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my progress so far.. now with xbox 360 goodness..and more crappy pics!
Vigo:
--- Quote from: Donkbaca on June 02, 2011, 04:35:06 pm ---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
--- End quote ---
Nice! Dipping into 2 rooms at once! Pure strategic gold!
And a daughter that loves video games? I call that "Mission Accomplished!" :cheers:
Donkbaca:
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:
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:
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!
Donkbaca:
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.