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my progress so far.. now with xbox 360 goodness..and more crappy pics!
Mrephunk:
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:
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.
Mrephunk:
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:
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
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Donkbaca:
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.