/diy/ - Do It Yourself

Who can give me advice on building a strong inner frame?

Also who can name a collection of well known 16bit and earlier female videogame characters.

I'll post another pic or two of current progress.

There hasn't been a whole load of planning I'm mostly working with a rough idea of the final project but I'm liking how its turning out.

I've only just started soldering so be gentle with my guts~

Today I went around to thrift shops trying to find some simple powered speakers, like the old computer speakers I grew up with. No luck. So I guess I can wire it up myself and learn something along the way, or keep looking.

>>581947
A solid back and front will be all you need to make a rigid cabinet, essentially you're just making a rectangle with bits cut out. Glue some thin wooden lengths into each corner to reinforce, and add your innards as you need. You are far from the first person to do this though, there's going to be tonnes of designs on google you can take cues from as you need.

>>581951
Pretty solid work man, while we can't really see the quality of work on the break out boards it appears there's not much to be worried about.

>>581953

Thanks man!

I've had a look at a few designs and read a fair bit. I was thinking a thin long piece of wood running up the back of both sides would be enough. My dad seems to think it'll need much more than that because it's chipboard but I'm concerned about overall weight.

The breakout boards are just connecting each button to the input of the arduinos with the ground daisy chained across all of them. I did it this way and also used the terminal connectors because I figured I would have to disassemble at least once.

is this designed for midgets? coz i'm pretty sure the controls should be at belly-button level, not penis level.

>>581955
That would do, but the cabinet would be susceptible to twisting if and when you're moving it around. You old man knows whats up.

I would go with a a solid back so you have a nice rigid cabinet. Why not use ply for the front and back? A little more expensive, but lighter. If you did want an open back, some cross bracing will cover you (so length of wood from the top left to bottom right of the cabinet, another length from top right to bottom left, bolted together where they cross in the middle)

> chipboard
It's kinda nasty stuff, I would have gone ply to be honest. Lighter, easier to work (less prone to splitting/messy edges when cutting etc) and impervious to liquid. You're going to spew if one of your dickhead mates spills a drink near it at your next house party or something. Make sure all surfaces are painted well, including the bottom edges. Last thing you want is a spilled drink on the floor soaking up into the bottom.

> I did it this way and also used the terminal connectors because I figured I would have to disassemble at least once.
Good plan, depending on how much you spent on the hardware, you might find some buttons fuck out after a few months of solid button mashing.

>>581961

This has been designed for my two daughters.

if you make the entire box (top, front, and back) out of presswood as well, it's gonna be a heavy bitch. i'd go for aluminum crossbars, like they use for aluminum stair railings, instead. 6 or 8 of those will give you plenty of rigidity, but they weigh almost nothing. then use the lightest wood paneling, or veneer, or cloth to cover the shell.

>>581964

Yeah, he has a fair bit of experience with woodworking but I had already bought all the wood by the time I thought to ask him.

I was thinking the reinforcements I've illustrated would be enough to keep the thing together on the rare occasion the unit will be moved. The maroon section is a cube of possibly 2x4 and the blue line is the side braces I had mentioned before.

My daughters will likely spill things on it if they're able to do so. I've got some primer/sealant to try and prevent that. I've also made the decision to slope the control deck about 30 degrees forward so that they are unable to use it as a shelf for drinks or whatever.

Overall, I'm comfortable with the electronic parts but I need to learn more about woodworking. Still, I'm excited for it to be finished so I can give it to them already. Videogames were one of the only ways my brother and I ever managed to bond so I'd like that for my children too.

>>581948
>earlier female videogame characters

Sadly you ain't got a lot to choose from. Many early video game characters were either genderless or male. Most English games with female leads were targeted exclusively at girls (who can't play "real" video games of course) so they tended to be licensed crap from Disney or Barbie. Japan had quite a bit of good stuff for girls that also had female leads, often times licensed but still of good quality (they only made about 14 billion Sailor Moon games) but much of it was never translated. Still, just because the game had a female lead doesn't mean its a game a girl would be interested in.

Many fighting games and JRPGs have female characters. More often then not they will have their tits hanging out so that might not be an option for little ones. Most WRPGs, which generally allow you to build your character as apposed to select from a cast, also allow you to pick gender but its more of an avatar than a character. Then theres the gameplay issue; would you kids even want to play many of these games? I don't know. There are plenty of gender neutral games that they might like. Puzzle games for example.

If you open yourself up to games made after the 16-bit era then your options improve tremendously.

16-bit and before:
Samus Aran (Metroid series)
Carmen Sandiego (Where in... ...is Carmen Sandiego series)
Pocky (Pocky & Rocky series)
Ms Pac Man
Athena (Athena, Psycho Soldier, other SNK games)

32-bit and later:
Um Jammer Lammy
Princess Maker series
April Ryan (The Longest Journey)
Kate Walker (Syberia series)
Mona De Lafitte (A Vampyre Story, its campy though, not violent {ie not Vampire: the Masquerade})

Also, I recommend the Bubble Bobble/Puzzle Bobble(Bust A Move) series of games. Pretty gender neutral and fun for anyone. Space Invaders '95 is also a riot. Pokemon games after 1998 also feature a choose-able female lead.

The newest one in that list is 5 years old so even if you use an old PC for guts it should run fine.

>>582056

This is just for the artwork on the sides.

So far I had selected Zelda and Daisy for one side and Samus and Sheik for the other. (My eldest daughter is a girly girl and youngest is a tomboy). I'm definitely adding some of those to the list though.

>>581951
Hey, how are you liking the Borderless Electronics Leonardo clones so far? I'm happy with mine.

>>581951
Where did you get the roms? I want to build something like that (just the joysticks) but the linux mame needs specific roms and I can't find the binary to match

>>582351
pleasuredome

google it.

registration is a pain in the ass but they have all the roms you would ever need via torrent.

But, I'm not promoting piracy. This is just what I've read about. <wink><wink>

>>582351
archive.org is hosting over 42GB of ROMs. I don't know how they're getting away with it without getting shut down.

http://games.slashdot.org/story/13/12/28/0351206/archiveorg-hosts-massive-collection-of-mame-roms

>>582359
yeah but this is exactly what I was referring to. These roms are MAME 0.152, debian has mame 0.146 and SDLMame is at 0.151.
Mame expects the exact version (binary/roms)

>>582390
http://mamedev.org/release.html

>>582390
update your shit?
I am pretty sure there is a way to bypass the package filters and force install the latest version.

>>582390

Your a Linuxfag, they provide sources, compile your own. If you are gonna drink the GNU coolaid you might as well finish the cup.

>>582351

The roms I am using are console roms. Nes, snes, genesis, megadrive, gameboy, gba etc etc.
I'm going to download the full romsets for these consoles.
I'm using a raspberry pi to run all of this so there was a preconfigured iso for me to use.

>>582286

They're pretty nifty, I haven't done any electronics stuff but I've done a lot of programming so they seemed like a nice entry point to ICs. I've salvaged some IR recievers from old dvd players and I bought a laser diode so I have a few more things to play with when this is done.

I also ordered ArduinoBasicConnections the book at the same time so I'm thinking in future I may just use the arduino schematic in there instead of relying on prebuilt arduinos.

>>582390
Actually pleasuredome has many sets archived that you can download including .146 and .151

They even have .37u5 roms (mame4droid)

>>582477
How well does the raspberry pi emulate?
I may try doing the same thing with mine till i bother getting a computer.

>>582673

Beautifully.

I hear it can play n64 and psx too but I'd imagine thats getting toward the upper limit of what it can do.

Look into the retropie project, its a whole frontend for the emulators.