bavacade Repair Log 9-24-2024

Posted on September 24, 2024 by Reverend

It has been a while since a full blown repair log, but that is the upside of having an all but perfect arcade 🙂 But as Chinua Achebe notes, “things fall apart.” So on with the show…

When I was back in the US last month I picked up a few boards that were in for repair with East Coast Arcade, namely Phoenix, an extra Stargate board set, Super Cobra, and a Crush Roller.*

The Phoenix board was having graphical issues that were probably related to my hacky install of the high score save kit, but Mike remedied that so all is good, and free play and high scores are back on the menu. The last thing with this game is a possible monitor swap give this tube is a bit dim, and I think the Centuri Challenger tube would work well here.

Make Trax in the bavacade getting ready for a Crush Roller board

Crush Roller splash screen

As for the Crush Roller board, it was still upside down and inverted, so I had to swap both the horizontal and vertical yoke wires to get it to work. This meant breaking up the yoke wires, which means I do need to clean those back up. You can read more about flipping vertical and horizontal yoke wires, because it’s important not to cross the vertical and horizontal streams.

The yoke wires normally go brown, white, grey, and red to the far right, but here the white and red are flipped as are the brown and grey. Also, note that you can not swap these randomly, read this guide for more.

My spare Super Cobra board was throwing garbage after it came back from repair, but then started working when the edge connector was adjusted. The high score had two blocks instead of numbers, and the game was having sound issues. I think the high score save kit that was added years ago never really worked, and as a result the board has always been glitchy. I’m going to get rid of the high score save kit and replace the missing ROMs on the main board in locations 2C, 2E, 2F, 2H, 2J, and  2L After that I’ll try a re-cap on the main board to fix some dying sound issues, but that should at least make this board a solid backup.

The cursed spare Super Cobra board

In terms of finally getting free play and high scores working on Super Cobra, I’m going to approach this in a different way. I have a working Scramble backup board that tested fine in Super Cobra. So, I’m going to get the multi-game high score save kit for Scramble, and then just have it default to Super Cobra, and as a bonus I’ll also be able to play Amidar and Frogger on this machine.

Multi-game Scramble High Score Save Kit

The extra Stargate boards were a non-working set I acquired cheap online. I figured it’s always good to have an extra set given how many of those Williams boards are interchangeable. The widget (or interconnect) board from the extra Stargate set was having an issue. More specifically, the reverse button was not working, it would randomly turn the ship in the opposite direction whether or not I was pressing reverse. I just happened to have an extra Joust board set and that widget board is interchangeable with Stargate. YEAH!  So I swapped out the widget board from Joust and now the extra Stargate set is working perfectly. I sent the Stargate widget board in for repair, just so I’m keeping on top of the whack-a-mole that is board repair.

Williams’ widget or interchange board

Speaking of Joust, when I turned that game on last week I got a 128 Error on the digital display that you can find on the ROM board. I believe this error is essentially saying main board (1) second bank (2)  eighth chip (8). As a first test, I swapped out the ROM board with the extra I had at hand, but got the same error. So, I figured it must be the main RAM board, so I went in search for my extra main board. I found what I believed to be the right board, but I got a new error: black and yellow vertical lines on the monitor. After a bit I remembered this was similar to an issue I had with Stargate years ago, so I was wondering if this wasn’t my working Joust board after all (the downside of these Williams boards being interchangeable). I kept looking through my PCBs and found the main Joust board and that fixed it, so the issue is definitely with a RAM chip on the main board, now whether I can fix it or not is another issue. Both a win and an invite to try my hand at board work.

While I was in Joust, I also tired an FPGA board that was previously in Stargate, and that worked perfectly.

Galaxian was briefly acting up with some discoloration of the graphics, but I left that one on for a few hours this weekend and the issue did not return—to be continued?

Also last week, the Dig Dug spare board went down. There was a loud, consistent beep and when I checked the screen it was throwing garbage. I swapped in the older board I had and everything worked fine, so looks to be a board issue, but we’ll see. Only thing was I had to reset the high scores, and I did that following this forum post. Also, wheels on Dig Dug are unstable given that game is just too heavy for smaller wheels, so will be talking to Alberto about swapping those out.

Millipede side dent

Finally, while trying to move Dig Dug, the wheel issue mentioned above made me force the game and it dented the side of Millipede— which I had just refinished. I was holding off on the T-molding because some of the white paint on the sides needs to be better matched. For that procrastination I paid, but Alberto noted it was a quick fix, so we’re golden, and this time I paint and add back the T-molding right away.

The T-molding channel looking ugly on Millipede after dent

Well, I think that is enough for this repair log; I’m not sure I could handle anymore. The big takeaway for me is that if I want to avoid going crazy with this hobby, I’m going to need to learn how to fix boards. That is a goal for the next year, but we’ll see how that fares.
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*I also tried to fix a non-working Williams FPGA board, but it was dead and could not be saved–bad video. Additionally, I bought a Crush Roller bootleg board that seems to have no apparent logic in regards to the actual board–so still a mystery.

Posted in bavacade, bavarcade, video games | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

In Search of the Magic Dust with Maren Deepwell

Posted on September 20, 2024 by Reverend

Last week I was invited by the great Maren Deepwell to chat about my experiences with remote working at Reclaim over the last decade, and it was a total blast. As it happens both Maren and I went remote around the same time, so there was no shortage of topics to discuss. What I learned from Maren over the years is how fundamental regular and intentional communication and community building is to a healthy online organization, in fact it may just be that elusive magic dust we were in search of during our conversation. I really enjoyed having the ability to work out so many of the finer details that make remote work work, and even better that it comes in the form of a free and open therapy session masquerading as a podcast episode!

Thanks again to Maren for having me, and if musings about remote work are of interest you might find this an enjoyable listen, but no promises.

Posted in audio, reclaim | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

The ds106radio Summer of Love Camp

Posted on August 24, 2024 by Reverend

It’s more than a week since the ds106radio Summer Camp wrapped up, and the good vibes are still bouncing around the atmosphere of my little corner of the world wide web. The free and open lofi conference that Maren Deepwell pulled together alongside Taylor Jadin was a pretty remarkable feat. My only regret is how little I had to do with how awesome it was!  Thanks to the impeccable planning of Maren and seamless integration of tech by Taylor all I had to do was show up after two weeks of traveling and jump on the air. The  vision and execution for this conference was all Maren and Taylor, so major kudos to a brilliant re-imagining of what a summer conference can and should be. It was truly a “summer of love” event, and highlights how warm and magical community events can be!

As for my part, I had the pleasure and privilege of getting the camp started four of the five days, which I approached as part playing music and part reflecting on what happened the day before, while preparing the listeners for what was on tap for that day. It was a pretty easy format for me to structure a show around and made planning dead simple. I would just dip into recordings that happened the day before and then extrapolate on the list of sessions for the day to come. For the record, here are the four 1-hour recordings from my Summer Camp morning show:

“ds106radio Summer Camp Day 1 Morning Show” by Jim Groom.

“ds106radio Summer Camp Day 2 Morning Show” by Jim Groom.

“ds106radio Summer Camp Day 3 Morning Show” by Jim Groom.

“ds106radio Summer Camp Day 4 Morning Show” by Jim Groom.

Beyond that, I had a hand in a few other sessions as either participant, moderator, or hanger-on. In fact, you can find any of the official sessions—20 in all!—over at the ds106radio Summer Camp audio archive. There are so many riches to explore in the wake of summer camp, and as always Maren and Taylor have prioritized both sharing and caring. All hail summer Camp on the mighty ds106radio!

Posted in ds106radio, reclaim, Reclaim Edtech, Reclaim Radio | Tagged , | 2 Comments

RetroPie Fun on Reclaim TV

Posted on August 23, 2024 by Reverend

After a month of on-again, off-again attempts to get my RetroPie upgraded to the latest version—which included not only changing the Raspbian OS from Raspbian Stretch to Buster, but also migrating hardware from Raspberry Pi 3B to 4B—I’m now running RetroPie 4.8 on a RaspberryPie 4B. Huzzah!

For this week’s stream on Reclaim TV I wanted to document installing RetroPie on a Raspberry Pi 4B from scratch.* After that, I went through getting the Atari 5200 console running correctly. All of that was done in less than 30 minutes, which surprised me. The next part of the stream was showing off how I was able to pull in a feed of not only the Raspberry Pi 4B, but also feeds of both Atari 5200 and Atari 7800 consoles I have setup in my office.

Finally, I ended the stream comparing various console versions of a particular game like Pac-man, and demonstrating how some of the gameplay experience can be compromised in emulation. All in all it was a very fun stream and I was pretty fired-up the various complexities of getting the old technology plugged into the stream worked fairly seamlessly.

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*After hours of lost time, upgrading from Raspbian Stretch to Raspbian Buster OS is not worth the hassle. Just be sure to backup all your ROMs, configs, and BIOS files, and start fresh. Most emulators work out of the box, and the more complex setups like Atari 5200 are easier on the latest version.

†The two small issues were the fan I had in my office to cool things down was making noise on my wireless mic, and the Elgato HN60X capture card that was grabbing the Raspberry Pi went in and out a few times—I need to see why that was. But if that is the worst of it for this setup, I’ll take it!

Posted in ReclaimTV, retrocomputing, TV, video games, YouTube | Tagged , , , , , | 4 Comments

Greetings from Reclaim Hosting

Posted on July 30, 2024 by Reverend

Turns out a few days ago was Reclaim Hosting‘s 11th anniversary, crazy how time flies when you are providing a range of infrastructure options for higher ed and beyond. Recently Meredith Huffman and I sat down with Bryan Mathers to try and map all the different products and services we offer. The beauty of these sessions is that they often lead to new ways of framing Reclaim Hosting, and this meeting did not disappoint. We came up with the overarching theme of visiting various products as if they were places, and the postcards become the key element for visually capturing their essence: Continue reading →

Posted in art, reclaim | Tagged , | 4 Comments

DS106Radio Summer Camp

Posted on July 29, 2024 by Reverend

Bryan Mathers is at it again with his Remixer

While the Learning Management System may not be dead, I certainly feel better when it’s not around. In fact, the ds106radio Summer Camp from August 12th through the 16th is embedded in the idea that doing edtech is anything but isolating and depressing. The schedule highlights just that fact, with sessions about everything from the Austerity Blues to Dream Teams and Apollo 13s. And the platform? The open and free airwaves of the mighty ds106radio. I’ll get things going each morning with some impromptu radio with musings about such topics as “What is art?” and “Why you can’t kill what’s already dead.” This format allows for folks to tune in as they like and enjoy a frictionless experience all the while. Major kudos to Maren Deepwell for organizing the summer camp so seamlessly, and creating a free and accessible event that is open and available to anyone interested—my favorite kind of open! If you’re interested in playing along you can register here for reminders and updates or just listen in when the time comes.

Posted in ds106radio, reclaim, Reclaim Radio | Tagged , , | 3 Comments

Exploring Arduino Uno Motion Detector Options

Posted on July 17, 2024 by Reverend

As part of the Creepshow bav-o-rama installation for the bavastudio, I’m trying to get a motion detector hooked up to an HDMI switcher that will change inputs based on motion on the other side of the diorama window. It’s what Michael Branson Smith has termed an “aspirational goal” for this installation, and he may be right, but hope springs eternal in the bava’s breast. If nothing else, it’s given me an excuse to play with the Arduino Uno Rev3, which is a pretty amazing little gadget.

So, for the last week much of my free time has been dedicated to testing out a variety of scripts folks have shared to create a simple motion detector using the Arduino. My favorite so far is  “How to Setup an Arduino Motion Sensor” from PiMyLifeUp. I like this one because it has the motion detector connected to both an LED light and a tiny piezo speaker, so whenever motion is detected the light and speaker are activated. I used the above video and linked guide to create it, but left the resistors out of the circuit because I knew this was just a test and wouldn’t be running for any significant amount of time.

The above video is my test of the motion detector, and it’s amazing how something seemingly so complex as a motion detector can be made so simple and entertaining. That’s the magic of the Arduino.

Some notes on were I’m so far on my quest. The above build is using a PIR motion sensor, or a passive infrared motion detector, which picks up on change of radiation levels based on a person’s movement. These sensors are quite cheap; I was able to get a 5 pack for 10 euros. The tiny piezo speaker and LED light were taken from the Sparkfun Inventor’s Kit George Meadows so generously donated to Reclaim many years ago. I bought a breadboard separately because the one that came with the Inventor’s Kit was long gone. I now understand just how useful a breadboard is for experimenting with all these circuits, it allows for quick connections without ever having to solder a thing.

I figured out almost immediately that the PIR motion sensor will not work for my project because they are activated by energy displacement. Given my diorama will be trying to detect motion on the other side of an insulated window, this means energy/heat detection will be difficult, if not impossible, to pickup. In other words, this is a no-go for my use case.

The SHARP GP2Y0A21YK0F is an easy to use IR distance sensor with a range of 10 – 80 cm

But this led me down a rabbit hole of other options for motion activation using the Arduino. Another sensor I had hanging around that might work is the SHARP GP2Y0A21 proximity sensor. This sensor has a range of 10-80 cm, and according to this thread might work at a distance of 30 cm from the window and angled at greater than 30 degrees from the glass surface:

I have had good luck using sharp gp2 series proximity sensors behind glass in museum display cases for triggering exhibits.  Typically incline them at greater then thirty degrees to the glass surface to avoid measuring the reflection.   Range from 30 cm in.

The proximity sensor measures distance, and when an object breaks the pre-defined distance it creates a reading that can then become an input that triggers an action, so if an object gets closer than X do Y. For example, if someone approaches beyond the distance X the diorama window the action Y can be triggered, such as the TV they’re looking at switches to a shot of them looking at the exhibit. Once again, aspirational, but it could work.

“Laser.”

The other kind of sensor that might work is a laser. Laser’s should be able to pass more easily through an insulated window, so when someone walks by and breaks the path of the laser the switch can be triggered. That’s Mission Impossible shit right there, but I’m a little hesitant to have a laser shooting out of the window across the street given the red dot might seem like a European hitman is stationed in the diorama—creating a bit more attention than necessary. What’s more, not sure if you look directly into the laser there could be any undesirable side effects, but this is where I am probably showing my ignorance—so more research needs to be done on this option.

Yet another option I have read about is video-based motion detection that depends on a establishing shot of the window environs without anyone in the frame. At the point someone passes by the window, or stands in front of it, the difference is detected which then triggers an action. I tried something like this with OBS when I started researching motion detection, and some folks have got this working. But I’d prefer an option that doesn’t depend on something as CPU-dependent as OBS, so I would need to explore what other options are out there for video-based motion detection.

Anyway, the quest continues, and at least now I know there are several options. What’s more, they’re all pretty cost effective, which brings me back to how amazing the Arduino is for such projects.

Posted in Arduino, bavastudio | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

Archiving Content and a Long View of the Web

Posted on July 9, 2024 by Reverend

While preparing for one of my retrocomputing streams for Reclaim TV I was searching for some of the major differences between Windows 95 and Windows 98. One of the first hits I got in Google was an archived help document from Indiana University:

Archived Indiana University Website discussing the difference between Windows 95 and Windows 98

It was a quite useful document for providing a point-by-point breakdown of the difference during my stream. It also had the added advantage of being in the moment, so it was addressing an audience that was preparing for the various changes in 1998 or 1999, helping to capture the ways in which Windows 98 was designed to make it easier for tens of millions more people to get online. Between 1996 and 1999 the amount of people online went from 45 to 150 million, and by 2000 it was 400 million.* Most of those folks would be using the Windows 98 Second Edition—which packaged so many of the necessary drivers for plug and play peripherals like ethernet cards right into the OS, making it that much easier for folks to get online. At the same time, this also meant packaging Internet Explorer 4 and 5 as the default browser for this OS which led to an antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft.

Anyway, I digress. The point I’m trying to make is how refreshing it is to see Indiana University take the time and resources to preserve something as ostensibly disposable as IT documentation. The archaeology of knowledge on the web over the last 25 years is dominated by the gravitational darkness of broken link errors created by individuals and organizations that fail to understand, or care about, the cultural importance a link might represent. I understand it is easy to go Catholic here and argue every sperm is sacred, which can be dangerous ground for all kinds of reasons.

So let’s look at it from another perspective, the way so many organizations deal with their own web history and archive is akin to clear cutting forests, leaving nothing behind for folks to understand the ecosystem that once was—not to mention the damage to the health of the existing environment over all. Beyond the AI pollution, without the Internet Archive† we would have such an immense web amnesia that we would arguably be living in a present devoid of huge swaths of the cultural content that has helped define our world view for more than two decades. Collectively we owe an enormous debt to the Internet Archive for all the great work they’ve done to preserve our pasts, but depending on endless good will after their coming under continual attack for simply trying to carry out their mission seems dicey at best. It’s high time every organization, and dare I say individual, take ownership of their online presence and make deliberate and responsible decisions about what stays and goes. But even writing that last sentence I am not sure it would solve the issue or be nearly enough, so maybe a third party crawler like the Wayback Machine is the best solution, but what happens if and when that is undermined by those who would have us forget?

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*Stats taken from this Elon University History of the Internet article “Imagining the Internet’s Quick Look at the Early History of the Internet.”

†It is telling that the easiest and most reliable place to get a copy of Windows 98 Second Edition to do this kind of research is the Internet Archive, they are truly amazing, but it does beg the question if they can continue to do it all alone.

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Retrocomputing on Reclaim TV

Posted on July 7, 2024 by Reverend

Reclaim Hosting has been streaming every Friday at 10 AM for a while now. We use Reclaim TV as the channel, and Taylor Jadin and Pilot Irwin did a recent stream breaking down the details of that process. A stream about streams…

One of the fun Reclaim TV developments has been the retrocomputing episodes I’ve been part of over the last month or two. It started with Taylor and I doing a stream about Protoweb, a proxy web service that’s designed to let you browse the web of yesteryear. Taylor demonstrated this brilliantly in that episode using his MiSTer running Windows 95.

That stream inspired me to fill some empty Friday streaming slots with some of my trials and tribulations of re-visiting Windows 98. I have at least two machines running this operating system, and it’s been quite eye-opening just how difficult relatively simple elements of computing were twenty-five years ago. So, I followed-up the Protoweb stream with another about the “Pain and Pleasure of Retrocomputing with Windows 98.” This one dives into running virtual ISO images using Daemon Tools to create a virtual CD-ROM drive. This allows you access to an unlimited treasure trove of old programs and games via the Internet Archive, which harbors a vast collection of software from this era. I demoed games that you can easily run off ISO images from the archive, such as Moto Racer (1997) and NHL 97, two of my favorites back in the day.

And just last Friday I did yet another retro computing episode, this time focusing on getting a 3COM Etherlink PCI ethernet card installed in my Windows 98 desktop machine so that I could get online and access Protoweb. I was able to get the card installed ahead of time and talked through the process, but the real gold was using Protoweb to surf old websites archived on the Wayback Machine. I visited UCLA’s website from 1996, and it was truly amazing. The main page was a very 90s image map, that had a pizza pie-like effect highlighting all the different “slices” of the university.

UCLA’s website in 1996 was an image map

The Explore button in the top-right corner leads you to another image map of the campus, this time with everything from an Arcade to a Coffee House.

Image map of UCLA campus from 1996 “Explore” website add-on

The arcade leads you to a Shockwave game that actually loaded for me in the video, and I could play it cleanly on the stream, which was amazing!

The Arcade has an interactive Shockwave video game called Labryinth wherein you control the marble in a maze with the number lock arrow keys

After that I went to the Coffee House which had a wide open public chatroom—can you imagine?

The Coffee House on UCLA’s 1996 website had a public chat room

Anyway, I fell down a rabbit hole of the 90s web using Protoweb, and it was really fun, and that marks the third video in what might be considered a retrocomputing strain of Reclaim TV, and I have a feeling there will be more to come.

Posted in ReclaimTV, retrocomputing | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment

bav-o-rama: Of Windows and Walls

Posted on July 7, 2024 by Reverend

The build-out of the bav-o-rama exhibit space is finished, and I’m thrilled with how it turned out. The plan was to have a window space to recreate movie scenes: think of it like NYC’s Museum of Natural History, just with dioramas of select 80s films. To realize this Antonella and I have been working with Riccardo and Alberto of Domus to figure out a plan that works. The space is about 4′ deep by 4′ wide.

The sides and back walls are made of movable pressboard that can be re-fashioned depending on the scene being created. The subfloor is made of 3/4″ OBS board, useful base for handling the various floors/terrain each scene will require.

One of the things that we also created around this window was a wood paneled wall with a nearly invisible door. This encloses the window diorama so that it’s neatly hidden when you enter the space, making sure the man behind the curtain is never exposed. The walls came out amazing, I’ll have to take care of the final step of staining them appropriately here soon:

Now that the window space is complete, I’ve been working further on the first exhibit. I’m hopeful to have it ready in the next week or two. You can get a sense of what Harry Wentworth’s head in the sand facing the TV in the window might look like:

Prototyping Harry Wentworth’s Head Watching Television

Also, I got the Creepshow episode “Something to Tide You Over” looping on the Zero Pi, which has me excited.

Finally, my friend Andrea and I started assessing the best placement of the head and TV while trying to account for the contours we will be created using a malleable wire base and various sized boxes to reproduce a sense of the undulating terrain of the beach.

Finishing the beach contours and adding sand is my project for next week, as well as digging in on the Arduino motion detector for switching to live camera (OBS seems a dead end). Beyond that, I have to get the background panels from the MBS Design studio and have them printed for the 3 wall panels and the ceiling panel  (more on that in the next few days); reproducing the old school CCTV camera using cardboard, while leaving room to house both a motion sensor and a Sony ZV-E10 camera; and , finally, trimming the hair of the mannequin head to more closely align with Harry Wentworth’s cut in the episode.

Outside of that, I want to talk to Bryan Mathers about creating  cartoon comments section using his Remixer Machine that folks can access via QR code when experiencing the installation. That same code will also allow them to read the comics on each wall in Italian, ensuring that the Trentini do not feel linguistically shunned—it is Italy after all!

Posted in bav-o-rama, bavastudio | Tagged , , | 1 Comment