NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR

Please note, if you are serious about building controllers or an arcade cabinet, the ultimate resource is ArcadeControls.com. I created these controllers several years ago, so this guide is out of date. For this blog post I essentially dug up the archived web page I created and converted it into a blog post. Contact me if you’d like some help / suggestions. Enjoy!

INTRO

These controllers are loosely based on Razoola’s from CPS2Shock (thanks Raz!). I hacked up 2 old Microsoft Sidewinder Gamepads (the ones with old school DA-15 game ports). I decided to use these specific gamepads for two reasons… the main one being that they are daisy-chainable (you can hook up to 4 to your computer just by plugging them into each other), the other being that they are extremely easy to hack… there are LABELED SOLDER JOINTS ON THE PCB!!! I ordered all of my parts from HappControls.com. Here are the parts I ordered:

Super Joystick - very similar to the Street Fighter II stick. Here are some other joysticks.

Competition push buttons - there are other style push buttons that might fit your specific needs better here

1 / 2 / 3 / 4 player buttons

Identification tags - to mark your buttons if desired

Custom push buttons - I didn’t actually order any of these, but you might want them for yours

THE BOX

These pics are terribly out of scale. The measurements are in inches. The biggest mistake I made was making my boxes WAY to tall. I recommend you chop off as much as you can from the height of the box. If I were to make another set of controllers, I’ll design them at a slant.

For the button placing, I recommend 4.5 cm between the center of each button. It’s about the same as the HotRodSE. The lower left button should be about 3 cm down, and 4 cm to the left. Please note, I did not include the button hole size in this diagram because every button is different.

Start by removing all the screws on the bottom of the controller. You will need a very small Phillips screw driver for this. I recommend keeping the button-side down when you take the shell off. This way the buttons don’t go flying everywhere.

The first order of business will be to remove the tab that is holding the wire-harness down. It is connected to the side of where you hook more sidewinders up to. A simple twist/turn of it with a pair of needle nose pliers will shake it loose. below is a picture of the tab:

If you look on the sidewinder board, you will see it is very clearly labeled for soldering. The two pictures below indicate where you will be soldering (remember that all ground (negative) terminals will go to the same place, which you will learn about later on this page):

Buttons: The solder point marked “PR” is the M button, and the solder point marked “ST” is the Start button. I used the M button for for my coins. The other buttons are quite obvious… a = a, b = b…. etc.

D-Pad: The U, D, L, R solder points indicate Up, Down, Left, Right.

The wire I used to solder is called CAT5 (category 5) which is mainly used to make Ethernet cable. It is aka twisted pair because it has 4 pairs of twisted wires running in one casing (8 wires total). This is perfect because it keeps the inside of your controller nice and clean. Also, all the wires are color coded so they are very easy to keep track of.

Time to solder! If you are a newbie at soldering, you should visit this YouTube video:

The first thing to do before you start soldering is to decide what kind of buttons you’re going to have on the controller. If you want ones like mine, then you will need 9 buttons total and 4 directions (13 total solder points). I used the standard buttons as Street Fighter II controls, and the one on the bottom left is for NeoGeo which I wired to the BACK RIGHT button. Then I wired my coin button to the M button, and the start button to my start button.

There might be some blue gooey substance in the holes that you are going to stick your CAT5 through… just use the head of a sowing needle to poke that stuff through and get it out. In each CAT5 cable, you will see pairs of wires. I used the solid colors as my positive terminal, and later I wired all of the lighter colors to the same ground terminal. When you stick one of your solid colors through the place you will be soldering, you will see them pop out on the other side of the controller in the places shown below. Solder on this side. USE A FINE-TIPPED SOLDERING GUN AND EXTRA THIN SOLDER!!!

Now wire your ground terminals. It’s best to strip your ground wires really long so you can wire them all to the same place. I wired all mine to the already soldered BACK LEFT button. Below you can see a pic of my ugly soldering job with all the grounds tied together to the BACK LEFT ground wire (the back left ground is the red wire leading up into the bunch).

After you’re all done, you should have something that looks like this:

So now that you’re done, hook them up to your microswitches and see if they work! Use the configuration below to hook them up:

Now close up your box with some wood screws, and go play mame =]

This is awesome….

http://www.websurdity.com/2007/02/28/uncomfortable-questions-was-the-death-star-attack-an-inside-job/

O hai people who say “insure” instead of “ensure”! What exactly do you mean when you say “this new automated robotic packaging system will insure the delivery of our product on time for our vendors”? Are you proposing an insurance arrangement for the robotic packaging system? If so, you haven’t specified a deductible or percentage of the insured’s payment responsibility. You have overlooked many aspects of the insurance contract you have proposed.

It appears you failed 7th grade English. The bowels of our school systems have given fecal birth to your heinous literacy. Perhaps I’m being too harsh… maybe you’re still in 6th grade.

Also, for every time you say “for all intensive purposes” instead of the correct phrase “for all intents and purposes”, I’m going to defecate in the upper deck of your toilet.

Love,
MastaG

Open Letters are posted every Thursday morning. For more, click Open Letters under Categories on the right.

I was searching for a way to batch download an entire album from WebShots.com and I ran across several non-working plugins, and a few non-existent pages. With some tinkering I found out a simple way to batch download albums without a premium WebShots account. The catch is that you can only download 28 photos at a time (the max number per page that WebShots allows), so if you have more than a thousand photos to download and you’re pressed for time you may want to consider the premium membership, at least temporarily until you’re done leeching.

Required software:

FireFox v2.x

Download Them All! (FireFox plugin)

GreaseMonkey (FireFox plugin)

Thumbs2Links (GreaseMonkey script)

Now that you have all the above programs installed, go to your WebShots album, and click the 28 pics per page link that looks like this:

Now, at the bottom right of the screen you should see a link that says Get Direct Links!, click that shniz noz, and scroll to the very bottom of the page and you’ll see links begin to populate. Give it about 10 seconds to complete and it will look something like this (with 28 links total):

Now right click anywhere in the frame, and click DownLoadThemAll! When the DownLoadThemAll window appears, make a check next to Images, set yourself a download directory, and press Start

That’s it! Like I said, it sucks that you have to go to every page of the album to do this, but it’s better than right clicking each one to download them individually!!!

May you have many loud and smelly farts,
MastaG

PS: if you want to download videos, in the DownloadThemAll window just click Additional Filters and enter .flv then play the .flv files with something like Riva FLV Player, or any other flash video player.

I about died laughing watching this!!!! You don’t have to be a Photoshop nerd to enjoy it.

via BoingBoing

Part 2 has been posted!!!!!!!!!!!!!

For instance, did you know that “In 2007 there were 5 storms classified as HURRICUNTS”?

I was very surprised to learn that “In the Criminal Law, automatism is WHEN MICHAEL BLOWS HIS DAD”

Not exactly news, but “In mathematics, an exotic R4 is a differentiable manifold that is homeomorphic to the Euclidean space R4, but CHERRY HILL HIGH SCHOOL TRACK TEAM FUCKS GOATS”

Holy ballfarts I love da Weekeepediaz!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Open Letters are posted every Thursday morning. For more, click Open Letters under Categories on the right.

O hai 3% of Nature’s Graffiti Readers! You are using Safari to look at our website. Whoa, whoa, whoa…. you should lean back a little, you don’t want to get emo tears on your new Apple Macbook Pro you got for Christmas (or “X-mas” as you call it when you’re around your parents). Wipe those tears off with your $50 black hoodie from Hot Topic and have another sip of emo juice (Starbucks Soy Peppermint Mocha, with a half squirt of white chocolate syrup). What the hell happened to your second mouse button anyway? Is that why you’re crying? Because you can’t right click?

32.9 % of our readers are at least 87 years old because they’re still using Internet Explorer. Hasn’t IE crashed enough already?

60.3% of our readers are turbo charged ultra mega super bona fide millionaire pimps because they use Firefox. Nice!

Love,
MastaG

PS: Your pants are too tight

The above image is GPL licensed, and was originally created by Steevven1 of Wikipedia.

When we first got a cat she did this to us twice, and I couldn’t take it anymore… I was either going to turn our cat into violin strings, or just start feeding her at night. I’m glad I chose the latter

Some folks emailed me with suggestions . Although these albums don’t compare to those in my original Best Metal Albums of 2007 post, they certainly warrant being mentioned here.

Job for a Cowboy - Genesis

Dysrhythmia - Barriers and Passages (technically released in 2006, but the Vinyl LP came out in 2007 so there

Please go vote for our kitteh… click the pic!!! Give it 5 Cheezburgerz!!!!!

original pic

O hai Hevy Devy! I love you. Not in a homosexual way, or some creepy stalker way. Nay, I would defend thee against a thousand creepy stalkers, and if homosexuals weren’t so merry and non-threatening I would surely ward off the short shorts, glitter, dance music, and sexual acts that are technically illegal in my home state of Virginia (yeah, I’m serious, it’s illegal here, even for the opposite sex to enjoy).

I can’t stop listening to your music. It’s a problem. Seriously. My wife constantly protests “MastaG, pleeeeeeeeease, I can’t listen to another over-the-top operatic metal album about a 4th dimensional alien who wishes to consume the entirety of the Earth’s coffee supply.” I return with “WHAT?! We’ve only listened to Ziltoid the Omniscient five times on this car trip, and I need at least twelve repeats of this CD before I can even consider listening to the next Devin Townsend album,” and then she usually counterblasts something like “Ok, MastaG, I’m going to make this perfectly clear; I will suffocate you in your sleep if I have to listen to one more double kick drum.” Then I usually switch to Terria or Ocean Machine-Biomech because she can actually endure those albums without contemplating murdering me in some horrible fashion.

In fall of 2006, you and your wife were blessed with a son! Allow me to offer my congratulations on your first born! You will surely be awesome parents. Understandably, you quit touring to spend time with your family. It was the noblest course of action any new father could have made.

Despite quitting live shows, you released a solo album entitled Ziltoid The Omniscient, which was recorded and produced in your basement, and you used software called The Drum Kit From Hell for percussion (the “drums” sounded awesome, by the way). This hilarious yet heavy and harmonic metal album merely acted further as causation for the adoration I feel towards your music, and has thus enraged my wife by rehearing the same album over, and over, and over, and over again. If this trend continues, I guarantee that within the first year of my marriage to the lovely Intergalactic Hustler, I will be maimed, tortured, and possibly “suicided”, or worse! I like being alive, it’s pretty cool. So PLEASE continue to make music. A variety of new basement-produced Devin Townsend albums could help dull the pain that my wife currently feels, and thus save my life.

If you ever play another show again, with any band, I will travel across the omniverse to witness the act. My wife has an interdimensional space craft that I can hitch a ride on. In fact, she’s currently on a space mission to save cuddly space creatures… no doubt NOT listening to any Devin Townsend records on her voyage.

Love (again, not in a gay way),
MastaG

Open Letters are posted every Thursday morning. For more, click Open Letters under Categories on the right.

There are certainly more albums that deserve to be on this list, but these are the ones that really stand out for me. I can’t stop listening to them, and even after I’m done listening they stick in my head for hours. Think I forgot one? It’s very possible I didn’t even hear the album you’re thinking of (hey, I’m not made of $$$), so email me because I’d love to hear some new bands!

Honorable mentions, but for various reasons they just don’t end up on my stereo as often as the others:
Between the Buried and Me - Colors
Dillinger Escape Plan - Ire Works
Pig Destroyer - Phantom Limb

9. Dethklok - The Dethalbum
It’s hard to believe a fake death metal band could debut at #21 on the Billboard 200 chart (and become the highest charting death metal album of all time), but Brendon Small made something of a classic here. I’m a big fan of Metalocalypse, so naturally I was attracted to this album for the gag factor, but I didn’t dream it would actually be half decent metal. Aiding Brendan Small was Ulrich Wild’s superior metal production skills, and Gene “The Machine” Hoglan’s insane drums (my favorite drummer of all time, by the way).

8. Alcest - Souvenirs D’un Autre Monde
The first time I listened to this CD I was in a rushed, hasty mood, and I didn’t give it the respect it truly deserves. It only took one car ride with my attention focused on the music that I became addicted. This one man act is driven by a French dude named Neige who originally created this band as a 3 man black metal outfit, but with the release of Le Secret in 2005 he turned the band into a solo act with a complete different, almost too pleasant, direction. This album is deeply harmonic and beautiful, with more than enough heavy guitars to keep most metal fans interested, but even non-metal fans will enjoy this one.

7. The Red Chord - Prey For Eyes
These guys started off on a high note with their debut album Fused Together in Revolving Doors, yet continued to bring originality and skill with each successor. Prey For Eyes is yet another delicious mix of grind, hardcore, and death metal, leaning heavier on the death metal side this time. The album progresses in such an unpredictable manner that I still find myself noticing little twists where I think to myself “Whoa, I don’t remember that part from the last time I listened to this…. Sick!”

6. Nile – Ithyphallic
It’s all about speed. No, not methamphetamine, I’m talking about some of the fastest death metal on the planet. Nile brings turns up the metronome a little bit with each album, and Ithyphallic is no exception. They also went back to some of their early roots and included some weird Egyptian and Mesopotamian instruments.

5. Behemoth - The Apostasy
Behemoth has changed drastically over time. Their early raw black metal albums, such as From The Pagan Vastlands, aren’t really to my liking (sorry, raw black metal fans). Starting with their 1999 album, Satanica, they took on a newer and more produced death metal sound, while sticking with their black metal lyrical roots, that agreed more with my metal pallet. The Apostasy is the next mutation in the evolution of Behemoth, and I FREAKING LOVE IT!!!!!! Blast beats galore, ridiculously fast guitars, and the throaty vocals of this album will simply not get out of my head.

4. Beneath The Massacre - Mechanics Of Dysfunction
Sometimes death metal just gets monotonous and uninteresting, but occasionally a band like Beneath The Massacre breaks that barrier and adds something that no other band can replicate. This album gushes with technicality while keeping things very tight. I hope to see more of these insane Canucks.

3. Behold…The Arctopus – Skullgrid
I happened upon these guys by chance while surfing Wikipedia for mathcore bands. Sometimes this is exactly what I need; no vocals, just pure 100% insane American technical metal! My teeth uncontrollably clench at certain parts of this album!!!

2. Baroness - Red Album
As I stated in a previous post, two of my cousins are in this band, so you might think I’m biased. Well… maybe a little… but this album would have caught me by surprise no matter who was in the band. It’s rare that bands can pull off a heavy sound, yet retain an element of beauty. Baroness have held true to their sludge roots, but have fused a harmonic element into their latest concoction that has truly breathed some new life into the tired metal scene. Red Album was chosen as Album of the Year by Revolver magazine, and they deserve it!

***drumroll***

1. Devin Townsend - Ziltoid the Omniscient
There is nothing in this world more musically soothing to me than a screaming Canadian skullet man with double kick drums rolling, harmonic guitars blazing, and over the top keyboards synchronizing the entire event. This album is an operatic metal musical focusing on Ziltoid, a 4th dimensional alien in search of black coffee, the only fuel that can power his time traveling interdimensional space craft. This is the probably the silliest metal album ever created (even more so than The Dethalbum), yet Devin managed to combine all the best musical elements of every band he’s ever been in. My wife, the lovely Intergalactic Hustler, is ready to murder me because I have forced her to listen to it so many times… this CD literally did not leave my car stereo for about a month after it came out. I’m so happy with this album that I could shit out of my nostrils.