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Custom Cocktail (finished!)
popsicle:
Thanks for the compliments, everyone. It's always exciting to read new posts about your project, especially positive ones :)
Yes, I did away with the trackball (and 3rd side altogether) and will maybe do a dedicated trackball cab in the future with the stand up and play idea.
When I was building my upright cabinet, I was wanting to add a coin door and was looking on ebay. My wife came into the room and said something like "Why the hell would you ruin that lovely stained wood with that ugly piece of ---steaming pile of meadow muffin---?"
Ahem... she just saw me here posting another message and added "Would you stop screwing with that thing and let the kids play on it already?"
:dizzy:
opt2not:
Aww, that's too bad. I personally think a freshly restored Coin door is a thing of beauty, with lit-up inserts, and NOS face plates. Specifically the Midway ones.
Here's a shot of a restored pac-man cocktail with a single slot door (without faceplate).
Owl-face coin doors are also pretty hot looking too when cleaned up:
But hey, it's your cabinet, and your wife...more and more often I read a lot of guys here having to compromise with the wife's opinion to have it accepted as a hobby, and in the home. I too am under a rule of "maximum-of-two-cabinets" in our home, (though I broke it recently by acquiring the third...that was a night of nagging for sure - 'cause she "doesn't want our home to turn into an arcade"...women!). But hey, doesn't stop me from having cabinets at the office! ;)
Show her these images, and ask her if she still thinks they're ugly. I'm thinking she made that comment 'cause she saw a rusted, old, non-restored one off ebay.
Anyways, you're cocktail has piqued my interest with it's design. I'll be following along, so post more pics as you go!
:cheers:
popsicle:
So.... I was shopping at the local thrift store yesterday and one of my ex-students was working there. I asked her 'do you happen to have any computers?' and she took me to the back donation area that is usually off limits to shoppers and put 2 towers in my basket. 'How much?' I asked. 'I dunno, a buck each?' she said.
* SCORE * :o
1. emachines 3000+ Athlon 160gb hd, 512mb ddr
2. some ol' generic tower from 1996 - couldn't even get a keyboard here attached, so it wouldn't boot (rs-232 keyboard only)
I did manage to get the AMD machine running, stripped out the optical drives/card readers/network cards and spent all evening uninstalling everything that was not a bare bones necessity (I don't plan on networking this cab). The 'black viper xp tweaks' page someone here suggested came in real handy, and I'm down to a 30 second boot-up time.
I managed to mount the mobo, ps, and hdd to a chunk of leftover wood, and will slide the whole thing down one of the slanted cocktail sides. I plucked out the power button from the older computer and might find a way to use it with a standard happ button. Any ideas why there are four wires coming off this switch instead of 2?
piecesof8:
--- Quote from: popsicle link=topic=104229.msg1147I'm 366#msg1147366 date=1293216516 ---I plucked out the power button from the older computer and might find a way to use it with a standard happ button. Any ideas why there are four wires coming off this switch instead of 2?
--- End quote ---
If the computer's that old, it's probably pre-ATX - AT, maybe? I don't remember how power switches were wired back in the olden days. ;D
I'm not clear on why you need it, though... If you're using a Happ button, all you should need to do is run two wires from the microswitch in the button to the power switch header on the motherboard.
DaOld Man:
That older power supply is an AT. The four wires on the switch are 120 VAC going into power supply.
The switch is a push on/push off switch. It breaks the neutral and the hot wires going to the power supply.