Ok, for some reason my pictures aren't loading up from here, but I'll see if I can get that fixed. I may be starting a new project soon, but we'll see.
Laters.
JC

ARCHIVE:
Oct 1, 2003: Apologies in order, I have tons of pictures of my stuff from my great digital camera, but I havent posted any yet. Call it laziness, or lack of funds to do anything substantial to the projects. I have found a potential new Phoenix Board for $25 bucks but we'll see if it turns out. I promise that I will have pix up before the end of the month. One of these nights I am going to completely overhaul this page, and archive the old page, just to make it look nice 'n Neat. So Stay Tuned.

Sept 1,2003: Wow, well over a month and no updates, yikes! So anyway here's the express version of the past month. ProfoundDevices responded to my feedback, saying that a new unit was on the way, as of yet, no new encoder is here. What I did get was several e-mails from others who were also screwed by this guy. So again, do not buy from him. Anyway, I got my encoder from GroovyGameGear, the KeyWiz Max. Freakin Awesome! Highly recommend it. Does everything I want and more. So now the Mame machine is up and running. I still need a marquee, and coin door/mechs, but at least it works. In other news I also got a digital camera, so Pics are forthcoming, really soon. I think I would be much more interested in this stuff if I was making a lot more money. Then again, who wouldn't?

July 24,2003: Well no updates lately, but with good reason. Flat out lack of time and energy. But, I'll fill you in. Couple of weeks ago, had some vicious flooding in our area, fortunately the basement survived with only minor damage. Neither cabinet got wet somehow. Guy finally shipped my keyboard encoder on July 11th, which means I got it on July 15th, almost a month after I paid for it, how's that for speedy shipping? Plus, the damn thing doesn't work! After several e-mails to the sender, I left negative feedback, since he doesn't feel the need to respond to me. Nothing personal, but when you sell a new product, you should make sure it works right. So anyone looking for keyboard encoders, avoid ProfoundDevices. Maybe you'll have better luck but why chance it. I guess I'm gonna go back to plan A which is order the one from GroovyGameGear, the KeyWhiz. I'll let you know how that turns out. So the Mame cabinet remains the pathetic shell that it has been for a while, and due to a lack of funds, Both cabs will probably be that way for a while, unless I find a damn good deal. We're having a yard sale this weekend so if you're in the central Illinois area, come on by. Email me and I'll tell ya how to get here.

BTW, here's the picture of the product in the eBay description.



And here's the product as received.


Oooh look at the fine craftsmanship:P

Here's a link to the cable the guy is selling. Same as mine.

Click HERE

July 02,2003: Nothing much new, still waiting for my Keyboard encoder, does 2 weeks seem that long? It does when you're waiting to kick a little video game ass, especially since the only thing left for me to get to be fully functional is that damn encoder, and a coin door. Ok I need a Marquee and a lamp too, but that won't stop the game from working. I'm already plotting my next move, another Mame cab. Anyone have a sit down racing game, or other cockpit game they don't want anymore? I wanna build a nice 25" racing game cabinet, but I guess I shopuld finish what I got first. Anyway, here's a few pix from my crappy web cam. BTW, the basement remodeling project is coming along nicely, although 2 of my CD shelves sustained some water damage at some point. Yeeeeech!

I really need to get that digital camera. When i do, I'll post a few pics of the "retro basement".

June 19, 2003: It's ALIVE!!!!! Alright not exactly, but I did a basic hookup to get the PC running on the MAME cab, and it works... kinda. What I was afraid of has come to pass, the vertical games don't work very well, and the text is difficult to read, but at least it works. with a few minor tweaks, maybe a monitor rotation, who knows. Pac Man works great, but Centipede, Arkanoid, etc. do not. I haven't gotten my encoder module yet, so I'm very limited on what I can do. More updates in the next few days.

June 18. 2003: Well once again the rumor mill was wrong,nothing good at any of the sales I went to, but maybe if I hadn't slept so late, it would have been better. So no wicked finds, no digital camera. But in a weird twist of good news, I cane across a nice (kinda) 25" color TV. The TV has this little problem where the tuner fails intermittently until it "warms up". Not really that big of a deal, hopefully it works for a while. Anyone know a fix for this? It's a Sanyo 25", not sure what the model # is. Unfortunately, the unit was too big for my cabinet, fortunately, my old living room TV will fit quite nicely, so after cramming the 25" into our entertainment center, I threw the old 20" into the arcade cabinet. I wish I had the digital camera, since the Mame cabinet is coming together quite nicely. I'd say it's about 75% done, since in addition, I built my dad a new AMD Athlon XP 2400 system, he paid for it, but I got the parts for him and assembled it, kinda as a fathers day thing. The upside of this beside the fact it took me all of 4 hours to build this thing without a flaw, including the hour to load XP, I got to keep the leftovers from his old system. Not the greatest thing in the world, but it's an AMD K6/2 400mHz system. Although the fact hasn't escaped me that we only spent a little over 300 bucks to get the Case, Board, XP2400 processor, and 256megs of memory. Oh well the K6/2 will be a nice start. In other news, I may move all this information over to Blogger.com, since it's getting a little long here. Maybe. Hopefully, I'll get that camera soon, and get some pix up here, cause everything's coming together nicely. In the meantime here's a crappy pic:

June 11, 2003: And once again, no pix, but I'm hoping for a sweet garage sale find this weekend. Thr rumor mill is flying high again, so I may have a major score to report after this weekend. Last weekend got a pretty decent score on a crappy used pool table that someone was practically giving away. Imagine trying to haul a pool table home in a Geo Tracker. Pretty funny site let me tell you. I had to pull the seat so far up, I felt like I was driving a kiddie car. But since the trip was all of 2 blocks, it was no biggie. So anyway, I'm hoping I can find a cheap digital camera somewhere this weekend. On to more arcade stuff. Just when I thought I was finished with the control panel, I get more ideas. Well at least I got the CPO on (AKA Con Tact Paper). I've seen much worse, and I think it looks pretty cool. In fact, I used the same paper on the front of the machine, and it looks pretty sweet. So I'll get some pix up soon.

June 4,2003: Again Still no pix, but I messed with the Phoenix machine, and plugged it in and got hum! So I plugged in a replacement Marquee light and it turned on. Hopefully the power supply isn't too bad then, and can at least be rebuilt if it doesn't function correctly. I am going to have to go through the wiring on it with a fine toothed comb, since I have no idea how the heck whoever had it converted it. More to come...

May 30,2003: Still no pix yet, but I sniped my Phoenix Marquee off eBay. I paid too much for it ($11.50), but since the seller lives in the same town as myself, I saved a few bucks on S&H. Marquee is in OK shape, some flaking, and a few scratches, but overall, with a little touch up, it should look nice. Thought I got a great deal on a potential monitor for the MAME cab, found a 21" Television at a garage sale for 2 bucks. Well of course the damn thing works, but I got a squished picture, and black bars at the top and bottom. Anyone know a fix for this? Nah, fugeddaboudit, it probably isn't worth it anyway. Still looking for a cheap digital camera to replace this crappy egg. Hopefully I'll get some pix soon. Things to do on Phoenix- Check wiring, power supply, get PCB and monitor. Things to do on MAME- Monitor, CPO, Marquee, Coin Door, wiring, Keyboard Encoder.

May 19,2003: Wow, 2 Control Panels in 2 days. Just got my Phoenix CP today( thanks to DrMoonsparkle), and as I thought, it needs a new CPO. 25 Bucks at Classicoverlays.com, which just happens to have the Marquee for 20 bucks, and the side art for 125. Well, let's not rush into anything yet. What I really need is the PCB. Also, I am going to add a separate links page to the Classic Games section, which could result eventually in the separation of these pages from my main website, but we'll cross that bridge later. I will be adding pics of the Control Panel later.

May 18,2003: Just returned from a trip back to my dad's house on the south side of Chicago. One of my wife's friends got married in a lovely little ceremony in Plainfield, Illinois. Yeah, I know, really interesting, so what... Well pops has got quite the collection of wood working tools, so in what little free time I had I was able to finish my first MAME Control Panel. I must admit, that I was a little rushed, and it didn't turn out perfectly, and I didn't get the chance to paint it to match the cabinet, but oh well. I've got more ideas for it, and I am still going to make a second control panel, for all of those wonderful trackball, spinner, etc. games, but this is a good start. Anyway here's a couple of pix.

May 14, 2003: Ordered a control panel for the Phoenix cab (so much for the hiatus). Still not sure on what I'm going to do with it, but it looks like it will become Phoenix. Added parts needed to bottom of page.

May 7, 2003:Unfortunately, due to financial constraints, these projects are on temporary hiatus, but I will be doing a little bit of nickel and dime work to them here and there. So stay posted.

April 29, 2003: Picked up the two cabinets I will be using from Chuck, aka chux0r tonight. They actually look better than I though they would. The Phoenix cabinet, which actually ended up being a Pleiades machine (no biggie), still has most of the wiring intact. No monitors, or boards however, and so the hunt begins. Found a good 19" monitor for the Phoenix in California for $100, but shipping costs more than it's worth. And so the hunt continues.

The MAME cabinet is a Kickman cab that had been converted (and I use that term loosely) to a Mortal Kombat machine. actually it looks more like someone converted it to a MAME cabinet and stuck some really bad MK stickers on it. Bad choice IMHO.

This one shouldn't be too difficult to finish, since it seems pretty well set up for MAME already, just a matter of getting the basic supplies I need.

I will post a parts list for both machines in the coming days, in the meantime, a few bad WebCam pix, I'll post better ones when I get a digital camera.

the Black cab is the one that will become the MAME cab, the woodgrain one is the Phoenix cab

Oh, and yes, that is a super dope doorsize poster of Skid Row next to the Phoenix :)

Yes, I do know that stupid piece of paper over the marquee looks like crap. That's not the marquee I'm going to use...

Parts needed- initial list, as I dig deeper, I know I'll need more.

Phoenix:

PCB boardset

Control Panel - Installed 5/19

Control Panel Overlay (CPO)- Ordering soon

Before installing the CPO, I'm going to have the CP sandblasted, since it's so rusty.

T Molding.

19" Monitor.

Coin Mechs.

Side Art.-

Marquee Rec'd 5/30/03

Mame Cab:

20" TV/Monitor, or some display device Installed 6/15

Coin Door/Mechs

Marquee

Vid Card/ComputerRec'd 6/13 although I might upgrade.

Control Panel Finished 5/18, still might do some minor work

Keyboard Encoder Ordered 6/19

 

More Updates soon.

Coming Soon- All the blues that fits