Archive for April, 2007
April 26, 2007
Nokes is now going up and down the stairs completely on his own. Sarah had been coaxing him down the stairs, and he seemed to do it with some reserve, but when we are both down there and he wants to hang out, he will brave them. It is really cute, he puts his front legs on the lower step and sort of slides his butt off the current one.
We gave him two liter pop bottles to play with, he seems to like those. He carries them around by the top. I have also noticed him getting more and more barky, he pants a lot now when playing outside, and really likes to jump up on you when you are playing.
He seems to have stay down pretty good, he knows his crate, so Sarah started last night to work with him on some new things, like shake and rollover. I don’t care too much about those as long as he knows the main stuff. But we will probably think about enrolling him in a puppy class in mid May sometime, butting right up to the end of her school year.
Nokes had his second set of shots today, and he also got his first bath and did really well. He didn’t squirm too much, and he didn’t wine.
Ms. Pac-man is alive!
Last night, a miracle happened! I got the game up and working, and it is a beautiful thing. I will try to get photos of it working here pretty soon, but first, how did I do it?
Two weekends back I had been talking with Robert at the Arcade auction here in Indy. I was asking him if he knew anybody that would be willing to help me get some of my machines working, which I have been asking of people for a year or so now. He asked specifically what my Ms. Pac-man was doing, and I explained to him that the power supply was bad, and was dropping amps off one of the leads. So then he tells me that Bob Roberts makes a kit to repair those old power supplys, replacing some capacitors and whatnot.
So, I checked it out. I didn’t see the actual part about the capacitors, but Bob Roberts puts together what he calls a “Pacpower” kit. It is a way to power the PCB with a switching power supply and some custom wiring, all while keeping the original wiring in tact. This answered my biggest questions, because I read you had to hack the wiring all apart if you just wanted to switch in a new switching power supply for the old transformer.
The kit was more expensive than I anticipated, if I wanted to get a new switcher. I knew I had a couple of switchers, but wanted to make sure that I did it right, and I didn’t get to the point of powering on the game with the kit and have the switcher be bad and leave me to test to figure that out. I had looked at Bob Roberts Pacpower kit instructions online, and kind of assumed that it came ready to go, plug and play, but I was disappointed to find out that wasn’t the case. You got all of the parts and you did some assembly.
I got it on Monday, but not figuring that it would work, I didn’t do anything with it right away. I still figured that even if I did the kit, the monitor and PCB both were unknowns on whether or not they were in working condition. Last night I set aside some time to put the Pacpower kit together. It took me awhile, probably about 2 hours, to put together. I am not an expert, and someone who has more experience and didn’t have to read and re-read things carefully on Bob Roberts website, probably could have done it in an hour or less. I made some mistakes, which I will get into later, and had to correct those and figure some other things out, but finally I got everything made and screwed up inside the cabinet.
I crossed my fingers, plugged the game in, and I heard a pop from the monitor, which was knew. I rushed around to the other side, and my game was on! It was already set on freeplay, which I thought was interesting, so I pressed the player one button and away I went. I also had the speedup chip already installed! I was so pumped about all of this. The weirdest thing, the immediate thought I had after I started to play was, “I wonder if I should install a 96-1 kit on here and get all of the games.”
I took a look at a couple of other things, I looked at the manuals and figured out which one was the sound pot, and got that turned down. It was arcade style volume, and it no longer needed to be so loud in my basement. The marquee light doesn’t seem to be working, and I thought it did before I did this, so I will have to do some testing on that to make sure I didn’t mess it up. The monitor has some pretty solid screen burn, but you know what, I don’t really care right now. I can be picky later.
But after hearing the original story of this game, and how it sat in a storage unit, I was suprised about the “freeplay” being set and the speed up chip installed. It must not have sit in that storage that long is my thought, that maybe the last user had it in a personal non-commercial setting.
Either way, all I know is that my game works, I got it to work, and I am pumped that my ratio of non working games is now less than those that I have that do work or are at least close. Sarah was confused at how I was acting, but happy for me that I got it up and running.
Note: Back to the Bob Roberts Pacpower kit. The instructions online are very good for a newbie to install this kit in their Ms. Pac-man. However, towards the end he trails off on some small details that he takes for granted that most people know, and I had no idea because I am so slow at this type of stuff. I hope to take his tutorial and make an little addendum section and post that here in case anyone needs further explanation of some things.
26th April 2007
Decided tonight to launch the Kellogg writeup I did in the opinion section, and to not finish it. I may never get to it, but if you want to read it to know a little more of what happened that day, you can read about Kellogg in our “Interests” section.
Working more on the Agent X sideart
Had some time to work on the artwork again tonight. I traced a ton of the smoke clouds coming out and around Agent X. I also got to other small bits and pieces likes some circles on the elevator doors.
25th April 2007
Tonight I set aside time to work on my Ms. Pac-man machine, going through the instructions for the power kit I bought. The night ended with me getting the game to work! I was so pumped, was up pretty late. I didn’t actually believe it would do anything, unsure if some of the other parts actually worked as well.
24th April 2007
Set upright, and moved the wine rack around tonight. Took some photos, hope to post them with our new bedroom set sometime soon.
Almost completed the Mr. Do! clown
Over the weekend I was watching some tv, so I worked on the Mr. Do clown enemy quite a bit, and he is nearing completion. So, between this character, the apple details I have left, and the almost done winged guy, I could have four main characters done by next weekend. Which is good, because I now have a blank sided cabinet to put the artwork on if I want.
April 23, 2007
Nokes was pretty good with guests down this weekend, only did thing that were typical of a puppy. This weekend we got a package from Brenda and Amanda with some great little gifts, some chicken flavored dog treats and two Tiger theamed items, a Tigers Collar for when he gets bigger, and a Tigers dish. We were going to have to get him a dish soon anyway, so that really saved us.
Sarah let him play with his first rawhide in a monitored setting this weekend. I am still really nervous about them, but the vet told us they are ok.
He gets really excited to play outside with the frisbee, and we did that with him a lot this weekend. Rachel watched him while we were wine tasting and played with him too, so he got a lot of that attention.
He has also started running up and down the fence with the neighbor German Shepherd. Before he was a little scared, but now he incites it a little, he will get really low in the grass and wag his tail, let out a little yip and start to do his little hobbled puppy run down the fence. The other dog wastes him in speed, but it is still pretty cute to hear him from the kitchen knowing what he is doing.
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