{"id":1147,"date":"2011-09-10T11:16:55","date_gmt":"2011-09-10T16:16:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rickandviv.net\/index.php\/"},"modified":"2012-04-16T10:43:32","modified_gmt":"2012-04-16T15:43:32","slug":"the-frinkiac-6","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.rickandviv.net\/index.php\/the-frinkiac-6\/","title":{"rendered":"The Frinkiac 6"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.rickandviv.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/09\/Frinkiac6.jpg\" rel=\"thumbnail\" title=\"Frinkiac 6\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.rickandviv.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/09\/Frinkiac6-225x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"Frinkiac 6\" height=\"400\" class=\"imageframe imgalignright\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve created a second retro gaming emulation project.  Kind of a little brother to my arcade cab, the Frinkiac 7.  So I&#8217;m calling it the Frinkiac 6.  It&#8217;s a laptop dedicated to emulating all the old consoles that I wished I had as a kid, plus a few more.  It currently emulates the following consoles:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Atari 2600 (via Stella)<\/li>\n<li>Odyssey 2 (via O2em)<\/li>\n<li>Intellivision (via jzintv)<\/li>\n<li>ColecoVision (via MESS)<\/li>\n<li>Atari 5200 (via MESS)<\/li>\n<li>Vectrex (via MESS)<\/li>\n<li>Atari 7800 (via MESS)<\/li>\n<li>Nintendo Entertainment System (via Nestopia)<\/li>\n<li>Sega Master System (via Fusion)<\/li>\n<li>Super Nintendo Entertainment System (via zsnes)<\/li>\n<li>Sega Genesis (via Fusion)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I&#8217;m using MAMEWah for the front-end, mainly because I&#8217;m very familiar with it from my arcade cab project.<\/p>\n<h2>Project goals<\/h2>\n<p>The real goals for this project were the following:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>I wanted a little portable console system that would play console games.  That will allow me to remove those systems from the arcade cab (where they aren&#8217;t getting much play).<\/li>\n<li>I wanted to be able to hook the system up to a modern TV.  My memories of playing these old games are of sitting on the floor or couch in front of a TV.  I&#8217;ve got VGA and sound patch cables for connecting it to my HDTV, as well as a little converter box to allow it to connect to a composite input on a regular modern TV.<\/li>\n<li>I want to get as many original controllers for the systems as I can.  For some that will mean some kind of interface to connect original controllers to USB on the laptop.  For others, something close will do &#8211; e.g. I&#8217;m using Gravis gamepads as the controller for most of the more modern systems.<\/li>\n<li>I wanted to have dedicated keys to control the features of the emulators on the laptop.  E.g. when you&#8217;re playing a game, it should be dead simple to pause it, to save state, reset the console, etc.  I decided to tackle that by painting and labeling dedicated keys on the keyboard.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.rickandviv.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/09\/Frinkiac6-keyboard.jpg\" rel=\"thumbnail\" title=\"Frinkiac 6 keyboard\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.rickandviv.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/09\/Frinkiac6-keyboard.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"Frinkiac 6 Keyboard\" width=\"400\" class=\"imageframe imgalignleft\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The controls on the keyboard are (loosely) color-coded.  The light blue keys are for doing save\/load and taking a screenshot while in a game.  The grey keys are for moving around in the front-end: moving from list to list and from system to system.  The green enter key starts a game from the front-end.  The pale green keys provide minimal control for player one in all the games.  The yellow space bar is a pause button.  The red escape key exits games.  The orange button will reset the console.  The little tan function keys at the top correspond to the 6 switches on the original Atari 2600.<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"break\">Controls<\/h2>\n<p>At the time of this posting, I&#8217;m using the following as controls for the various systems.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Atari 2600:<\/strong> I have two reproduction Atari 2600 joysticks that connect to USB from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.legacyengineer.com\">www.legacyengineer.com<\/a>.  I&#8217;m also working on retro-fitting two sets of Atari paddles to connect to USB as well.<\/p>\n<p><em>Update:<\/em> Well, I&#8217;m sorry to report that the joysticks from legacy engineer aren&#8217;t really working reliably.  I got them as soon as they were available, so maybe they had some production issues with the first couple of batches (?).  At any rate, these sticks aren&#8217;t going to work for my setup.  And I doubt legacy engineer will want to support them since they are old (I don&#8217;t blame them).  So it looks like the best route to take (once I get some cash) is to buy two Stella Adapters which will allow hooking up original Atari joysticks and paddles.<\/p>\n<p>In the mean time, we&#8217;re using Gravis gamepads for the Atari games, which is working just fine.<\/p>\n<p><em>Further update:<\/em> I wrote the above after reading the official support policy as outlined on legacyengineer.com.  But when I emailed their support, I was told to send them back for a quick repair!  That&#8217;s very cool!. Hopefully they&#8217;ll be more reliable after a quick tune-up.<\/p>\n<p><em>Last update:<\/em> I&#8217;m sorry to report that even after getting my sticks repaired by legacyengineer.com, they still aren&#8217;t working reliably.  I&#8217;ve moved on to using a Stella Adapter.  Unfortunately, these aren&#8217;t for sale anymore at atariage.com (or they don&#8217;t seem to be ???), but I was able to grab a used one from gamegavel.com.  I&#8217;m currently looking for a second one.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Odyssey 2:<\/strong> I&#8217;m just using the Atari joysticks for the Odyssey 2 games.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Intellivision:<\/strong> I have a CGC (Classic Game Controller) that was sold by Shiny Technologies a few years back.  They connect original Intellivision controllers to USB.  I also have mapped 24 keys on the keyboard to the keypads of the controllers so that simpler USB controllers (game pads, joysticks, etc.) can be used to play Intellivision games.<\/p>\n<p><strong>ColecoVision:<\/strong> I don&#8217;t have a really great solution for the ColecoVision controller yet.  Currently, I&#8217;m just planning on using the Gravis gamepads and the Intellivision keyboard mappings for the keypads.  I never liked the ColecoVision controllers, so I view this as a slight improvement anyway.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Atari 5200:<\/strong> The Atari 5200 is a bit of a weird system, in that it had analog sticks (that were pretty bad, as I understand it).  So this system might only do well with a PC gamepad that has analog hats on it.  I&#8217;m not 100% sure how I&#8217;ll get this working in a good way yet.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Vectrex:<\/strong> I&#8217;ll use the Gravis gamepads for the Vectrex.  It isn&#8217;t a system I played much as a kid, so having authentic feeling controls isn&#8217;t a huge deal to me.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Atari 7800:<\/strong> Probably the Gravis gamepads again.  Although the Atari 2600 joysticks will probably work for a lot of these games as well.<\/p>\n<p><strong>NES:<\/strong> At this point I&#8217;m using the Gravis gamepad for NES games, but I think as soon as I can find the spare cash I&#8217;ll spring for an NES-to-USB adapter so that original controllers can be used.  I played a bit of NES in the late 80&#8217;s\/early 90&#8217;s so the authentic feel of that system is a little more important to me than it is for other systems.<\/p>\n<p><strong>SMS:<\/strong> I&#8217;ve never played on a real SMS, so I&#8217;ll just use the Gravis gamepads for this system.<\/p>\n<p><strong>SNES:<\/strong> Gravis gamepad is a strong possibility here as well &#8211; it is nearly identical to the SNES controller anyway.  But this is another candidate for possibly getting a dedicated USB converter in the future.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Genesis:<\/strong> I&#8217;ve never played on a real Genesis, so I&#8217;ll just use the Gravis gamepads for this system.<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"break\">The Intellivision keypads<\/h2>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.rickandviv.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/09\/Frinkiac6-IntvKeys.jpg\" rel=\"thumbnail\" title=\"Intellivision keypad keys\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.rickandviv.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/09\/Frinkiac6-IntvKeys.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"Frinkiac 6 Intv Keys\" width=\"400\" class=\"imgalignright imageframe\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>My favorite retro-console is definitely the Intellivision.  I&#8217;ve written stuff about it on other sections of this site.  It was important to me that this multi-console machine be able to play Intellivision games well.<\/p>\n<p>Many Intellivision games will play very well with just a joystick and a button or two, lending themselves to either an Atari joystick or a gamepad for good gaming.  However, even those games typically have a startup screen asking for number of players, or some other setting that required input from the keypads.  That&#8217;s where my dedicated keys on the keyboard for the Intellivision keypads come in.  A big thank-you goes to Joe Zbiciak for getting me clean graphics of the button numbers.<\/p>\n<p>At the top of that picture, you can also see the buttons to support the Atari 2600 switches.<\/p>\n<h2>Thanks!<\/h2>\n<p>A couple of thank-yous: As mentioned above, thanks much to Joe Zbiciak for the cool little graphics of the Intellivision keys.  Also thanks to David Harley for the Intellivision fonts that I used on all the wording on the keytops.<\/p>\n<p>Of course I need to thank the hard work that the hobby communities put into creating emulators and dumping roms from the various systems&#8217; carts as well as the man who created MAMEWah, my front-end of choice (he goes by the handle &#8220;min-wah&#8221;).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve created a second retro gaming emulation project. Kind of a little brother to my arcade cab, the Frinkiac 7. So I&#8217;m calling it the Frinkiac 6. It&#8217;s a laptop dedicated to emulating all the old consoles that I wished I had as a kid, plus a few more. It currently emulates the following consoles: [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-1147","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rickandviv.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1147","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rickandviv.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rickandviv.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rickandviv.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rickandviv.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1147"}],"version-history":[{"count":33,"href":"https:\/\/www.rickandviv.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1147\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1169,"href":"https:\/\/www.rickandviv.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1147\/revisions\/1169"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rickandviv.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1147"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}