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Author Topic: my progress so far.. now with xbox 360 goodness..and more crappy pics!  (Read 35967 times)

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Donkbaca

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well here it is so far...
« Last Edit: March 23, 2011, 10:14:00 am by Donkbaca »

ubermick

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Re: my progress so far
« Reply #1 on: March 02, 2011, 06:48:32 pm »
Dude! Is holding my hand and answering my asinine questions keeping you from working on this?!?  :'(
Mammy, why is everyone pointing at my cab and laughing?

numbnutz48

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Re: my progress so far
« Reply #2 on: March 02, 2011, 07:37:31 pm »
I officially hate everyone with a bigger garage than me!  :soapbox:

Donkbaca

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Re: my progress so far
« Reply #3 on: March 02, 2011, 07:59:35 pm »
That's only half of my garage.  It's coming around slowly because my skills aren't that great, and is going to be stained so no visible screws on the outside. Plus working 55 hours a week + 21 month old daughter + pregnant wife = maybe about 3 hours a week I have to work on it.

What do you guys think of the shape?

ubermick

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Re: my progress so far
« Reply #4 on: March 02, 2011, 08:18:53 pm »
It's coming around slowly because my skills aren't that great, and is going to be stained so no visible screws on the outside. Plus working 55 hours a week + 21 month old daughter + pregnant wife = maybe about 3 hours a week I have to work on it.

Ooop, that'll do it. Bitten by the Knievel bug too, eh?  ;)

What do you guys think of the shape?
It might be the angle, but the monitor area looks HUGE - what are you planning on putting in there? Other than that, I think it looks great. Doesn't have the curves that some of the others I've seen do, but if your skills aren't that great (still probably better than mine) it's a good move.
Mammy, why is everyone pointing at my cab and laughing?

Donkbaca

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Re: my progress so far
« Reply #5 on: March 02, 2011, 09:07:04 pm »
I like the angular, more modern look. 

The monitor area looks big, but its about 24 inches, my monitor is about 14 inches tall and 18 inches or so wide , and I am going to put a 4 inch admin panel just above the CP to access the xbox 360, so it'll be about 21 inches or so I need to cover up, that's about 3-4 inches on the top and bottom.  There will be a 3.5 inch gap from the side of the cab to the screen.   

Its based on the woody, is roughly the same size, except I changed the bottom section, and gave the monitor area a little bit more of an angle, and my monitor is a 21.3" whereas knievel used a 19inch. My interior width is 24 inches and his was 23 1/2 so my monitor will take up more space in the area than his did

The whole in the front of the cab is for my coin door, the angled area above that is actually a door with hidden hinges that swings down to reveal a cubby where I will keep my light guns and wireless controllers for my console emus

Donkbaca

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Re: my progress so far
« Reply #6 on: March 14, 2011, 12:14:25 pm »
Two weeks later, still no progress on the cab, been doing work on the electrical end.  A buddy of mine gave me his old RROD xbox.  Fired it up and after about 10 minutes it had a 2 light ROD, which is good because that is just a standard overheat instead of a hardware failure. Took it apart, removed the x-clamps and cleaned and re-pasted the CPU/GPU.  Looked to me like it was just bad/not enough thermal paste. Its a HDMI, xbox with the added GPU heatsink and thermal pipe.  Fired it up after the fix and ran it for about 45 minutes, the fans never sped up and it ran as cool as Jack Nicholson, (really can't get much cooler than that).  I plan on running this with the dvd drive mounted outside of the case.  The DVD sits right on top of the GPU, so removing it frees up a lot of airflow in the case.  I extended the DVD power cables, had to solder to the eject switch on the motherboard,and got a longer SATA cable.  Now I have about 2 feet to play with.  I need to figure out where I am going to place the dvd player. I am thinking about two possibilities:

1)Putting it on the shelf below the CP, where the controllers and light guns are going to be kept. This would allow for easy swaps of the discs,but I would need to build/buy some sort of enclosure for the drive, because in its current state, its pretty fugly.  Also, letting guests swap out the discs is something I am nervous about with guests losing/scratching discs.

2) Mounting it behind the coin door.  This means that it will be behind a lock, so I don't have to worry about guests losing discs, it also means that I don't have to enclose the drive.  But, it means that changing games will be a PITA.

What do you guys think?  If I go with option 1, what kind of an enclosure do you guys think I should do?

To connect my xbox to my CP, I was originally going to cannibalize my Hori ex sticks, but then I decided that I would keep them in case I wanted to play fighters on my big screen instead of my cab.  So I found some SFIV mad catz pads for 26 bucks a piece at VP games.  The nice thing about these controllers is that they are all digital, so I don't have to worry about converting analog to digital trigger buttons.  The PCB is nice and big and the solder points are pretty straight forward, with the possible exception of the guide button.

I found a good diagram of them here:
http://shoryuken.com/f177/soldering-madcatz-sfiv-fightpad-179270/index2.html

I am connecting seven of the buttons to my CP, and the start, back and guide buttons will be on my admin panel above my cp.  I also tapped the 5v on the controllers so that I can light up my guide buttons when I turn the xbox on.

For my xbox admin buttons, I am using 18mm sanwa buttons for back, guide and start.  I am modding the guide buttons so that they light up, but I haven't gotten to this yet.  To switch between the cab and the xbox 360, I am using a 24mm green seimitsu button to activate my kvm switch.

To connect the xbox to my cab, I am using this:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000F8J0TE

This KVM is good for 3 reasons: 1 its relatively cheap, 2 it lets you share a monitor and sound, and 3 it has a wired remote.  I took the remote apart, and as I guessed, its a momentary contact that switches the sources.  I soldered up a couple of wires, and now I have a seimitsu 24 mm button that switches everything.  I had to get a xbox vga cable, and a female to female vga adapter to connect it to the xbox, and I had to get adapters to turn the male rca jacks from the xbox into a female headphone port so that I could share the sound, but it all works!

I have the vga cable, the sound and a usb cable plugged in to my computer, on my xbox I have the sound and vga cable plugged in.  My keyboard encoder plugs into the KVM, and the xbox xontroller will plug straight in to the xbox.  So the way it works is that when the KVM is switched to the computer, the encoder, the monitor and the sound is hooked up.  When I switch to the xbox, the encoder gets disconnected, and the video and sound switch the xbox 360.   I turn the 360 on by pressing the guide buttons on the admin panel.

So, that's what I have been up to.

To do:

Mount marquee, speaker panel, moniitor panel and admin panel.  The trickiest part will be the marquee, which is laser etched plexi that will be edge lit.

mod 18 mm sanwa buttons

Paint/ finish

seeing as how I only get about 4 hours or so a week to work on this, I am hoping to get it done before Mortal Kombat comes out so I can play it on my cab!



So, now when I start up my rig, it boots to my FE. 


eds1275

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Re: my progress so far.. now with xbox 360 goodness...
« Reply #7 on: March 21, 2011, 11:42:35 am »
Sounds pretty sweet. I dunno who you have playing that thing where discs would get scratched up or missing - but if you are really worried about it then I'd stick the drive behind the coin door. For the most part you can just keep the keys in the lock, unless say you have a hell storm of other people's children booking it through/around your house.

If you put it on the shelf, I would recommend finding an xbox hd-dvd drive from somewhere, and swapping the guts. You'd probably have to cut out the back side of the drive to make room for the wires but it'd look nice at least.

Donkbaca

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Re: my progress so far.. now with xbox 360 goodness...
« Reply #8 on: March 21, 2011, 12:10:10 pm »
Behind the coin door is probably the best thing to do, the less access you give to people the better, but I am probably going to use this cab for playing fighters on XBL, when others aren't around, So I am thinking maybe the shelf would be more convenient with me.. 

I have seen mods of the hd dvd drive, not sure if I like the way it looks though.  I think I may just build one out of wood to match the cab.

I was planning on getting a lot done this weekend, but didn't get a chance to touch anything on account of spending time on the backyard.  Hopefully I can get some work done this week, and be done next weekend... hopefully....

eds1275

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Re: my progress so far.. now with xbox 360 goodness...
« Reply #9 on: March 21, 2011, 12:38:08 pm »
Ooooh, the backyard. I have one of those. I'm scared to go back there right now  :angry: This year it's going to get better. I'm pouring a concrete patio, building a raised garden bed and after 2 years of "debate" to put it lightly... a single hole, modular mini golf. And of course hope to get rid of the moss and get my grass back to being lush.

Do you have any more of the woodworking done?

Donkbaca

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Re: my progress so far.. now with xbox 360 goodness...
« Reply #10 on: March 21, 2011, 12:48:00 pm »
nope, what you see is what stands in my garage.  I need to wait for a couple of forstner bits to come in before I finish my admin panel, then I have to mount my monitor, do a speaker shelf, do the marquee and I'll be done

Of course, if I have to build a enclosure for my dvd drive, that will take a little longer.  I am thinking if I do that, it'll just be a simple mitred box.  Going to replace the faceplate with a wood one, and mount the eject switch in the back, then it will look like a simple rectangular box

None of this should be too hard, except for my marquee.  I laser etched 2 sheets of plexi and am going to edge light them, so for the longest times I was thinking about how to mount the marquee and LEDs.  I think I have a solution now.  I think there is probably a few hours of woodworking to be done before it can be stained and taken inside for wiring.

Nephasth

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Re: my progress so far.. now with xbox 360 goodness...
« Reply #11 on: March 21, 2011, 12:51:10 pm »
You could make a deeper recess/groove for the edges of the marquee and install these.
« Last Edit: March 21, 2011, 12:54:08 pm by Nephasth »

Donkbaca

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Re: my progress so far.. now with xbox 360 goodness...
« Reply #12 on: March 21, 2011, 01:00:22 pm »
I already have the LEDS, and an idea of what I want to do.  I am going to take a piece of 3/4 inch ply and then cut out an opening that is slightly smaller then my marquee, then I will route out the back to put the marquee in and have room for the leds, the leds are small, they don't need much, then I am going to back it all with black foam board.  To finish it off, I'll use my t-molding on the edges.

I am thinking about putting some tint on the front of it too, that way when its off it'll be black, but when its lit it will look like the light is floating in the middle of the marquee.

I think I know what to do, I just haven't had the time to get it done....

megrog2

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Re: my progress so far.. now with xbox 360 goodness...
« Reply #13 on: March 22, 2011, 05:20:02 pm »
If your xbox can be jtagged, that is an option so you don't have to deal with discs. :-\

Donkbaca

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Re: my progress so far.. now with xbox 360 goodness...
« Reply #14 on: March 22, 2011, 07:35:56 pm »
nope, not jtaggable, this one was a RROD throw away that a buddy of mine had.  I convinced him to give it to me for free  :applaud:

So, no JTAG, now that I have one, I am not sure if I want to spend the money to get one either.  Also, I kind of like the idea of using the cabinet to play people on XBL.

I think I will upload some of my electronic pics tonight, since my woodworking is at a stand still at the moment....

BurgerKingDiamond

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Re: my progress so far.. now with xbox 360 goodness...
« Reply #15 on: March 23, 2011, 08:33:39 am »
something you can do is decase the 360 and put the MOBO somewhere out of the way inside the cab and mount the DVD drive somewhere convenient near the coin door. It's just connected with a SATA cable and a proprietary power connection. You can buy a longer SATA cable, but you'll probably have to lengthen the power cable yourself. Thats what I did on my candy, before I got rid my old 360 for a Jtag (the jtag doesn't require disc's so I didn't bother remounting the DVD drive). You can open and close the DVD drive with the X button. So it makes it really convenient to swap discs.
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Donkbaca

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Re: my progress so far.. now with xbox 360 goodness...
« Reply #16 on: March 23, 2011, 09:01:45 am »
Yup, I have decased the 360 and am moving the drive. This does two things: 1) it let's you put the drive wherever you want and 2) makes the 360 run cooler because normally the DVD drive sits right on top of the GPU heat sink.

I soldered a couple of wires to the mobo so I could extend the eject switch. Noe I just need to figure out where to mount it. I am leaning more towards mounting it in my cubby where my light guns are. Need to figure out a cool enclosure though

BurgerKingDiamond

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Re: my progress so far.. now with xbox 360 goodness...
« Reply #17 on: March 23, 2011, 10:17:24 am »
Yup, I have decased the 360 and am moving the drive. This does two things: 1) it let's you put the drive wherever you want and 2) makes the 360 run cooler because normally the DVD drive sits right on top of the GPU heat sink.

I soldered a couple of wires to the mobo so I could extend the eject switch. Noe I just need to figure out where to mount it. I am leaning more towards mounting it in my cubby where my light guns are. Need to figure out a cool enclosure though

why mount an extra eject button when you can just use the X button when you're in the dashboard?
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Donkbaca

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Re: my progress so far.. now with xbox 360 goodness..and more crappy pics!
« Reply #18 on: March 23, 2011, 11:16:55 am »
okay as promised, pics

Aimtraks, used the tutorial I found on this website, they are the generic yobo guncons.  I think they look decent, plus they vibrate when you pull the trigger.  The finish on then, however, is horrible.  I was going to resand and paint, but I got to the point where I was just sick of dealing with them, so they will have to do in the current state


Next is the first mod I did, connected my power button to a microswitch, drilled a hole through the middle of the button and ran my pc's power LED into it.  I hit the button to turn the pc on, hit it to turn it off, and the led glows green while its on.  This is gonna be mounted on the top of the cab


This next pic is my xb360 as it is right now.  Its a bit of a messy picture, but I will explain a couple of things.  This XB was RROD, so I had to remove the heatsinks and repaste the processors.  It runs super cool now.  One of the reasons XBs overheat is that the dvd drive sits right on top of the GPU heat sink, if you look, you can see 3 heat sinks, the tall one on the bottom is for the CPU, the one on top of it with the thermal pipe leading to another heat sink is the one for the gpu and is about half as tall.  The dvd drive normally sits right on top of this, restriciting airflow and trapping heat.  I got a longer SATA cable, and extended the power cables for the DVD drive, so now I can mount it away from the XB.  One annoying thing about the xb360 is that the dvd eject button is connected to the mobo.  So, what i did is solder a couple of wires to the mobo to extend this switch, you can see them at the front of the case.


This is one of the xb 360 I soldered for my controls.  I used the madcatz SFIV pads, these are sweet for 2 reasons: 1) no analog triggers to convert to digital!  2) there is a switch that lets you toggle the dpad to be either the dpad, the left stick, or the right stick.  Kind of neat in case you want to play a game where you can't use the dpad and have to use the analog stick


Next up are the admin buttons for the 360.  These will be in my admin panel mounted right above my CP.  The green button will be lit, its a seimitsu 24mm button that will operate the KVM.  The other buttons are sanwa 18mm buttons.  I plan on putting the kvm button in the middle, and having 2 clusters of sanwa buttons, one to the left and one to the right.  The left button is back, the right button is start and the middle button is the xbox guide button, and will be lit up.  In keeping with my cardinal and gold theme, the 1p guid will light red, 2p will light yellow.


Here is a close up of the sanwa buttons.  I custom made the guide button using parts from the madcatz controllers.


Now the KVM switch. I got a belkin kvm with audio that has a wired remote!  First step, hack the wired remote so I could connect it to my 24mm seimitsu button


The way its going to run is that I am going to have my cp buttons wired to both the hacked 360 pads and my x-arcade encoder.  The encoder is plugged into the kvm, the xb controllers are plugged into the Xbox.  The xbox has the video and audio connected to the switch, the pc has video, audio and usb connected to the switch.  When the kvm is connected to the pc, the encoder is connected, and the xbox 360 is off.  If I want to play the 360, I press the seimitsu button, that switches the audio and video and disconnects the x-arcade, to turn on and off the xbox, I use my xbox guid buttons on the cp. Here is the switch:


Last pic for now.  I am using a xbox vga cable.  The cable has a male connection, and the audio is 2 male rca jacks.  The kvm also has a male vga, and a male 3.5mm stereo jack.  In order to get it all to work, I had to get some adapters:


So that's it for now.  Hopefully I can get to woodworking soon.  If anyone has any comments, or wants info or better pics, let me know.
« Last Edit: March 23, 2011, 12:20:52 pm by Donkbaca »

Nephasth

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Re: my progress so far.. now with xbox 360 goodness..and more crappy pics!
« Reply #19 on: March 23, 2011, 11:20:18 am »
Not seeing any pics...

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Donkbaca

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Re: my progress so far.. now with xbox 360 goodness..and more crappy pics!
« Reply #21 on: March 23, 2011, 11:27:39 am »
me neither!  dang it, I thought I had figured out how to put pics in my message!  Any of you know how to do that?

I can add them as attachments I guesss....

Donkbaca

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Re: my progress so far.. now with xbox 360 goodness..and more crappy pics!
« Reply #22 on: March 23, 2011, 11:31:54 am »
delete
« Last Edit: March 23, 2011, 12:01:05 pm by Donkbaca »

Nephasth

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Re: my progress so far.. now with xbox 360 goodness..and more crappy pics!
« Reply #23 on: March 23, 2011, 11:48:29 am »
me neither!  dang it, I thought I had figured out how to put pics in my message!  Any of you know how to do that?

I can add them as attachments I guesss....

Best thing to do is to attach your pics in a post in this thread. Then right click on the link of your desired attached pic, click on 'copy shortcut'. Then in the post you want the pic to be in, where you want the pic to be type {img}paste copied shortcut here{/img}. Replace { with [ and } with ]. And there you go.

Donkbaca

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Re: my progress so far.. now with xbox 360 goodness..and more crappy pics!
« Reply #24 on: March 23, 2011, 12:01:26 pm »
thanks for the advice!

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Re: my progress so far.. now with xbox 360 goodness..and more crappy pics!
« Reply #25 on: March 23, 2011, 12:04:19 pm »
Weird, when I click on your pics, I get this error:

An Error Has Occurred!
You are not allowed to access this section


But if I go directly to the 'not a project' thread, I can see them just fine?!? Am I not worthy?

I usually just add them as attachments to my own messages, then I open them, right click and 'copy image address', then I paste that address back into my message inside an [img] tag...


Nephasth

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Re: my progress so far.. now with xbox 360 goodness..and more crappy pics!
« Reply #26 on: March 23, 2011, 12:07:22 pm »
That is weird. I don't get that error, I can't even click on the pics. Usually posting pics like that will bring them up "full size" in the post. Those are still small in your post...

Did you copy the shortcut from the link under the attached pic? Or did you copy the image itself?

Donkbaca

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Re: my progress so far.. now with xbox 360 goodness..and more crappy pics!
« Reply #27 on: March 23, 2011, 12:21:25 pm »
better now?

emphatic

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Re: my progress so far.. now with xbox 360 goodness..and more crappy pics!
« Reply #28 on: March 23, 2011, 01:01:30 pm »
better now?

Yep, all good!  :applaud:

That KVM switch, won't it introduce lag?

Donkbaca

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Re: my progress so far.. now with xbox 360 goodness..and more crappy pics!
« Reply #29 on: March 23, 2011, 01:10:58 pm »
You mean on the inputs or the video?  I tried it with the 360, no noticeable lag at all.  I haven't fullyexplored it all in MAME yet, but I don't think it will be much of an issue.  I'll test it tonight and let you know.


The only negatives I have read about the KVM switch is that while the audio and video switching happen almost instantly, there is a slight delay in waking up the keyboard and mouse.  No reports about ghosting, or lag or anything like that, but I don't think the people using it were doing so for gaming applications.  I don't expect this to be an issue.

shateredsoul

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Re: my progress so far.. now with xbox 360 goodness...
« Reply #30 on: April 18, 2011, 02:03:55 pm »
nope, not jtaggable, this one was a RROD throw away that a buddy of mine had.  I convinced him to give it to me for free  :applaud:

So, no JTAG, now that I have one, I am not sure if I want to spend the money to get one either.  Also, I kind of like the idea of using the cabinet to play people on XBL.

I think I will upload some of my electronic pics tonight, since my woodworking is at a stand still at the moment....

Just got my jtag, you're misssing out, ;P

What about all the import shmups? Well I guess most of the shmups will be working on the next release of demul, so you could play those through your pc.


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Re: my progress so far.. now with xbox 360 goodness..and more crappy pics!
« Reply #31 on: April 18, 2011, 02:09:54 pm »
Yeah, and I am not a huge SHMUP fan. 

More work this weekend.  Still need to get a few things ironed out, still need to do my marquee and speaker panel, then i need to figure out a few gaps and such, and then its stain and finish, which takes FOREVER.

In the final stretch though.

Man, modding those sanwa buttons to light up as xbox guid buttons was a HUGE PITA...


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Quick update, pictures tonight...

Admin panel and monitor bezel done. I think its starting to look pretty good.  Got my stain on my CP, ready to wire it after I seal it with a couple of coats of Poly.

Issues - advice needed
I have modified the sanwa 18mm buttons, they will light up, trying to wire them so that they are only lit when the xbox is on, as of now they are connected to the 5v from the control pad, but this is a constant 5 volts.  i am guessin that I am going to have to solder to the SMD indicator lights around the guid button,  not sure it I want to deal with that though, and might just have constantly glowing guide buttons.

Expiremented with a couple of ways to light up my 24mm seimitsu button that the kvm is attached to.  Can't find a solution I like.  As of now it will just not be lit.  If anyone has advice, I would welcome it.


To do:
What is holding me up is the damn marquee!  I laser etched 2 sheets of plexi.  I like the edge lit, floating neon look of edge lit plexi.  This has made mounting the marquee quite the pain though.  I think Ihave figured out that what I am going to do is route out a border for it, and then glue the plexi to the inside and then attach it with velcro.  That is my goal.

Speaker panel.  This should be pretty easy, hard part will be getting the front angle cut right so I can velcro on the marquee.

The back panel is not cut well at all.  I am guessing there will be a gap between the top panel and the back of the panel.  Not sure if I care though, because it won't be visible.  I rushed this cut, and don't think I am going to redo it.

Toying with the idea of making a wooden enclosure for my xbox 360 dvd drive, as I can'f find one I like.

Stain, poly, affix monitor and wire.  

Anyhow.  Its been fun so far, finding time is a ---smurfette--- and a half though.  Hopefully when I am done it will be something different, but familiar and I'll be able to pass my experience on...

Thanks everyone!

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Looks good - do you have any details on how you made the CP box?  Is the entire thing mitred including the bottom panel?

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Yeah, that was the first thing I built.  Totally not happy with it.  It is all completely mitered.  Thing is though, having zero wood working experience, I used glue and l brackets to hold it together.  I was sloppy with the glue and there are spots on it that didn't stain as well as I wanted.  Its acceptable enough though. 

Its all built out of 1/2 inch ply.  The controls are top mounted with 1/8 inch ply and 1/8 inch plexi on top.  I'll post pictures tonight.

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Okay first off, to give you guys a better idea of the profile:  Its obviously woody inspired, but I changed the bottom to be straight, instead of flaring up, and the monitor area is a little more angled than in the woody, which is very straight:


Here is a new shot of the front.  The plexi and bezel are test fit.  The plexi is not clear because it still has the plastic film on it.  I am going to tint the plexi to hide it all a little bit.  I think it looks ok.  The bezel is a PITA to make.  The monitor I am using is a 21.5" NEC multisync.  You can also see my admin panel. As you know I am a bit of a minimalist, but for this type of design, I think you need a panel there to cover up some bezel real estate.  This is where my xbox 360 and KVM switch will go.  The set of three holes at the left and the right will have sanwa 18mm buttons glued in.  They will be the Back - Guide - Start Buttons for P1 and P2.  The middle hole is for a 24mm seimitsu that will activate the KVM.  Finally, the slanted area right below the CP is going to swing down to give me access to aimtraks, additional controllers, a track ball and the xbox dvd drive.  When its in its closed position, it is pretty hidden


Someone had asked about my CP.  This was the very first thing I started building a few months ago, and I was way more sloppy then I should have been.  The bottom box is mitred on all sides, held together by L brackets and glue.  I was not as careful as I should have been with the glue and got some on my wood, not thinking it was a big deal since the glue is "stainable".  Well, stainable glue stains, but not the same as wood, so its a little blotchy.  I am tempted to do it over again, but for now its in the "good enough category. 

Here is a side pic:


Here is the front, that show how sloppy I was:


As you can kind of see from the pictures above, I am top mounting my controls.  The wood is 1/2 inch plywood, at first I was worried about this being too thin, but when the controls are in they feel really solid, plus this is for home use.  If worst comes to worst and it breaks, I will just do a thicker one next time, for now though I think its fine.  I think people really underestimate the strength of plywood.  Anyhow this is what is going on top [excuse the recycling pile next to it]


As you can see, pretty simple 7 buttons per.  The buttons on top will be P1 -Select - Exit - P2.  IN retrospect I don't need a select button, but it balances things out okay, I may use it for pause too.  I was contemplating a trackball to take up some of the real estate in the middle, but decided against it since i really don't enjoy trackball games.  I do, however, have an x-arcade trackball controller, so if anyone really wanted to play trackball games, they can open the door under the CP and pull it out of the cubby. 

That's it for now.  Its not revolutionary or ground breaking, I think its decent though, for a dude that had never soldered or woodworked before this, and I think the x-box capability will be neat.

Thanks guys

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...........pregnant wife ...............

What do you guys think of the shape?
She's prolly fat?  :dunno


One of the reasons XBs overheat is that the dvd drive sits right on top of the GPU heat sink
Thats so not true. In fact if you do the "card trick" the 360 runs cooler then removing the DVD drive. Its all about air flow.

Build looks good though. Gonna be a dark finish?
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Quote
She's prolly fat? 

Actually she is not.  she looks the same, only now she has a bowling ball sized gut.  Anywhow, lets keep wives/significant others out of the conversation, unless we are talking about mikezilla's bed wetting girlfriend.


Quote
Thats so not true. In fact if you do the "card trick" the 360 runs cooler then removing the DVD drive. Its all about air flow

What is this "card trick"?  Are you talking about adding cardboard to direct airflow away from the heatsinks to the fans?  I didn't say the DVD was the ONLY reason it overheats.  I agree its about airflow, and I think the DVD sitting on top of the GPU traps heat between it and the heatsink.  I don't really care though.  I am removing the dvd because it will take up a smaller foot print in my storage area than the entire xbox would.  I think I will leave the xbox decased to improve airflow, plus I like seeing the guts. 

I think it looks alright  :cheers:  Its going to have a mahogany finish is a darkish brown...

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I think it looks alright  :cheers:  Its going to have a mahogany finish is a darkish brown...

Many leather bound books around?
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going to put it right next to my autographed X2 BB filled shaolin toe stab bag

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going to put it right next to my autographed X2 BB filled shaolin toe stab bag

it was an achorman reference
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Re: my progress so far
« Reply #41 on: May 20, 2011, 10:16:43 am »
Looks good and I feel your pain.  Hard to get much time to ourselfs with the kids.  Let alone cut wood at 9:30 at night when it took you an hour to get everyone to bed.  Good job on the build.  I like it.  I am going to look at more photos on your post.




That's only half of my garage.  It's coming around slowly because my skills aren't that great, and is going to be stained so no visible screws on the outside. Plus working 55 hours a week + 21 month old daughter + pregnant wife = maybe about 3 hours a week I have to work on it.

What do you guys think of the shape?

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I am friends with Merlon Olsen, he comes over on ocasion.

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Um... Thanks?

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sorry i just can't resist joining in on anchorman refrences.

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how did you make the guide button and get it to light up. I want to do the exact same thing, but was gonna try to do it with a 24 or 30mm button.

Donkbaca

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I have a 24mm button for my KVM and I can't get it to light up the way I want with the LEDS i had on hand, and I couldn't find any good tips on getting them lit.  You can light up 30mm buttons pretty easy, I know Paradise arcade sells boards that fit in them, and I am sure other do too.  My xbox start, back and guide buttons are 18mm sanwa buttons, you can see them earlier in my thread.  I modified 2 of them to be my guide buttons by using the buttons on my mad catz fight pad and doing some modifications.  To light them, I use a super bright LED that is hotglued in place.  Right now I have them hot wired to the 5v on the fight pads, but the 5v is an always on.  I poked around with my multimeter to find a switched circuit to try and run my lights off of, but I couldn't find any.  As far as I know, the only switched points are the SMD's for the ROL on the controller.  This only puts out about 2v.  What I plan on doing next is using these points with an NPN transistor to switch the grounds, so that the light only comes on when the controller is on.  Probably won't get to doing that until this weekend though.  I'll keep everyone posted.  Right now I am finishing up the stain on my cab, putting my final coats of poly on tonight and then tomorrow it goes in the house for wiring.

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I was also wondering, in the pic with the fightpad PCB all soldered up I notice a couple of ground wires. I thought it was a common ground PCB and I would only have to wire to one ground? I am using the same PCBs for my build and wanted to know why you did that?

Donkbaca

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I am going to use one for the controls and the other is going to my light. I did this for easier wiring for the light


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

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Re: my progress so far.. now with xbox 360 goodness..Now in the house!!!
« Reply #49 on: June 02, 2011, 11:43:56 am »
Well here is my update.  Finished the stain and put the CP together and the coin door in.  I built a housing for my xbox 360 drive our of 1/8 inch ply, I think it will turnout decently (not pictured, i'll post that when its all put together.)   The stain came out acceptable enough to convince my wife to let me bring it in the house for wiring and final assembly.  The LCD is going in it tonight, final assembly by the weekend, in time for my daughters second birthday  :applaud:

Anyway here is the staining part:


I probably should have cleaned out the garage more, it was a little dusty, but I lucked out and it ended up not affecting my finish much.  I didn't put as many coats of stain/poly  on the back of the cab, or the top because nobody will really see them, so they are not quite as dark as the rest of the cab.  Staining is hard, but I got the hang of it about half way through.  I used a gel stain, which I would use again.  Waiting for the finish is hard, apply a thin coat and wait, sounds so simple, but its easy to get overly obsessive and lay on too much stain and not wait long enough.

Here is how it stands today before I left for work, buttons and joys are in, t-molding starting to put on the side:



another shot



some self criticism:  
1) The CP front is a little lighter than the sides and front of the cab, it isn't as noticeable in person, this is due to sloppiness in using wood filler and glue on the CP.  When I first did it, there were spots and drips that didn't stain evenly, I was able to manipulate the gel stain so that these weren't noticeable, but it was hard to get the stain even throughout.  I kinda like it though.

2) Some will wonder about why a coin door.  To me a cab just doens't look right without a coin door.  Plus i like the chrome bezels of the asahi seiko door, and I put custom inserts in it to tie up the theme

3) why so many buttons?  Well 7 per player so that I could have a mk3 run button and have the neo geo 4 across the bottom.  The top 4 buttons on the CP are from left to right: P1 - Select - Exit - P2.  P1 and P2 are custom inserts. Select is to start games, exit is to exit games.  P1 and P2 will light up white, slect will be green, exit will be red.  The 7 buttons on the admin panel are for my xbox 360 they are: back - guide - start  KVM switch back - guide - start.  For this sort of build, you need to have a panel above the CP, or the bezel area would be too big.  I used this panel area to stick on my kvm and xbox buttons.  It looks like a lot of buttons, but its all pretty functional and easy to follow.

4) the colors - This cab will be themed after my alma matter - the University of Southern California, so the sticks, buttons and marquee will be cardinal and gold, or as close as I could get to them.

thanks for looking.


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No flight stick or cupholders?

JK

Looks good dude!
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Haha, thanks!  i will provide more pics and details of the x-box setup.  I think that is probably the best contirbution I can give to the site...

The wife wouldn't let me build a franken panel, even if I wanted to :)  This is going in our home office...

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Hey Donk, it's really looking nice!  :cheers:

Is this going to be a present for your daughter, or more something to play during her birthday party?

Also, good job making a whole room nonfunctional in order to put it all together. It just wouldn't be a proper build if you didn't monopolize at least one room.  :lol

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Classy!  :applaud:

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Thanks guys! means a lot coming from you and some of the great projects you have done.

Vigo- Its actually straddling our formal living/dining room, so I am sorta taking up 2 rooms to get it done.  For anyone building something out there with a W/GF/SO this is a GREAT strategy, start building ---steaming pile of meadow muffin--- in the middle of the house and the wife will be on your ass to get it done.

We are having the daughters party at the inlaws, but she LOVES it, the girl adores video games, and thinks arcade cabinets are awesome

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Thanks guys! means a lot coming from you and some of the great projects you have done.

Vigo- Its actually straddling our formal living/dining room, so I am sorta taking up 2 rooms to get it done.  For anyone building something out there with a W/GF/SO this is a GREAT strategy, start building ---steaming pile of meadow muffin--- in the middle of the house and the wife will be on your ass to get it done.

We are having the daughters party at the inlaws, but she LOVES it, the girl adores video games, and thinks arcade cabinets are awesome

Nice! Dipping into 2 rooms at once! Pure strategic gold!

And a daughter that loves video games? I call that "Mission Accomplished!"  :cheers:

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Well here is something useful: I figured out how to light up my guide lights so that they come on and shut off with the controller!  For those not familiar with the the dilemma, the pads have a 5v coming off the USB, the problem is this is an always on 5v, meaning that power flows through it, even when the xbox is off.  Poking around the fightpads, the only switched circuits I found were to the SMD's, and they were just under 2v, not enough to brighten up my LEDS to where I want them to be. So what I did was get a npn3904 transistor, and a 220ohm resistor and I wired the transistor to the SMD tos switch the ground and turn the LEDS on when the controllers are on. Here is how you do it:

Solder a lead from the positive SMD connection to the resistor, then solder the resistor to the base of the transistor.  
Solder a lead from the SMD ground to the collector of the transistor
Solder the emitter of the transistor to the ground from the LED
Connect the LED anode to the 5v.

Voila!  when the power is on, the transistor closes the ground circuit, powering the LEDS, when its off, the LEDS don't have a ground shut off.  If anyone wants more details of pics let me know

Now the frustration:  The damned bezel isn't as clean as I want it to be, luckily the tinted plexi hides it all pretty well, unfortunately, putting tint on plexi is a pain! Spent the good part of the weekend applying and reapplying the tint to get rid of the imperfections.  The wife said I was getting too obsessed, finally said f-it, and went with what I had.  Its IMPOSSIBLE to get all the little bubbles out due to stray pieces of lint/dust that get attracted to the plexi and tint through static electricity.  I got it to the point where there are maybe a half dozen really, really tiny bubbbles.  They are not in screen area, and you can only see them if the glare off the screen hits a certain way.  Most people probably won't see them, so I am leaving them where they are and moving forward.

Now the crushing anger:
That pretty much ate up my weekend.  Put in the xbox, and it worked! I removed the drive, built a small wooden enclosure for it and stuck the xbox behind my coin box.  Fired up, no problem.  Then I go to show my wife last night, the drive starts to open and BAM! 2RL error.   :angry:  Checked the code, its giving 0013 - RAM overheat.  I am thinking I went a little overboard trying to secure the xbox to the cab and maybe flexed the board displaced the ram somehow.  Going to look over it this weekend, if I can't get it to work I might get it reflowed.  If not I am going to have to get a new one.  Maybe I'll get an elite and move my home one into the cab...anyhow, the xbox is down for now... so pissed.

Anyhow, cab still have built in the middle of the house, and I am leaving for work for a few days.  When I get back, first priority is to finish assembly and get the PC and speakers in, then I will try and get the xbox working.  

Donkbaca

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So here is an update, CP is wired - look slike hell, but works.  Need to get the xbox working because it wen 2RL on me... grrr.
Anyhow, here is the top, need to finish the marquee.  This marquee has caused grief to no end, I hope its worth it in the end.  You may notice not lights for the marque, well that is because its going to be edge lit with LEDS.  You can see my speakers that are resting on some foam board and secured with zip ties and L brackets.  In the back you can see my on/off button, I drilled a hole in the middle of it and migrated my PC power LED to is so there is a little green light in the middle of it that glows when its on.



Here is what the rest of it looks like:


Here is my coin door.  Its an old Asahi Seiko coin door from what I believe was thrashed Punchout cab.  Got it on ebay for 20 bucks, shipped, with mechs!  Cleaned it up, re-painted it, put in some custom inserts.  I also modified it to accept .984 tokens, which was pretty simple, just enlarged the opening and tweaked the mech a little bit.  So, now it takes both tokens and quarters.



Donkbaca

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Continuing my tour:

Here is the lower half of my cab.  THe angle there is actually a door, held in place by 2 spring magnet clasps


You open that door and this is what you see.  I need to clean up and finish the wiring, and I will have my aimtraks, some xb 360 pads for emulators and maybe my trackball controller.  That wooden box in the middle is the enclosure I made for my xbox 360 drive



Here you see the back of the xbox enclosure, you can see I have mounted a microswitch right next to it below the panel.  This is the eject switch for the drive.


Moving up to the CP, here is my custom 1p button and above it on the admin you can see my buttons for the xbox, back, guide, and start.  The guide button lights up when you turn the controller on.  The start button will light up white.


here is the middle of my CP with my two MAME admin buttons, the select button will light green, exit red.  Above is a Small seimitsu button that will swap between my MAME PC and my XB 360.  It does not light, I couldn't find a good way to light 24mm Seimitsu buttons



Finally here is my custom 2p button, it will light white and above, you can see the 18mm sanwa button that will be my xbox start button.

To do:  Finish marquee and wiring; wire up my lights on my cp; a little organizing of m FE.

Thanks for looking!


« Last Edit: June 15, 2011, 03:03:06 pm by Donkbaca »

Donkbaca

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    • Slim built MAME/Xbox cab
In case people were curious, here is what the cab looks like running a game.  The screen, IMHO is just about perfect size, yeah a little bigger would be nice, but I am pretty happy with it.


What do you all think?  The wife is pretty happy with it, and she was dead set against the project in the beginning.

HaRuMaN

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yeah a little bigger would be nice

That's what she said...   ;D

Looks good!  :cheers:

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Looks nice!  :applaud:

I would like to make a "furniture" grade cocktail cab.
« Last Edit: June 16, 2011, 12:24:44 pm by Woodshop Flunky »

Complete mini arcade cabinet plans available.

Donkbaca

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Thanks!

I apreciate the "furniture grade" comment.  I think you do good work WSF.  I think I am doing okay, considering this is the first thing I have ever made out of wood, and that I had never soldered anything before.  Wait till you see the Xbox360 integration.  It will be sweet.

Donkbaca

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    • Slim built MAME/Xbox cab
Problems!!! Damned xbox 360....  Okay so I fixed my buddies RROD, had it all set up but I think I went too rough on it in the install because now I am getting the 0013 ram overheat error on boot, which probably means a ram chip has a bad solder joint, which means a reball.  pissed! 
solution:
Luckily gamestop is selling MS refurbed xboxs for99 bucks.  Figure I can sell the controller, the hard drive and the power brick all for 50-60 bucks, so its a fairly cheap fix.  Now I have to mount it in my custom encolosure, and put it in the box.


Problem number 2!
Wiring issues! 
So originally I was going to use my x-arcade encoder, and had it figured out as to how to share the controls with a xbox 360 pad and the x-arcade.  Then I got another encoder that emulates a joystick, and figured I would give that a shot.  Well. I couldn't get the joy encoder and xbox pads to play nice, so I switched back to x-arcade, now I am having issues.

1) Player one works great, but for some reason, when I connect player 2 controls up to the xbox controller, I am getting a short somewhere, so that when I press, say one direction on the joystick, it is registering all the inputs.  So I need to look at this some more, right now the CP is a completes rats nest with LED wiring, encoder wiring and xbox wiring.  I am guessing it has something to do with the wiring/soldering on the player 2 pad, or a stray ground somewhere.  I hate this wiring stuff.

2) For SOME reason my LED WIZ is freaking out my x-arcade.  When I turn on the LEDS, it starts registering inputs, its weird.  LEDs off, no problem, then once about 10 lights go on, I start registering inputs.  I tried turning lights on and off to see if I could isolate it to a certain port, but it seems to be a combination of ports.

So...  New x-box is coming in, I need to remove the drive and solder up the eject switch on it and install it in the cab.

I need to figure out the wiring situation.  If I can't work it out soon, I may just ditch the encoders and just use my xbox 360 pads.


Donkbaca

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And we are rocking and rolling again!  Figured out my encoder issue, it was a problem with the ground.  Ditched the x-arcade, gonna put that back in the box and give the stick to someone.

Replacement x-box on its way.  Looking to finish (finally this weekend) look for final pics early next week

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I like the cabinet base.  You did a good job there, but I do not like the CP.  It looks out of place IMO.  I would understand if it was a 4 player but you need to rethink the CP.

Just looks odd.
If I had only one wish, it would be for three more wishes.

Donkbaca

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I appreciate the comments :)  Yeah the cp is kinda big, but I like it.  I don't like being crammed together.  I probably could have made it smaller, but I am happy with it.

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I was reading through this thread and saw the KVM and thought "Oh, awesome! I have two of those!" Then, thinking about the reason I got one of them, an alarm bell went off. Now, I don't 100% remember the specifications, but at the time, I looked it up online and someone else had this issue, so I don't think it was unique to my setup.
Have you hooked the KVM up to an xbox AND a Pc yet? That was the issue.
I had it at my old job so I could play xbox in my cubical, and if the boss came around, that little button fits right under a desk for quick switching. Scandalous, right? Anyways, There was an issue with something regarding that. I know, vague, right? I remember the fix was something along the lines of not having the USB in the xbox when it was first booted up. Something like that! I wish this could be more helpful, but it was a long time ago and I don't remember the details at all. I just know there was an issue with hooking it up to an xbox and a PC. Something that might make a tidy setup like yours inconvenient. Keep a lookout for something like that.

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yeah a little bigger would be nice

That's what she said...   ;D


 :laugh2:

 office joke never gets old