AUTOEXEC.PHAT
What better way to greet someone that switches on your arcade cab than with a couple of aliens?
Flamboyance? Pah!
A short entry this time round but we have pretty much covered the software install now and we can move onto the process of refurbing the cab itself, but just before we do I’ll share the contents of my Autoexec.bat file with you.
Ever the gentleman eh?
During the testing of my DOS setup I got pretty fed up with the boring boot process and I wanted to make it a bit more interesting.
Once my PC is booted it gives a brief notification from the graphics card and a quick POST test then you see a few DOS commands and messages roll by (only a few as the @echo off command is at the top of the file). Then it sits there with the screen showing the confirmation messages until the ArcadeOS frontend loads up with the game list menu, and it is this last part I wanted to change.
Now, once the DOS commands have run I clear the screen and then echo a picture onto it which stays there until ArcadeOS has loaded. You can see how it looks by downloading this file unzipping it and running it by double clicking.
If you right click on it and select Edit you can see where I have commented out the commands that execute ArcadeOS and have added a pause at the end that will leave it on screen for you.
It’s only on screen for a few seconds but it adds a nice touch to the boring boot process and helps take away from the fact that there is just a plain old biege box inside there.