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Got a new part of the project in the mail this week. The I-PAC will let me use real flipper buttons instead of a keyboard to control the flippers and start games. Getting close with hardware. Now it’s time to finally build a cabinet. Hopefully next week.

Happy New Year!

I set off to build a virtual pinball machine last week. I went out and bought all the stuff to build a PC for it. I haven’t built a PC from scratch since high school. I had to base it on a Windows machine for a few reasons. First is because it all runs on some open source software that only exists on Windows. Second, and the reason I couldn’t use Boot Camp or Parallels, is because I need to have access to some pretty beefy video cards. Parallels just doesn’t have that ability to utilize a big card, let alone two of them that I eventually need to run three monitors. So, a PC it is…

All the parts for the big PC build.

Anyway, here are the results after the first few days of work. I got the machine up and running, the software loaded and the skeleton of the machine built. It’s all controlled with a keyboard now, but when the i-Pac gets here, I will have the ability to control the game with real buttons. I have a long way to go including making a cabinet and buying larger monitors, but it’s been pretty fun so far. As with most of my silly obsessions, I’m not sure where this will end up. But, I certainly am having fun.

It worked!

Related Links

• Here is eventually what I’m trying to build
• VPForums.org has been hugely helpful
• I Pac Button Controller