MAME Cabinet: Part 1

I’ve always been obsessed with everything 80s; the music, the fashion and of course the games. It’s the era video games began and arcades were common-place. Today however, nobody visits the arcades and they have almost all died off. Systm did a series on building a MAME cabinet. Since watching this series, I felt that this is something that we [my dad & I] could do; and this summer it’s what we have, and shall be doing.

The first thing we needed to acquire was an ‘old’ computer. Over the years we had given many of ours away, so it wasn’t difficult to get one back; an old Olivetti with a Pentium MMX processor, 64MB of RAM and a 4GB HDD, of which 2GB was eaten by Windows 98. Obviously MAME was the first thing we needed to get up and running on the machine. One of the issues we had was the lack of USB support for pen drives. Intially, we burned discs to combat this, but this proved both timely and costly and we soon searched for a driver. Now that our movent issue was sorted, we tried to get MAME running.

Best OS EVAR

MAME just would not run on the old Olivetti, and so our hopes of trying to get an arcade machine on the cheap [free] were shattered. This wasn’t really any issue for dad and I but mum was certainly pissed about having to spend money on what she thought was another one of my dad’s stupid schemes (personal mug, garden toys etc.). He found someone in the Trade-It and gave them a ring, to ask about a computer. The call, I imagine, went something like this:

We ate dinner, and made our way over to the other side of Bristol (’The Norf’). The estate that the guy lived on was a bit of a mess if I’m honest, and it was the kind of place that you wouldn’t want to keep your car parked there for too long if you don’t have to. The ‘Ginger Guy’s’ house wasn’t too much better either. A rusty fridge littered the outside of his house and Dad, ‘The Ginger Guy’ and myself had to squeeze into what was at one point in time a cupboard. The cupboard had been converted into a smoking den workshop and was rummage of old computer parts, cables, and cigarettes. What should’ve been a five-minute-pickup-and-dash was quickly turning into a thirty-minute-chat-and-’is there anything else?’ kinda thing. We finally got computer, and battled our way past screaming children and a mouthy wife to the car.

All we needed to do now was configure the software, get an interface and buttons, and build a machine – not a lot.

Summerlist®

As well as the ‘In The Summertime’ playlist, I decided I’d write a list of all the things I would like to (but probably won’t get around to doing) this summer.

1. Go on holiday // This one is a dead cert. The family and I are off for a week to Goodrington/Paington/Torbay — I’m gonna feel like a kid again; it was always one of our top destinations when I was younger.
2. Get a job // This I cannot see happening if I’m honest, but it sure would be nice. I’ve applied to a few places already with no success, and not many are hiring at all. [Looks like I got a job after all. I'm a checkout dude in Sainsbury's]
3. Barbecue // We’ve already had a couple this year, and I guess this is just hoping the weather stays good enough for more.
4. Read- a lot // As I’ve got nothing else to do I can see this being possible. There is nothing better than reading a good book by the pool or on the beach; I’m currently reading Stephen King’s ‘Misery’. I want some more stuff to read, so let me know if you know of anything.
5. Have a moviemarathon™ // Mr. Hanks may be coming back out as I need something to watch now that I’ve almost finished watching ‘House’. [Did this with Tor last night ]
6. Photograph // I want to photograph more people as I don’t really get a chance to. Holiday should be a chance to do this.
7. Not worry about my GCSEs // This is one thing that is not going to happen. I worry too much and the closer it gets to the results day, the more worried I seem to get.
8. Coffee // This may seem a bit loser-ish, but blame Oscar— he suggested it. I guess coffee is just an excuse to meet up with friends to make sure we don’t lose contact, and there’s the fact that Pret’s coffee is amazing /trufax! [I met up for coffee with Oscar and Charlie, and then we went for coffee with Chris and Charlotte during Tweetup West]
9. Bike ride // This would mean getting my bike fixed, but I think it would be a lot of fun. The county is literally 5 miles away from my house and cycling over to there with my camera would be awesome. Just gotta see if I can drag some lazy people with me.
10. Picnic // I have never had a planned, proper picnic with friends. [Did this last week, it may not have been as planned as I would have liked, but it was a picnic and it was with friends].
11. Fishing // I went mackerel fishing with school on camp way back when and I’ve always wanted to try it again — can’t see it happening though.
12. Paintballing // I’ve always been too much of a pussy to try this as everyone has said it hurts, maybe this year is the time to actually do it.
13. Learn guitar // Duncan, master of the acoustic, has made me want to learn the guitar badly. Being able to play Ryan Adam’s ‘I See Monsters’ would be epic.
14. Tweetup // Tweetup West is coming up and I hope all the awesome people I chat to on a day to day basis are coming. [The tweetup wasn't really a success, but it was darn fun hanging out with Chris and Charlotte <3]