Hello to Everyone

[dexxy]

I wanted to say hi to everyone, I'm so happy to have found BYOAC!

I remember seeing my first gaming machine (corner store got a Space Invaders back around '78 and I was hooked from there)

I have been gaming since just before the Apple II, TRS 80 , in fact we used to play star trek on an old ibm mainframe at high school (load the mark sense cards,  run the process, enter moves on the dip switches, punch the execute button, and run to the printer to see what was going on).  take that !  So I got into gamedev with the Apple II's.   Fast forward many moons and I am finally building a mame machine. 

My first machine is going to be pretty close to neon mame's design.  I was going to go a bit crazy but decided to keep it middle of the road for now.  I have all my ultimarc stuff and trim etc.  I just have to get the wood to start.   (I built a mechmate cnc machine so I can do all my work on the computer and then just have the machine do the cutting whis is cool, btu I still need to get  a table saw for the angles.)

Last night I picked up a sega Indy 500 dual for a really good deal.  Got it home without breaking my back (man it is heavy even split apart). With some tweaking it is running great!  So the debate is how to get it down into my basement.

I also have a williams fire machine that I shopped (plastics were all good), put on new rubber, had some electromagnet and chip problems that were pretty easy to fix).  Runs like a dream.

Anyways, as u can see I'm happy to be here and will start a project thread as soon as I get cutting.  (still debating lcd vs crt) and size.

Thanks and looking forward to some great chats!

Dex



 

[BobA]

Welcome to BYOAC.  Sounds like you are an oldtimer with the TRS80 and Apple II.   I remember adding a disk drive to my TRS 80 and between the added expansion and drive it was about $1000.  I sold my TRS 80 for about $1500 back when and got into CP/M with 8 inch drives.

[nox771]

I would be interested in following your build thread, especially with respect to the CNC work.  I'm currently building a 8020 based CNC (a modified FLA100 design), and I'm not sure what direction I'll go on software.  I'm thinking Sketchup for design, and Vectric and Mach3 for driving the thing, but I'd be interested to know what you use on the software end, and any issues/problems that come up on milling CPs and such (although CPs should be trivial for such a machine).

[Donkey_Kong]

Welcome dexx

I remember I was knee high to a grasshopper staying at my aunt's in Grand Junction Colorado (probably like 1982-83) and she had a TRS-80 and you had to program a game if ya wanted to play. She had a book of games and I think it was either a poker game or black jack and I got busy with teh coding (I was about 7-8 yrs old). It seemed like it was hundreds of lines, maybe 1000's. Pretty sure it was going to take a decade to complete at my wicked wpm. My aunt couldn't take too much of it before she scooted me out of the way and she friggen wailed out that code like a got damned woody the woodpecker and before ya know it I was knee deep in a hand of good ole black n white text 21. Seems like we actually had to do a little debugging first, couple syntax errors on a few lines. Anyway, didn't take long and I was back in front of the TV watching Revenge of The Nerds over and over all day via satelite. "PANTY RAID...naaaaaeeeehaaaaaeeeeeehaaaaaeeeeehaaaaaaeeee"


You can mail my geek badge to 476 third ave,,,"""#$^# lol

[yotsuya]

You can mail my geek badge to 476 third ave,,,"""#$^# lol

You should just CNC yourself a 3' x 5' one and hang it on the wall! 

[dexxy]

Hi BobA, so you remember the fun times banging away at those old keyboards,  funny but I still have my Apple ][ still running, most of my disks from the 80's still work!  Now if I could get past level 4 in Crossfire I'd be set!

Here's a pic of my cnc, took me a year on and off to make it


Nice Carvings Wow!  What creativity!!!  Man thats funny, I remember many crazy nights similar to that trying to debug old 6502 or apple basic stuff

nox771, I use mostly Rhino 3D with RhinoCam and Mach3 on my controller.  Seems to work great for most of the things I do.  I also have aspire but haven't really made use of it as much as I'd like (its expensive!)  but I haven't done much with signs, I wanted to use it more for slicing and dicing things.

I'll post some build pics soon!

[mgb]

Hi Dexxy,
 welcome to the forum, I look forward to watching your progress. Good luck with the build

[nox771]

Nice CNC - that thing is big enough to mill out the whole cab side panel 

I actually remember Crossfire.  I used to do a lot of Apple IIgs assembly coding a long time ago, but it's been a while.  Recently someone pointed me to this browser plugin which runs an emulated GS (essentially a Kegs frontend): http://activegs.freetoolsassociation.com/  It can run standalone too, but for non-GS stuff I prefer AppleWin.  Back when I first discovered those I burned through a few days playing Rescue Raiders, and found it to be just as hard as it was 20 years ago (still an awesome game though).

[BobA]

Nice CNC, you will definitely have the advantage when building your cab(s). Looks like a great machine. Got rid of my Apple collection at a garage sale 7 or 8 years ago.  Nice to have but too much space was being taken up by stuff that i never touched.

[dexxy]

Rescue Raiders hasn't gotten any easier for me too!  Great game!!

Here's a pic of my cab in Rhino.  I've generated the gcode and just have to get to the lumber store.  But I have to figure out my monitor situation.  I can get a 32" LCD with VGA input pretty cheap these days, the cab is currently sized for that, but will it be too big?  I don't have a 21" crt around and don't really feel like sourcing one.  Any opinions on what I should do?

My 12" blue neon rings came in today so I'm all set for hardware.  They seem to be getting pretty rare.  I have to figure out the marquee and cp graphics but with all the high quality images out there it should be pretty easy.



I got my Indy 500 working great as well!



So its now time for some extra-curricular



All the best on this great weekend !