Arcade Restoration
The basis of this restoration was to utilise a 19 inch television monitor, which we de-cased to fit into the space.We then had to rebuild the control panels out of a composite aluminium and fit new buttons and joysticks. all of this gets plugged into a purpose built conversion board called a J-Pac made by Ultimarc.
We then decided to identify a suitable computer to run the game emulation software MAME., and decided that serendipity was indeed present as my old computer was not up to the task of modern gaming so needed to be upgraded asap. Any old P4 2.8Ghz with 2 GB of Ram will run it so we had our donor computer.
"Serendipity was indeed present as my old computer was not up to the task of modern gaming so needed to be upgraded asap."
MAME and a steep learning curve
We spent the next couple of months setting up MAME on the test-bench, and through many, many, many, many, get the pattern forming here, trials and errors, and a not insubstantial number of beers, we finally got it to boot up properly, and respond to all of the controls. The next part was to get it to output to the television.
It can be said that when one tries to combine different generations and genre of electrical equipment, you experience either of 3 outcomes. You either:
- become a Buddhist/Zen master,
- spend an exorbitant amount of money in therapy, or
- experience new and unparalleled symptoms similar to a cross between a stroke/heart attack/seizure.
I found that I started at the latter and worked back to Buddhism.
But.....we did end up doing it finally.
How, that is another story for
another time.