A Small Interlude - Donkey Kong Mini

[Dr_Dave]

A-hoy hoy shipmates!

When I got to the end of my main project I was gripped by two realisations: I wanted to build something else, and that I had a hell of a lot of MDF off-cuts in my garage that I really didn't fancy taking to the tip. So I dusted off my router for a kind of epilogue project, or a small interlude to keep me going till the next one.

Now, I have no children to entertain, other than my neotenous self, but my siblings have gradually ramped up the spawn rate till they're beginning to resemble parental Gatling guns. Needless to say, I need a way of both a) keeping these kids occupied when they visit, and b) subverting the next generation into being geek-friendly for use as foot soldiers in the coming revolution. A plan was hatched. I'd use the waste bits to build a sub-bartop that I could put on the floor and trust them to hammer away at and teach themselves the true value of a ten pence piece.

My plan was to do this entirely on the cheap - I had a spare EEE 701 gathering dust upstairs. Lots of waste MDF, plexi, vinyl and t-mold. I'd resist the temptation to go to gameongrafix for my overlay and marquee, and print them myself. In theory, all I'd need to buy would be the controls - and since I was only putting in one player, that shouldn't be too much.

Well... I didn't quite keep it sub-one hundred quid like I imagined. There was an... incident with the EEE motherboard that meant I had to replace it which pushed me over. In fact, the EEE proved to be an absolute pig to work with. The monitor cable was non-standard, and as impossible to rewire as it was short. The motherboard was delicate and the USB ports all proved difficult to get at. Power was tricky to deal with. But, it was (in theory) free and spare. Nevertheless, I felt genuine frustration towards the end of the project, and by the time I'd finished I was just glad to get it over with.

Anyway, I think it turned out okay. It plays surprisingly well for a tiny, slow computer. I've tried to make the bezel bright and kid-friendly to make up for the small, odd shaped screen. The CP has kind of a barrel thing going on, in keeping with the general DK theme, but the lack of brown buttons means it isn't quite as effective as I wanted!

The marquee does light up (with a usb array of LEDs), but I've disconnected it till I can get a lighting friendly marquee printed - have some paper en route that should do the job.

Well, that's me done till next year. Unless someone has an microscopic manipulator I can use to arrange MDF molecules into a nano-cab?

Gallery here: http://picasaweb.google.com/dave.tansley/ASmallInterlude#

Couple of pics:







Dave

[BobA]

Looks great.   Did it end up working with an EEE motherboard inside?

[Don]

That looks great, and so neat!

[Dr_Dave]

Looks great.   Did it end up working with an EEE motherboard inside?

Yeah, eventually, using some creative harnessing to get the motherboard slung up close to the monitor without fouling on the buttons and still allowing you access to the usb ports . Another problem is that the motherboard screws are some ultra tiny things that fit in holes that are too small for normal motherboard mounting screws and spacers.

Ooo, just thinking about it is getting my dander up again. Excuse me while I go have a relaxing mug of horlicks.

Dave

[skinz]

Looks Awesome!  Looks like you better dust off some more stuff other than your router - Especially if you have a wife - I hope you wear a mask in you work area LOL   

[lokesen]

I really love this cab. Beautiful colors and lines. Well done. I have at project running with a 1-player cabinet, I look forward to showing it to you. It's much different though and I hope it will be as nice as yours.

Is that a "Project MAME" cab i see? I like that too

 

[nintendoid]

did you design the artowrk yourself? looks great

[Neosubu]

That's really neat!
Is it running a GBA emulator?

Cheers.

[javeryh]

Got any pics of the computer installation?  What kind of monitor is that?

Really really nice.