Legacy Cabling Fail Barely Averted.

[TopJimmyCooks]

Switchcade's display runs on a DVI cable . . . . mainly because I didn't have a VGA cable handy at the time. . . . . So anyway, I get a Craftymech SLG to try out, needing a VGA cable to work.  I knew from messing with the kid's computers over Christmas that I didn't have one laying around handy.  I go to the Legacy Cable Reserve Center (a couple of shoeboxes in the attic).  I've got plenty of copper in there.  Parallel printer cable, no problem!  putty colored USB's and ethernets?  Got em in spades.  Midi serial cables?  yep.  That funky cable that went with the palm pilot?  Yes!  Both types!  but No VGA. 

Went away for a while and remembered having a stack of various adapters somewhere:  PS2 to usb and similar - maybe one is a DVI to VGA and I can rig some absurdly long double dongle out the back of the vid card.  Could not find the stack o' adapters.  Was at radio shack, passed on a $19.95 +tax cable with gold plated ends.  About to click buy on monoprice ($3 plus $4 shipping) when I decided to raid the attic one more time.  Spent 2 hours Sunday rifling and throwing away old pc component boxes.  Found a VGA monitor with cable - alas, it was so old the vga cable was surgically grafted to the monitor's ass!  Damn. 

Finally I upended an old laptop bag and found it - my last never used shiny VGA cable with bright blue ends.  That cable almost ended up costing more than the SLG. 

Moral:  Keep your legacy cables forever, no matter how many times you have to move the shoeboxes and milk crates.

[lilshawn]

i can't bring myself to throw away mine either.

i have boxes upon boxes of cables for floppy drives. i don't even have a computer that has a 31/2 inch drive let alone the old 5 1/4 with the slip on edge connectors.

but if i ever need one...

[ChadTower]

A year ago I finally bit this one and started throwing stuff away.  I had way too many boxes full of stuff I was never going to use again.  Stuff with no monetary value.  Ancient motherboards, ISA cards, 64mb hard drives, cables cables cables.  Shelves full of them.  Finally I threw down a six pack to dull the pain and put them all in a garbage bag on trash night so I wouldn't have time for second thoughts.

Yeah, maybe someday I'll need to build a 386 with a 5.25" floppy drive and a max of 32meg of RAM.  Any of that stuff is still readily available on ebay.

When I tossed all of that obsolete crap I freed up a whole set of shelves that I was able to fill up with g05 monitors and game PCBs like Atari Basketball.   

[Hoopz]

i can't bring myself to throw away mine either.

i have boxes upon boxes of cables for floppy drives. i don't even have a computer that has a 31/2 inch drive let alone the old 5 1/4 with the slip on edge connectors.

but if i ever need one...

This.

Needed one a few years ago and had it.  Ravaged three PCs to get a working floppy drive.  Won't throw stuff away like this.  Need to get it better organized though. 

[ark_ader]

I have my own definition of cable hell.  In several boxes too. But close at hand. 

[kahlid74]

I too had a throng of cables and then I decided no more shenanigans.  I organized and classified them all and now my policy is I never go above 4.  So if I have more than 4 I either try to sell them, salvage them into something else or just throw them away.  It's given me back a piece of my mind and now I can find cords so easily, with them being in open containers sitting on my shelf.

[Drnick]

Keep all the cables and have cables everywhere, that's my motto   Only because one xmas I needed a floppy cable and ended up spending about £10 on one   

At least when I did my last clear out I did clear a bunch of stuff, I would definitely agree with keeping no more then 3 or 4 of any one kind of cable.  Now I have cables for pretty much everything I could possibly want.

I keep trying to tell them at work not to throw away cables or power adaptors as we never know when one will be needed.  Undoubtedly though they will eventually get thrown away only to be needed about 1 week later.

 

[Howard_Casto]

I use old cables for wire.  I haven't bought wire for my electronics projects in ages with the exception of some good wire for my arcade panels. 

[Gray_Area]

Power, VGA, audio (single/split/stereo Y), and PATA. Anything else, nope.

[Dervacumen]

Three months ago I took drastic measures to reduce clutter.  First I got rid of all my dedicated machines.  Then I tossed what I could find of my old fans, and arcade machine parts.  Then my burner.  Then I tossed a chunk of switches, old boards.  I figure in about two months I'll have nothing retro-arcade related except the rigs I've built.  Anyone looking for a random piece of whatever let me know.  I might have one for ya.
I'll probably get rid of the components, too.  And a couple of oscilloscopes.  Feels good.

[lilshawn]

i have a o-scope allready, but could use some more probes...

[Gray_Area]

Three months ago I took drastic measures to reduce clutter.  First I got rid of all my dedicated machines.  Then I tossed what I could find of my old fans, and arcade machine parts.  Then my burner.  Then I tossed a chunk of switches, old boards.  I figure in about two months I'll have nothing retro-arcade related except the rigs I've built.  Anyone looking for a random piece of whatever let me know.  I might have one for ya.
I'll probably get rid of the components, too.  And a couple of oscilloscopes.  Feels good.

Dude, some of that isn't/wasn't ebay-worthy?

[TopJimmyCooks]

Ok - had to move and open up the machine to test a dragon's lair scoreboard for someone.  So I finally put in the Craftymech SLG and vga cable to try out the scan lines thing, a scant 3 years later.  I can get it to work at 640x480x60Hz as per directions.  looks OK and I would like to run it.  However, Mala looks bad with 640x480.  I understand you can run a higher resolution on the PC and then direct Mame to run games at 640x480.

This is mame 145u1 circa 2012.

Mame.ini had "resolution auto".  I changed auto to 640x480.  Did not change anything.
There is also resolution1, resolution2, etc which looks like they are for additional displays.  didn't change those. 
there was no .ini entry to set refresh rate.

Is it possible to do this resolution switch in mame 145? 

[yamatetsu]

You can tell Mala to start MAME with a specific resolution, you basically use MAME's command line options for this. Start Mala, open up the config window,
change the text in the 'command line' box from %rom% to %rom% -resolution 640x480.

This works in MAME 0.149, hopefully that command line option was already there in your MAME version.

[TopJimmyCooks]

cool, thanks, will try. 

[TopJimmyCooks]

OK, in mame 145, it has to be -resolution 640x480@60 and -switchres 1 rather than default of 0. 
still doesn't work on older/classic games which is mostly what's on the list.  I need to go to the Craftymech SLG threads and read up a little. 

[Howard_Casto]

fyi those have been the appropriate settings for as long as I can remember. 

[TopJimmyCooks]

Yeah, these are the things that happen when you only go under the hood on a mame rig once a year.  Hard to remember everything.  Now, Bally 6808 and williams system 11, got those locked in. . .

[ark_ader]

I have friggin loads of the stuff in plastic containers for this very reason.

The garage looks like a borg cube.



Not as bad as this but close.....

[Howard_Casto]

Where did you find the pic of my back room. 

[Xiaou2]

Nearly 2 yrs ago... I had a job to remove old networking wires from above the ceiling tiles, in an old building.   Some of the tubes were like 4 inches in diameter,  packed with wires.  I think I recall using an angle grinder, to cut the large stuff down.

 In the end... I probably scored around 6 to 8 large boxes packed with copper wire.  I think it rang up at about $600 at the scrap yard.
Took me like three 12 hr days of hardcore efforts, to get it all down and out.

 Even copper cable that has a coating on it... pays good money.   If you have an excess, box it up, and make some money.

 Also, if you work with PCs a lot... dont toss those dead power supplies, without cutting the wires off.  The wire is great for arcade and electronic projects.   And if you dont mind the work... you can dismantle them and get the aluminum heat sinks, and transformers, collected for scrap.  I found that those vibrating cutter devices, with a good bi-metal blade on them... will cut wires and components off boards like butter.  If you must do this... wear gloves, a fine dust mask, and only do it in a place where you can make a disastrous mess.  For most, its totally not worth the efforts.. but, if you have nothing better to do... and or are quite low in funds...

 ( A sledge/hammer and chisel worked ok for some stripping as well)

[BadMouth]

I stare at piles of S-Video cable and try to force myself to throw it away, but I just can't do it.
I can't imagine ever needing anything other than a single 5-6ft cable if I just happen to build a cab with a CRT TV.
...but I've got a few pounds of up to 25ft lengths, switchboxes, etc.

I have many other types of legacy cable too, but the S-video is the one that makes me pissed at myself for not throwing it away.

[Howard_Casto]

I think that might be one of the few that's worth holding on to.  Network cable, phone cable, vga ect.... that's stuff you know is going to be fairly relevant for years to come because it's in use today.  S-video is one of those where if you happen to need one 10 years from now you might pay out the butt for it because they don't make the connectors anymore.

[dkersten]

I tend to save any cable that at some time in my life I needed and had to pay a premium to get.  Unfortunately this means I have drawers and boxes full of IDE, floppy, parallel, serial, sata, audio, svideo, vga, dvi, nema15, phone, network, and just about any other type of cable you can think of.  I recently had my assistant purge my storage room and I cringed as he threw out boxes full of floppy drives, old monitors, keyboards, mice, and specifically old routers, serial boards, and other stuff that cost tens of thousands of dollars 15 years ago that are worthless today.  We depreciate all our equipment fully, so we can't get a tax break for donating it, and even churches and schools no longer take tech that is more than a few years old any more unless fully functioning.  Without recycle places nearby, the most cost effective means of disposal is the landfill.  Anything of remote value I throw on CL for free and some junky will come pick it up.  The stacks of old hard drives pile up until I hit the shooting range for proper decommissioning, but then hit the landfill as well.  I saved some copper from solid copper heat sinks once, but after a year I had about $2.50 in recyclable copper, so it wasn't worth it. 

To this day, there is a high percentage chance that if I throw something away, I will have a need for it the next day or maybe a week later.  BUT, if I save it, I will never find it when I DO need it, at least not until the next day when I am throwing some old stuff out (after I already bought an overly expensive replacement).  This can be anything from a screw or nut to a cable to a piece of hardware or even a tool.

[Howard_Casto]

It would be nice if proprietary cables would go away.  Perhaps a universal series of cables..... maybe a 5, 10, 15 and 20 wire available in various thicknesses and lengths with a generic connector on the end that could be adapted like those little usb phone charger adaptor kits.  Of course it will never happen because hardware manufacturers want to change you 20 dollars for a 3 dollar cable.   

[dkersten]

It would be nice if proprietary cables would go away.  Perhaps a universal series of cables..... maybe a 5, 10, 15 and 20 wire available in various thicknesses and lengths with a generic connector on the end that could be adapted like those little usb phone charger adaptor kits.  Of course it will never happen because hardware manufacturers want to change you 20 dollars for a 3 dollar cable.

I get what you are saying, but I am sure glad we didn't universalize s-video or we could never have shifted to digital video with audio carried in the same cable, or universalized serial cables or USB would be severely limited in length, not to mention the bulk of charging your phone with a db25 cable...

I think we are on the right track though.  The best thing to happen to cell phones in the last 5 years is moving everything to micro usb (except Apple of course, but they make a living on proprietary).  The only reason I buy any kind of charger/interface cable for cell phones any more is when the old one wears out.  I can keep a drawer full of chargers and when an employee needs one I don't have to ask what brand phone they have, I just know the chargers will work.  Get Apple on board with micro usb and then you have something... The same nema 15 power cord for all electronics, the same micro usb for all peripheral devices, the same hdmi for anything video, the same rj45 plug for anything data related, and the same 3.5mm jack for anything analog audio.  Life is getting closer to that, but there are still a few stragglers.  It's only when you get into higher end tech when you need something unique any more.  Or an Apple product...

[lilshawn]

slightly off topic, but still related... I just got a nexus 6P phone with USB-C connector.

have to say i really like it so far. it feels solid as hell. reversible. seems better than the lightning connector which everyone else in my household seems to have various issues with

I don't like that i only have one cable for it...and now it's another cable. more cables. just what we need.

but this connector needs to be the next micro USB connector and on everything.

[Howard_Casto]

I don't like USB C.... it's a headache waiting to happen.  If you buy premium cables and devices sure, the adaptor is reversible, but as soon as China figures out that they can save a cent by only hooking up one side of the cable/connector that is exactly what they are going to do and we are back where we started.  Instead of wasting money and effort making sure the cable works in either direction they could of, oh I dunno.... DESIGNED THE CONNECTOR SO IT ONLY FITS ONE WAY

As much as I like USB as a protocol, the people that designed the physical connector should be shot, hung, and shot once more for good measure.