The guide!:

Introduction: This is my first attempt at writing this. I may have skipped some minor (or major) details. If you think I have, please feel free to drop me a line. Also, please feel free to email me with any comments, suggestions, etc.

Sometime in late 2003, I became addicted to DDR (Dance-Dance-Revolution). I immediately got a cheap ($10) PlayStation soft-mat to use as a controller, and a copy of the game. But soon I realized that the soft pad wouldn't make the cut, since as I moved faster, the pad would slide all over the floor. Duct taping the mat down helped, but only for a few rounds. I decided I had to do something.

A decent hard pad (one made with polycarbonated plastic for the arrows) runs a few hundred dollars. Always trying to save a buck, I decided what the hey, I bet I could make one for less! I drew up some plans, and I decided it would actually be pretty easy. But you can read more about that on my DDR pad page. After about a week, I made my pad.

Soon I began to grow tired of the mixes I had to choose from. A bunch of my friends had been using StepMania - an advanced dancing simulator. Surprise! They have it ported to Mac OS X! About the same time, I stumbled across an iBook with no working screen. What luck! I completely disassembled the iBook (Carl Norum has a great guide as long as ou don't tear off the resistors like he does :) ), and took some of the left over pegboard that I had from my DDR Pad and made a litle box. I even put the battery there, so that we can have a DDR game without power (but now that I think about it, it makes no sense - where will I power the TV? :) ). Everything is really just hot glued down.

It automagically logs in on boot, and StepMania automagically launches. It's even network enabled so in the future I may use it to stream movies. To connect my DDR pad, I have an EMS-USB 2, which I got from Lik-Sang. It all works like a dream.

----End----- (June 25, 2004)

The photo gallery!

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