Suggest A New Project For Me!

[Snatch1414]

Hey everyone with it being winter and me having limited access to other things I'd normally do, I was looking for a new modding project of some kind.

FYI I have extremely basic skills (or lack thereof) when it comes to this sort of thing: I know how to solder having worked on Game Gears and pinball machines and I took apart a dirty old NES, cleaned and brought it back to life. That's pretty much it. Better than nothing I suppose. In short I'm pretty much watching YouTube for instructions on any of this stuff, but I don't mind and enjoy learning.

I just don't want something TOO complicated. For instance I'd love to make my own arcade stick I'm just not sure if that's too daunting. I'm not really sure what else I'd enjoy, but any fun suggestions would be great. Thanks

[fastbilly1]

Arcade sticks are fairly easy to make, if you have access to woodworking facilites. Things like the ipac and the Cthulhu board have taken out the hardest part. No more figuring out the keyboard matrix...

How about Svideo mods for some of your consoles?

[Anapan]

I think the arcade stick is a good project too. I didn't want to do the shell so I modded a PS2 HORI RAP with Sanwa controls.

[bacteria]

Make a portable retro gaming console system. It's fun and you learn a lot by doing it.

[Cronozilla]

This should be pretty straight forward, and all the software is already done for you.

Make an arcade stick, with something like a Raspberry Pi included, so you just hook it up to the TV and play whatever games you want.

Making the actual stick is really straight forward and there are plenty of plans online. The issue there, like mentioned above, is woodworking.

Including a system inside is extremely straight forward, and instructions on how to turn Raspberry Pi into a game machine is all over the internet. There's even a distribution of Linux made for it that already has MAME and other emulators configured.

It's what I'd be doing!

[Anapan]

The software's only set up to a certain extent. Saying this because my bartop arcade cab's in nearly the same place it was last year (config hell - incompatibility with the UI due to video and software problems as well as ISO rejection):

IMO Raspberry Pi's not such a good platform for emulation as it is for single-purpose hardware interface - cheap yeah, but you can do better... In that case go with an Android HDMI stick. It's kinda like the OUYA but more powerful and already rooted. USB port for a hub, video card, and expansion ports. One tip - keep a cooling fan on it - I had a CX-919 die on me while I was getting to the good part due to overheat - there's a lot of power in that small package. I had it plugged directly into a big-screen projector; I should have known better.

[samsonlonghair]

Headphone repair is a fun and simple soldering project. Did you know that you can solder a new quarter inch or eighth inch audio plug on your headphones with only three solder points? It's a neat little project you can wrap up in about an hour.

[Anapan]

Hmm sounds like fun but I'd pass. I've owned / been given altogether 4 pairs of the same model cheap "aaa" battery amplified Altec Lansing headphones which have all broken at the rotator joint and could not be repaired despite me having multiple fodder. Consult headfi.org before buying a pair of 'phones. No amount of hot-glue can repair bad engineering...
Suguru can do amazing things however, and it didn't exist back then... I bet it'd fix all those earbuds I dumped. Everyone should have a couple of packs in their mod-kit.

[Snatch1414]

Thanks for the ideas. To be honest anything involving software or programming is probably a no go for me, but it seems like building an arcade stick is more possible than I thought. I don't know anything about woodworking but I'm sure I can have a box made by someone somewhere.

I'm looking for a list of parts I need to order, but seems like maybe I should get familiar with what the hell I'm doing first. There's a lot of parts. Maybe I should clarify too: I mean a fight stick not anything more than that.

PS: S-video is a great idea too. I'd like to get that done for some of my Sega consoles.