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INTERFACE
Basically I've done a standard keyboard hack, based on an old Mitsumi microswitch keyboard. I'd been peeking into dumpsters and checking rubbish piles for a few weeks when Chris showed up at my place with this old keyboard with a missing R key. Perfect, I don't believe in trashing perfectly useable hardware. Since it's a solid PCB type I've just soldered ribbon cable wires directly onto the back. This may look a bit messy, but it was actually very easy to do and a lot cheaper than buying a keyboard encoder. It's all been well documented on several other sites so I won't go into all the messy details here. For more info you'd best go to Build Your Own Arcade Controls. It documents keyboard hacks in great detail and helped me out a lot. Adrian also found me a really neat baby keyboard which was too nice to butcher, but fits nicely inside the cabinet for servicing. I'll either plug it in when needed or build a keyboard splitter.
It may be ugly, but this simple hacked keyboard PCB does the job and it was easy to make.
SOFTWARE
Right from the beginning I wanted the keep this simple, and for a low powered machine like this, you just can't go past good old DOS. It was actually quite nostalgic installing 6.22 from floppy discs. Sad, I know. Anyway, after that, on went DOS MAME, which runs a lot quicker than any Windoze version I've tried. I'm also using ArcadeOS, which is a very slick and configurable front end for DOS MAME. Unfortunatly, my old Zenith monitor didn't like quite a lot of video modes used by MAME. Lucky for me some nice people had come up with AdvanceMAME which is DOS MAME with advanced video support. Suitable for arcade monitors, TVs, and oddball monitors like mine, AdvanceMAME includes MV, a mighty useful utility for creating and configuring custom video modes. It certainly got me out of trouble.
It also occurred to me that this might be an interesting medium for resurrecting old DOS games. In particular I think 2-player Star Control II would be heaps of fun. Have to give it a try..
UPDATE: I've since tried it and it IS sensational. I'd almost forgotten what a great game Star Control II is. Almost.
My machine proudly acknowledges the MAME emulator, without which none of this would be possible.
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