Category Archives: Computer – Windows

MAME Arcade Cabinet

Well, my vision of about five years ago has made it to a working machine. A MAME (Multi Arcade Machine Emulator) machine is one that will play all the classic arcade games as long as you have the ROM files.  (You can click on the pics below for larger size ones.)

Here, you see my friend just after  we powered it up for the first time, after mounting the monitor to the top half of the cabinet and installing it on the bottom half.  Then, the computer got installed, and for this first test, we didn’t even have the controller screwed down.  Here, we have just gone into the Robotron 2084 game for a first run.  At this point, we still had to map the controllers for a true experience.  This includes the trackball for games like Missile Command, Arkanoid, Centiped, etc. My friend opted to not install a coin door in the hole in the front, but insted decided on a blank panel….  This Arcade cabinet has all the roms that you might encounter in a true video arcade: Space Invaders, Mario Brothers, Asteroids, and the list goes on and on.  Here, you can see his girlfriend taking Ms Pac Man out for a spin.  This arcade cabinet seems to be a big hit.  I put together an Elite 8200 USDT computer with Windows 10 Pro on it, along with Maximus Arcade front end for MAME.  The computer boots directly into the front end, and you only need to select the game you want to play.  My friend picked up the cabinet and tankstick controller from recroommasters.  You can just google it.  He also had to pick up a 32″ vesa mount display.  (I recommended a VGA input, but he could have used the native DP++, Display Port, or adapt that to HDMI, but a VGA input is easiest.)  There was a bit of initial angst, and my friend noticed the display would occasionally flip upside down, so I just had to disable the intel video driver’s hot keys, as the tankstick emulates keyboard buttons, etc, and was causing this.  Turning the hot keys off fixed that.  Another bit of startup tweaking was the trackball wasn’t being picked up, so I had to go into the mame.ini file and set MOUSE and MULTIPLEMOUSE from 0 to 1.  If you don’t want to go thru the time and expense (not cheap) of setting a cabinet like this up, for the price of a computer, ram and hard drive, you could actually connect to your wide screen TV set, and play the classic arcade games right from your couch.  🙂

 

Versatile Bandwidth Monitor

I managed to find a great, free bandwidth monitor tool that is not crippled or limited except for one minor thing that mostly won’t cause grief.  If you need that, then activate it.  😉  It’s called Netbalancer, by seriousbit.  Here is the tray NetBalancerTrayicon.  It actually turns transparent when you move your mouse over it.  It can also be hidden down to the taskbar, where if you double click it, it will lauch the main program task window.  Next is the larger popup that you get when you mouseover the NetBalancerLargerPopupdouble red and green arrows in the task bar, you get what’s on the right.  A bit more information than the smaller one, and as soon as you move your mouse away, it goes back into hiding.  Now, if you double click the little tray icon, you will get the main program window with all the details and controls that you could imagine.NetBalancerMain If you notice if you expand the graphic, it says that the trial period has expired.  It still works, and even asks if you want to upgrade to the latest version.  Been using this for a month or two now, and it’s really slick.  Click here to download the program.  And, click here to go to the main webpage for detailed info.  Enjoy.  I used Bandwidth Monitor Pro for many years, but it didn’t do  half of what this program does.  It would not allow you to throttle bandwidth, or the real deal breaker, it wouldn’t allow you to see WHICH application was using all of your bandwidth.  😉

Error 0x8007232B occurs when trying to activate Windows 7

Over the weekend, got the following error message when trying to activate Windows 7 Pro:

Windows could not be activated.
Key management services (KMS) host could not be located in domain name system (DNS), please have your system adminstrator verify that a KMS is published correctly in DNS.
Error: 0x8007232b
Description:
DNS name does not exist.
IfKMS activationwill not be used, and if there is noKMS server, the product keyshould be changed to an MAK. For Microsoft Developer Network (MSDN), or forTechNet, the stock-keeping units (SKUs)that are listed below the media are usually volume licensed-media, and the product key thatis supplied is an MAK key.Change the product key to an MAK. To do this, follow these steps:

  1. Click Start the Start button, click All Programs, click Accessories, and then right-click Command Prompt.
  2. Click Run as administratorUser Access Control permission  If you are prompted for an administrator password or for confirmation, type the password or provide confirmation
  3. At the command prompt, type the following command, and then press Enter:
    slmgr -ipk xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx
  4.  Note This command, slmgr, is the Windows Software Licensing Management Tool.  The placeholder xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx represents your MAK product key.  After this, you will be able to activate Windows 7 normally.

New Camera Server

CamServer VNC Screenshot.

This is the new camera server that was just put into service today.  Compaq Ultra Small Form Factor DC-7700, running at 3.40GHz with 3GB of RAM and a 160GB Sata Hdd.  It is backed up using Ghost 15.

I see no real need to attach a  display to this box, as I can remote into it and do anything that I need to.

Only things left to do, are to move it to the other servers (at the moment, it’s not where it’s going to end up), and get the other cameras up and running.  😀

See, give a computer geek time off, and he feels the ‘need’ to improve the network infrastructure, heh.  Let’s see: yesterday, I upgraded the CRAB server’s storage drive, today I set up the camera server…..  Thinking about possibly upgrading the server’s Fedora OS sometime soon.  😉