aerosol properties of the plastic.

If its already blocked, try leaving it in Metholated Spirits for a whille - or perhaps paint thinners. If all else fails, try a similar nozzle off another tin, or even keep spare nozzles if you end up buying multiple tins of the same paint/brand.

Sorry, gotta put this in!

Please do not look away from... The Nozzle

Sanding completed

2011-04-07T17:17:00.004+10:00

All parts have been sanded down to 600 grit - no pictures here as you cant really see the difference. Took me 4 days of working & Sanding it - from 10am till 7Pm with not many breaks. Who'd have thought id work myself harder on holiday than when im actually working?
Everything is super silky-smooth now so ill be moving onto painting.

I have made up a painting booth out of some plastic drop sheets, a broom handle, a mop handle, a peice of steel I found lying around and a fishing rod. I put on top of it a fan to serve as a exhaust fan (to keep dust and paint spores away from the paint job as much as possible). There's a few days of bad weather coming up so I hope to get painting after that clears.

Bogging and Sanding

2011-03-23T16:49:00.001+11:00

Well now I'm back from Melbourne and the weather has been pretty good I've had a good chance to get into the project.

I have had to bog up the top half of the box and begin sanding it back. This has meant dragging out the table i got from work and getting myself set up outside.

I have split it into 3 parts - top, bottom and bottom flap. I am aiming to sand each down progessively through 80, 240, 400, 600 grit - when it is all down to 600 grit I will move on painting.

More prepwork

2011-02-28T21:28:00.002+11:00

Whelp, a little more work on the Black Box. Not much, but ive bogged the inside in prepration for some more sanding.

I have 6 weeks off work now, so im hoping to really get into it over the next little bit!

Parts

2011-02-01T20:28:00.003+11:00

First batch of parts from china for the Freespace cockpit. There all win and quite cheap (about a quarter of the cost of buying them in Australia, and I struggled to find anything similar down here anyway)

The missile covered switch is win with its build-in LED.. however the shield strength switch (aka Toyota 4runner power window switch) its not as simple electrically as I hoped. Im confident i can hack it however.

About time..

2011-01-30T21:34:00.005+11:00

Finally started sanding the arcade box! Yeah, i know...

Went out and got myself some sandpaper (while I was buying some particle board to extend a old table I got for free from work) and some more bog to fill up the rest of the screw holes. So i got outside and spend a few hours sanding it to size with some 60 grit. The biggest problem has been the top part has a ever so slight bit of play along the piano hinge - which of course means massive variances at the end your playing at. Ive had to sand each side to match the other by putting it on a flat surface and sanding a bit, flip over, sand a bit more, etc. After a while, It's starting to all come together - while the edges arnt perfect yet there a massive improvment as now only a few bits feel raised, where when I started it have a overbite of about 4mm and was a good 1-2mm out on some parts of the side.

Unfortunately im not quite as in-shape as I could be.. After hours of sanding I noticed it was nearly 9PM and the light was gone so I packed up. Pouring a celebratory bourbon, I proceeded to nearly glass myself in the face due to my right arm suddenly responding to all commands by moving about 10 times more than it should have.

Ive done some research and settled on trying to use some decent spraypaint to paint it, after using a automotive putty/primer spraycan. A few goes of the putty/primer (with liberal sanding) should help me really fill in any gaps I have left.

As for colouring, Im still working out what i want to do with artwork.. But im starting to thing black with red lines might be the go (ala a Shivan cruiser.. Damn Shivans...)

Also... ive finially settled on a name. The Black Box, in honor of the phreaking done in the 60's & 70's (shit even 80s I think) - check it out on wiki HERE and even HERE.

Ive also done some work on the VGA->CAT adapters. One of them had its wires tear off their solder joints (damn cheap crap) which I had to re-solder. I suspect it has a lot to do with the bend that it gets internally - i had a right angle adaptor, then the adaptor, then the cable.. and when the lid was closing, it was hitting the cable and bending the whole lot sideways.

So I converted the VGA-CAT adapter itself to right angle mount to save 20mm to avoid this problem in the future. Ugly, yes. Effective, yes.

Aurora Chair Concept post

2011-01-18T21:24:00.005+11:00

So I have a brand new project to begin! All I have to do is paint the arcade box.. Im getting there...

This one im pretty excited about. Blatantly ripping off the idea here ive decided to make my own racing/simulation cockpit. Its a Ottoman, which has a hollow storage area in the middle. When you lift the top off, it has a fold-up seat, and contains a G27 steering wheel, with pedals bolted down and a steering wheel frame. You sit inside it to play games, and pack it up neatly into a functional couch.

I was going to just build a frame, but a cockpit of sorts you could actually sit inside of sounded great. I, however, dont really need a couch, but i do need a new coffee table. When not in use, a top can be placed on it to create a coffe table. When in use, the lid comes out, the steering wheel is mounted on top of it, and its Gran Turismo 5 time.

This also couples with my Freespace cockpit project - a cockpit with switches/buttons/whatnot. It works like any keyboard, so its compatiable with anything that can accept a USB keyboard and bind buttons. So instead of fumbling with buttons to play the game, id be using switches/levers/etc to kill Shivans. Sick of trying to target a particular ship, and going past it, and having to go through all the ships again because you never bothered to bind 'previous ship' or cant be bothered typing 'Ctrl-Alt-Mac Key-Commodore Key-F' to fire primary lasers? This will be for you!

Features include:

Coffee Table
Racing wheel for GT5
Pedals reverse-mounted like a real car (push away, not push down like what comes with the plastic wheels you buy)
Subwoofer/Speakers
Bass Shakers (for force feedback for explosions/car engine/whatnot)
Swappable Steering wheel/Freespace cockpit
Custom built sequential/reverse shifter with a nice heavy feel (those plastic shifts dont do the wheels justice)

Crosssection of the box, with the right wall hidden for comparison

Closed up, a coffee table.

Seated view with the Racing wheel and custom sequential shifter to the left

Custom build freespace cockpit

DIY Bass shakers (Tactile Transducers)

2011-01-18T21:04:00.002+11:00

Ive been fooling around with Tactile Transducers for the Aurora Chair project (upcoming). These little guys are like Subwoofers, but the produce more vibration than sound. This makes them great as force feedback, a fact I will be incorporating into the Aurora Chair project.

Below is a little DIY vid I did up for them, showing how to build a homebrew one. Unfortuantly, I turned up the vol and bass to max for the test showin in this and explordered the amp circuit, so im currently looking for some salvage.

Clap control for Music PC

2010-11-19T22:41:00.003+11:00

When I set up my FreeNAS server, I lost only one program I actually missed: iTunes. Now dont get me wrong, I absolutely hate iTunes as its a restrictive, bloated, and useless peice of crap. However, the Remote app on my iPhone is fucking fantastic and even after trying out alternatives (Namely songbird), the remote control apps just dont cut it.

So ive resurrected my old Compaq (for the 4th or 5th time now), and installed my nLite XP SP3 disc.

Ive installed iTunes 10 on it from a archive site as the lates iTunes refuses to work properly (the remote app wont connect period) but the 10.0 release worked fine. I imported a directory from my NAS into the setup and got it working well with the Remote app. After connecting this setup to the external speakers i set up for my TV, i was able to play some music just fine in the TV area.

However, iTunes doesnt really auto-add new tracks in the folder like i want it to so i bought iTunes folder watch from here. Its a really great app if your going to suck it up and use iTunes. The registered program sits in the background, scans your watch folder and auto-imports the tracks into the iTunes db. Its got quite a few more featuers as well.

However, one thing i was a bit 'meh' about was getting home after a stressful day at work and fiddling around on my iPhone to get it to play music. As it had a internal mic i thought i might be able to work something out.

I then settled on working on being able to play/pause via a clap (i have done voice recoginition programs a long time ago but found them to be fucking frustating when they pick up your voice during conversations). I found a nice and simple freeware program (here) that detected clapping and would run your selected program/action/whatnot.

After a short fiddle around with that awesome program autohotkey, i had 2 .exe files to control iTunes - one for play/pause, one for next song.

All it took was to set up the clap program to run the .exe's upon clap detection and presto! I did rip the microphone and super-glue it facing outward on the exterior of the laptop shell (this compaq is literally falling apart, so it wasnt really a issue)
Now i can walk into the lounge and clap once to start playing music immediately.

The Project again, roadblock gone!

2010-08-03T22:26:00.003+10:00

Finally, more work on the project.

Problem:

VGA-CAT5 adaptor works (discussed here), but now the monitor cannot detect that its plugged in. So whats been happening is that every time it changes resolution (pretty much start and end of any game) it pops up that annoying 'ANALOGE MODE' box in the upper left of screen for 10 seconds. Also, when the computers plugged in to power it displays the 'NO CONNECTION DETECTED' box that slides around the screen.
Massively annoying, as its a issue thats only cropped up.

Its taken me over a month to figure out how to fix it easily. Simple answer is splice a VGA cable, but damn I bet that would only cause problems down the track.

Reasoning

I figured that since CAT-5 cable has 8 cables, and VGA has 15 pins, obviously some pins arnt being connected. I also assumed that, since monitors don't display all the crap the moment there plugged into a PC even if its not powered on, it must be something hardwired into the plugs on the computer end that allows the monitor to detect its plugged in even if there's no power on in the PC.
It makes sence that it will run a lower power signal through one pin, and look for a reply down another ground line. But with 15 pins, what combination is correct???

Solution
http://www.monitorworld.com/faq_pages/q17_page.html. This is what got me started on the right track. I noticed on this some 'sense' pins and ground pins - this narrowed it down for me from something like 210 different combination's to try to 9 or so.
I hit on the right one on the second go - shorting pings 10 and 5 made the monitor turn blank ready for input like it used to.
From there it was a simple case of cracking open the cheap CAT-5 -> VGA adaptor and soldering a wire directly across pins 5 & 10. Put back together and re-insert. It was so simple! (Not!)

Creating a short that tricks the monitor into permanently realizing its connected on the analogue mode. Once the shell is fitted back on, its as if i hadnt modded it!

Freenas Transmission Tweaks

2010-07-03T00:42:00.005+10:00

Blatantly liberated from http://code.google.com/p/freenas-rss-extension/wiki/MyTweaks.

** FOR THOSE SEARCHING FOR ERRORS RELATED TO "BLOCKLIST_UPDATE: Config directory not set"

The script below searches through FreeNAS' configurtion files to find the torrents 'Config' directory as per the below screenshot. This option is in the WebUI -> Services -> Torrents

You really really shouldnt need to, but if your still haveing huge problems you could try replacing the code:

config_dir=`/usr/local/bin/xml sel -t -m "//bittorrent" -v configdir /cf/conf/config.xml | /usr/local/bin/xml unesc`

With:

config_dir="/path/to/torrent/config/directory/"

Note: Make sure you put the torrent config directory in a location that allows write (i.e. dont put it willy nilly somewhere in the root filesystem - put it in your RAID or on the spare bit of your OS drive)

1) Fix for file permissions when using samba for windozer file sharing.
Why? Well, basically when you log in Anonymously in windows via SMB protocol, it forces your computer to work under FreeNAS's 'ftp' user. Which is fine, untill...
When Tranmission saves a file, it does so under the 'transmission' user. Also fine.
But when you browse to your NAS from windows (being forced to work as the 'ftp' user) and you try and move or whatnot a torrent file (which has been saved as the 'transmission' user) FreeNAS cracks a wobbly and tells you that you dont have permission to do that (as all it sees is one user trying to fiddle with anothers files)

So we can baindaid her up, with the below additions to the 'Auxiliary paramaters' section

This forces the windows client to pretend to be the 'transmission' user, not the 'ftp' user. So it all plays nice!

2) Blocklist updater.
By default, FreeNAS doesnt use a blocklist (in fact, it disables it quite semi-permantly). We can fixxer that up however.

The script below is also taken from the above wiki - I prefer this one because of the location it gets its blocklists from (Bluetack) and the felxibility of lists.

(Big note: If you copy this into notepad and save it onto the NAS, youll encounter one big problem: Windows uses CF+LF to dictate end of line (return). *NIX uses just LF. This confuses the bash interpreter and it will not run. Download and use Notepad2 and when you save the file select 'File->Line encoding-> Unix (LF)' to avoid those problems)

First off: youll have to stop FreeNAS from diabling blocklist. Do so by editing the rc.conf variables via System -> Advanced -> RC.CONF in the WebUI

Either way, before running the file, youll have to log into the NAS via SSH (Enable the SSH service, setup a user in the webUI with 'bash' as its shell, and point Putty to your NAS) and run some commands on the file.

Bonus geek points if you noticed the nethack.alt.org telnet settings!

First, use the SU command (and enter admin password to NAS) to gain 'superuser' privelages, browse to the direcrory using the CD command, and CHMOD +x the file. Then you can run it directly to ensure it works. Like ive done below.

(Note the LS -Gl [this lists the directory in colour mode] - the permissions list to the far left of blocklist.sh is -rwxrwxrwx. The x's mean its eXecutable, which is what we need to run the script (this is what CHMOD +x has done to the file - CHange MODe eXecute)

CODE: blocklist.sh

#! /bin/bash

###
# Select the blacklists you would like to download & use, all available lists
# (except exemptions) are listed below
#LISTS="ads-trackers-and-bad-pr0n bogon dshield edu fornonlancomputers hijacked iana-multicast iana-private iana-reserved level1 level2 Microsoft proxy spider spyware"
#
LISTS="bogon dshield hijacked iana-multicast iana-private iana-reserved level1 level2 Microsoft"

###
# YOU SHOULD NOT EDIT BELOW THIS LINE UNLESS YOU KNOW WHAT YOU ARE DOING
#
url="http://www.bluetack.co.uk/config/"
config_dir=`/usr/local/bin/xml sel -t -m "//bittorrent" -v configdir /cf/conf/config.xml | /usr/local/bin/xml unesc`
updated=0

if [ "$config_dir" == "" ]; then
logger -t blocklist_update -- Config directory not set
exit 1
fi

if [ ! -d "$config_dir/gzblocklists" ]; then
mkdir "$config_dir/gzblocklists"
fi

for list in $LISTS; do
file="$config_dir/gzblocklists/$list.gz"
lsize=`stat -qf %z "$file" || echo 0`
rsize=`fetch -apsw 5 $url$list.gz || exit 1`
if [ "$lsize" -ne "$rsize" ]; then
logger -t blocklist_update -- Updated $list

# need to download to different folder than $config_dir/blocklists
# transmission seems to have trouble at times starting possibly by trying to parse
# gz'd files
fetch -qapw 5 -o "$file" $url$list.gz
gunzip -kqf "$file"
mv "$config_dir/gzblocklists/$list" "$config_dir/blocklists/"
updated=1
fi
done

if [ "$updated" -eq "1" ]; then
/etc/rc.d/transmission restart &> /dev/null
else
logger -t blocklist_updater -- All lists up-to-date
fi

Then its a simple matter of setting up a cron job to run it on a schedule. Below is my settings for midnight every Wednesday.

Note: Your path to the script will differ.

Freenas extras

2010-07-02T23:34:00.004+10:00

So after trials in a virtual machine, and three installs on ol' Frankenputer, FrankenNAS lives! Insert demoic laughter and all that.

I was going to do a big walkthrough to installing FreeNAS, but my apathy knows no bounds. Plus, google can tell you how to install it. I think you can install it falling over, actually.

Download FreeNAS from http://sourceforge.net/projects/freenas/
Burn CD - imgBurn or the like will be a-ok
Pop into CD drive, set BIOS to boot from CD and reboot
FreeNAS will boot, and run off the CD
Youll want to install it to a HDD or CF card (you can get IDE -> CF card adaptors)
I went for a Full install + swap. Swap is always fun. Keep in mind that booting the OS off your RAID (if you have a hardware RAID card) is a terrible idea. Grab either the IDE->CF card or a 40/80GB HDD and boot it off that.
Once its installed (all what, 15 seconds?) remove the CD and reboot. This time it will be off the HDD
Youll end up back at the same menu now. (It runs off the CD exactly the same, however you dont want it to run off the CD permantly - it wont perform all that well)
Now press 1. and setup the network (It's likely it guessed all that for you, but configuring it cant hurt) Youll have to select which network device to use (you may well only have 1 so go nuts) Im not sure how its wireless support goes here - I would advise against it anyway.
Once thats configured, press 2. Here you should select DHCP (unless you want to manually enter a IP address) and select no for IPv6. It will now give you a funky IP address.
FIN

You can now browse to that IP address in your webbrowser! As shown below, it will tell you the IP address you can log in with below.

The steam special is insanity. Oh, and also FreeNAS is shown.

Youll want to set up your hard drives first before hand, obviously.

This post will leave you to play with the webui. Google is your friend here.

Stay tuned for:

Transmission (Torrent client) blocklist
Transmission RSS auto-downloader
Transmission RSS auto-downloader email hack
Custom script ive used for email status reports
PS3 Media server setup (The pre-installed uPNP server is shite, sorry)
Performance Tweaks?

Conroy

2010-07-01T23:01:00.003+10:00

Exert from a email response I sent in regards to our illustrious Governments filter. Posted here for posterity. Hopefully we can look back and laugh and go 'Conroy? Wasn't he the guy that campaigned to save us against spams and scams coming through the portal? Wasn't he the guy that was so stupid that the 2010 elections ballots had to be kiln-dried before talling because people laughed so hard as his name on the ballots they cried?'
Of course, if we get Gillard for another couple of years, you likely wont be reading this as it will be blacklisted as anti-government propaganda.

Quote: Me, in response to a discussion on the filter via email, 29 June 2010. Names omitted to protect the innocent

Its funny, because until this email I’ve never even looked at it that way. You two argue for and against a filter, I argue against the technical implementation of the filter.

I don’t even oppose A FILTER.

I liked the previous plan installing filters on parents PC’s as they:

· Moved responsibility to the household, and ultimately the parents

· Provided some level of security

· Bypassable unfortunately (Which any solution is. ANY)

I don’t like the proposed filter because:

· It WONT WORK

· It wont stop child pron at all

· It gives your wife a false sense of security in thinking your kids protected

· It will impede our broadband development and speeds which are already behind – This directly impacts economy too

· Extra cost at ISP level – either they pass on the expense to us or what, the GVT will pay – which is us again

· It wont stop torrents, FTP, IRC, what not where the actual harmful stuff is shared

· It should be AT LEAST opt in (As a young bachelor, why do I need content filtering?)

· Its extremely EXTREMLY bypassable (And legal to do so, so duuuh?!?)

· Christ, it will cost people like me even more for internets because ill likely pay for a encrypted proxy connection – internets expensive enough!

· Massive breech of privacy. They will be inspecting each and every packet of information to and from your PC

· Private blacklist means abuse. I think it’s a guarantee it will be abused in some way if its there – power corrupts and all that.

Closing points:

This makes me so angry, only because were being sold a square peg for a round hole!

Ive got a secret for your wife. Don’t tell anyone – the GVT doesn’t want you to know!

You have a filter at home. Its cheap, easy to install, failproof, doesn’t require government funding, sponsorship, and whatnot. It wont impede your privacy, internet speeds. It will also help you grow a true bond with your children and will allow you to explore the wonders of the internets with safety and ease together.

It’s a chair. Move the PC out into the living room (kids shouldn't need more crap in their rooms to give them even more reasons to sit in them all day) and install a chair next to the PC. Install parental ass into said char. Your new filter is set up and ready to go. Even set up free software on your PC to lock the internet out on the kids accounts at certain times, and have designated internets time.

RAID Rundown

2010-06-21T18:10:00.010+10:00

A rundown of what I intend to do with FrankeNAS, RAID, and OS differences. Please note its written from a Home media NAS perspective (with some additional services like UPNP, torrents, etc) Not a corporate enviroment.

What is FrankenNAS?
Well, I have a always-on server sitting next to my TV called Frankenputer. Its name came from its origin - it started its life with me as a throw-out desktop from work. It had been sitting covered up by archived paperwork in a small and forgotten shed. I was given it free, and cobbled bits and pieces of it and old hardware I had lying around into a working computer.
Its been running a custom version of XP I made up for a while. Unfortunatly, all ive done is add 1tb external drives to it. These drives have all my digital files, no backup, are tying up a full powerboard, and full, making organizing files a nightmare.
I intend to make a RAID home server, basically a Network Attached Storage (NAS) PC. Hence, FrankenNAS

Kryten says: Frankenstein was the creator - not the monster. It's a common misconception, held by all truly stupid people!

Yes I know Kryters, but I think people will get it.

Porject Goals

Numerous Terabyte hard drives linked into one volume under RAID-5
Web administration
Email notifications
Run headless (No screen/keyboard/whatnot)
Torrent client with web administration
MP3 player with iPhone remote capabilities
Reliable (Windows PC kept dropping of the network for no apparent reason daily)

Whats RAID?
Redundant Array of Independent Disks (Originally Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks, but thats not longer the only option). Its a number of disks set up to work together. Depending on your RAID level config, it can provide a level of redundancy (i.e. one or two drives can fail, and you wont lose your data), possibly performance increases, and a godsend to me, one volume between all the drives.
So in my RAID-5 setup, 3 x 2tb hard drives would show up as a single 3.7tb 'drive', which can suffer a single hard drive failure, and keep chugging along OK.

What are the numbers after RAID for?
Theres different 'levels' of RAID. the most common are 0, 1, 5, and 1+0 (usually written as RAID-10)
RAID 0: Multiple disks as one volume. No redundancy, and therefore not a true RAID.
RAID 1: Contents of one disk is identically mirrored to another: Total capacity is half the total raw storage space.
RAID 5: Using funky XOR binary mathematics, parity, and a little fairy dust, Shares data and parity amongst disks. Total storage capacity is the total storage space of the drives minus one hard drives worth of storage
RAID 1+0 (RAID 10): A combination of RAID 1 and RAID 0 - pairs of RAID 1 (i.e. mirrored) drives in a large, single volume

Why RAID 5
Better storage capacity. For example, a 4 x 2tb RAID 5 has 6tb (minus 7%) storage space and can handle one drive failure. A 4 x 2tb RAID 10 drive has 4tb (minus 7%) storage space and can handle one drive failure per pair. So if the two failures were HDD 1 & 2 of a pair, goodbye data.

My decision: RAID-5, balance between storage space (I'm not made of money) and some redundancy (can lose a single drive OK)

Oh, so RAID = backup! Yay sausages!
No, and if you dump important data on a RAID and lose it all you had it coming.
RAID DOES NOT MEAN BACKUP.
RAID will give you some level of protection vs hardware failure. It will be useless if:

PSU dies, taking 2+ HDD's
More than 1 HDD dies
If using hardware RAID - If a hardware RAID card dies and you cant get a similar replacement, same diff
Someone breaks into your house and sledgehammers your box
Flood, fire, acts of god, etc

Always have a backup plan.

Why minus 7% on total capacity?
Manufactures rip everyone off with their total storage PR crap. A drive may have 1TB of storage space avaliable, but your Operating System (OS) must create a file system to archive it, which takes storage space. Usually this is approx 7% of the total drive. It would be like getting a 1000 page blank book from a publisher and filled it with information. You can just dump it in, you have to have contents pages, index pages... So your actual information usage will be less than 1000 pages, it may be more like 930 useful pages and 30 pages for administrative stuff (legal, contents, index, etc) - or 7%.

Software RAID and Hardware RAID? WTF?
Theres two main ways of seting up a RAID - Software and Hardware.
Hardware involves a RAID card (PCI usually, i think, but you might be able to get ones for faster slots). The RAID card (If its any good) does the calculations on parity/sharing/whatnot on it, which means the computers main CPU isnt tied up doing all sorts of crap. Hardware is expensive (>AUD$150-200 for a 8 port RAID controller) but is supposed to be the shiznit.
Software RAID is managed through a OS (Linux, BSD, Windoz, etc). This means the CPU is doing the hard work on calculations. On the upside, its cheaper (cheap as free in many cases) and should do OK for a home system if the budget is tight/Female of the house requires new shoes.

My decision: Software RAID (Not made of money, blah blah)

Which OS to use?
FreeNAS

Webui
Torrents build in
Software RAID
FreeBSD-based
Some argue not as mature as a Linux NAS system
UPNP (Fuppes) Built in
Basically read for Home server use
OS so small it can run on next to nothing hardware and can fit onto a CF card into a IDE->CF flash card. This means no HDD specifically for the OS
Can mount + share other OS's drives (NTFS etc). So if a mate comes around, you can plug in their external USB drives and share it.

The problem I had was when I ran the torrent program, it shut my internet down. After a lot of fiddling, I've found that it was my cheap-o router which was the problem. (I think torrents + it are the reason i was having problems in the past - after 24 hours of torrents my internet connection died and it required a restart)
The security log showed it was blocking massive amounts of SYN FLOOD. Basically the amount of data the 'transmission' torrent program was throwing up was triggering its firewall protection. So, considering ive never used its firewall, I disabled it and all is right again (hopefully even better now)

OpenFiler

WebUI
No torrent built in
Software RAID
Linux based
Arguably more mature codebase
OS needs hard drive
Cannot mount existing file systems - have to format and copy across

Due to the above.. Meh! Its built toward professional deployment, which is what it is best used for.

Windows
Ill break down the windows option here in installation steps

Throw out CD
Save time, just take a sledgehammer to your HDD's
Same result, less time

My decision: FreeNAS!

FrankenNAS?

2010-06-18T22:14:00.004+10:00

Alright, its not the project. The project is ready to be sanded and painted, which will take a bit of time.

In the meantime, I'm thoroughly fed up with my headless server sitting next to my plasma/PS3. Its got 1TB external HDD's all over it, and its starting to look like Medusa's hair with all the cables snaking over it.

Im out of HDD space AGAIN, and Its completly disorganized, requires a whole 8 socket powerboard for itself, and its running... XP. But a customized XP, if that makes it any better.

Ive sucked it up and forked out for 3 x 2TB HDDS (for a start, im anticipating ending up at 8 x 2TB when i have more disposable income) and I plan to be running a RAID 5 array shortly.

So tonight, while im recovering from the damn flu, im playing around with FreeNAS on a Virtual Machine. Looking pretty good currently!

More parts

2010-05-02T22:28:00.001+10:00

Well, the parts finally arrived so I've been able to get more work done.

What I've imported from China is a VGA to CAT-5 adapter. It was only a few bucks off ebay. This has enabled me to easily pass a CAT-5 cable through the hole between the top and the bottom bit, instead of attempting to splice a proper VGA or DVI cable. I felt this was a much better option.

Right angle VGA adaptor (about 3 pounds from UK delivered) and two male VGA-CAT5 adaptors (about $3AUD from China)

Next up came finally getting all the cables together and getting them to pass between the top and the bottom. I had to get the dremel out with a drum sander attachment and tweak the hole size until it fitted. Wrapping up the cables in some electrical tape was enough to slide it through.

All the top cables taped and slid through the hole. Looks just about right.

Anyway, so the top half's wiring is pretty much complete. My main concern before screwing the lid shut is just doing some real-life testing first, take it to some peoples places, etc. I think I may have to superglue down some cables to ensure I get no cable-rattle.

Top part pretty much done - all the wiring here is done. Just to clean up and fix any rattles/loose cables

Side panel

2010-04-25T22:45:00.008+10:00

Well the side panel is almost done. I spend this weekend attempting to finish it off but every time I went ouside it started to rain, and I prefer not to get electrocuted.

I outlined where everything was to go on paper, cut out a cardboard section to make sure it would all fit, drew that onto the metal and dremel'd myself stupid. Unfortunatly, the USB holes arnt perfect (even after spending about a hour hand-filing them) but they should clean up neat later on.

The panel here is missing a network port. The one I currently have is a bit of a pain to fit well, so I might hunt around for another type.

Layout of the panel	Work area outside Work area in the BBQ area
Side panel dummy-fitted into project	Testing out the plugs

Project Addition?

2010-04-25T13:29:00.003+10:00

Mate sent me a link from hackaday (Thanks murph) - a guy that built a small usb plug-in multi-video-games-system that plugs into a computer and allows you to play emulated games via the authentic controllers (Link)

Now, considering ive already planned to use that 15-pin adapter linked up to the I-Pac, why not do the same for the project.

In this light, I have started looking around for original controllers to slowly start buying up.

Also, check out his arcade room! (Link)

Audio again?

2010-04-08T22:31:00.002+10:00

Ok, so I haven't finished with the audio. I realized I hadn't done the last part - support for external audio.

Playing on the jukebox made me realize just how bad the speakers sound for actual music. I would much prefer to have support for external audio. This will mean a additional cable from the top to the bottom, but I think its worth the effort.

So today I have unsoldered the Line Out adaptor and ran another extension cable for it, so that i can put a Line Out in the bottom . To test this, I whipped out my trusty alligator cables and tested it out. After a bit of fiddling, I have a working Line Out jack that disables the internal speakers when a external source is connected.

Working trial of the external jack - disables internal speakers when external audio is plugged in.

Wiring win!

2010-04-08T19:32:00.000+10:00

Tested out the 240V wiring that I completed last year. I was waiting for the sparky at work to continuity check it, but every time I brought in the project he wasnt there, every time i didnt he was there, and now hes on holdiays in New Zealand. Dammit.

So I continuity checked it myself twice, double-checked the whole circuit, ensured all points were well and truly insulated, and plugged it in. First with no load, second with the speaker powerpack plugged in, third with the monitor included, and fourth the whole thing. It worked perfectly.

Please note: DONT TRY THIS AT HOME. GET IT CHECKED BY A QUALIFIED ELECTRICIAN, OR EVEN BETTER, DONE BY A QUALIFIED ELECTRICIAN.

Now that im not suffering from a bad case of death, its onward to other areas of improvment.

Audio circuit round #3

2010-04-06T22:21:00.006+10:00

"Today I have debugged the sound system (Lost a channel of audio, pulled the whole thing apart and later found it was the wire snapped off its solder on the audio circuit, and was stuck in place with the plastic so I couldn't tell it had snapped), got the 240V wiring done, and finialized the audio circuits." - Nat Allan, Jan 24, 2010.

Audio finalized? Bwahaha, what a idiot.

Over the last 3 days I have struggled with the audio stuff more. I had massive trouble extending out the potentiometer for the volume control... When I did so, the voulme got jammed at maximum and moving the volume knob just tuned RADIO STATIONS. Immensely frustrating, even if i did manage to get the footy scores.

Of course, not only did the potentiometer turn out to be broken, but some moron who will remain nameless used single wires from a roll he had to extend the volume pot, not sheilded audio cable he specifically bought for that exact purpose.

Braided single core wire mixed with audio = fail.

At jaycar, I bought (Amogst other stuff I didnt specifically need of course) a A10K Double-Gang potentiometer. The old one was linear (B10k) but I decided to try out a logrithmic pot, as they are supposed to be 'correct' for hearing (as human hearing works on a log scale as well). Unfortunatly, ive found this computer speaker amp hits a comfortably loud volume at 1K ohms, so having a 10K pot is overkill anyway.

Working temporary rig with cannobalized 50k pot from spare parts. The Project was playing a random SNES advertisment at the time, and as i took the pic it summised my feelings on finially getting it working.

Working log scale double-gang pot. Hooked it up temporarily with alligator clips to ensure I had it marginally right.

Above, you can see ive purchased spare alligator clips (Sooooo handy). When I was trialing with the pots earlier,l i only had 2 alligator clips, so i spend hours soldering and unsoldering when it didnt work. Big pack of alligator clips pre-made at Jaycar for $11 bucks has already saved me hours.

In non-audio news, ive also wired up the 80mm case fan mounted in the top of the box (to help remove heat from the monitor/sound adaptor. This has been directly wired into the DC input of the audio board (dammit, go away audio). I thought this would be a terrible idea in terms of noise on the audio's power line, but it makes no audiable difference. I did have to wire in two 100ohm resisters into the cable however to trim back the fan speed as it was two loud. These i wired in parallel to get a resistance of 50ohm (I think thats how the maths goes) as i couldn't be bothered finding a 50ohm resistor in my spare box when i had two 100's in front of me. Below the resistors are spliced in-line under the green shrink-tube.

Two 100ohm resistors wired in parallel on the top fan's power to bring down the speed to keep it nice and quiet.

Sound

2010-01-24T18:56:00.002+11:00

Well, Ive done a little work on the sound circuit as shown below. Since ive removed the variable resistor from the circuit and basically added a extension cord, ive had to make up a bracket for it

Work continues

2010-01-03T22:00:00.004+11:00

Well, now its coming up on a year of being going, sigh. Epic Project.

Today I have debugged the sound system (Lost a channel of audio, pulled the whole thing apart and later found it was the wire snapped off its solder on the audio circuit, and was stuck in place with the plastic so I couldn't tell it had snapped), got the 240V wiring done, and finialized the audio circuits.

I decided to put the audio circuit in the top part of the box, to help de-clutter the base. This will mean more wires needed to run to the base (as the volume control variable resistor requires 5 wires) but will easily fit.

New workplace	Mains circuit complete
Mains wiring halfway	Audio circuit finished

Move

2009-12-05T21:44:00.000+11:00

Well, as with all things, the upsides are balanced by downsite.

Upside: New Place is awesome
Downside: Spare parts box has become dangerous

Status: On Hold

2009-11-17T20:50:00.004+11:00

Unfortuantly, due to the following factors The Porject (sic) (tm) has been delayed:

Coming into the busiest time of the work year
Requiring additional surgery
Having the owner of my unit sell the place from under me with bugger all notice

The project will re-commence work shortly after i sort all this out.

IT LIVES!

2009-09-01T22:26:00.001+10:00

Yeah, I couldnt wait, (Plus the guy whos painting it is coming over Friday to see what im describing) so i re-fitted it together. Then went a bit mad with double-sided velcro and velcroed the speakers in and the monitor in. End result, is very very much what it will be like.

What a blast to play on.

Can you splice a DVI-D single channel cable?

2009-08-30T00:00:00.004+10:00

YES YOU CAN. WHEE. Yep, that mishapen lump is the splice in the DVI cable I did with just twisting wires and duct tape, and yes, that's the actual cable the monitor is running of. Ill call her Frankensplice.

Well, at some point I had to face splicing a monitor cable. I was going to use VGA, but i found a old DVI-D cable lying around. I never saw the difference in image quality so it ended up in the magical box of spare cables.

However, I decided to research the difference for this project (as the video card is DVI out and the LCD supports VGA and DVI input) and found one massive surprise: While I really couldn't see the difference in quality on the LCD (as I believe newer LCD's are very good at converting the analogue VGA signal) I did notice one thing: The scaling and repositioning of the screen was gone.

Under VGA, the screen has to detect where and how to fit the screen, resulting in it flickering on and off, changing in size and sliding around to fit. This was annoying on my test runs as it happened going into each game, and sometimes (5-10%) it wouldnt get it right and slide the screen a centimeter to the left, obscuring part of the screen.

DVI DOES NOT DO THAT. It displays the image crisp and clear, no flickering and always in the right position instantly. I didnt know this beforehand!

So it had to go in. Question was, was it possible to splice the cable without signal degredation? I have to fit the cable through a loom tube (just big enough for the cables between top and bottom), I certaintly couldnt get the connector through. Downside was, this cable is sheilded with tiwsted pairs, and removing these for a splice has a risk of interupting data, much like untwisting CAT-5 can make the cable less than optimal in use.

What was more fun: Not only did it look scary enough when I opened it up (four pairs of sheilded wire, with 5 lying speerate = 13 cables), but when I got into it i found a third uninsulated wire inside each of the four shielded pairs (4 times 3 + 5 = 17 cables!)

So I had a go as a trial run before the real deal next build time, and I got it right the first time without solder or heatshrink. All I did was twist the wires and insulate with duct tape. Little help sourced from this thread: http://www.avrfreaks.net/index.php?name=PNphpBB2&file=printview&t=44543&start=0.

Im going out tommorow to invest in some heatshrink and a small blowtorch for the real deal, which will be done with a lot more precision in care. This was just the test run, proof of concept to ensure I could actually do it.

Cable or a HL1 Headcrab? You decide.	Om Nom Nom Nom. Nearly set me back 30 mins work, thanks cat.
Halfway through, sheilded pairs done	Added some old dowel to help reduce mechanical force acting on join.

Speaker Epic Deveat

2009-08-27T22:57:00.015+10:00

The speakers I had installed seemed like epic win. They fit well and cranked out some tunes from my Ipod. Or so I thought.

It wasn't until later I unplugged my Ipod and plugged it into my PC. The noise. Oh the noise. I thought having it plugged into the running PC and into my Ipod was a good test. Apparently not. It had the most horrible line noise ever. So that USB speaker idea went in the bin after hours of trying to fix it. EPIC DEVEAT.

So I ended up going back to my old 2.0 powered speakers, which are working even better.

Deveat (Verb): Something that seems like complete fail, but has a hidden win.
Antonym(s): See VICTOLY

So Ive had to redo the speakers with a powered set. The sound quality is much improved, with NO LINE NOISE. Huzhaa.

Ive also completed the top wiring in terms of 240V power. I had to use a junction box and split of another mains for the powerpack for the new speakers.

Re-done speakers.	Testing the junction wiring
Looks safe	Completed wiring

Ive also done some work on the Jukebox side of things, and neatend up the playlist (also got something for all the album artwork)

EDIT: My first Bubble Bobble Million.

Day 5 (?) Casebuilding

2009-08-24T20:32:00.019+10:00

I think Ive missed two days. Oh well.

Case sat together in its closed position

Case in the open position

Another day of work brought us to this. The top part is assembled, and just needs the speakers and LCD put in.

The word of the day was DREMEL. I used it a lot, for sanding out slots for the speakers and LCD, to cutting the mounting out of the speakers (As we couldnt just screw the speakers to the wood)

As for the speakers, I had to sand out some of the pine reinforcment to fit the speakers.

Speaker mount removed from casing	Hole cut and sanded out
Mounts glued in place with liquid nails	Speakers mounted

We also got the LCD fitted (but not mounted) at this point.

LCD from front

Dremel line where we had to sand back the pine to fit the LCD

HIGHSCORE! Wait, whered it go?

2009-08-22T17:32:00.004+10:00

Alright, long delay between updates as I havent had access to the WIP case. Between my mate going to QLD on business for two weeks, and upon his return going in for surgery, I have had little time to get out and work on the case. Since I have now spent two weeks only able to lie down and either watch Stargate or play Eternal Sonata on my PS3, I've gone half mad and decided to set up The Projects components in a old computer case and tinker with the software/hardware.

Ive picked myself up a Dremel 300 from Bunnings and a few extra bits for it from Jaycar, along with a peice of sheet steel from Bunnings. This will enable me to cut out some of the finer square holes/etc out of the sheet, which was posing a problem (cutting out 30mmx 25mm square out of 6mm sheet steel would be difficult with a standard tool) I shall do some work on this tomorrow (as tomorrow it is when I shall be next working on the case, wound or no wound)

Ive also done some work on the software, mainly MAME. Ok, so by 'Work' I mean playing Bobble Bubble for a while (and still only a maximum of level 32 on Easy starting with 5 lives). However, one thing I have done is re-enable High Score saving for games in MAME.

MAME's goal is to achieve 'perfect' emulation of cabinets, or as close to it as possible. Also, many MAME games did not save High Score tables. This is due to the original games not saving the high score in their firmware. Why? Because most arcade ops back then would have left them running for weeks or months on end, meaning that saving the high score table was not really a issue. This meant on power-down high scores were lost, and when you quit mame and start again its the same as a power-down. There is a autosave feature in MAME, but who wants to start up MAME and find themselves halfway through a game they rage-quitted?

MAME devs patched in a hack of saving high scores into MAME for a while (somewhere in the originals 0.60 -> 1.03 region from memory) but then removed it as it was causing more problems than good. Their goal was to recreate the original hardware, not add features.

Of course, someone had to add it back in for people like us. MKCHAMP over at the BYOAC forums was that person, who has released patches and compiles of newer MAME vers with the old highscore saver enabled. I found a highscore enabled MAME compile and matching highscore.dat file here (http://highscore.mameworld.info/)

Ive installed and tested it - works a treat for all the games ive tested (ok, ive only tested one, Bubble Bobble). Thanks guys!

Ive also got myself a very cheap pair of USB powered speakers for the box (http://www.jaycar.com.au/productView.asp?ID=XC5191&keywords=usb+speakers&form=KEYWORD) which should be excelnt for the box (Analogue volume control and no clunky transformer for power [The more expensive ones all had digital volume, which isnt what I want])

More vids

2009-07-20T22:16:00.004+10:00

Uploaded these a while ago, hadn't got around to updating.

Day 4 Casebuilding

2009-07-07T21:23:00.006+10:00

Alright, forgot to well, update after the last day. Mainly because Rod has visitors and not really anything was done, except I bogged the hell out of the box. And the ending of BSG did make me shit myself.

Note to self: Really really really don't use much hardener.

Builders version of Clerasil

We started cutting out the parts for the top the last time I was down. Unfortunately, i didn't take and shots of it. Although, i did have to strip down the monitor too see what size it would fit into, and I decided to fire up the pc stripped down to see if there was any more viewable area behind the plastic (there wasn't)

Firing up the pc stripped

Around about here I was permanently banned from sanding, as I had sanded so much that I sanded out the bog id meticulously put in, and I've sanded back the dimensions from 400mm wide to 399mm wide, making fitting the top part harder.

At this point I'm out of project pictures, so heres a picture of a little kitten. This is the latest addition to their household. His favorite hobbies appear to be eating, sleeping and chasing toys.

Video!

2009-06-18T21:07:00.002+10:00

Quick link to a vid on the inner guts of the case:

Working guts

2009-06-18T19:04:00.004+10:00

Well, its been a while, and I havent been bothered updating the "blog", however I have the case running here and playable. This info is nearly a week old - been updating all my PC's (barring my fileserver) to Windows 7 RC and hammering out the last season of Battlestar Galactica. If BSG gets any more awesome I may poop myself. Stupid me for thinking it was a cheap Star Trek knockof when I saw it in the TV Guide.

The wiring, temporary instalation of the components (As it has to be painted its all temporary) using stick-on clips and tabs. It may sound stupid to do it twice, however it has the following key advantages:

Any failures now can be rectified for the final
I can trial how it all fits and make changes
All the wiring will be carefully taken out and put back in - making the final version a 'quick' affair
I WANT IT WORKING NOW! IVE BEEN WAITING SINCE FEBURAY DAMMIT

Components installed and working. Ready to play!

Had to slice the corners of the PS2 M-M cable to get it through the hole we drilled

I adhesive clipped the Hard drive to the roof of the box. The zip-ties gave me something to clip to.

The security-lock from behind. Certaintly not the best soldering, but functional

The completed wirings of the main buttons

Playing Bubsy II on the 'finished' base

Playing 1942 on the finished case

First steps

2009-06-04T23:24:00.002+10:00

Got around to doing a clip of the case as shown below. I crap on a bit about the making of it.

Also started on the wiring a bit. Not much details to be had really on this part - wiring up a IPAC isnt hard.

Day #3:Casebuilding

2009-05-31T20:39:00.006+10:00

Sigh, better part of a month before I got a chance to work more on the box. I guess that's what happens when you have friends fly over here to Tasmania for a holiday, and find out you have to have butt surgery.

Hinge done and parts ready to screw

After putting some of the components in to ensure it would fit, we got into making some more pine structure reinforcement.

Extra pine reinforcement to ensure good structure

The pine skirting was added for something to screw then MDF to and to hold it all together rigidly. Thankfully, I had allowed enough for this in the plan to fit everything into it.

Assembled base component. Note metal to the left of the box for control panel.

After assembly, we added in the cam-action lock I had bought from http://www.jacksonssecurity.com.au/. Unfortunately this isn't keyed like a arcade circular security lock, I had to order one of those in. The camlock you see in the picture is the closest lock in a 'normal' key, which I will swap around when i get the proper lock.

We drilled a appropriate hole for this lock by drilling two 16mm holes slightly adjacent to each other to give it the elongated circular with flat sides shape [What a lousy description]. This ensures that it will not twist at all, even under force, whereas just drilling a circular hole would allow motion if twisted hard enough.

We also added a second layer to the joystick area, and then screwed the joystick in from the bottom. This avoids using ugly bolts at the top (we could countersink them, but screws are even neater) I'm not 100% sold on the MDF holding the joystick in place, however I figure if it fails we can then go with the bolt option.

Which leaves us with:

1 base box with a bad case of Acne. A pack of 100 wood screws disappeared into this.

Side view of box. Obvious sandmarks here where I've been getting the edges lined up.

Inside view of box. Here weve added the lock, two fans (with part of the grill on the other side of the box) and the joystick.

Base view of box (part that sits on the table). Ventilation port here (minus the top part of the grille) and 4 foam feet to protect whatever surface its on from all that awesome.

Back view (tilted sideways). One half a grill added here, didnt add the second grill due to lack of bolts.

Day #2:Casebuilding

2009-05-03T20:25:00.005+10:00

Since all the parts were cut out last time, surely a finished base case and the top part cut out and sitting ready to assemble follows in this post right?

No. Stop asking. Im looking at you Jeremy.

I started the day by turning up over a hour late as I got half a hour out of Hobart before realising I had forgotten the continuous hinge. Turned around to go get it, and back again.

When I got there I immediately went to start on the angled upper control panel. Figured I could drill the holes out on it while Rod got working with the jigsaw on the cutout panel parts.

Unfortunately I Epic Failed with my measurements (Read 2mm back from 35mm instead of 2mm back from 40mm) so my control panel arcade buttons turned out a bit tighter than I wanted. Fortunately, I noticed immediately after I drilled so I was able to do the same on the other side to make the mistake symmetrical and therefore look planned.

Ready to assemble control panel. Notice the very tight grouping of the two sets of arcade buttons due to my eyesight. Spare hole is for volume control.

After drilling a 12mm hole for the barrel switch and Rod jigsawed out the holes for the push buttons, all was good after a little sanding. I ended up sanding out the second set of pushbuttons to match up with the mistake. The hole to the left is empty as it is where the potentiometer will go when I unsolder that from its motherboard (for volume control).

After a 'unacceptably' long lunch break which consisted of some awesome muffins, Coffee and toasted sandwiches, we resumed work.

Next up was the pinball button holes, which were also not centered correctly. Some more sanding fixed this up. We drilled a larger hole on the exterior of the case, and drilled the correct size hole on a piece of mdf on the inside. Apparently this is called doubleskinning.

1x Countersunk pushbutton for pinball games.

After that, there was a lot of jigsawing out and brainstorming how the heck were going to do xxx (mainly about the continuous hinge) We think we have a solution to the hinge problem, it will just have to show on the bottom of the box. And be bolted as nobody trusts screwing into 9mm MDF.

Yeah, lots of fiddly jigsawing/sanding. Rod insisted on following the curvature of the ventilation ports so they were completely flush, which looks awesome (see last pic) however fiddly with the sanding.

Yep, base part just sitting together again, however all drilled and ready to go. Put in all the buttons and crap for a good photo. Its looking incrediawesome. Here you can see the pinball pushbutton well.

Back view. Note how good the ventilation ports look as they fit well in to the mdf. You can can also see the motherboard I just stuck inside to ensure it all fits.

Day #1: Casebuilding

2009-04-26T19:38:00.003+10:00

1 unit of base case parts, cut.

A full day wound up with the parts for the base of the case unit cut and finished to the correct sizes. I managed to cut the holes for the buttons on the lower panel (leaving the upper control panel until next week) however basically all the rest has been done by a professional carpenter.

This base part will need some holes cut for ventalation, side buttons (for pinball), piano hinge on the base for fold-out access, and finially assembly. Then its onto construction of the top part.

Im anticipating at least another two full days of work until the woodworking is done. Then its onto painting.

Video capable

2009-04-23T19:06:00.005+10:00

The Project is no longer Video challenged!

Radeon HD2400 card with mobile and cat paw for scale.

Yeah, its a ATI Radeon HD 2400. $60 bucks down at the computers store second hand. Just removed the mounting bracked and presto.

Works a charm for the project, AND has more grunt than my main PC. Polishes up Half Life quite nice.

So why did I change my mind?

Anaglyph games, like Quake (i.e. old awesome games with red-blue 3d glasses)
S-VIDEO out, means I can link it to a RCA output for TV's (and S-VIDEO). This means that I can fold it up, plug it into a TV, plug in surround sound, and turn it into a damn console using the wireless xbox360 controller!
Better performance/resolution/graphics out of old DOS games and some MAME games.
This card is small enough to fit neatly and doesnt obstruct airflow
Removes some load from the 1.5ghz CPU
$60 is cheap enough to warrant the cost

Vid #6

2009-04-22T21:45:00.001+10:00

Due to popular demand, I bring to you:

Half Life on the project with xbox360 controller.

Finished Case*

2009-04-21T20:59:00.002+10:00

* Note some assembly required

2 sheets of 9mm MDF 1200x900 ~ $17 a pop from bunnings

Since im planning to start the case this Sunday, I thoght it would be prudent to get the actual wood required.

Vid #5: X36 controller

2009-04-21T20:10:00.005+10:00

Yeap, I went and got a wireless Xbox 360 controller. I spend hours trying to get a ps3 one to work to no avail. Over HERE I did find a article however I gave up after 9 hours and only being able to get it working wired. Something wrong with ppjoy - I could get it connected within minutes however couldnt get button recognition working. Also, even if I did get it going it would require frigging around with messy screens all the time - not the go for a project like this

So a X36 controlller from Dick Smiths was the go (M$ page). Popped the wireless part inside the cardboard model and installed the drivers fine.

From my struggle with the PS3 controller, I had installed XPadder, which worked a dream for this. Using this simple program, I was able to bind buttons to all the parts of the controller except for the middle button. This worked a treat for platform games (the d-pad didnt seem as bad as lots of people say) and for FPS's.

I bound the left analogue and d-pad to arrows, and the right analogue to mouse. This meant I could set it up for fps quite well, and use it for old games with ease.

Additional: Had to throw in this analogy I used in a email discussing this very project. Seriously, why?

PS: Ive got this x36 controller for a specific purpose: A console. (Ive just realized this has turned into a console project than anything else) Why would anyone WANT TO use a controller on PC for FPS games? Its like allowing people to play golf with a putter on each shot because there used to playing minigolf. If you wanna play with the big toys you gotta use em properly!

Vid #4

2009-04-17T01:00:00.003+10:00

Vid #4 of theprojects design process.

Please note the poor lie I put in here

Not sure how I made a precisely measured cardboard cutout without doing any designing beforehand.

Comander Keeeeeeeeeen

2009-04-17T00:04:00.002+10:00

Alright, so I had a lot of emulators working (basically all 2nd gen to 4th gen barring anything that was terribly boring or was exclusively japan/chine) but what about Billy Blaze? Considering I taught myself to read the Standard Galactac Alphabet in high school the oldschool DOS games had to be involved.

So, how do we accomplish this with MAMEWAH in a cabinet-style envoroment?

http://www.dosbox.com/. Everyone knows of DOSBOX right?

Alright, so I downloaded it, extracted it into my d:/emulators directory, and now what? How to MAMEWAH it up?

I found it best to run dosbox as the emulator, and have batch files running each file as nessecary. This means you can run a autohotkey file in there if required, and can run DOSBOX commands to get the cycles right, etc.

PCGAMES.ini

emulator_commandline d:\emulators\dosbox\dosbox.exe "[rompath]\[name].[romext]" -fullscreen -exit {nodosbox}

Runs doxbox, with the argument of the batch file in question, runs in fullscreen (-fullscreen) and exits when the batch file is done (-exit)

Then basically setup your dosgames directory with batch files, and sent mamewahs 'romext' to .bat and point the 'rom' folder to where all your batch files are.

Please note, that a number of games ive installed recently drop outta fullscreen and run at odd speeds - I'm more interested in getting the woodwork done and painted before I fug around too much with software.

Vid #3

2009-04-16T23:43:00.003+10:00

Youtube vid 3 of the case.

At this point, ive drawn up designs, requisitioned a 1100mmx1100mm pallet sheet from work and modeled a cardboard box based on the designs. As you can see from the clip, it works quite well, and its strong enough to play on (playtested for weeks now)

Added the clip at the end as I forgot to go back and show the top - you see it in vid 4 anyway. Threw in the mobo/psu into it as picture below and (as my Math Methods teacher always said) 'Got stuck right into it!'

I omitted explanantion on the whole design/model process. It wasnt that exciting, mostly involved the cat playing with/hiding my ruler and pencil.

Now, the end clip shows the two lighted buttons lighted up, but I havent posted on it yet. Time will tell young grasshopper... However, its not hard, just looks cool.

Autohotkey

2009-04-16T22:38:00.008+10:00

You makin a MAME case? Are you?

Then frelling well get this: http://www.autohotkey.com/

Why you ask? Its a program, sorry, FREE program that allows you to rebind keys basically. For starters. Theres a lot more it can do.

I got it for the trouble I had with WinVICE: To exit, you required Ctrl-x. Not very cab-friendly, as dammit I wanna use ESC to exit thanks.

Autohotkey comes in here, and delivers in spades. (Not only that, spades are trump this trick too...)

I made two files as follows:

Code: autoexit.ahk

#singleinstance ignore ;Once program running, dont run twice
esc::!x ;Bind ESC :to: Ctrl-X (!=ctrl)
p::!j ;Bind P :to: Ctrl-J (!=Ctrl)

Line #1 So this program would only run once (if run again the program exits due to the first line)

Line #2When ESC is pushed, it parses Ctrl-X to windows instad. (So now, I can exit this emulator with ESC, which is standard with all other emulators I have)

Line #3When P is pushed, it parses Ctrl-J (Ctrl-J swaps C64 joysticks, as some games use joy#2 as main controller)

So how does a *.ahk file help me with programs like MAMEWAH?????

Autohotkey also enters itslef into windows right-click menu. So right clicking on a ahk file allows you to compile to exe. Do that, and you have a EXE file that will function exactly the same.

Fantastic.. buut if i Exit and go to another program, ESC is still Ctrl-X...

So I wrote this to fix that:

Code: autoexite.ahk

#singleinstance ignore
DetectHiddenWindows On ; Allows a script's hidden main window to be detected.
SetTitleMatchMode 2 ; Avoids the need to specify the full path of the file below.
WinClose escexit.exe ; Update this to reflect the script's name (case sensitive).

Alright, so what this script does is basically find the PID of the original program we ran, and nukes it. change the 'escexit.exe' to the name of your program and volia!

Hows that help? Run the first program before your emulator, run the second one after it. Most frontends should do this, the following is how I did it in my MAMEWAH script:

CODE: WinVICE.bat

start escexit.exe
x64.exe -fullscreen -VICIIdsize +confirmexit -autostart %1
escexite.exe

START is a DOS command that runs the .exe and returns control to the batch file. (Without it, the batch file waits for escexit to finish, which it doesnt until its forcably exited by escexite.exe. Net result is the batch hangs and never executes x64.exe)

xt64 command line: -fullscreen starts in fullscrenn, -VICIIdsize I found required to get it FULL fulscreen +confirmexit removes the annoying messagebox "DO YOU WANT TO EXIT Y/N", and -autostart runs the file parsed to it. %1 of course is replaced with the argument that is passed to the batch file.

So my WINVICE.INI looks like:

...
emulator_commandline d:\emulators\WinVICE\winvice.bat "[rompath]\[name].[romext]"{nodosbox}
...

Alright, so yay sausages! Who cares you moron, you can program the IPAC to different keybinds for each file!

Yes you can. I decided not to, beacuse of the following points:

Customizable keys must be stored in flash memory. Flash memory has a limited number of write cycles. IPACS are not cheap. (Yes, i know it has millions of write cycles, im a perfectionist)
If interupted during repogramming, you end up with the old control set.
I read that it takes a few seconds to get it programmed, and if controls are slammed around the programming is interuppted, and the above point happens.
Drunk twenty-somethings (and the odd thirty-something) tend to get excited about nostalgia, and wont be patient when they get a arcade joystick in their dorito-stained hands.
Sitting a program in between the keyboard port and the software keyboard queue is quite neat.
I need this functionality for DOS programs like COMMANDER KEEN, QUAKE and DOOM, where I can run a AHK file per-game (To bind letters like Y for confirm exit to a spare button). Might as well get used to it.

Vid #2

2009-04-16T21:03:00.001+10:00

Ok I found video 2 i uploaded a few days ago - set as private. Explain why I couldnt find it in my channel.

Fairl...Fairlane? Flaccard? I dun..cant remember"

ITS FAIRCHILD MORON! ITS RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOU! FAIRCHILD CHANNEL F!

I laughed so hard at the starkness of my stupididity voiceovering this documentary that I uploaded it instead of re-recording it. ITS THERE IN LARGE LETTERS.

Tech interlude

2009-04-14T21:56:00.007+10:00

*interlude*

So I got the micro-atx running with a variety of software, of course partitioning D: for all the emulators software, and leaving C:\ a 'pristine' windows install (Can windows be described as pristine?)

(Sidenote: Ive just found out why I find shiny things in my shoes of a morning - it appears my cat is a bowerbird and my shoes are her nest)

Next up was the actual controller parts. These came from ozstick in Melbourne, along with a IPAC. Went to Bunnings and found a nice large peice of chipboard scrap.


Parts finially here! Beer is in order Dummy trial panel	Foreman approves Wiring finished

Basically, i just got myself a nice 28mm drill bit and away I went (actually, I nearly ripped my arm off when I put a fresh battery in my drill) A hour of stripping and crimping later, and it was ready to go. Since the joystick has a dust protector, you can easliy use a 28mm bit for the hole.

Im skipping over the IPAC goodness as well as the wiring as its dead easy and plent of sites have already covered it.

D:\ ended up with the directories:

d:\emulators

d:\roms

d:\mamewah

Yes, mamewah featured as my front end of choice, because its more complicated than a DDR machine based on brain surgery, its customizable to a fault, and it runs well on hardware with no GFX card. The others I tried had nice smooth animations and failed on the onboard video.

So onto video card - why no video cards?

Cost
Space
Heat

I could have got a cheapo-card and got a ribbon PCI-E riser, but.. for what? a nicer frontend and the ability to play a few more MAME games? Nah, not worth the headache. For now.

So I started with some old old incredibly old-school stuff. Cue Atari 2600 stage left.

I never had a atari, only even got to play River Raid once...

Took a bit to get the z26 emulator going fullscreen, but it was worth it. Nice simple program thankyou, no bloatware here.

After stuffing around with the 2nd gen consoles (I worked everything into console generations, based on Wikipedia's articles) I moved on to a console that I always wanted but never got: The SNES. Easy as all hell with zSNES!

Yeah, SimCity was my year 7 lunchtime break on ancient 286's - featured here on zSNES

(sidenote: Anyone else remember the original CD's you got at school? Came in a jewel case with a metal slot just like a 3"1/4 floppy?.. no? damn. What about running Windows 3.1 on a school network and being able to get the server to crash by opening the same file on 30 computers at once?)

Mamewah worked perfectly for linking these in, and a fine list more.

At this point, I had 2GB ram in the box - im tempted to swap it out with a 1gb or a 512 from the fileserver. Or perhaps with onboard video hoggin up all the space its worth leavin a lot free.

Also here I had a 120GB IDE HDD... Plenty until I thought of adding a jukebox program and media playback capabilities.

Which leads me neatly onto me getting bored of installing emulators and hence a jukebox:

Mmm Quake 2 soundtrack

Jukebox 'emulator' courtesy of DWJuke. What a fantastic little program for the project. Its a good argument to attempt to fit a small ex-computer speaker subwoofer I have sitting here in the case.

With some Quake2 OST blaring, I took it one step further, and worked out how I could get DOS games running with DOSbox on mamewah.

Terry Pratchett said it best: "Eat leaden death, demon..."

Come get some!

WOLF3d! Chuck bucket from the awesome psuedo 3-d graphics optional.

All was right in my world, so i lost a few days just playing the damn thing. A week, actually.

Vid #1

2009-04-14T21:30:00.006+10:00

Alright, now I have a "blog" I can link the vid I put up a while ago. Few more sitting on my HDD ready to upload. Unfortunatly, these uploads have been blocked by work and sheer lazyness.

Win '98, roused from its sleep, threw a bluescreen at the mortal that dared distrub its sleep, then returned to its eon-long slumber. And you thought Cthulhu was bad.

Yeah, I decided to try and wipe the installation and install '98. "It will boot faster", I thought. "Easier to do a splash bootup screen", I thought.

And it did, it just didnt do much else. 98 didnt have the video drive, so I figured it would be a quick case of installing the 98 drive off the mobo driver CD. Right? WRONG...

Installing the driver disk was made of fail, as 75% of the time I inserted the CD, it came up as a audio drive. Also, 50% of the time the drive bay closed it blue-screened. When I did get it in, the 98 drive failed to install. Copying the drivers across manually blue screened the sucker as well.

Back to XP i go...

(sidenote: [Speaking of cthulhu] I recently built a compy for a mate of mine who wanted a non-dell [shudder] PC. It was crawling with viruses and had oven cleaner sprayed all over it in a attempt to lube up a noisy GFX fan. Clearly there was dark forces at work here - this PC had to be sanctified before autopsy)

Ia! Ia! Cthulhu fhtagn!

Operation: Bored weekend start

2009-04-14T21:27:00.006+10:00

Ok, so it started off after playing a MAME build for a bit after some emails from a mate. I thought "This is cool, I can get aboard this".

However, since MAME cases are dime a dozen, I got a bit meh about doing something that had been done more times than Ron Jeremy.

Also is the fact that I already have enough crap clutterin the unit and dammit if I was going to build something only to find it doesnt fit out doors again. I learnt the last time - I built my bed-base and very well glued it together to find id need to, of course, dissasemble it to get it downstairs whenever I move on from this place.

So i figured id make a bartop. However my only 'spare' monitor was a 19" LCD. Would make a dicky bartop, as it would work out almost like a square edge not a nice shape.

This got me thinking that I could fold away the LCD flat for storage, and "The Project" concept was born.

A foldup-into-a-suitcase portable mame case perfect for parties!

Has it been done before like this? Not that I can find on BYOAC forums or well, anywhere. Perhaps a few people starting something like it. Hopefully its semi-original. (Edit 31/8/9: One has been done similar by Bender @ BYOAC : http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=84113.0.)

So I poked my head into my random closet of joy and found all the computer mobos ive had lying around for ages.

Yep, a small selection of crap i have lying around

I started going through the mobos, only to find one made my PSU's asplode, another's CPU had fused to its heatsink and the third ran. The one that ran was a old Celeron I aquired (I bought a old case for a linux fileserver project and it came with Celeron bits I couldnt even give back to the guy)

So i hooked it up on the table, and it barely loaded XP. Fail #1.

I pitched all the mobos in the end after hours of frigging around with them. Of course, after i bought a micro-atx I found a decent mobo i had wedged in between my N64 and a Futurama poster.

Ended up with a micro-atx mobo for $100 (VIA MM3500 [Info bottom page]), some cheap-o RAM and a old IDE HDD (going to get a SATA one soon for it)

1x Great mobo

Installed XP fine, and got started.

Fuggit

2009-04-14T20:12:00.006+10:00

Alright, so I have a "blog". Never been keen on these things, im not really fussed about that cute guy in math class, or if your dog can do backfilps, or if you really did build a satellite that can fire rebar.

Actually, the latter IS cool.

I needed to start posting addition to my current project, imaginatively called "The Project". So I fired up notepad, and got into a basic code for some pics and the site. Then I remembered I would require FTP, and for images to make smaller ones for thumbnails. My laziness self-defence mechanism kicked in and I immediately went for another beer.

Thought about how easy a "blog" would be to update along with some of the new image sites. A 'Publishing tool' basically. For lazy people like me. So I er, got one. I already had some YouTube vids up for posterity, and Picasa had upload features. All this cant-be-assedry and automagical functions fell into place.

So wtf is "The Project". Its a little like this:

Yep, its currently a cardboard model of a portable "suitcase" MAME box. Bit of a all-in-one party machine. This was started quite a while ago, however I never could be buggered uploading pics anywhere.

Since I meant to post updates in order of how I've done things, ill have to go back to the beginning, badly written movie dreamscape style.

Addendum:

1: Yeah, Ill be adding talking marks around blog until im convinced otherwise the usefulness of these things (or I forget)

2: Complaining about new technology makes me sound so bloody old.

Overview

2009-04-13T18:45:00.002+10:00

Alright, so I think ill need to post a overview of the project before I get to disjointed in my posting.

Overview:

'The Project' is a MAME box that folds up into a portable breifcase-like design. This concept of this is to have a nice sized control panel, decent LCD screen, and all the parts nessecary to make it work all in a portable yet sturdy box. Something you can throw in the passenger seat in the car and not have to worry about damaging a joystick or a screen.

PLAN	WORK IN PROGRESS

Unfolded and ready-to playcardboard model. 'Standard' 6-button control panel, 4 'admin' buttons up top, red backlit 'Instert coin' and green backlit on/off button. Volume-control and administrative barrel-lock to come. LCD fits in the back peice where marked, and two speakers and a small subwoofer mounted inside the beveled area up top. Buttons on side for pinball games.

PLAN	WORK IN PROGRESS

Closed model. Shown here buttons for pinball. Finished case will also feature AC in via standard D plug thingy, audio out jack, 4x USB for external controlers, 15 D-plug for second external arcade controller, Network port for uploading files, and ventlation ports. Carry-handle and clips holding the two sections closed.

The case will be built soon(tm) (No room or tools in a unit, so going to a mates shed for a weekend coming up) and will measure upon completion 430x400x235 and will have 2.1 sound (2 speaks and a small subwoofer), a 19" LCD, and a emulator array of over 25 consoles/handhelds, along with a jukbox, media player and pinball games. This list is due to expand - I want to get the box going before doing too much more on the software. Has enough CPU poewer to emulate anything from 1970-1995 (Some variations, can run some arcade games right up to 2000, and handhelds. Ive decided not to emulate 5th gen console onward).

Backstory:

Waay back around the 1st of Feb '09, I decided to build myself a MAME case. Not all that exciting compared to the number of excelent cases avaliable. Alas, I already have enough crap in my unit so that I barely can fit much more, so a full cabinet was looking unlikely.

I started to think about making a bartop case, however even that was a bit meh with my avaliable parts. I had a old "19 LCD avaliable, and none of my old motherboards worked properly. Also, having a LCD of that size made things a bit dicky. I started wondering if i could fold it flat for storage when not in use and 'The Project' was born.

This is the sort of thing I see is something you bring to a party - rock up, unfold it and casually announce that you can be playing anything from 1942 from the arcade, Pitfall from Atari 2600, Great Giana sisters from the C64, DOOM from the old DOS days, Super Metriod from the SNES, Pinball tables from classic pinballs, listen to the best game OST's on the built in jukebox and see the latest game trailors on the media player. Ive already lost countless hours playin on the cardboard model case held together by tape!

SPECS:

Folded up: 430x400x235

Unfolded: 430x400x575

CPU: ~1.50Ghz

RAM: 2Gb

Video: Onboard (May be a PCI-E card eventually, if I find that i can play Freespace 2...)

HDD: Currently 120gb, expandable. Likely 300+Gb HDD added in the future.

Controls:

Single player arcade built in, second player avaliable by seperate arcade controller plugged into the main case.

Sanwa joystick, 4-8 way interchangable operation
Standard dimple pushbuttons
Barrellock switch for admin menus
Insert coin backlit button
On/Off backlit button
Pinball buttons countersunk on the sides

More controllers avaliable by 4x USB ports.

Wired USB keybaord (possibly roll-up keyboard for spill-proofage)

Wireless mouse (looking into feasability of adding a XBOX 360 controller as a wireless perhiperal)

Current Emulator list (more to come):

Console

Fairchild Channel F

Atari 2600

Intellivision

Atari 5200

Colecovision

Vectrex

SG-1000

NES

Sega Master System

Atari 7800

Turbografx-16

Sega Genesis/Megadrive

SNES

Amiga

C=64

MSX

MSX2

Handhelds

Gameboy Mono

Gameboy Colour

Gameboy Advance

Atari Lynx

Sega Gamegear

Neogeo Mono

Neogeo Colour

Pc games

Jukebox

Video player

Arcade

Pinball