OK, not strictly Jamma or supergun discussion so put it here. This is going to be mine and a friends current summer project......woohoo. Came about after a pub lunch discussion this afternoon (fueled by a few pints). Basically what we are going to do, is take an old PC and make a MAME cabinent, exciting I hear you say, well yes and no. We want to make one for a laugh, but are limited by space, so we are going to work it on demensions of 3ft height and 2ft lenth/width. So its gonna be small, and portable for room to room. Basing it around an Old PC we have laying about, an AMD 1.4Ghz Athlon, 700+Mb RAM, and a 40 gig HDD and an old 64Mb geforce 2MX with TV out. We needed TV out so we can conect it to the portable TV we are going to use for the display. So we are going to make a frame to house the TV and PC. The PC is going to be stripped of all plastic side panels, just keeping the metal frame for all companents to fit in (and to give us somethig to work around). Same with the TV, we are un-sre if we are going to keep it in the plastic case, or (so we can maybe make it smaller) strip away the plastic and have a bare electronics and rig it in the case (DANGER, RISK OF HIGH SHOCK AND DEATH.....WOOHOO), but unsure of shielding etc so any experts!?!? We are then going to model the external shell as an arcade machine (prob formica/hardboard) with mock up plastic marquee (gonna light that on a 9v circuit) and possible a fake control setup (stick and buttons) made out of old sinclair/amstrad joysticks just for that novel touch. The controllers for the MiniM (as it will now be called) are gonna 4 USB pads, USB 4 PORTHUB stripped and mounted in the front and a hole for the joypads to sit in. Here is an EXCELLENT, TOTALY AMAZING SUPER PRE SKETCH MOCK UP of the unit, using.......ahem...paint (so my AutoCAD qualification wasnt wasted!!) With work and such (ie drinking, girlfriends and general ladish behaviour) we expect this project to take about 3-4 months in our lesuire time. So what do you guys think......
Blimey, wish that was classed as "an old PC" to me. its got more ram than my main system! Anynway, i dont really have any advice other than to watch out on heat issues - make sure theres plenty of cooling in that system, and best of luck to you!
yea, we have a few PC system fans which are going to be mounted onto the frame of the PC chassis, AND then maybe get a few more and place them around the wooden case to keep air ciruculated. My mate even suggested taking an old FAN and just placing that inside to keep air ciruclated but its a bulky old monster of a thing and my proven track record with electrics dosent really qualify me to take things apart (PC'S NO problem, general consumer products, kettles, TV etc should have a warning with my name on saying do not touch!!). So we may stick with 12v PC Fans.
I know exactly what you mean - i blew a saturn - giving myself a nice 240V AC shock while doing it. And the best part? I'd had the console less than 1 hr....
hell, I've got 2! not certain if the CD assembly works on wither though - one i think might simply be out of alignmentas it spins the disc and the laser moves, but it doesnt do too good a job of reading discs - it only manages around 1/2 of my games. But hey, your welcome to it.
Ah first snag........decided to strip the motherboard from the case along with the PSU, jusyt plugged it all in for the first time in about 4 months and I get 8 beeps at the start on the POST tests.....8 beeps, jesus ....and according to this 8 beeps is: 8 short = Display memory Read/Write test failure so Im going to assume this is due to the graphics card, which for the record is a very very old 1mb S3Virge which I think no longer works. I only used it to see if it would still boot, but Im hoping, when my mate turns up with the 64mbGF2MX in the morning all should be fine. But can someone confirm the 8 beeps does infact mean its a display error!!?!?
Motherboard details: GA - 72XE (VIA KT133A) (GigaByte) Not sure on the BIOS as I cant boot at the moment (see previous post) so not sure what it is, but according to the BIOS chip on the board its: 686 AMIBIOS I do remember we flashed the BIOS and it worked fine for a year and then we upgraded machines and thus the machine has been in storage. I always thought the POST Test beeps were generic regardless of motherboard and BIOS settings.........
Well I could do with various Saturn spare parts... what are the models on those machines? Round or oval buttons?
unfortunately not thats the one that died within the first 1/2 hr of having the console in my hands - i threw it away
