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Domain: speedhost.com

Stories and comments across the archive that link to speedhost.com.

Comments · 7

  1. Re:USB Digital Joysticks Suck by Chelloveck · · Score: 1 · on Where Are the Joysticks For Retro Gaming?

    Weren't Joust and Gyruss purely digital inputs? I'm trying to think of any non-trackball / non-wheel / non-paddle stick-based arcade games that used analog controls from a retro time-period, and the only one I'm coming up with is Afterburner.

    Yes, they were digital. I have an original Gyruss cabinet; it uses a bog-standard 8-way digital stick. Joust is a 2-way digital stick. I think Tailgunner (an ancient vector game) used an analog stick, but that's the only one that comes to mind. Sinistar and a few others mimicked a low-resolution analog stick by using a funky 49-way digital stick.

  2. Only Vaguely Related, but Cool... by Chasing+Amy · · Score: 3, Interesting · on Using Joystick Ports to Measure Case Temperature?

    I have no idea how one would measure temperatures through some sort of joystick port dongle; however, it put me in mind of the coolest hack I've ever seen for a joystick port, very cool. It may even be vaguely on topic since he mentions the "all sorts of fun to be had" with the joystick port... Take a look:

    Hooking an Arcade Star Wars Flight Yoke to a PC

    What a cool joystick port hack--it uses all the original electronics from a circa 1984 Star Wars or RotJ controller, except for a change of POTS. Better than any cheesy gaming steering wheel. :-)

  3. A story and some links by dasunt · · Score: 1 · on Build Your own Ms. Pac-Man machine from Scratch
    Gather around, boys and girls, for a story how Dasunt was really dumb. This is a great story, btw, I want to kick myself in the arse every time I recall it.

    About 5 years ago, one of my friends was at a police auction, and there were 10 upright arcade machines there, all in working order. They had been siezed, since they were modified to run illegal gambling. Since my friend has $10 on him at the time, he made the only bid, and got all the machines for the lowly price of $1/machine.

    A year later he was moving out, and he offered to sell me the machines at $10/machine. I said no, since I didn't want to have a big hulking machine that only could play one game (I believe it was poker, blackjack, etc on the machines). The machines had great monitors and all the controls worked.

    Then, about 2 years ago I got into console and arcade emulation heavily. I found out that a lowly K6-2 stuck in a machine with a special adapter/driver could run plenty of games and use the original monitor. *Sigh* I looked up prices on Ebay. Conservatively, since the machines did have a slot in the front to dispense money and thus weren't exactly mint, each machine could have been sold for $250.

    D'oh, I am dumb.

    My friend was happy, he bought them for the remote controlled relays in the machines that were used to "flip" the machine over to a non-gambling game whenever the cops came around. So, he got a ton of relays. I, in my naive state, got shafted. I believe he sold all his remaining machines (5) for $50.

    Since I researched a bit on emulation and arcade cabinents in hopes of building a cocktail style machine, here's some useful links I found. That is my list of resources, if you have any, please put them in a reply to this comment, or mail me at dasunt@hotmail.com. I'm especially interested in cocktail-style cabinents, hacks for controls, and translation sites (so many nice games never made it out of Japan).
  4. correction to above url by double_h · · Score: 2 · on Inexpensive Do It Yourself MP3 Players

    (whoops, the proper url is here... dunno how that extra %3C/a snuck in there...)

  5. Re: I've been trying by double_h · · Score: 3 · on Inexpensive Do It Yourself MP3 Players

    Anyone have *any* idea how to get a volume knob to tweak software?

    You might have some luck hacking the guts of an old mouse (or better still, a game controller with some sort of potentiometer) to get something that you could bolt onto the backside of a knob. Eschewing a volume knob in favor of some buttons would be even easier.

    You might find some other ideas at the build your own arcade controls FAQ which, like your proposed project, deals with the question of attaching non-standard input hardware to a PC.

  6. Build your own arcade machine by rshah · · Score: 2 · on Emus And Do-It-Yourself Arcade Construction

    The definitive site to learn how to build your own arcade machine, such as a MAME arcade machine which will allow you to play the classic 80s games:
    Build Your Own Arcade Controls

  7. Anyone done this? by Evangelion · · Score: 2 · on Emus And Do-It-Yourself Arcade Construction


    I'm curious if anyone has built a dedicated emulator machine, and if so what CPU/Video Card combination is ideal.

    I'm curious, as running some games, such as Gradius 3 (which I have a masochistic love of), are *really* slow in parts. Like 10 FPS or so. (Average FPS when running Gradius 3 is about 17, as opposed to the 60 FPS or so in 1943).

    I'm in the process of testing my skillz by building an arcade joystick. (Thanks be to http://www.arcadecontrols.speedh ost.com/ and Happ Controls for information and parts respectively). If this is successful, I would like to find and strip down an old console. But I'm not going to do it if all the games I want to play run like shit =)

    More to the points, are there any tips/advice for speeding up MAME and/or other emulators? Specific video settings, etc?

    --