Thread necro as I actually have the parts and time to do this now.
Based on re-reading this thread multiple times, I can't tell if I'll be able to drive the relay with the PacDrive. It can dish out 500ma and milhouse had mentioned putting a 500ma fuse inline w/ his control voltage (12v and LEDWiz, I'm trying to use the built in 5V of the PacDrive). In a later post he mentioned a 1A slow blo. Just wondering if I'm confusing 2 different fuses, or if the 500ma wasn't sufficient and the 1A slo blo was needed.
And another thing I am confused about. For some reason I thought in Q-bert the knocker actually banged against the cab. The solenoid I picked up has a metal harness with rubber on one end where the metal bolt thing hits. milhouse's build seemed to keep that in tact and it seems to work/sound fine. What is actually going to hit what? Metal on metal, or metal on rubber?
I am also unsure which terminal on the solenoid is +/-. There is a diode across it and I saw this mentioned earlier in the thread
"Do not forget the diode across the coil (anode to the grounded side, cathode to the supply side) to prevent damage to the transistor."
Just want to verify that before wiring it up as I thought that the Anode was V+ and Cathode was V-. Although if this is to prevent some kind of back voltage, it would make sense that it would be the opposite.