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