Re: Cheap-but-good speakers?

On 2007-03-11 19:19:54 +0000, T i m <news@xxxxxxxxxxxx> said:

On Sun, 11 Mar 2007 13:59:29 +0000, Ian McCall <ian@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On 2007-03-11 12:18:01 +0000, T i m <news@xxxxxxxxxxxx> said:

*I* would cut the IEC plug off [1] on the inside of the cabinet and
hard wire that into surge protected 4 way trailing socket left inside
the cabinet. Then you have enough ways for PC, speakers, monitor and
lead lamp / soldering iron etc ;-)

Yep, I think that's the way to go.

Speaker problem solved with a discounted pair of these just found at PC World:
<http://www.macnn.com/articles/06/09/14/diva.21.speaker.system/>

Apple centre not open Sundays then? (<< joke) ;-)

You laugh, but all the packing shows Macs for these speakers and it emphasises their iPod compatibility too. In fact the picture shows them in front of an iMac - god knows why because the speakers are fine inside an iMac.

I briefly considered the Apple Pro speakers as well, for much the same reason - small and easily positionable. But nope, this is a PC endeavour through and through. A probably ex-corporate HP Vectra is currently wondering what the hell happened to its spreadsheets and why is it so dark in here? An arcade monitor is wondering where the hell its JAMMA board went and what is this PC doing hooked up to me? Some flash stylish speakers are wondering why they've been taped into position inside a black hole. And LAN is wondering why the hell a W2K box has just appeared on it, and why it only seems interested in transferring multiple thousands of small .zip files.


It's all working now, but there's still a lot of tweaking to be done.
The picture is -way- too strong, like an over-exposed photograph. I
think that's an artifact of the video amp I'm using that sits between
the arcade monitor and the PC - no setting I've twiddled with on the
monitor has had any effect.

Could the input be after the controls? Do you have much in the way of
control via that special video card Ian?

I have resolutions and hertz settings coming out of my ears for the video card, but none for the gamma ramp. I -suspect- the problem is an over-amplified video signal. I bought a video amp to boost signal to an arcade monitor which is apparently often necessary - I think now that I only needed a VGA breakout cable instead. Going to order one of those to see whether things improve, in the meantime there are command-line parameters to MAME I can try tweaking controlling brightness and gamma.


But...but...despite all of the above, I can now switch on and play any
of the arcade games I have.
...
Neat, well done Ian and when are we going to see some pic's or video
clips of the beast in action (with you on the high score of course and
several AAA's following you) ;-)


I did take quite a few photos and am going to put up a web page, but the photos aren't great for three reasons. 1 - I'm an average-at-best photographer. 2. It's hard to take pictures of a screen and 3. During the day there's a lot of reflection going on in the room where the machine is (conservatory). But I'll put the page up anyway, probably in the next couple of days.


Cheers,
Ian

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