How to clip cool arcade/pinball pages
to your Palm OS PDA using Plucker
First of all you have to use Plucker. I know a lot of you are
using AvantGo because it is easy (it is) and many others are
using other programs but TRUST ME: Once you give
Plucker a try, you'll delete them all and convert everything for
Plucker (I did). Why is Plucker so much superior? The app itself
is smaller than all the others, it is multi-platform (clip-side),
it does color better than all the others, it's clipped pages are
smaller than all the others (2 options for PDA compression PLUS
something no others have: fully configurableable link exclusion
during clipping stages), it is OPEN SOURCE
and FREE, it is regularly updated and
supported with new features and bug fixes, and it works AWESOME.
Well what are you waiting for? Click here to download
a copy and install it RIGHT NOW!!!
OK, in an attempt to make this as painless as possible for new
Plucker users, I am going to assume you are doing your doing your
web clipping from a Windows OS computer. If you fall into that 85%
or so then I'll do ALL the work for you. Just follow these steps
(if not the steps and files will be pretty similar but some
directories and commands may differ slightly):
- Download the package labeled "Windows ME/NT/98/95
version" and install Plucker on your PC.
- Download myplucks.zip and
extract it into your C:/"Program Files"/Plucker
directory. This automagically creates databases for
creating these Plucker PDB documents from these pages:
- "m3capcom" (~5K: Marvin3m's Capcom
pinball repair pages)
- "m3pb2000" (~376K: Marvin3m's Williams
Pinball 2000 pinball repair pages)
- "m3_wpc" (~2433K: Marvin3m's Williams/Bally
WPC pinball repair pages)
- "m3_sys11" (~423K: Marvin3m's Williams
System 11 pinball repair pages)
- "m3_sega" (~1566K: Marvin3m's DataEast/Sega
pinball repair pages)
- "m3_sys80" (~???K: Marvin3m's Gottlieb
System 80 pinball repair pages)
- "m3_bally" (~545K: Marvin3m's Bally/Stern
pinball repair pages)
- "m3_em" (~224K: Marvin3m's Early E-M
pinball repair pages)
- "arcahome" (~10K: Arcade @ Home pages)
- "vgpinouts" (~226K: Wiretap arcade
pinouts)
- "vgswitch" (~205K: Wiretap arcade DIP
switch settings)
- "dfwpins" (~531K: DFW Pinball locator
including rulesheets for all the games! Trivially
adaptable to any other location; this page is a
global database)
- For each of the ones you want to use, edit the
"plucker.ini" file in its directory and
change the "user=Gregg Woodcock" line to be
"user=<your HotSync ID>". For the ones
you won't be using, delete the entire directory.
- Clip the pages from the web and install them on your PDA.
To do this simply execute the DOS command 'C:\"Program
Files"\Plucker\monthly.bat' (to do all of them) or
be more selective and use the command 'C:\"Program
Files"\Plucker\runsync <database_name as
indicated above> for just 1 document at a time (the
sizes above are the spaces required on your PDA to
install).
- HotSync and enjoy!
- OPTIONAL: Schedule a task to periodically re-clip
the pages re-install the PDBs because they will
undoubtedly be updated from time to time. To assist you,
the zip you extracted in the previous step also includes
a "monthly.bat" file. All you need to do is
schedule this to be run once a month (or however
frequently you like). In Windows 98 you do this using the
Maintenance wizard. Start by clicking Start,
pointing to Programs, pointing to Accessories,
pointing to System Tools, and then clicking Maintenance
wizard. Then just follow the steps.
- OPTIONAL: The other key thing to maintain is the
"exclusionlist.txt" file for each document.
They all work great now but as the web pages grow,
additional configuration will be necessary to properly
prune the PDBs so you'll have to either do it yourself or
come back here every now and then and re-install the myplucks.zip file (repeating from
step 2 above).
Now some of you may want to know more about how the "plucker.ini"
files are configured for each document and why some PDBs are so
much larger (WPC and Sega) than others after they are clipped.
The reason "m3_wpc" is so much larger than all the rest
is because I have a Visor Prism with a 16M springboard and I
clipped that one (only) in FULL color (as
indicated by the "bpp=8" parameter in its "plucker.ini"
file). If you want it to be smaller (black-and-white) like the
others, just change this to "bpp=1" like the other
files have and it will be about the same size as they. I did a
similar thing for "m3_sega" but for a much better
reason. The Stern web pages' service bulletins were converted
from PDA to FULL COLOR GIF (instead of black-and-white or 4-scale
gray). So if one uses "bpp=1" they are all unreadable (and
I, for one, want to be able to read them). Therefore "bpp=2"
is used which makes them just barely readible (and also
bloats the PDB file considerably). Sure would be nice if they
were reconverted in black-and-white or, even better, OCRed to
plain text! Other than that everything else is clipped in black-and-white
(bpp=1) and looks GREAT (while taking up a minimum of space).
Go back to the Classic Coin-Ops Main Page.