Opera Widget Arcade

Almost the entire team gathered together on Friday to add the final strokes to the arcade machine. George, Anders, Adam, Arjan and Alexander all worked together to finish the surface of the cabinet with the second layer of paint.

Some parts, like the keyboard door, were painted separately and reattached to the cabinet the next day, when the paint dried off. The machine stands in the Desktop Team office now, it's finished, and it helps us have these nice litte breaks while our code is compiling. We also want to make it look even cooler by adding some artwork, but more about that later.

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Before painting, the cabined needed to be primed. The layer of primer prevents the paint from absorbing into the pores of wood and drying too fast, and also doesn't let the natural color of the wood shine through the paint.

This February, a new member joined our desktop team, so far as an intern but we hope he'll stay with us after he graduates. Not only has Alexander taken a head start in work, but he also has joined our teambuilding activity! Together with Arjan, Adam and Per Arne, he helped sand the surfaces of the cabinet so that they became smooth. After that, the team covered the cabinet with a layer of primer.

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After running the computer inside the cabinet for some time, we found that it needed better cooling. Without proper ventilation, the computer could easily make the air too hot inside the closed space. We decided to make two ventilation openings in the back of the cabinet, one near the top and one in the bottom door, so that convection takes care of the cooling. On Friday, Adam removed the back wall of the cabinet and started making the ventilation opening. He drilled four holes where the corners of the opening should be, cut the rectangular hole with the jigsaw, and screwed a grate from a disposable grill on top of the opening. These disposable grills (engangsgrill) are very popular in Norway, complete with carbons in a grate-covered tray and even containing a sheet of paper soaked in combustible liquid.

The controller hardware came with a CD containing ROM images of some arcade games popular in the eighties. These games used to run on very specific hardware, sometimes even built specially for the game, that is, of course, not manufactured anymore. However, those old ROM images can still be run with the help of MAME, an emulator that mimics many entertainment hardware platforms of the past. After installing MAME on the machine, we loaded one of the ROM images and played our very first game of Tetris on the Opera Widget Arcade!

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We've made a great progress on Monday, but the holes for buttons and the trackball were too deep for them to sit nicely. We needed to make grooves in the wooden panel where the buttons and trackball would be mounted. To carve out the grooves, we used a wood router. It was easy with the button holes, but the large figured slot for the trackball took a lot of time and effort: George, Arjan, Adam and Per Arne took turns at cutting the wood. Finally, we had a nice controller panel where all the buttons and the trackball would fit perfectly.

The controller hardware we chose is X-Arcade, known for their indestructible buttons and joysticks. They offer a full range of products up to a complete arcade machine, but we're building our own, right? That's why we went for the Build Your Own Arcade Kit (two joysticks, a bunch of buttons, and a controller PCB that emulates a PS/2 or USB keyboard) and a 3" Arcade Trackball Mouse Assembly (a trackball unit and a few buttons). At last two links you'll find pictures, descriptions and PDF manuals for those who are interested in building their own arcade machine.

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This Friday we have added a few more strokes to the arcade cabinet.

Video games are not supposed to have keyboards, but occasionally we would need one for system administration. We've decided to have a keyboard on a shelf with a door opening in front. The door was ready some time ago, but it happened to be so wide that we had to sand it down a bit from the sides so that can open and close without too much effort. Now the door was ready for installation, so Adam and George attached the hinges to the chassis with screws.

We also needed something to hold the door in the closed position, so Adam and Espen installed pairs of spring latches on the left and right.

Another thing we did on Friday was installing a piece of plexiglas into the top part of the cabinet. It will be painted with some fancy artwork later, so as to be translucent but not transparent, and we'll have a light behind it.

I'll keep you informed on our further progress!

Note: All hyperlinks in this post take you to more pictures. You can also view all the pictures from this event.