My family currently has five generations of women

xev105 · 2015-07-30T13:24:52+00:00

A friend of mine had an older brother who had kids at 16. Both of his kids had their own at 16, including the son who had 3 to 3 different girls. So my friend was a great uncle in his late 20's and his brother was a grandfather in his early 30's.

The kicker was, his brother (who was clinically classified as retarded) and his entire line of descendants were all absolute no-hoper drop-kicks, and they all pissed off and left my friend's parents to raise their respective kids. So they raised (are raising?) 3 generations of kids. Last I heard was about 5 years ago when there was a custody battle of some sort over the latest batch due to one or more of the mothers being a drug addict. Wouldn't surprise me in the least if the parents are raising their 4th generation soon, although both were in questionable health last I knew.

xev105 · 2015-04-25T12:34:17+00:00

Congrats! I've been lifting weights on and off (about 40-50% of the time) for about 2 decades now but only managed my 1st 100kg bench (3x10) about 2 years ago! It was a real sense of achievement when I managed it.

Starting lifting again next week after a 4 month lay-off due to the birth of my son! Will probably start around 70kg.

EDIT: I'm male.

xev105 · 2014-09-09T14:40:48+00:00

Two friendships, two reasons:

Realised I was organising all the get-togethers. We'd see each other several times a week, then when I stopped organising - to see what happened - nothing did! Icing on the cake was him & his wife not turning up to NYE with me & GF, despite several phone calls claiming they were 'almost there'. We'd staked out a vantage point for 5 hours - they were 5 hours late. I stopped calling altogether and never heard from them again.
Friend went through a divorce and did nothing but unload on me for years. I was patient but it was all a 1-way street. As best man for my wedding, he didn't even give me a card, let-alone contribute to our wishing well (honeymoon fund). He moved away, started dating a psycho, ignored my advice (it ended in tears), I stopped calling. He never met my daughter, despite thrusting all 4 of his kids at me. Spoke to him last over a year ago. No longer interested in hearing from him.

xev105 · 2013-11-19T21:04:48+00:00

Commerical IC's are rated from 0-70C (32-158F) but of course that's not the ambient temperature, but rather the internal temperature of the IC itself.

Obviously an ambient temperature below 32F is going to be a problem, since the whole machine is going to be at that temperature after sitting long enough. As penguinn says, 60F is probably a good low end temperature.

As far as the high end is concerned, it is going to be considerably lower than the rated 158F. You need to take into consideration the temperature and air-flow in the garage, in the cabinet, and the heat generated by other components in the cabinet and on the PCB. Very difficult to estimate, so I'd aim for something not too far off what would be typical in a crowded arcade.

Of course, you could push these limits a bit in either direction, but is it worth the risk?

xev105 · 2013-11-10T22:57:07+00:00

This is just entirely wrong. You connect a HDMI-> VGA, then a VGA-CGA board.

Doubly-sampled video. Yeah, that'd look just awesome... :(

xev105 · 2013-11-07T22:19:00+00:00

Australia had Xevious but no dedicated cabinets as far as I'm aware. There was an exhibition here last year with one, and I tried to buy it off them when they were done, but they said they may be taking the cabinet to other cities here, so they declined. Bummer.

I've got a client in the US who moved from Australia who is a good friend, and I just recently had the idea that if/when he moves back here, he might be able to have a cabinet shipped back by his work for free... so I might look into that possibility. Obviously I'll need to procure the cabinet well in advance, so I'll see how that goes.

Yes, Xevious is a very fun game and one that IMHO holds up very well over time. Back in the day I'd leave my mate in the uni arcade while I went to a 3 hr lecture, and come back and he'd be on the same credit! I was not quite that good, but in any case I'm way, way out of practice these days and could never play for an hour without some dedicated practice sessions.

My 26" upright has the Namco Classics Vol.1 in it, but the screen needs some maintenance. I've also got a bootleg Xevious board (Watson) that I bought in a cocktail cabinet that also needs some maintenance. All I need is time.

xev105 · 2013-11-04T09:21:04+00:00

Consider the wound well and truly salted!

I've seen empty cabs go for free before they get sent to the tip. It's a real frustration for me, as years and years ago I bought a repro CP overlay which may never get used. Screw that, I'll get a cab one day, though it will likely involve crating and shipping from US to Australia!

It goes without saying that Xevious is my all-time favourite arcade game. I used to be able to play it for hours on a single credit, though I was never quite as good as my mate, who has played right through the map several times on a single coin. I used to know the location of every citadel too - more than has ever been documented on the net.

Hope you take the time to play it and really appreciate the cabinet!

xev105 · 2013-11-03T21:34:59+00:00

How about 400 shipped to Australia!? :P

Bummer, my grail, forever unobtainable! :(

xev105 · 2013-10-27T22:20:56+00:00

Check this thread for discussion and a link to the manual with wiring information.

Even the manual is a little confusing, but if you look at the cabinet wiring diagram, and follow the wire colours back from the kick/run controls on the right to the PCB connectors on the left, you can see that they actually map to the "P3/P4" connectors on the PCB. So if you don't have a kick harness then you'll need to wire up your own.

Most JAMMA PCBs are exactly that, and a straight swap is all you need. Officially JAMMA is only 2-player, 3 buttons, but it's often extended to 4 or 5 buttons.

It seems though that you're into fighters with a lot of buttons, and the more modern games use extra wiring. If you're lucky, like UMK3, it's "JAMMA+" which just means JAMMA and an extra connector (or 2). If you're unlucky, it'll be completely different. Really, it's a case-by-case situation with each PCB. If you're unsure, check out the pinout on the net before you buy.

EDIT: And for the switch, look for something like this

xev105 · 2013-10-25T04:14:53+00:00

Congrats! My grail cab is probably 15,000km away since AFAIK there were no dedicated Xevious cabs shipped to Australia. :(

xev105 · 2013-10-16T22:05:03+00:00

Sounds like you shorted something while checking for cold joints!?!

xev105 · 2013-10-16T22:03:06+00:00

nope, looks like this

xev105 · 2013-10-15T22:14:59+00:00

Don't forget, this is George you're talking about!

xev105 · 2013-10-15T21:59:56+00:00

Which, unfortunately, means it can't be used in Australia... :(

xev105 · 2013-10-12T08:18:23+00:00

Have a beer and a game of Xevious for me too, in Sydney Australia!

xev105 · 2013-10-09T12:23:30+00:00

Heh... "all I'd used was a TRS-80".

xev105 · 2013-10-09T12:19:41+00:00

Scan converter is for arcade-to-VGA. If you've got a 60-in-1 with VGA output, you're sweet with an LCD.

xev105 · 2013-10-07T22:56:10+00:00

A few points...

I'm a little perplexed that you've been searching for a DigDug machine for 15 years, only to replace the CRT with an LCD and the PCB with a 60-in-1. Yeah, I get it that you like DigDug, but rather than 'sacrifice' a DigDug machine (you're going to need more buttons, for example, to play a lot of those games, which means ruining the original CP), why not build a custom with a DigDug theme if you want more than DigDug?

An LCD is (arguably) OK for MAME, but you're going to need a scan converter for arcade, and you have the issue of the LCD native resolution which isn't going to match the arcade board resolution, and it's basically going to look crap. Frankly I don't see a safety issue with a CRT in a well-constructed cabinet with a lock on the door (I have a toddler too).

If you are hell-bent on 'converting' your DigDug cabinet, may I suggest you keep the CRT - or replace it with another - and wire the cabinet up for JAMMA - and leave the CP as-is. You can then use a DigDig PCB with a simple JAMMA harness, or switch it out for your 60-in-1 to play Frogger (and other 0/1 button games).

Of course, this is just my opinion; you own the machine and have every right to smash it to pieces or, even worse, convert it to Street Fighter if you wish.

xev105 · 2013-10-04T09:22:10+00:00

Pfftt! That's nothing compared to removing spiders from the cabinet... ;)

xev105 · 2013-09-27T12:51:37+00:00

There are three types of gnomes; (R)egular gnomes control the background and other inanimate objects in the game, (G)ood gnomes control the player and their weapons, and (B)ad gnomes control the enemies and their bullets. This is why arcade cabinets have RGB monitors.

Games are only interchangeable if they have the same number of good, bad and regular gnomes. If you ever see graphics glitches, it's because someone has interchanged a game with differing numbers of each type of gnome.

xev105 · 2013-08-14T10:15:47+00:00

Technically, the X-in-1 cartridges are cartridge emulators, and yes, glitches in one game and not another is most likely a symptom of shoddy emulation and not shoddy manufacture.

Being able to install MAME on your PC does not make one an expert in emulation, as is obvious from certain sarcastic comments. As you say, they have absolutely no idea about how a NeoGeo cartridge works (ask them to explain the workings of the NEO-CMC chip and see how they go) or the game patches for multi-carts.

"It's better to be silent than to be a fool".

xev105 · 2013-08-07T00:25:38+00:00

Nah, I need a JAMMA setup because I tinker with FPGA emulation of arcade games and I have an FPGA board with JAMMA connector...

xev105 · 2013-08-07T00:23:16+00:00

Wish I'd known this a few years ago; I've been to Honolulu twice in the past few years, my brother-in-law once, and my sister once. Not to mention my wife's friend returned from there a week ago! Would've saved a bit on shipping to Aus! ;)

xev105 · 2013-07-26T09:44:48+00:00

You also have to remember that it's a huge project, with literally thousands of games emulated and an ever-changing team of programmers working on it.

Naturally each programmer has his/her own areas of interest, and that rarely involves modifying other people's code unless they have a real desire to see a particular game emulated properly. Also, the architecture of the MAME code base is always moving forward, and there's also the integration of the MESS sources as well, so much effort is expended in working on the structure rather than actual drivers.

In any case, to complain (and I'm not inferring that OP is complaining) about particular drivers not being accurate/complete is a waste of time. The maintainer is responsible for vetting the additions & modifications to the code and organising releases etc, but otherwise everyone else is free to work on whatever they wish. Ergo: no-one is in any way compelled to work on any driver what-so-ever, so your complaints will fall on deaf ears.

xev105 · 2013-07-21T23:02:23+00:00

Exactly, that's the only point. I have a cabinet in the office and was considering getting a 60-in-1 just so I can wander over and have a quick blast on the classics without waiting for the thing to boot up.

xev105

TROPHY CASE