Live instruction card!

[Chris]

Looks like I may get my hands on an old IBM ThinkPad 486SX, which has a very small color screen.  I'm planning to hack this into the space below my monitor to become a live instruction card display!

Anyone know of a good source of instruction card images?  

--Chris

[SirPoonga]

There aren't many out there, I've been slowly collecting some, most are just repoductions an artist created.  We are talking like maybe 100 or so I have so far.

The biggest problem with your idea however (I think is it cool though) is that instructions cards come in MANY different sizes.  From tall and skinning, to small squares, to long and thin.

[Chris]

Well, the primary point of it is practical, having instructions available.  Appearance is secondary, so if I have to tinker with the cards some, I'm not worried about losing the authenticity...

What I'm planning to do is liberate the laptop from its case, mount the screen appropriately, and connect the remnants of the laptop to the MAME PC via serial port.  Then, the launcher program that I use to decide which version of MAME to use can send the ROM name over the serial port to the laptop.  An INI file will define the display for each ROM, allowing it to display multiple images with text overlays.  Thus, on the top half of the screen I can show the original instruction card or a facsimile thereof (or perhaps a marquee for those without instructions), and on the bottom half I can have an image of my CP with text overlays showing the function of each button...

If it works, it won't require much horespower from the laptop, and the images can be 256 color making them small.... I figure even a 386 with 4 MB of RAM would work...

--Chris

[Chris]

Well, I got my hands on the laptop after all.  It's an IBM ThinkPad 355Cs; it has a 486SL-25 CPU, 8 MB of RAM, and a 170 MB hard disk.  In other words, it's useless.  

I've measured the screen, and it should fit neatly below the monitor.  Here's a mockup of what it would look like for Donkey Kong:



I'll write the image display driver to receive images from the host PC the first time, then save them to the laptop's HD for later displays.  That way, I only have to update one machine with new games; the side effect is that the first time each game is played there will be a short delay as the image transfers.

--Chris

[SirPoonga]

Well, if you want instruction card pics give me a PM sometime,  I'll try and dig up what I have found.

BTW, you could just run on ONE computer with a dual display output video card.  There is a way to specify what monitor something shows up on.  Don't remember how though.

[Chris]

Thanks!    If this works, it shouldn't be a big deal to add to a cabinet... the last 355Cs that sold on eBay went for $16.52!

--Chris

[Chris]

BTW, you could just run on ONE computer with a dual display output video card.  There is a way to specify what monitor something shows up on.  Don't remember how though.

I had thought of that originally, but the problem with that is:

a) I really need the flat LCD panel to fit in that space, and I don't know if I can drive it from a regular PC.
b) My cab runs DOS, which I don't think will have dual display drivers.

--Chris

[Brax]

THAT, is seriously cool.

Here's the new cabinet accessory! A second computer!!!! Oh no! hehe

Would you have it go black screen when you start the game up? I was just wondering if the glow of the instruction card would distract from the game.

You have to show us more if you pull this off, it's very unique and a great idea.

[Chris]

Here's the new cabinet accessory! A second computer!!!! Oh no! hehe

Heh... we'll start a run on cheap laptops!  

Would you have it go black screen when you start the game up? I was just wondering if the glow of the instruction card would distract from the game.

No, I was going to leave it up... but if it does become distracting, I could add a button mapped to the laptop's Suspend/Resume key...

You have to show us more if you pull this off, it's very unique and a great idea.

I will... right now I'm trying to figure out how to get the laptop to power up when the main power is thrown... I'm going to need some sort of momentary relay that is only triggered once when power somes on...

--Chris

[Darkstalker]

OOooo <gears turning>  You could get a second PC to power the instructional display, and a custom LCD for the marquee.....

[wee beastie]

If the instruction card display is too distracting, you could always tint the glass over the LCD.  

[Brax]

I will... right now I'm trying to figure out how to get the laptop to power up when the main power is thrown... I'm going to need some sort of momentary relay that is only triggered once when power somes on...

http://home.bendcable.com/werstlein
Wouldn't this work to use the first computer to power up the second?

[Chris]

I will... right now I'm trying to figure out how to get the laptop to power up when the main power is thrown... I'm going to need some sort of momentary relay that is only triggered once when power somes on...

http://home.bendcable.com/werstlein
Wouldn't this work to use the first computer to power up the second?

This is the reverse of my problem.  It uses a momentary pushbutton to trigger a power strip; I need a power strip to trigger a momentary pushbutton.

However, after testing, it looks like the notebook will power up properly even if the power button is continuously held down, that solution will probably work after all....  thanks!

--Chris

[Howard_Casto]

Ok I am very intersted in this idea so I am willing to help out but heres the deal....

Most crappy laptops use windows 3.11 which would be great for this purpose, but I don't know how to code in any useful languages in 3.11.  BUT I can code in 95 compat languages fairly well.  You were all mentioning the issues about the graphics size ect... Well I can take care of that.  if someone else can write a program that constatnly monitors the serial port on the laptop and checks for incoming images, I can write a program that takes the image, sizes it for the screen, puts a nice background behind the card, saves thsi new image and sends it down the serial port.  

Can anyone help out?

[Brax]

Looks like this may happen...... hmm, i'm planning to do the 1UP rotating panel someday.... is there any way to power 3 lcd screens? hehe

[Chris]

Most crappy laptops use windows 3.11 which would be great for this purpose, but I don't know how to code in any useful languages in 3.11.

I'll be writing this in DOS.  I already use a small launcher program between Game Launcher and MAME which sets the appropriate mouse driver and MAME version; I only need to modify this launcher to send the image definition to the laptop, wait for the laptop to respond with what images it doesn't have, then transmit those images.  The image definition would consist of one or more image overlays along with text labels  I can steal most of that from the skinning code I'm writing for DOSCab Jukebox.

The software isn't what wrries me; it's removing the hardware components from the laptop and keeping them functional.  The individual components are tied together with literally paper-thin plastic cables.  In a previous attempt to repair a laptop, I accidentally disonnected the keyboard and was never able to get the paper thin cables back together...

I'm going to try to whip up the software part over the weekend, but I probably won't start messing with the hardware until after Christms.

--Chris

[Generic Eric]

I had a similar idea recently.  See the thread I started
http://www.arcadecontrols.org/yabbse/index.php?board=4;action=display;threadid=3939

My idea was mainly for fighting games, streetfighter and such.   It involves using the portable monitors for the current consoles(gamecube ps2 or Xbox) and adding two additional video cards to the pc.  The portable monitors would be built into the rear of the cp where it butts into the bezel.  Each monitors would display the fighters moves(left monitor for player 1, right for p2.)  

So far the hangs up are
finding two pci cards that do composite out or a dual head that can do two composite out displays.  
Getting the two displays.
Finding enough instruction cards so that this project is practical for me.
And of course, Cash.

[Chris]

In a previous attempt to repair a laptop, I accidentally disonnected the keyboard and was never able to get the paper thin cables back together...

Well, after digging through my junk pile, I finaly found a couple of null modem adapters, so I can start coding  I also found the carcass of the aforementioned wrecked laptop, a Gateway Colorbook2.  It's also a 486, but it has 20 MB of RAM and a 300 mb hard drive.  It has a larger screen than the Thinkpad, which in this instance is a liability, but I may try moving its larger hard drive to the Thinkpad.

Looks like I'll be writing in C using DJGPP for the compiler, Allegro for graphics, and DZComm for communications.

--Chris

[Chris]

Well, you gotta say something for IBM's product support... this laptop doesn't support VESA natively, but a quick trip to IBM's site turned up a driver disk from 1994 for this laptop, which included its VESA driver!

So I now have the MAME logo on the laptop's screen in what it claims to be 256 color mode, but the banding is so bad I'm guessing that the LCD can't show any more than, say, 32 colors or so...

--Chris

[eightbit]

95 runs great on a 486/66, you shouldn't have to stoop to win3.11.

[Chris]

95 runs great on a 486/66, you shouldn't have to stoop to win3.11.

There's not a lot of point on running Windows on a system who's sole job is to put an image on the screen....

[eightbit]

If its easier to program in Windows to make it do what it needs to do then yes their is a point in running Windows.

[Chris]

Both communications and graphics are ordinarily far more difficult in Windows.  Fortunately, I use Allegro as my graphics library, which makes graphics programming for Windows as easy as it is for DOS.

[eightbit]

Sorry i should have clarified, I was responding to howards concern about programming in Dos. By all means if you can do it in Dos thats probably better, especially for the laptop end.

[Howard_Casto]

Actually it depends upon the programmer.  For example I find directx much easier to code in than allegro.

But back to the point.  I can run 95 on this laptop, but it's so slow as-is it would probably take 20 min to bootup.  I'm going to find a copy of vb 3 and see if I can code something up, although I would much rather have a dos solution if chris is willing to share his app.  
Merry Christmas everyone!

[SirPoonga]

Chris, I'd like to know if you plan on sharing your progra to:)

[Chris]

Sure, I'm willing to share the source, but since I don't expect a ton of people to use it (how many people have laptops to trash, AND enough empty space on their bezel to fit a laptop screen?), it probably won't be the most flexible or configurable thing in the world.  I'll try not to hardcode it too much (I was just going to hard-code it to 640x480, for example)...

[MinerAl]

...(how many people have laptops to trash, AND enough empty space on their bezel to fit a laptop screen?)...

I think you'll be surprised.

Many instruction cards have pictures of the controls.  Do you plan to customize each instruction card graphic to reflect your control panel?  If the instruction card collection gets to be large, that'll mean a lot of photoshop time.

I'm not a coder, but if you wanted to make this portable to other people's machines, maybe the top half of the laptop display could be the original instruction card (if there is one available), and the bottom could be a graphic of the particular machine's control panel, with labels that it grabs from a small database file for each game, with fields like "joystick_label," "button_1_label,"  etc.  

With something like that, you could have control panel-specific instruction cards for games that didn't even have original instruction cards, or oddly shaped ones, or whatever.

Just an idea.

Al

[Brad Lee]

What about the 5 or 6 inch LCDs that always come up on ebay intended for like mobile displays?

just for example, like this: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=32825&item=1946574737
(Sorry if anyone goes blind from the layout/color scheme of that ad)

This particular one takes ntsc composite, but I know Ive seen others that take VGA or other formats.

[Chris]

What about the 5 or 6 inch LCDs that always come up on ebay intended for like mobile displays?

Yow... that one looks too nice to destroy for a cab!

[Chris]

...(how many people have laptops to trash, AND enough empty space on their bezel to fit a laptop screen?)...

I think you'll be surprised.

Many instruction cards have pictures of the controls.  Do you plan to customize each instruction card graphic to reflect your control panel?  If the instruction card collection gets to be large, that'll mean a lot of photoshop time.

I'm not a coder, but if you wanted to make this portable to other people's machines, maybe the top half of the laptop display could be the original instruction card (if there is one available), and the bottom could be a graphic of the particular machine's control panel, with labels that it grabs from a small database file for each game, with fields like "joystick_label," "button_1_label,"  etc.  

With something like that, you could have control panel-specific instruction cards for games that didn't even have original instruction cards, or oddly shaped ones, or whatever.

Okay, here's a solution.  It would be a pain in the neck, but...

A) Create a control panel definition: Player 1 joystick at 2", 2.5"; player1 button 1 at 2.8", 2"; etc.

B) Use the control definition file that the FE developers are working on to get all of the control names.

C) Look inside the .cfg file for the ROM to find the actual button assignments, or the mame.cfg for the defaults

D) Look in another file for any game-specific overrides

E) Using all of this information, draw the control panel layout on the fly.

If I can pull this off, with the source available, control panel displays would be available for any front end....

Did the control definition file project get anywhere?

--Chris

[SirPoonga]

Did the control definition file project get anywhere?

--Chris

Not until after christmas, HC and I have been really busy.

[eightbit]

I've got laptops to burn no body wants 486/66's with no cd or sound. I think I got 6 or so of them in a pile by my desk at work. Even the charitys that we donate equipment to don't really want 486 laptops any more.

I've been wanting to hack one to mount in the overhead center console in my Jeep wrangler to plug my GPS into for my off road trips.

[SNAAAKE]

also,instead of bezel place,you can always put the LCD top of the marque.

you know...the one golden tee 2003 has where you have a LCD screen right above the marque.

Just my $ 000.0002

[bhille]

Is this being discussed in the Developer Forum?  I was just wondering if this was actually being developed.  If so, I some older laptops I would use in this cab.  I haven't made it yet, but would need to allow for the space if this was being developed.

Not sure that I could help any, but if I can I offer my time  

[Chris]

I'm going to be working on it soon, but I have to get past the holidays before I can get some free time.  In the meantime, find the DOS VESA driver for your laptop... you'll need it...

--Chris

[mcleanjoel]

This sounds like a great idea!
Maybe there is an easy way to make this work for others with a single display - for example:

Display the layout before starting each game. This would be extremely helpful for custom layouts if you program it to read those.

[Chris]

You can already do this with front ends that show both a screenshot and a cabinet image; simply replace the cabinet images with control panel layouts.

--Chris

[mcleanjoel]

You can already do this with front ends that show both a screenshot and a cabinet image; simply replace the cabinet images with control panel layouts.

--Chris

That's cool but it sounds like the idea of the software displaying layouts based on custom settings would be very useful.

[Chris]

Well, I suppose a standalone program could be written from the same code that would pregenerate all of the images that would normally be sent to the small screen, and throw those in the cabinet images folder...

[bhille]

In the meantime, find the DOS VESA driver for your laptop... you'll need it...

Would installing Windows 98SE and running in DOS mode work, or do I need real DOS?

Brian

[Chris]

I'm writing this around real DOS... I don't know how well a DOS mode would work.

--Chris

[bhille]

Wow, it's been awhile since I used DOS.  I have a question now that I've ripped apart my poor laptop.  I'm using a Toshiba Satellite Pro 420CDT with 24MB of RAM.  Do I need a DOS VESA driver?  It looks like it's built into the video card BIOS.  Is that all I need?

SUGGESTIONS:
1.  Please don't hardcode the resolution.  This laptops native display is 800x600.  It will display 640x480, but in a small window.  I would like to use the full screen.  Obviously, beggers can't be choosers, but if it isn't that hard to let us pick the resolutions...

2.  I thought an earlier post mentioned connecting via a serial port.  Would it work faster/better if it connected via the parallel port like the old laplink or interlink?

Brian

[Chris]

Wow, it's been awhile since I used DOS.  I have a question now that I've ripped apart my poor laptop.  I'm using a Toshiba Satellite Pro 420CDT with 24MB of RAM.  Do I need a DOS VESA driver?  It looks like it's built into the video card BIOS.  Is that all I need?

As long as VESA is available, you're fine...

SUGGESTIONS:
1.  Please don't hardcode the resolution.  This laptops native display is 800x600.  It will display 640x480, but in a small window.  I would like to use the full screen.  Obviously, beggers can't be choosers, but if it isn't that hard to let us pick the resolutions...

The problem isn't the display code, it's the instruction images.  Scaled images look awful on laptop screens, so it's likely that different sets of images would have to be created for different resolutions.

2.  I thought an earlier post mentioned connecting via a serial port.  Would it work faster/better if it connected via the parallel port like the old laplink or interlink?

It would, but I know how to write to a serial prt... I don't know how to do two-way communication over parallel. I am planning to look into it, though, as I have a couple of parallel PCAnywhere cabes that would be perfect for this, and I'd rather not use up a serial port that could be servicing a spinner or trackball.

[JoeB]

Folks, there's a much easier thing that you can do, and it has been applied in other applications..

buy an LCD screen (not the video type, but rather one like your digital watch) and hack it.

Many people in the past have used it to create anything from something they put in their 5.25 drive slot for info like MB temperature, etc to put in their car as an interface to a PC in the trunk that acts like an MP3 player and this screen scrolled the name of the song.

Well, the serial conneciton and info is all over the web, all you need to do is write an interface the sends this info to the serial port, and it'll output it on the LCD screen!  Some have multiple lines, some will scroll back and forth.. all up to you!

[eightbit]

Well, the serial conneciton and info is all over the web, all you need to do is write an interface the sends this info to the serial port, and it'll output it on the LCD screen!  Some have multiple lines, some will scroll back and forth.. all up to you!

Yeah but we're looking for images here more than text. I think the theory is display a picture of the actual game control panel then show a picture next it with your game panel. Then some text with game instructions.

[Chris]

Joe,

The hard part isn't doing the display; I could do that in 20 minutes and be done with it.  The hard part, if this is to be a public release and not just a one-off, is not requiring each cab owner to create an image of his control panel for every single game! If we can create some sort of workable format for this that reads your controls from MAME's config files, we should be able to build up a library of instruction files, similar to the way artwork files are handled now.  Once we can make that work, it can be displayed in frontends, on separate screens, on separate computers, whatever.  

--Chris

[MinerAl]

If putting together a custom graphic each time is going to be a p.i.t.a. just make an ordered list next to a pre-labeled standard picture.  Something like this:

1: 4-way joystick 2: Fire 3: Thrust 4: unused 5: unused 6: unused 7: unused

Then all each user would have to do is make one labeled illustration of their layout, and maybe modify a simple configuration text file to decide which controls never to show... something like:

...
PlayerOneButton5 (show)
PlayerOneButton6 (hide)
PlayerOneButton7 (hide)
PlayerOneButton8 (hide)
PlayerOneTrackBall1 (show)
...

Or something else less difficult than putting the words directly on the graphic itself.

Forgive me if you've already thought of all this... I'm excited by this idea, even though I'll have to design a whole new cab to use it!

Thanks.

Al

[Chris]

Well, if you provide the system with the coordinates of where the labels should go (which you should only have to do once), then the labels can go right on the CP image.   MAME already know wher your buttons are mapped; what it doesn't know except in some cases is what those buttons represent.

What's needed is a comprehensive list of what buttons do what, and such a list has already been discussed among front end developers.  With that list, plus MAME.CFG and the game's CFG, plus a description of the control panel, the system should automatically be able to build the CP image for any game.  This would go in the bottom or right half of the laptop screen; in the top or left half would go an image of the instruction card from the original game (it would probably have to be rearranged to fit the area) showing the actual gameplay instructions.

--Chris

[eightbit]

Then all each user would have to do is make one labeled illustration of their layout, and maybe modify a simple configuration text file to decide which controls never to show...

That is pretty sweet. So is there anything those of us that aren't programmers can do to help?

[Howard_Casto]

Well, the serial conneciton and info is all over the web, all you need to do is write an interface the sends this info to the serial port, and it'll output it on the LCD screen!  Some have multiple lines, some will scroll back and forth.. all up to you!

Yeah but we're looking for images here more than text. I think the theory is display a picture of the actual game control panel then show a picture next it with your game panel. Then some text with game instructions.

Exactly.... lcd instructions have been available for fe's for ages but they are so ugly that nobody uses them....  Check the source of aos and you'll see what I mean.

Oh and chris, there is already a project that is geared towards generating cp layouts, so you are wasting you time on that one.  Come help us with the controls.dat instead. Which reminds me.... I need to make an announcment.  

Also for different screen resolutions imho the proper thing to do would be to scale the image prior to sending it.... In other words generate it in the resolution that it's going to be sent on the main pc's end and then send that graphic.  Scaling shouldn't be necessary.  

I can make a program that dynamically makes cp layouts for you at any resolution for that matter. That's part of the goals of the controls.dat project and I already have a rather crude, hardcoded generator working.  All you need to worry about is sending the generated image.  

[Chris]

I can make a program that dynamically makes cp layouts for you at any resolution for that matter. That's part of the goals of the controls.dat project and I already have a rather crude, hardcoded generator working.  All you need to worry about is sending the generated image.  

Scaling the CP image also isn't really the problem... but scaling the scans of the original instruction cards could make them illegible on some laptop screens.

Is there a particular home for the controls.dat project?

--Chris

[Chris]

Bummer!

After ripping apart my cabinet, I've discovered that the laptop screen with its supporting hardware won't fit into the space below the monitor after all...