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SeverdHed's 4-Player Showcase cabinet - keywiz frustrations
DirtyDachshunds:
--- Quote from: severdhed on September 07, 2010, 11:31:18 pm ---thanks.
i didn't really get much done on the cabinet tonight, but i did manage to work on my mala layout while watching TV with my wife. i'm not sure that it is 100% done yet, but it is close. it is strange designing a layout at such low resolution, my other cab has an LCD monitor, at 1280x1024, so switching to 640x432 is a big change.
feedback is welcomed
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I know what you mean. I've been configuring my Hyperspin project on a 640x480 TV. I finally gave up and brought my LCD monitor down for the dual display. Much easier now.
Anyway, the cab is looking great! I'll be following this to see how it comes out.
severdhed:
Well, it has been a while since i have done anything with this, i just haven't had the time. However i knew that with the holidays coming up, we would be likely to have people come over and visit, and i didn't want to have a bare mdf panel on this cabinet...so i finally purchased the plexiglass and took this panel to the next level. I am not completely happy with the way it turned out. i had planned on painting the back side of the plexi black to give it a nice glossy black finish, which i have successfully done in the past on my other cabinet. however at the last minute, i decided to go with a dark gray textured paint instead. i really like the shade of gray, since it makes the black controls stand out a little better, but the first coat of paint apparently didnt go on evenly enough, and no matter how many more coats i put on it, it still is splotchy. it is better than nothing, and since it is getting cold out, it will stay like this until spring...at that point i hope to add a trackball to this panel..so i'll get a new piece of plexi and paint it black like i should have in the first place....
i also relocated two of the player 4 (red) buttons. i somehow had them laid out in a square pattern, even though all of the other players were set up more in a diamond shape. so when i took the panel out, i used some bondo to fill in the holes and moved them to where they needed to be. i forgot to take pics of the process.
here you can see the old player 4 button layout:
and here is the new one. not that dramatic, but at least now they match the other ones (noone ever noticed that but me)
While i was at it, i switched out some of the components. i had two u360s for players 1 and 2, and Sanwa JLWs for players 3 and 4. i really liked the feel of the JLWs...much more than the u360s. so i figured since i had to remove everything to add the plexi, i should just remove the u360s. i still need to purchase two more JLWs, but with Christmas coming up, i need to keep costs down until January. I moved the JLWs to players 1 and 2, and installed two old xarcade sticks for players 3 and 4....not exactly ideal, but they are fine for now. i also installed ball tops on my JLWs, i think i will go all 4 balltops when i get my new joysticks, even though the colors dont exactly match the happ buttons.
I had a good bit of rewiring to do, since my player 1 and 2 buttons used to be wired to the u360s. now everything is running off of a single keywiz. I had to get a little creative and remap mame completely, but all is working great. the keywiz is clearly designed for a 2 player panel, however with 40 inputs, and 32 additional shifted inputs, it can be used for a 4 player setup. as you can see, i have 4 joysticks, 6 buttons each for players 1 and 2, and 4 buttons each for players 3 and 4. plus 4 start buttons, 4 coin buttons and a pause/exit button....that all adds up to 45 inputs. i wired up all of the sticks, action buttons and start buttons to the 40 inputs on the keywiz, and then i used the shazaam button adapters on my coin and exit/pause buttons. these adapters allow you to send a shifted input with only a single button press....i was a little skeptical at first, but after using them, they work great. the adapter looks like a Y adapter....one side goes to an input on the keywiz, and the other goes to the shazaam input. when you press the button, it sends the shifted input instead of the normal one. GGG seems to discourage you from using these as gameplay buttons, but for coin or admin functions, they are fine. since the keywiz doesnt retain any custom programming, i decided to stick with the default button config and just adapted mame to use that. after testing i have had to change my shifted keys to different inputs, because the ones i chose aren't perhaps the best choice. (F2 for instance, even though i went into the mame config and told it not to use f2 for the service switch, a few games didn't like it (mortal kombat series)...but that was easy enough to overcome by just moving it to a different input.
here is the shazaam adapter
and just a few more shots of the panel.
you can see the coin buttons on the edge of the control panel box..i made the outside rings of the buttons yellow instead of black so they would stand out a little more. i dont think they will stay that way, but i may replace the yellow parts with white ones the next time i order some parts.
like i said, i'm not super thrilled with the way the paint turned out, but at least the panel is nice and smooth, the tmolding is installed and it still looks better than the bare MDF. i will be replacing it in the spring.
BurgerKingDiamond:
that's too bad about the streakiness because I like that color.
severdhed:
i know...i was pretty upset when i first saw it. i really like the color alot. i coulnd't find a plain gray spray paint that was that dark..all the ones i could find were pretty light. when i found this textured one, i thought it would look awesome, and if it would have come out even, it probably would have...i'm not sure what went wrong...i guess i should have coated it very heavily all over the first time.
i'll probably just make it black the next time, but i dont think i will like that as much as the dark gray. i thought about doing artwork for the panel instead, but it is pretty expensive to do on a large panel like that.
Rick:
Looking good! Good progress! I did have a quick question, and it looks like you're the man to ask!
--- Quote from: severdhed on August 29, 2010, 11:13:08 pm ---
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When you partially decased your 27" TV, what is your rough estimation of the plastic surrounding the tube at the front? From this pic, I would say it looks to be about 2"-3" on each side. I'm asking, as I've yet to decase the 27" TV for my build, and I'm hoping it has as much 'wasted space' in between the tube and walls.