________________________________________________ / \ | _________________________________________ | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | DOS & Don'ts | | | | | | | | A Modern Newsletter | | | | for Vintage-minded Folks | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | C:\>Issue #15 January 2024_ | | | |_________________________________________| | | | \_________________________________________________/ \___________________________________/ ___________________________________________ _-' .-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-. --- `-_ _-'.-.-. .---.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.--. .-.-.`-_ _-'.-.-.-. .---.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-`__`. .-.-.-.`-_ :---------------------------------------------------------------: `---._.---------------------------------------------------._.---' ------------------ In this Issue... ------------------ Features ---------- Our Staff's Predictions for the Next 100 Years Dendy & Pegasus: Attack of the Famiclones, BlueMSX Breaker Breaker: The CB Radio Fad of the 1970s, Grizzly Adam Columns --------- The Latent Image, Jon Mullin Retro Living in a Modern World, Grizzly Adam Bits & Bytes -------------- Unclassified Ads ___________________________________________________________________ OUR STAFF LOOK INTO THEIR CRYSTAL BALLS TO TELL YOU ______ __ __ ___ _____ __ __ ______ __ __ ____ ___ | || | | / _] | || | || || | || \ / _] | || | | / [_ | __|| | || || | || D ) / [_ |_| |_|| _ || _] | |_ | | ||_| |_|| | || / | _] | | | | || [_ | _] | : | | | | : || \ | [_ | | | | || | | | | | | | | || . \| | |__| |__|__||_____| |__| \__,_| |__| \__,_||__|\_||_____| ___________________________________________________________________ In the year 2050... Grizzly Adam: Few will travel outside of their local communities and will instead rely on virtual travel agencies. Those who do choose to travel will see increased airport screening times and hotel rooms being located in the terminals themselves. It may take up to 5 days to get through security. Music will be made entirely by computers and will feature ambient sounds mixed in a pleasing way. Leaders at NASA will tell us that we are only 10 years from crewed missions to Mars. Ashley Thomas "The Nerdy Blogger": Humankind has evolved past mere social media pictures of their dinner. We now have smell-o-vision! A friend visiting a swanky restaurant? Want to live vicariously through their experiences? No problem! Triple tap on the picture and the smell-o-vision feature on your phone or computer will activate. The custom fragrance formula set by the restaurant will release, tickling your olfactory senses. Be advised though--internet pranksters have developed hacks for smell-o- vision. Think you're taking a whiff of your favorite mac & cheese? Joke's on you, because now it smells like someone cut the cheese! Experts recommend using smell-o-vision in the privacy of your own home. BlueMSX: Technology will have progressed a fair bit farther than in the present day. Quantum computers will be far more common in most industrial settings, while the computers most people use will have ARM processors with software that allows them to run software from any machine from any prior era natively, thereby unifying consumer computing. A large number of brands and corporations will no longer exist having been run out of business by changes in the marketspace. Fashion is gradually returning to simpler, more clean line clothing. Frutiger Aero returns after the large-scale rejection of oversimplified designs for most things ushered in during the early 2010s. The majority of people are much healthier than in years past with truly organic foods and lower sugar diets becoming the gold standard for health in most countries. Additionally, the Terrans finally returned to the moon even setting up a semi permanent station, this being the main center for space studies after the former International Space Station was deorbited like Skylab before her. Energy is still a tricky business, but slowly alternatives are becoming more mainstream. Recycling was also made optional in most areas with public awareness into the process playing a large role. Jon Mullin: Most of the world has unified currency to just one standard currency, and all nations have formed into 5 major countries: the American Union, Neo-Euro, Africa, The Asian Region, and Australia is doing their own thing now. War is not on anyone's mind, and the world is at peace. Personal electronics are out, after every major company folded under the pressures of consumers in a capitalist society. The world is more analog now. People have returned to more simple methods, and technology only serves a major purpose in health and communication. The world is good now. In the year 2075... Grizzly Adam: Few will have reason to leave their homes. Nearly all work will be done remotely and virtual meetings will take up 91.3% of the work day. Instead of going out to shop, the people of 2075 will order everything online with their goods being delivered by Amazon drone. The most popular television show will be of a small group of people who have to rough it like we did in 2025. Leaders at NASA will tell us that we are only 10 years from crewed missions to Mars. Ashley Thomas: As humanity prepares to join the Vulcans in space exploration, scientists are looking for new ways to prepare and preserve food for space travel. Astronaut food is gaining popularity again among would-be and future space explorers. Scientists unfortunately have not figured out how to properly synthesize this food into something edible. For all our advancements, astronaut ice cream still has a piquant styrofoam flavor. BlueMSX: Information Technology has advanced a great deal over the last half century, Quantum computers are in the hands of more people, but the older ARM based systems still find high usage due to their lower cost. Information is more accessible than it's ever been, with information long hidden brought to the light, and the cures for most if not all diseases exist. In spite of this, the world is still rebuilding after a great catastrophe, but people are making the most of things with many returning to a simpler way of doing things out of necessity. The International Moon Station is still in use after a period of abandonment, but travel to other worlds is still not yet possible with available technology- though some still work towards it. The majority of areas are controlled by smaller localized governments with large scale governing bodies being only a memory. Jon Mullin: The Americas split back into two, and the world is now turned upside down. There is rampant crime, as the once benevolent leaders begin to corrupt and leach the prosperity from the land in favor of their own interests. The revolution was NOW! Led by one man, only known as Carl. Also the Americas Corrupted leader, Sandra Glorbston (terrible name), has been successfully assassinated, and succeeded by her dog "Hanches." He's a good boy, and a good leader. Along with Carl they work to bring peace and prosperity to the world! In the year 2125... Grizzly Adam: Fashion will center around scented genital piercings. Humans will no longer drink water of any sort due to its association with pollution. Coca-Cola will rebrand itself as "The Universal Solvent." Humans will no longer have any in-person interactions and couples wishing to procreate will have genetic materials collected by the Amazon drone, who will then use it to inseminate their partner. Leaders at NASA will tell us that we are only 10 years from crewed missions to Mars. Ashley Thomas: Food is making a renaissance. People are weary of fast food, astronaut food, and replicated food. Real food, harvested by real people is in! Vogue magazine reports that the 4-course steak dinner is truly en vogue. Popcorn with real butter invades the movie theater! And hot sauce is indeed HOTT. Tempt your tastebuds with actual food...TODAY! BlueMSX: The Terrans are finally a true space faring people, with a permanent settlement setup around the old International Moon Station. A base exists on Mars and one of its moons, with plans to visit Jupiter's moon Europa in the next 10 years. No serious plans to set up permanent colonies on Europa exist due to the distance from Earth, and the ability to set up life sustaining conditions being far harder than ever expected. The events of a hundred years ago are remembered well in hopes of not repeating the same mistakes. The quality of living is better than it's perhaps ever been, and while there is still conflict from time to time, bold new ways of resolving them were conducted. The most popular resolution was for the leaders of both factions to compete in an activity they were both equally bad at, so as to avoid any unfair advantages while making for an entertaining event. All in all, it may not be quite what many envisioned the future being 100 or even 200 years ago, but for most, it's life. Jon Mullin: The world is run by dogs. The Americas are are ran by a sweet American Pit Bull named Baby, Asia by a smart and serious Shar Pei named Greg, Neo-Euro by a strong and proud Cocker Spaniel named Buddy, Africa by a Nervous and cautious Borzoi named Snorp, and of course Australia is lead by a precious mutt named Dog. The world finally has peace, but there is talk of an uprising. And only a Kitten named Tux can bring peace to the world once again. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------- ------------------- | ,-. | | _ | | "._," | Dendy and Pegasus | _| |_ | | ,-. | Attack of the Famiclones | |_ O _| | | "._," | _ | |_| | | | _| |_ | | | | | |_ O _| | | | | | |_| | | | _ | | | | | | _| |_ | By BlueMSX | ,-. | | |_ O _| | | "._," | | |_| | | ,-. | | | | "._," | ------------------- ------------------- While the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) was officially discontinued in the 1990s to make way for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES), the NES would unexpectedly continue production thanks to other companies. Our story begins in the early 1990s with TXC Corporation (also known as Micro Genius), who had reverse engineered the NES' hardware in the hopes of making a clone of the system. Rather than using the many smaller chips needed to drive the hardware, the clone design made use of two main chips which consolidated the majority of the system's functions in a low cost package that was easier to produce. This would lead to the first hardware clone of the NES, which would come to be known as Famiclones- a clever portmanteau of Famicom (the japanese counterpart to the NES) and Clone. The bootlegging of Famicom games was common for a number of years right up until the original system was discontinued, but high demand remained. TXC hoped to fill in the void left by Nintendo while working with other companies to distribute the hardware to other parts of the world. A major player in this was Steepler Corporation, who operated out of Russia and other parts of the former Soviet Union. Video games in many regions were quite the rarity, making the market ripe for such a device. The initial offerings took various forms, some of which resembled the Famicom while others resembled the Nintendo Entertainment System in appearance. Steeplers first models were mostly direct copies of their TXC counterparts aside from branding. This would change with the introduction of the Dendy Junior, which was designed specifically for Steepler. While it didn't look much different from its siblings, it was the first to use what is now called the NOAC or Nintendo On A Chip. This design further consolidated the needed chips for the hardware down into a single package for even easier production. While this particular version wasn't sold for long it would set the design for many other clones seen afterwards. As for software, the Dendy's entire software library was almost entirely bootlegs of NES and Famicom games, usually with small variations to sprites or the removal of copyright information. Pegasus was another notable clone system which was marketed by BobMark International in eastern Europe. Pegasus would also release the Pegasus Game Boy which was a hardware clone of Nintendo's Gameboy handheld. In their final years of operation Pegasus would release officially licensed systems in their region, mainly due to changes in Poland's copyright law. The majority of the Famiclones sold during this period were alternate versions of each other with other companies copying and simplifying the hardware even further. However, Steepler, TXC, and Pegasus would go out of business before the end of the millennium, despite over 1 million Dendy systems being sold. While the exact reason for their closure is unknown, copyright infringement was a likely explanation. The introduction of 16 bit consoles, such as the Sega Genesis and Super Nintendo, into many of these regions is another possible explanation. While those systems would also be cloned to a lesser extent in the years to come, the cloning of NES hardware would continue long after the companies that popularized it. UMC Corporation would take over production of Famiclone hardware for many years thereafter, even producing the UM6578 hardware which added enhanced video and support for keyboards and mice. This allowed for using the hardware as a simple computer. Many Famiclones would use this as the base design to make low cost computers such as the Subor SB-486 or the Little Tyrant. They were both marketed as educational systems due to the country they were sold in, China, having a ban on recreational video games during this period. The Little Tyrant was notably endorsed by film star Jackie Chan in commercials and other promotional materials. Around the year 2000 the hardware patents for the NES would expire, leading to clones of the NES under various names and designs. Some would even build the clone hardware into DVD players, Video CD players, and even televisions! With UMC's system on a chip design based on TXC's designs, Famiclone hardware would become cheaper than ever. This would allow for more plug and play styled systems, such as the Infamous Powerjoy and Power Player brands. These systems would usually fit the entire hardware package into a controller. A light gun and cartridge slot were typically present along with allegedly thousands of games built into the system. Like their ancestors, they were almost all bootlegs of NES and Famicom games with each system having about 50 to 100 unique games. Notably, the Super Joy would ultimately lead to its main distributor being arrested and deported back to his homeland for the stolen games they contained. Other manufacturers would try to further improve the hardware, leading to the VT03 standard which improved graphics and sound over a base NES or Famicom system. Its adoption wasn't very widespread, however, outside of a handful of systems. As the popularity of the clones continued, many developers such as Nice Code would opt to create new software for the aging hardware with many of these games finding their way onto these clone systems. Notably, the first model of the Atari Flashback and early Atari plug and play systems actually used Famiclone hardware internally rather than using clones of Atari's own hardware. Variations of the Famiclone hardware would be sold right up to the present day, too many to list here. They usually use parts from UMC themselves or copies of them. A more recent example would be the Hyperkin Retron 1 AV Hyper Beach. Compared to earlier Famiclones which were notorious for improper hardware copying that resulted in poor video, incorrect colors, and sound that was iffy at best, this system fixed many of these problems. However, with the decreasing cost of FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array) technology for hardware replication, and the ever popular ARM (Acorn RISC Machine) software emulation, the Famiclone hardware is slowly fading into obscurity. Depending on your stance, this may be a good or bad thing. While they weren't the best copies of the original hardware, they were important in introducing video games to many countries that for one reason or another wouldn't have had them otherwise. For this reason I feel it's important to recognize their significance to the history of video games. Happy Gaming! ------------------------------------------------------------------------- About BlueMSX: BlueMSX, Blue for short, enjoys retro technologies, history, and learning for the sake of learning. She has been interested in retro electronics and media for nearly as long as she can remember. This fascination means that she has a lot of great stories to recount. Blue's philosophy can be summed up by the quote, History is like a puzzle- the more pieces you have the more sense it makes. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- BREAKER BREAKER: THE CB RADIO FAD OF THE 1970S, by Grizzly Adam _________________________________________________ __________ | ___________ _____ | _|||||||||||| | ||||||| |.,.,.,.,.,.| |_____| (O ) | | |||||||||||| | ||||||||||| |-----^-----| | V | | | |||||||||||| | ||||||||||||| |_____|_____| \ 8 / ( O) | | |||||||||||| | ||||||||||||| ,--. | | |||||||||||| | ||||||||||| ,-. ,-. ! ! (O ) | |_| | | ||||||| '._,' '._,' '.__,' | \_________/ |_________________________________________________| || \ _.-=-._ _.-=-._ _.-=-._/ '-=-' '-=-' '-=-' The 1970s were a tumultuous time. Unemployment was high, inflation was higher, and an oil embargo meant that even finding fuel for your daily commute was a tall order. In an attempt to reduce fuel usage, the U.S. government imposed a national speed limit of 55 miles per hour to conserve fuel. At this point, truckers had been using Citizens Band, or "CB" radio for over a decade to communicate, exchange information, or to call for help. With the fuel shortage and with speed traps popping up all over the country, it wouldn't be long before John Q. Public would turn to CB radio as well. With a sudden uptick in applicants, the FCC would streamline the CB licensing process and reduce licensing fees from $20 to $4 (the fee would be eliminated entirely in 1983). Suddenly the airwaves were alive with hot tips on where fuel could be found and where the "smokies" were running their speed traps. The whole country seemed to be speaking a new language of CB slang and 10 code- a system created in 1937 by the Illinois State Police. 10 code emphasized brevity and clarity for low-bandwidth radio transmissions. Some 10 codes are still commonly used today, such as 10-4 (transmission received and acknowledged) and 10-20 (location, i.e., "What's your 20?). Unofficial slang included "good buddy" (a friend or fellow CB user), Smokey (short for Smokey the Bear, a state trooper or highway patrol officer), and bear trap (a speed trap). Every CB operator had their own nickname, called their "handle," and would declare it when trying to break into a conversation. A typical radio conversation would often begin similar to: Operator 1: Breaker breaker 1-9! Operator 2: Go ahead, breaker. Operator 1: This is the Roadrunner, headed westbound on I-90 outside Rochester. Who do I have on the other end? Operator 2: This is the Coyote and I am in your area. Watch out for Smokey and his bear trap around mile marker 230. Operator 1: 10-4, and I thank you Coyote. There were a total of 23 channels in the citizens band, but not all were available for general chit-chat. Specifically, channel 9 was for emergency use only and channel 19 was meant to be for truckers. But anyone who has seen Smokey and the Bandit knows that channel 19 was where all the action was, and soon the channel became crowded with operators that had no business on the frequency. On New Year Day 1977, the FCC expanded the citizens band to 40 channels to try to clear up some of the congestion. As the popularity of CB radio surged, the media became saturated with the topic. Beside the aforementioned Smokey and the Bandit and its hit song "Eastbound and Down" (Jerry Reed), there was also the "Convoy" movie which told the story of the wacky novelty song (C.W. McCall). Also popular was the tear-jerking ballad "Teddy Bear" (Red Sovine), which tells the story of a young sickly child (Teddy Bear) who talks with truckers on his CB and dreams of riding in a big rig, only to pass away before he gets that chance. Many CB operators enjoyed the practice of DXing, or "shooting the skip." These operators would bounce their signals off the ionosphere and talk to people hundreds or even thousands of miles away. This was commonplace, but technically illegal as CB radios were intended for short-range use, and the FCC prohibited intentional long-distance communications. Going hand-in-hand with DXing was the blatant use of illegal linear amplifiers, also known as "foot warmers" or "kickers." The FCC set a limit of 4 watts to ensure local communication wouldn't be buried under stronger, distant signals. Operators with a desire to communicate over greater distances would often run a 100 watt (or greater) amplifier. Not only did this make local communication more difficult, the amplification would cause broadcasts to overstep the citizens band frequencies and would cause interference with electronics, particularly televisions and garage door openers. An episode of The New Fred and Barney Show entitled "C.B. Buddies" depicted Fred Flintstone using an illegal linear amplifier and broadcasting over several non-electronic items, including a big blue mailbox. Even though CB radio had its heyday 50 years ago, its cultural impact can still be felt today. Phrases like "10-4", "What's your 20?", and references to "Smokeys" have made their way into everyday language, and truckers are still using CB radios to share information on traffic, speed traps, and weather conditions. Packet radio, one of the earliest forms of digital radio communication, would go into use in the 1980s, laying the groundwork for Wi-Fi and mobile data networks. While packet radio is more associated with HAM radio, many of the same operators that were drawn in during the CB fab went on to become the same HAM operators that would develop the technology. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- About Grizzly Adam: Grizz is one of those eccentrics that you read about. The type that people say marches to the beat of their own drum. His hobbies include writing, programming, computers, electronics, telephone systems, pyromania, and lawn care. Grizz's Website: grizz.atwebpages.com ------------------------------------------------------------------------- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] ----------------------------------------------------------------------- | The Latent Image - with Jon Mullin | | | | This Month: | | Badge Engineering a Camera? | ----------------------------------------------------------------------- [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] ----------------------------------------------------------------------- We have to start this on a tangent about cars. I promise it will make sense as you read on. We all have seen cars that are "badge Engineered" even if we didn't realize it. The biggest example of this would have been the now defunct division of GM: Geo. Geos were small cars made by Japanese companies like Suzuki, Toyota, and Isuzu. This helped both companies as GM now had small and reliable economical cars, and the Japanese brands sold more vehicles that helped pay off more of the R&D costs. Badge Engineering is an easy way to expand or develop a product line to fill holes in a company's product library. A modern example of this is the Mitsubishi ASX/Outlander Sport. It was also sold in Europe under the Peugeot 400 and Citroen C4. (Editor's note: Columbo drove a Peugeot!) These European companies got a small and economical crossover,and Mitsubishi could manufacture more units to sell. Badge engineering is an easy way to offset the development costs of lower end products, as their smaller profits make recuperating these costs much more difficult. So how does this relate to cameras? The answer is a little company called Cosina and their CT-1 camera series. Cosina is a Japanese lens manufacturer known for their high quality glass and also buying manual focus lens company Voitlander. They also dabbled in the manufacture of SLR (single Lens Reflex) cameras. One of these models, the CT-1, was far from special. It was manual focus, manual film advance, manual wind, manual exposure, and the manual Focus K mount originally designed by Pentax. The only thing that was in any way "advanced" was that it had a light meter built in, and that wasn't anything new or revolutionary upon its 1978 release. The Cosina CT-1 saw many revisions such as the CT-1A which added a digital readout in the viewfinder or the CT-1 Super which had a shutter speed that was twice as fast (1/2000th max shutter speed compared to 1/1000th on previous models). These 1970s and '80s SLRs were beyond basic for the time, but got the job done at an affordable price. The CT-1 and its minor variations were also sold under other names, but in most cases you would have been none the wiser. The Nikon FM10 released in 2006 was internally identical to the CT-1 Super- they just put a different plastic shell on the outside of the camera and swapped the K mount for Nikon's F mount! How about the Olympus OM-2000? Its release was in 1997, and was also built on the CT-1 series. Even Canon got in on the fun with their 1990s T60, the last Canon branded camera with an FD mount. What makes the T60 even more interesting is that it was released 3 years after the more advanced EF mount that provided features like advanced autofocus and aperture control! All three of these cameras were manual everything like their CT-1 based ancestors. Three major brands selling essentially the same camera with a different exterior and lens mount may sound a bit silly, but this is the beauty of badge engineering. Low cost products need to sell high volumes for the R&D to pay off. This means that Cosina would have to move a lot of these CT-1 cameras very quickly or over a long period of time to recover those costs of development. Companies like Nikon, Canon, and Olympus know that development of these cameras causes them to have lower profit margins so they aren't as appealing to develop compared to their higher end counterparts. By rebranding a CT-1: you see the profits much sooner than developing the camera in house, and the rebadged cameras bring profits and customers to their camera system. Remember, most of what makes a camera great is the lens, not the body. Sure the features were basic, but now you had access to a whole world of high quality lenses from brands like Nikon, Canon, and Olympus! It also offered people a lower starting point which could lead to a loyal customer wanting to upgrade for features like autofocus or automatic exposure. These cameras weren't meant to be a forever camera, but a stepping stone to the more expensive F6 from Nikon or Olympus's OM-4T (OM-4Ti outside of the states). Badge engineering is sometimes seen as the cheap option, a cop-out from a company because they are lazy or don't care. In reality, it can serve a much broader purpose to provide companies with products to offer at wider price points without putting the financials of the company at risk. Sure these CT-1 clones were nothing special, but that's also what made them special. They were many budding photographers' first cameras. They were the cameras many people learned on through college. Some were just backups for their more expensive and fancy cameras that owners didn't want to risk damaging. In the end, they were the perfect solution for all parties involved. Badge engineering cameras can work well for the high end market as well. Leica still employs Badge Engineering to this day with help from Panasonic's camera division Lumix. That Leica D-Lux Type 109 that you may want is just a Panasonic Lumix LX-100. Sure, some minor changes are made to make it feel more premium, but this rebranding allows the low volume company Leica to provide a higher quality product that can meet their customers expectations sans the extensive research and development. So there you have it, badge engineering is for more than your Mercury Villager (a clone of the Nissan Quest minivan). Camera companies have been doing it for years and it has allowed the camera industry to continue to flourish. I just hope one day we can finally see a modern company release a new CT-1 based camera. Sure it will be a basic plastic fantastic hunk of garbage, but that might just be what the film industry needs right now. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- About Jon Mullin: Jon has been photographing professionally since 2008, but has been surrounded all his life by the small and quirky point and shoot Kodaks that his father collected. Now he photographs pets and people in unique and interesting ways. Jon's Website: jonmullin.com ------------------------------------------------------------------------- ,---. ,---. / /"`.\.--"""--./,'"\ \ \ \ _ _ / / `./ / __ __ \ \,' / /_O)_(_O\ \ | .-' ___ `-. | .--| \_/ |--. ,' \ \ | / / `. / `. `--^--' ,' \ .-"""""-. `--.___.--' .-"""""-. .-----/ \------------------/ \--------. | .---\ /----------------- \ /------. | | | `-`--`--' `--'--'-' | | | | Retro Living in a Modern World | | | | | | | | with Grizzly Adam | | | | | | | | This Installment: Custom Arcade Machine Part 2 | | | |_________________________________________________| | |_____________________________________________________| This is the second and final part of the story of how I converted my Arcade1up Rampage cabinet to a RetroPie machine. If you have not read part one, you can find it in last month's issue. Before we get into it, here is a quick refresher. I picked up the cabinet on Marketplace for a good price, but within about a month I was having issues with the controls being unreliable. I was able to trace this down to the encoder board, which all of the controls attach to. To get a new encoder board, I would have to spend almost as much as I would to convert it to a Raspberry Pi 3b+ based system. I decided to take the later route. Last month I covered the majority of the hardware modifications, but there have been a few more since then. I will cover those, as well as the software side of things this month. Let's get into it. Last month I left on off on a cliffhanger regarding the power for the audio amplifier. I have had no luck fully isolating the power circuits, so there is a lot of noise that creeps in if I try to power the amp with the same power supply as the rest of the hardware. What I eventually decided to do was to use the power supply that came with the amp to power just it. To make the amp switch on and off with the rest of the cabinet, I broke the positive leg of the power supply and connected it through another relay (I am glad I bought the big pack). I connected the switching side of the relay to a 5v port on one of the control encoder boards, which powers on with the rest of the system. In addition to this, I also rigged up some amber LEDs to light up the coin slots and connected them to another 5v port- this time on the other encoder board. With the coin slots illuminated, the machine sends out waves of nostalgia that I happily let wash over me. With the hardware sufficiently covered, we can now discuss the software side of things. At first, I was unsure of what operating system and software I was going to use. My initial thought was to use the official Raspberry Pi OS, which is what I used for my dialup server (issue #2). However, I was not happy with its performance, nor was I happy with using MAME as the front end for everything. I gave Ubuntu Server a quick look, but ultimately decided to go with RetroPie. Specifically designed for game emulation, the RetroPie build has a RetroArch backend, includes MAME, and uses EmulationStation as its front end. Button mapping is pretty straight- forward, but buggy. I would sometimes find that certain buttons just weren't mappable, but if I wiped everything out and started over it would then work fine. This seemed to be an installation issue and could be tested for shortly after the initial installation. I spent a lot of time trying to correct the issue, but as stated earlier it is far easier to wipe out and start again. Once everything is mapped correctly, I highly recommend making a backup of the disk- it could save you a ton of time in the future. I make a full backup of the disk periodically because I don't want to go through the entire configuration process again. After the initial install, EmulationStation will launch into the control mapping screen. Make sure that you map every button on the control deck or they will not be available for mapping inside the MAME emulator(s) later. You can remap and add more inputs from the SELECT menu later, though. My machine has three coin buttons, so I chose to map the SELECT menu to the first one, the START menu to the second one, and the "special" key to the third. However, I did learn that the special key can not be mapped for any other uses. Since I wanted to also use it to add coins for player 3, I simply added an extra pigtail to the button so I could connect it to a second input on the encoder board. I could try to explain how once the special button is mapped the UI only sees the second input, but it would be far easier to just say, "Trust me, it just works." I mapped the player start buttons to the top button for each player, which also doubles as the action button. The two buttons I added to the coin door (see last month's article) were used for game reset and the in-game menu. I really wanted these two functions to not be on the control deck itself, as we had run into some issues during playtesting that led to accidental restarts when we were in the end levels of a game. All the other buttons were mapped as you would think. Some games have fairly unique controls or use more buttons than I have available. For instance, some beat em-ups have two attack buttons, a duck button, and a jump button. Since I only have two buttons on the deck, I mapped jump to up on the joystick and duck to down. It looks silly to see the sprites ducking the entire time you move down the screen, but it is better than not having a duck option. For racing games that include a shifter, I chose to map it to the far right joystick. After loading my ROMs onto the drive and ensuring that mapping was fully functional, I next installed a shutdown script provided by howchoo.com (URL at the bottom of this article). The script listens for input on GPIO3 to begin the shutdown sequence. This is another one of those things that just works, and I can now power the machine up and down from the power switch on the control deck. Next, I ran all the available RetroPie updates, installed all the additional MAME cores that were available, and installed some themes. I really like the soda pop theme except for the pop-top sound, so I modified the theme to use the default sound instead. I found that the MAME 2010 core was pretty responsive, so I set that as the default core. I use the other available cores for any ROMs that don't run well on 2010. Overall, I am really happy with how everything turned out. Emulation- Station is a really polished front end, my mapping is exactly how I want it, and I can both control the volume and power the machine up and down from the control deck. Also, I can play my favourite arcade games like Turtles in Time and Juno First. Until next month, stay retro! How to Add a Power Button to Your Raspberry Pi (Contains shutdown script) https://howchoo.com/pi/how-to-add-a-power-button-to-your-raspberry-pi/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------- About Grizzly Adam: Grizz is one of those eccentrics that you read about. The type that people say marches to the beat of their own drum. His hobbies include writing, programming, computers, electronics, telephone systems, pyromania, and lawn care. Grizz's Website: grizz.atwebpages.com ------------------------------------------------------------------------- ================== | UNCLASSIFIED ADS | ================== ######################### ## DYNAMIC-TENSION ## ## BUILD MUSCLES FAST! ## ######################### Are you "Fed up" with seeing the huskies walk off with the best of everything? Sick and tired of being soft, frail, skinny, or flabby? Only HALF ALIVE and GETTING SAND KICKED IN YOUR FACE! I know just you how feel. 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