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SERVER IS GOING DOWN FOR MAINTENANCE 7/18/23
July 17, 2023, 09:18:07 pm
Submitted by saint

SERVER IS GOING DOWN FOR MAINTENANCE 7/18/23

Host is moving the box to another part of the data center, outage will last multiple hours.

2 comments



Pac Man stools $70 on meh.com today May 31st 2022 only
May 31, 2022, 09:41:50 am
Submitted by saint

$69 for a pair of PacMan stools - they also have the Arcade1Up logo on them, which may be a deal breaker for some folks.



https://meh.com/deals/2-pack-arcade1up-pacman-arcade-stools


1 comment



RGB-Pi OS 4 ALFa 12 released with improved G-Con compatibility for gun games
April 21, 2022, 05:12:10 am
Submitted by Alejo I

RGB-Pi OS is a fantastic piece of software that takes the Raspberry platform and turns it into an extremely accurate, fast and powerful emulation solution for CRT setups. The ALFa version was released a couple of months ago with Dreamcast support, dynamic resolution and G-Con compatibility for lightgun games and it's being updated almost weekly. If you own a Raspberry Pi 4 and a CRT display, you ought to try it.



Official site

RGB-Pi 4 OS4 ALFa testing program

OS4 changelog:

Quote
  • Compatibility with all RPi4 models (RPI3 and below not included) since the first one that was released with the possibility of overclocking to 1.8GHz to reach the base frequency of the latest models (We recommend a 2GB ram model, more is unnecessary)
    Hardware backwards compatibility with all up-to-date RGB-Pi hardware, Scart, JAMMA and Plus models.
    Renewed user interface with animated pixel art Themes, scrolls and sprites.
    Introduction of the exclusive Dynares development programmed by rTomas within Retroarch itself that is capable of generating Timings or resolutions at the moment using Calamity Switchres without any type of limitation, just like a PC with an educated graphics card, 15-24-31KHz progressive and interlaced. Not only that, but it is also capable of changing the resolution and the refresh rate within the game itself whenever necessary, adapting the Vsync to the exact refresh rate and speed of each game, as we can see in FPGA implementations, so the speed of execution is native too, other features will be explained later...
    Support for GCon2 and other light guns: after promoting the development of the driver for linux and years of work together with Beardypig and rTomas we have support for light guns (at the moment GCon2) for all systems, NES, SMS, SNES, MD, PS1, DC (pending a bug) and arcade, including many arcade games that were not really light guns but joysticks, but that we have managed to make them work too, with their own calibration in the user menu for both position and of screen brightness necessary for the correct operation of the gun.
    New systems supported, Dreamcast and Atomiswave, DosboxPure and X68000 (allowing HD 480i gaming even on a home TV)
    Many other improvements that we will explain but that you already have in the software to test them.

Alpha 12 changelog

Quote
  • Added overclock for all Pi4 models. CPU=2000Mhz, GPU=700Mhz (VOIDS WARRANTY!!!)
    Added SegaCD LGun player validation
    Added Swedish lang
    Added Dreamcast to LGun supported systems
    Added cpuinfo for command line interface
    Fixed Dreamcast Flycast UDEV driver
    Fixed SNES Native resolution
    Fixed all controller types (LGun, DOSBox, etc.)
    Changed PCSX-Rearmed by SwanStation
    Changed Dreamcast Alpha Sorting for better performance

Some OS4 videos:







1 comment



The Gritty, Underground Network Bringing Japan’s Arcades to the USA
January 15, 2022, 03:19:45 pm
Submitted by dankykang

Story of network of people that ships games from Japan.

https://www.wired.com/story/gritty-underground-network-bringing-japan-arcades-to-us/

2 comments



Northcoast Custom Arcades re-launches affiliate program!
April 14, 2020, 06:13:45 pm
Submitted by Mameroom

We have brought back our affiliate program.  That's right!!! Simply create an affiliate account and place a link on your website to earn 5-10% on all referral purchases!

To create an account, click here:
https://www.mameroom.com/affsignin.asp

0 comments



mGalaxy v7.6 released
December 28, 2019, 05:53:06 am
Submitted by mgalaxy



  •     [New] MySNES theme.
  •     [New] 'Menu' window with shortcuts to all other windows (default key: m)
  •     [New] 'VJ One' screensaver.
  •     [Improved] (mGalaxy_Runway) Import from 'Medium' images (e.g. cartridge stickers)
  •     [Improved] Controller window: keys combination (like Ctrl-A) are now allowed.
  •     [Fixed] The local music play is now working when no internet connection is available.

More info and download on http://www.mgalaxy.com

0 comments



Raspberry Pi 4 out now: Cortex-A72, up to 4GB, dual Micro HDMI from $35
June 24, 2019, 04:46:32 am
Submitted by Alejo I

Lo and behold





-A 1.5GHz quad-core 64-bit ARM Cortex-A72 CPU (~3× performance)
-1GB, 2GB, or 4GB of LPDDR4 SDRAM
-Full-throughput Gigabit Ethernet
-Dual-band 802.11ac wireless networking
-Bluetooth 5.0
-Two USB 3.0 and two USB 2.0 ports
-Dual monitor support, at resolutions up to 4K
-VideoCore VI graphics, supporting OpenGL ES 3.x
-4Kp60 hardware decode of HEVC video
-Complete compatibility with earlier Raspberry Pi products

Pricing:
-1GB   $35
-2GB   $45
-4GB   $55

The way things are looking, Raspberry may have finally put out a dev board that easily competes with very low-end/picked-from-the-curb-grade computers, but with modern niceties and dual video output, which may enable virtual marquees.

5 comments



Northcoast Custom Arcades New LED Pixel Marquee
May 28, 2019, 08:40:31 pm
Submitted by Mameroom

Northcoast Custom Arcades is proud to announce the latest in our product line.  Our new LED Pixel Marquee!  Supports animation.  Will display the currently selected game (if artwork exists) and you can even customize or make your own images.





34 comments



mGalaxy v7.5 released
May 01, 2019, 04:46:49 am
Submitted by mgalaxy



mGalaxy v7.5 is out with a number of new and improved features:

  •     [New] 'Group' feature (group several systems into one group)
  •     [New] 'Presenter II' theme.
  •     [New] 'MyGameBoyAdvance' theme.
  •     [New] Screensaver feature.
  •     [New] Ambient sounds play (background music option).
  •     [Improved] 'Go to top of the list'/'Go to end of the list' commands can now be used in the 'Systems' and 'Top 10' windows to navigate to the start/end of the lists.
  •     [Improved] PC keyboard can be used to type in the 'Search' window.
  •     [Fixed] mGalaxy is 'portable' again.

More info and download on http://www.mgalaxy.com

0 comments



Sinden Lightgun Kickstarter
April 16, 2019, 01:43:06 pm
Submitted by Bradleyw801

There is a new product called the Sinden Lightgun. It allows line of sight aiming on LCD tv's and monitors without an IR sensor bar needed. The developer of the product is amazing! He is very responsive and always looking for feedback from the community about what's important to potential users. Go check out the kickstarter, and if possible, pledge, or get in early on this amazing tech.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/sindenlightgun/the-sinden-lightgun

3 comments



NVIDIA Announces Jetson Nano: $99 Tiny, Yet Mighty Developer Board
March 19, 2019, 06:33:29 am
Submitted by Alejo I



Those who couldn't even look at the Raspberry Pi due to its lack of horsepower may be interested in the new Jetson Nano from Nvidia. It's marketed as a cheap AI platform for homebrew/classroom development and even mass production, but it packs a huge punch in terms of CPU/GPU, with half of a Nintendo Switch's worth of graphic cores and 4 GB of RAM powered from 5V. There's also plenty of ports for expansion, a full SDK and proper documentation, being a CUDA product from Nvidia and all that.

It runs Linux for Tegra out of the box, so it's basically emulation ready. Exciting stuff.

Some extra information here:
https://nvidianews.nvidia.com/news/nvidia-announces-jetson-nano-99-tiny-yet-mighty-nvidia-cuda-x-ai-computer-that-runs-all-ai-models
https://devblogs.nvidia.com/jetson-nano-ai-computing/
https://www.anandtech.com/show/14101/nvidia-announces-jetson-nano

0 comments



---FORUM MOVING TODAY---
March 09, 2019, 01:38:46 pm
Submitted by saint

I hope! :)

I'm going to try to move the forum over to the new server today, Saturday March 9th.

At some point today I'm going to put this forum into maintenance mode, pull a final backup, and import into the new server.

Then I will update DNS to point forum.arcadecontrols.com over to the new server.

And for a lot of folks, that won't work for a while :)  So if you keep coming to the old server (it will say old server and be in maintenance mode), use http://newforum.arcadecontrols.com/ as your link temporarily, which should be working as of now (but isn't ready for company yet).

Wish me luck!

Discussion on our impending doom: http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=159757.new#new


0 comments



New mirror online - Cinemarcade of Arcade84 fame
March 05, 2019, 07:20:56 pm
Submitted by saint

David Dries has graciously given me permission to host a permanent archived mirror of Cinemarcade, home of the Arcade84 video and other arcade nostalgia goodness. If you are *not* familiar with Arcade84 then seriously you're missing out. Take a look. If you are, then you know how sad it would be to see Cinemarcade disappear from the net. Thanks for the hard work and for letting us keep it alive here Dave!

http://mirrors.arcadecontrols.com/www.cinemarcade.com



9 comments



News about the future of this site
March 03, 2019, 11:50:45 am
Submitted by saint

All good, I hope ;D

The server we're on now is on its last legs. One drive is failed and the other is failing. I have purchased a new server and have been migrating things over. It's in "final-beta" stages now and I'm hoping by next weekend to have us all moved over from here to there. I do have nightly backups from here and have a several day old copy of them there now, and will do another "final" transfer of data before shutting this box down.

Right now on the new server:

  • the forum is online, and upgraded to the latest version of SMF. The messages/etc from a few days ago are there and working. Still a few tweaks to plug ins to work out. Note - please don't try to find the new forum yet, it's going to be wiped and a fresh copy of the most recent database from here moved over there as the last step. It's not hard to find, but the new forum isn't quite ready for company yet.

  • The files library is back online and updated. I've gotten most of the material online, though a handful of files are missing for now - I should be able to get those restored when I get back to it. You are welcome to take a sneak peek at it if you'd like. http://new.files.arcadecontrols.com/. Remember the logins from that system are not the same as your forum login. They did get moved from the old to the new so if you had an account on them before it should be working there now. Feel free to use this system if you want, I don't think we'll be doing any database wipes/reloads on it, I consider it "done."

  • Various behind the scenes things that no one but me really saw and had to deal with are almost all rectified. Yay!

  • Wiki is next on the list to sort out and bring back online.

  • The old SMF arcade system doesn't appear to be supported anymore :( Not sure if that's something folks want or not?

  • Tapatalk working

  • More space, faster processor, more RAM, hardware RAID-1 instead of software, updates OS, etc.
Anything else I need to be thinking of that isn't working here?

Please keep any comments to the thread on the Forum Discussion post below.

http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=159712.new#new

0 comments



GameEx Evolution 1.00
September 18, 2018, 10:49:45 am
Submitted by B2K24

The next generation of front ends.

Latest version.

Full install.

Note: The product is currently in Beta and there may still be a few bugs.

https://www.gameex.com/evolution/

https://www.gameex.info/forums/files/file/2245-gameex-evolution/

0 comments



Mamesaver 2.0.1 released
September 17, 2018, 06:49:43 pm
Submitted by nullpainter

I'm one of the contributors to Mamesaver, a Windows-based MAME screensaver which plays random MAME games at at specified intervals. We're super excited to announce the release of version 2.0.1 which, apart from a few licks of paint and a bunch of bug fixes, introduces multi-monitor support, hotkeys, in-game information, customisable fonts, better power management, and better game management.

I run Mamesaver at work and it's a fantastic distraction and really fun to show off games that might have been forgotten.

Mamesaver can be downloaded here, or you can build it yourself. Mamesaver is open source and released under the MIT Licence.

Feature requests, pull requests and bug reports are always welcome!


11 comments



Win an X-Arcade arcade machine in October!
September 16, 2017, 11:49:11 am
Submitted by saint

X-Arcade is giving away one of their arcade machines in October to people who sign up for their mailing list! (I'm on the list, it's pretty low-volume).



Details



5 comments



New - Glass Battery
September 01, 2017, 04:36:23 pm
Submitted by TOMMYGUN

I thought this was interesting for mobile gamers  ;)

John Goodenough, coinventor of the lithium-ion battery, heads a team of researchers developing the technology that could one day supplant it.
Electric car purchases have been on the rise lately, posting an estimated 60 percent growth rate last year. They’re poised for rapid adoption by 2022, when EVs are projected to cost the same as internal combustion cars. However, these estimates all presume the incumbent lithium-ion battery remains the go-to EV power source. So, when researchers this week at the University of Texas at Austin unveiled a new, promising lithium- or sodium-glass battery technology, it threatened to accelerate even rosy projections for battery-powered cars.

“I think we have the possibility of doing what we’ve been trying to do for the last 20 years,” says John Goodenough, coinventor of the now ubiquitous lithium-ion battery and emeritus professor at the Cockrell School of Engineering at the University of Texas, Austin. “That is, to get an electric car that will be competitive in cost and convenience with the internal combustion engine.” Goodenough added that this new battery technology could also store intermittent solar and wind power on the electric grid.

Yet, the world has seen alleged game-changing battery breakthroughs come to naught before. In 2014, for instance, Japanese researchers offered up a cotton-based (!) new battery design that was touted as “energy dense, reliable, safe, and sustainable.” And if the cotton battery is still going to change the world, its promoters could certainly use a new wave of press and media releases, as an Internet search on their technology today produces links that are no more current than 2014-2015 vintage.

So, on whose authority might one claim a glass battery could be any different?

For starters, Donald Sadoway’s. Sadoway, a preeminent battery researcher and MIT materials science and engineering professor, says, “When John Goodenough makes an announcement, I pay attention. He’s tops in the field and really a fantastic scientist. So, his pronouncements are worth listening to.”

Goodenough himself says that when he first coinvented the lithium-ion battery in the 1980s, almost no one in the battery or consumer electronics industries took the innovation seriously. It was only Japanese labs and companies like Sony that first began to explore the world we all today inhabit—with lithium-ions powering nearly every portable device in the marketplace, as well as electric vehicles and even next-generation airliners.

In other words, who better than Goodenough to cocreate the technology that could one day supplant his mighty lithium-ion battery?

The new battery technology uses a form of glass, doped with reactive “alkali” metals like lithium or sodium, as the battery’s electrolyte (the medium between cathode and electrode that ions travel across when the battery charges and discharges). As outlined in a research paper and recent patent filing (of which Goodenough, 94, says more are forthcoming), the lithium- or sodium-doped glass electrolyte offers a new medium for novel battery chemistry and physics.

They find, for instance, that the lithium- or sodium-glass battery has three times the energy storage capacity of a comparable lithium-ion battery. But its electrolyte is neither flammable nor volatile, and it doesn’t appear to build up the spiky “dendrites” that have plagued lithium-ions as they charge and discharge repeatedly and can ultimately short out, causing battery fires. So, if the glass batteries can be scaled up commercially, which remains uncertain in this still-proof-of-concept-phase research, the frightening phenomenon of flaming or exploding laptops, smartphones, or EVs could be a thing of the past.

Moreover, says lithium-glass battery codeveloper Maria Helena Braga, a visiting research fellow at UT Austin and engineering professor at the University of Porto in Portugal, the glass battery charges in “minutes rather than hours.” This, she says, is because the lithium- or sodium-doped glass endows the battery with a far greater capacity to store energy in the electric field. So, the battery can, in this sense, behave a little more like a lightning-fast supercapacitor. (In technical terms, the battery’s glass electrolyte endows it with a higher so-called dielectric constant than the volatile organic liquid electrolyte in a lithium-ion battery.)

Moreover, Braga says, early tests of their technology suggest it’s also capable of perhaps thousands of charge-discharge cycles, and could perform well in both extremely cold and hot weather. (Initial estimates place its operating range between below -20º C and 60º C.) And if they can switch the battery’s ionic messenger atom from lithium to sodium, the researchers could even source the batteries more reliably and sustainably. Rather tha...

1 comment



mGalaxy v6.3 released
August 27, 2017, 07:07:18 pm
Submitted by mgalaxy



mGalaxy v6.3 is out!
New theme, Mame database creation further simplified, ‘history.dat’ support,...

  •     New “Fruit Machine” theme added to meet the need of a growing number of users for a slot machine theme.
  •     mGalaxy_Runway: Database > Mame database creation further simplified.
  •     mGalaxy_Runway: Database > ‘history.dat’ support added to Mame DB.
  •     mGalaxy_Runway: Database > Image preview while scraping from databases.
  •     mGalaxy_Runway: When duplicating a system, you now get the option to copy user files (database, favorites, top10,…) from the ‘original’ system to the ‘duplicated’ system.

More info and download on http://www.mgalaxy.com

0 comments



Last remaining CRT monitors from X-Arcade
April 19, 2017, 09:26:11 am
Submitted by saint

Received an email from X-Arcade today that they expect to sell out of their remaining stock of CRT monitors shortly.

"LIMITED CRT MONITOR AVAILABLE

The CRT featured in our arcade machine is no longer in production and we are down to the last remaining inventory. We should be running out by end of this month, so if you wish to own an authentic CRT monitor, please order immediately! We will shift to an LCD once our remaining stock is depleted. No companies are willing to produce any more CRT arcade monitors. First come, first serve."

https://shop.xgaming.com/products/x-arcade-machine-cabinet-with-250-arcade-classics?_ke=c2FpbnRAYXJjYWRlY29udHJvbHMuY29t

1 comment



RatRefresh 0.1 - Automated EDID updater for MAME and others
January 12, 2017, 04:43:32 pm
Submitted by Rataplan626

I've put up a small tool that might aid LCD users to prevent tearing when gaming. We all know CRU can update your EDID settings, but that does not have command-line support. That makes it quite inconvenient to change your refresh rates for every single game you play (especially on MAME).
I have created RatRefresh to help with that. It's a simple tool that allows you to update EDID settings from commandline. What can it do?

  • Quickly switch to a specific refresh rate from command-line
  • Automatically switch to the correct refresh rate for any MAME game
  • Allows you to enter refresh rates for any emu / game / application

So this might be ideal for your LCD-powered MAME-cab! Check it out here.

[Fixed link. -- Scott]

0 comments



mGalaxy v6.2 released
December 24, 2016, 05:32:22 am
Submitted by mgalaxy



What's new!

  •     New “Presenter” theme added.
  •     mGalaxy_Runway : Database > Hidden items can be restored to ‘Visible’.
  •     mGalaxy_Runway: Database > Show/hide Hidden items (displayed in a different text format)
  •     mGalaxy_Runway: Database > Show/hide Missing items (displayed in a different text format)
  •     mGalaxy_Runway: Database > New database server added.
  •     mGalaxy_Runway: Database > Media download extended to movies, clear logos, fan arts.
  •     Game description cleaned up from parenthesis and brackets (and their content) [Option]
  •     Game list animation when scrolling [Option]
  •     Game list with logo images (for compatible themes) [Option]
  •     mGalaxy_Runway: Mame database creation further simplified: “Catver.ini” & “nplayers.ini” automatically downloaded when missing.

More info and download on http://www.mgalaxy.com



0 comments



Use an Arduino to de-suicide a CPS2 board
September 13, 2016, 11:52:18 am
Submitted by saint

Quote
Dear all, after a few months of testing we are extremely happy to release the new clean desuicide / security programing method for Capcom's CPS2 hardware.

This guide is the result of almost two years of work by an small group of arcade enthusiasts to unravel the secrets of the security implementation found in one of the largest and most popular arcade platform systems. Thanks for this work it is now possible to fully preserve any CPS2 systems as original hardware.

Over the coming weeks additional details about the CPS2 hardware internals will be released providing unseen insights into how Capcom implemented security.

More details, PDFs, step by step guides, and and video at the link.

http://arcadehacker.blogspot.mx/2016/09/capcom-cps2-security-programming-guide.html?m=1

5 comments



Holy cow! Are we up? We look up! Are we really up?
August 22, 2016, 07:35:32 am
Submitted by saint

I *think* we're up! I'm going to leave the server in maintenance mode for a while, possibly all day, while I make sure we're reliably up and stable and that everything's working. I'm positive there are things that aren't working yet, for instance the wiki. However, the main site and forum appear to be online. Thanks for bearing with me folks while we worked through our outage.

What happened?

The hard drives in the RAID configuration on the old server died, one at a time. We replaced them, but somewhere in the replacing we lost the boot partition, and despite the fact that it should be relatively easy to restore, we could-not-get-it-to-boot again.

Since the server was 4 years old at least, we had already been contemplating upgrading to a new box, so took the time to do so. We still had access to the old server's drives via a rescue boot environment, so migrating was doable.

It took a bit to get the new server online and configured, primarily because I used the transition as an exercise to improve my server administration skills with Linux. 

The final snag was the version of the Ubuntu we're running on the new box doesn't support the version of php SMF requires, and SMF isn't upgraded for the new version of PHP yet.

Got that resolved this morning, and now it's hopefully just a matter of troubleshooting various quirks and settings until we get everything resolved.

BIG THANKS to sirwoogie for holding my hand through this process and helping teach me to fish! :)

Several of you have offered your time or financial donations to help. Thank you, thank you, I very much appreciate it. In the future I won't be shy about accepting offers of expertise.

As for financial donations, thank you for the offers, but please consider donating to charitable organizations or those in need such as relief for the Louisiana flooding victims.

BYOAC/arcadecontrols.com is my way of giving something back to the community. There's such a wealth of knowledge and resources out on the Internet, and BYOAC is my way of being a small part of that. Maintaining the server is within my means, and as long as there's any interest in what BYOAC hosts, I'll continue to keep the server online.

Thank you for your support!

--- saint


40 comments



mGalaxy v6.0 release
July 10, 2016, 04:39:18 am
Submitted by mgalaxy



Incredible amount of new features into v6.0!!

 • Automatic script handling.
No more need to handle scripts installation! No more need to worry whether an emulator needs a script or not to work, mGalaxy will manage it by itself!
• RetroArch added to available systems.
• Command window hidden.
The command window may now be hidden when the emulator is launched (for systems allowing it, like ‘Mame’ for instance)
• Uppercase and lower case rom file extensions are now allowed.
• Screensaver/Attract Mode.
• Theme switching (Premium).
Set one (different) theme per system.
• Localization (French, German, Portuguese for now!).
• mGalaxy_Runway system creation setup revised.
You now drag and drop the system you need (as many instances as you want) to build your system list (this would allow you, for instance, to create 3 different MAME systems!)
• Systems window: filtering on arcade/computer/console.
• mGalaxy_Runway: box/marquee images support (for themes allowing this functionality).
• Scroll speed setting.
Let you define the scrolling speed of the list when direction keys are held.
• Pre-Launch settings.
Allows you to launch another application/script/document before launching game (for instance, to auto load map to ‘Ultimarc Ultrastik 360’)
• Child lock (per key/button).
When set, the key/button has to be held for 3 seconds to run.
• Compatible with every screen resolution (e.g. 640x480px).
• mGalaxy_Runway: database creator (with resume functionality).
• mGalaxy_Runway: database editor (Premium).
• mGalaxy_Runway: data/media export (database, favorites, roms, snaps, boxes, videos).
• Multiple monitor support.
• Command Help panel.
Displays all the actions available and their corresponding key/button shortcut
• mGalaxy_Runway: Mame database creation updated

Spread the news !!
More info and download on http://www.mgalaxy.com





2 comments

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