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Sbox Homemade Console

Posted by michael on from the santa-is-making-a-list dept.

Anonymous Coward sent in: "I just ran across a very cool homemade emulation console. It emulates multiple machines, plays movies, plays mp3s, and uses Intel's new wireless gamepads to control everything. It's also cased in plexiglass and uses its own menuing software. The best I've seen yet!" His remote has a docking station.

6 of 131 comments (clear)

  1. Arcade cabs by Bodero · · Score: 5, Informative
    For those of you who want to build your own arcade cabs, just like the Sbox, you may want to check the Arcade@Home site at http://www.arcadeathome.com.
    In addition to the MAME front-end of the same name, the site features a nice collection of pics and links to converted and custom-built cabinets. IIRC, the Plastic Cactus site linked from this page has a set of measured drawings that might be useful, and there are probably others too.

    There's also the very nice Build Your Own Arcade Machine site: http://plaza.powersurfr.com/kevin/arcade/

    Both of these sites are geared toward creating cabinets for use with emulation, but if that's not what you're after I'm sure they could be adapted for true arcade hardware. I've been thinking of building something like an Sbox myself, someday when I magically become competent with power tools. ;-)

    1. Re:Arcade cabs by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative
      For those of you who want to build your own arcade cabs, just like the Sbox, you may want to check the Arcade@Home site at http://www.arcadeathome.com.
      Or not. Arcade@Home is run by Tim Eckel, the same Tim Eckel (affectionately known as "Timmay" in emulation circles) who was previously covered (along with eFront) in a not-too-flattering light. He's also infamous for once abusing the MAME license (by offering his own version of MAME called MAME! that differed only in ways like removing the copyright notice at the beginning of MAME, which eventually led to the changing on the MAME license), childishly insulting people he doesn't agree with (like Gridle of the MAME team, or Penny Arcade's Gabe & Tycho) and for not only promising ROMs for download (or, as he puts it, a "link" to his "friend" who has them for download . . . funny, his "friend"'s server seems to have the same IP) but often (seemingly purposely) dedicating so little bandwidth to the downloads that all people get are the ads plastered on the download site. And once, a "hacker" (suuure) changed the search scripts on his site to DDoS Retrogames, an emulation site often critical of Eckel.

      Please, let's not give this guy the ad revenue.

  2. If you do this by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    don't forget about one very important component: licensing. You need to have all your software licensed. This is often overlooked by many people doing things like this but that doesn't make it any less important. You'll probably want to talk to a lawyer before doing anything like this as well. There is also new legislation called the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) which is used to stop piracy. If you predict that you will run afoul of the DMCA then you musn't proceed. If you do this don't overlook licensing as it's very important. Have someone come in and audit your "Homemade Console" from the Business Software Alliance (BSA) to make sure your licenses are correct.

  3. Re:The big question by TotallyUseless · · Score: 2, Informative

    yes, the version of doom for sega was for 32x. i bought a 32x addon just for doom. yes i was that lame. you may now shoot me

    --

    Time for some tasty Shiner Bock!
  4. Avoid arcadeathome.com at all cost. by Augusto · · Score: 3, Informative

    For the reasons already explained in another post, plus the site is the worst offender when it comes to annoying popups and requirements for clicking on a million links before reaching anything meaningfull.

    For real info on building your own cabinet go to:

    http://www.arcadecontrols.com/arcade.htm

    For the latest arcade ROMs go to :

    http://mame.dk - This is the site the arcadeathome guy tried to eliminate from the face of the earth.

    --

    - sigs are for wimps.
  5. ...Sega? by DaRiachu · · Score: 2, Informative

    Uhm, Sega Dreamcast runs off of Windows CE.

    And, a lot of the tools that people use, including the VCD player (at least the ones I've seen) were built to those specs off of VB.

    ::shrug:: Doesn't seem too impossible to me, considering the Xbox is supposed to run off of a modified NT kernel. I've also heard that the programming package for it is a modified PC game-creating engine that MS uses.

    But, of course, I could be wrong. Heh.