Operation 'Console Shelf' is a Go

Two posts ago I detailed the plan to construct a shelf type thing for my consoles. Since then I've made up a proper plan (coming to the conclusion that 7cm between shelves is ridiculous), brought the necessary supplies and started building. I was 1cm off at how long I wanted my wood to be, and found some that were nearly 2cm thick and even better at 24cm wide. From there I made this plan:

Probably should have used grid paper. 

I also changed the placement of the middle beams so the weight would be more equally distributed. Also 20cm in-between shelves is a lot more realistic than 7cm.
The building so far is still in it's infant stages, but so far I've marked the wood up and cut out the beams. I have three more cuts to go, which I should get done tomorrow. Hopefully me posting that here won't jinx me and I'll actually get it done.

Some pictures:

Feels weird posting a picture of outside on a gaming blog. I guess this is proof that it does indeed exist. 

All my manly tools. 

After I've cut all the wood I need to sand down the pieces so they're to size to the mil. From there I will drill the holes, actually assemble it and then apply the varnish. After that it will be done, and I'll have to find something else to blog about.

Oh Yeah, My Famicoms Work

The game to Famicom ratio is now 1:1

Several months ago I talked over a few posts about two Famicoms and one Super Famicom which I scored for free. While I did elaborate later about the SF, I never really did post further about the two other Famicoms. I'm not really sure why I didn't, it just got forgotten like the band Hanson. Seriously, they sucked.
In the last post which was focused on a Famicom, I posted about how the LED's lit up on the joystick pad and how this looked assuring until my test game arrived. I never posted after that, but my test game did arrive. The game was suppose to be something fun and cheap, but in the end I purchased Matsumoto Tooru no Kabushiki Hisshougaku. The English text on the box simply says 'Family Computer Business Economics Software, Volume 1.' It's about as exciting as it sounds, cost me $3.83 Australian, complete it box and totally in Japanese. While the game is er, well, about economics, it still has all the original pamphlets in it and could make an interesting video.
Either way, it was bought as a test game and I've used it to that purpose. It proved that my better condition Famicom worked, and that the other one did too after some persuasion. I opened that up to find it full of sawdust. While I'm still trying to think of a scenario where a fully sealed Famicom becomes full of sawdust, after I pulled it all out it now worked as well.
Tuning it to an Australian television has been fairly hard though. While I do have a mostly clear picture (with some static saying hello every now and again) I still haven't mastered the sound. I can hear it slightly, but this is over rid by roaring white noise. Sound isn't really that much of a problem and not totally necessary in 80's games, but it would be nice to hear those 8-bit tunes more clearly.
The other day I received Tetris in the mail after I decided I wanted to play some games on the system which I actually enjoyed. As you can imagine, a totally Japanese economics game gets boring after a while. In fact, I think I got bored of it after about 30 seconds. The Tetris is game is great, but has some small issues like the fact you change the angle of the shapes by pressing down. The amount of times I've pressed it by accident so far has been a little bit annoying, but all well. I'm not even interested in English economics.

Console Storage: A Visualization

A while back I blogged the greater plan for my games room. Right at the bottom of that post I mention that I wanted some kind of permanent storage for the consoles because I didn't like them being on the floor, as this makes them vulnerable.
Today I finally got my shiz together and decided to mock up something in 3DS Max:

I've added low poly, but to scale PlayStation 1's so you can get a sense of how big it will be. 

Believe it or not, I did actually do some measuring around the area where I want it and translated that data into what you see above. It will be positioned right in front of the TV and sound system, and hopefully will be just like that if I can find comparable wood. You can't actually just go to the Bunnings website and look at wood sizes, so I actually have to go into a store, look at the wood, and design it properly from there. In the above design I've made all the wood 2cm thick, the whole thing 4 feet long (122cm) and there are 7cm gaps between shelves. I made it 7cm because it seems to be the perfectly sized space for putting in carts and disks, while not making the shelf too high. I still need to be able to easily access the sound system controls under the TV.
It's hard to tell in the above render, but I've designed all the separate objects to be the actual sized bits of wood which I have to cut up. I plan to join it all up with screws in the right places, as well as wood glue. This is how I did it when I built stuff in high school, and it always made the object quite sturdy. I will also probably put felt on the bottom so I can easily slide it if need be.
I'm very excited that I'm finally getting somewhere with this. Soon I'll go into a hardware store, measure up the wood properly and make up a proper plan. I'll blog another post about this when I have that all worked out.

The Obligatory 'Sorry For No Posts' Post

What's that sound I hear? Oh, it's the sound of nothing. It appears I haven't posted anything to this corner of the internet for about a month. Sorry about that. The usual culprits are to blame; education, work, life in general etc. I wish I had the time for this right now, but it's becoming quite hard.
But I just want to start off and verify that I'm in fact, not dead. Now that that is out of the way, what's going on in my retro like life? Not a lot, but like herpes the love for retro never leaves. I did buy a Nintendo 64 and an Atari 2600 though, oh wait I posted that already. AH, I tried to fix the Atari because it didn't work! Oh wait, damn. I posted that as well. Well, I did leave that on a lame cliffhanger, but a cliffhanger none the less. I didn't in fact try and solder the connections again for about another fortnight because life got in the way. I did get to it eventually though, and it didn't help anything.
The problem is the internet doesn't offer much help in regards to the Junior model (which I have) but is plentiful on the original fat models. The structure of the variances are suppose to be similar, but my tech skills aren't that high. I could try and follow a guide on a fat model with my Junior, but it would be like... er...
My analogies suck this evening.

It currently resides on my table... silently mocking me.

Moving on. A catch up post wouldn't be complete without mention of shit I've brought.

I should start off by mentioning that the copy of Zelda isn't mine, it's currently on loan from a friend. Considering I've never been a fan of anything fantasy, I have a hard time bringing myself to play it usually. Like, I do enjoy it, but it's not on my priority to play it that much. It's a great time waster everything now and again don't get me wrong, but it's just not my type of game.
Both Quake 2 and Wipeout 64 seem great from what I've played so far, but I keep forgetting to buy a memory pack for my N64. Annoying in perspective, but I'll get there eventually.
Road Rash is just awesome though. Out of all the retro games I've played this last month, this is what I've been playing the most. Just the concept of riding motorbikes at high speeds down highways while bashing your opponents with crow bars and by flykicking them in the face... is just awesome. I've never played anything like that before. Also Soundgarden being in the soundtrack will always earn brownie points.