4 Months Later, and I'm Back Again + Custom Arcade Cabinet Plans

I keep forgetting about this blog. I know very few people look at it. In fact, I'm pretty sure the whole thing has exactly 20 views since its creation in 2019. That's...not great. Haha.

In any case, more changes have taken place in my life since my last writing. I've put several thousand miles on the Accord, having taken it several hours south into Texas more than once, as well as on multiple trips an hour and a half one-way to watch movies with friends. A large group of us saw Promare on my birthday (which I apparently neglected to mention in my last post despite that one being less than a week following that trip), and then just a few of us saw Sword Art Online Progressive: Aria of a Starless Night back in early December. There will always be something cool about watching anime films in the theater.

SAO: Progressive artwork. Source: The Nerd Stash

I tried to switch back to Android by buying an Asus Zenfone 8 (it didn't go well). I almost immediately sold that phone and bought an iPhone 13 mini (absolutely adoring it so far). I then borrowed a friend's severely cracked Apple Watch for a week or two before deciding to buy my own. I also sold my 7th generation iPad and bought a brand-new iPad mini (which I've yet to receive).

I'm in my fourth semester of college, and I guess you could say that hasn't been completely miserable. My job has certainly been adding to the stress.

Anyway. I'm not actually here just to vent or rant this time. I plan to actually document some things in the coming weeks. I've ordered the first piece of a rather spontaneous and rather expensive project: a custom arcade cabinet. I'm working on it with a friend, Michael, with whom I previously made lots of videos of typically dubious quality back in elementary school (if you've actually seen any of those videos, you may know him as Blaze). We don't have very much of the plan truly nailed down yet, but once we do, you can be sure we're going to tell the world about it.

Tentatively, the basic (and possibly overly ambitious) plan is as follows:

• Custom Ryzen 5 3400G-based PC
• Custom hand-built cabinet with Touhou themed artwork
• Joystick + trackball assembled using X-Arcade parts
• Gorgeous 27-inch quad-HD (aka 2K, 1440p, or 2560x1440) display from a top of the line late-2009 iMac
• Custom audio solution using TBD amplifiers and such (currently looking at Hertz car speakers, and a small subwoofer in the bottom "just for fun")
• Versatile design that works with as many games from as many genres as possible
• As much integration as we can manage! This means, hopefully, we are able to power the display and lights on the cabinet from the PC's power supply, so it all comes on with the click of a single button.

The first part I've ordered is the display driver boards for the iMac display. I'll probably follow that by tracking down that Ryzen chip, which has thus far proven more elusive than I ever would have suspected. The whole plan came to be from a goofy thing I mentioned on a whim when I was trying to find a use for an Intel NUC from around 2015. Somehow, it evolved into a plan to build a Touhou-themed arcade machine. We don't know how big it will be. We don't know what it'll be made out of. All we know is what hardware we're going to put inside it, and we don't even 100% know that yet. 

Stay tuned! Things will likely really start rolling here in about a month when that display driver finally comes in from China. We're also planning to video document most of the build, so there'll be no shortage of coverage!

--Sidney