Jukebox build and some questions.

[superbovine]

Hi everyone!

Okay so it's been several years since I posted.... I've popped in and out every few months just to see what was going on, but since completing my arcade I haven't frequented nearly as much, and had nothing particularly useful to add 

Anyway, here's an update on what I'm fooling with:

I received an elo ~19" (closer to 19.5 for some reason) touchscreen for nothing a while back and had nothing to do with it. Because it is a bare screen (no case, no stand), options were limited.
I found an old console radio for sale, that quite honestly needed to be destroyed, but the price was right and I decided to put it back into service as a jukebox for the free touchscreen.

I knew the radio was beyond restoration so I felt no issue with cutting it up, but I did not realize just how bad it was until I got deep into it. This had a lot to do with why there was no initial build thread, as I got deeper into it and madder about the condition I just dug in there harder until before you knew it there was very little left and nothing really to take a picture of unfortunately.

To get an idea, every single piece of veneer, inside and out, were all bad. Some lifted, some split, some warped.... nothing usable. Not that it mattered, but the radio itself (guts) looked like they had been in the ocean for a year or two. Clearly this thing sat outside for an extended period. The inside had several spots where a rodent had gotten into it and started chewing away at the structure.
And then the worst part.... I waited until last to deal with this as it didn't look like too much fun; I knew one corner was a bit damaged and soft from water. I had briefly looked at it, noted the wobble and the foot was recessed, and noted the veneer in that area was water damaged. No big deal right.
Wellllll, then I got around to fixing it. Big deal. It wasn't just water damage, it was termite damage. Looking through the back side there were about 100 pin holes in it, and one good squeeze turned the entire bottom into crumbling dust. Yay.

In the end, the top routed corners, the center trident, center plywood reinforcement, and half of the uprights are all that was salvageable.

So that left me with several weeks of repair work by the time it was all said and done. The end result is not too bad, all things considered. Fresh Cherry veneer on either side and center section is Mahogany. If I were doing it again, I would do the entire thing in Cherry. I would also use 3M lazy veneer rather than the traditional glue/bond. The Mahogany was the 3M crap and damn was it easy to use.  There were some spots I tried to reuse sections of substrate and should not have, I am debating whether or not to redo these areas or try to injecto some adhesive etc.
So here is the product with fresh veneer and hardwood repairs:

Several coats of urethane later it actually looks like a piece of furniture again. I have added the original Stewart Warner name plate in this picture (and have not figured out what to do with the slot yet... it was for pre-set tuning). Also a bolt is seen in the fourth knob location; this is holding on some spacers behind it while the glue sets up.

From behind, you can see the tracks as well as what I have to work with for the knob locations and the original needle display location. I do not know what I am going to do here, so any suggestions would be welcomed. I had entertained putting one of those little 7" touchscreens here, however with a ~5/8" recess between the veneer and the screen, I feel it would look really crappy.  Visible at the bottom center is a progressive automation high speed actuator.  It is a 16" throw rated at 5 inches per second @ 19lbs.

Inside I will be running a Shuttle all in one Atom D2700 pc with 4gb ram and a 60gb SSD... no fans or moving parts at all. The speakers have not been sorted yet, primarily due to needing to find an easily modified system. I have a Logitech amplifier I can use, however it has a wheel knob on a large board, which will make adapting it more difficult than I would prefer. Ideally I would like to have one of the old Philips 2.1 systems from ~7 years ago as they are ideal, but I can't find the specific one I need.
The speakers themselves will be upgraded, I only need the PC speaker system for the amplifier, sub, and remote volume control.

On the way is some speaker cloth, that while not vintage I think will compliment the look.

Also on the way is a Bits LTD power strip....these are pretty much common-place around here.  I had talked about this with some people on another forum (not arcade/etc related) and they had never heard of such a thing.  Funny.  Anyway, I put one in my arcade and loved it, so it had to go here too.  It's the balls.

The auxillary power supply for the actuator was rigged up at this point, and I picked up a DP6T knob, so I was able to get things operable long enough to take a cell phone video. Disregard the noise from the shimmy; I need to brace the actuator to cut out that vibration noise.  I contacted progressive about this, and have not heard a response yet.  I am betting it has to do with the extended throw, as the shorter ones don't do this.  If I do not hear back from them soon I will just brace it near the top.  If even slight pressure is held on the tube it is silent.... it just has a ~3-5 degree arc that it goes through so I would prefer to not have to brace it due to long term effects.



More to come (transferring documentation here)

[superbovine]

1 week later

If I had known it would take so long to get the power button right (angle, thrust) I would have paid someone to do it. What a pain.
Anyway, power button is rigged up. Steel shaft riding in an angled bore with spacers to a momentary switch mounted on some bent scrap bracket. Simple, but effective. Getting the spacing and angle were very important as I can get really over-focused on crap like that.
Bore with spacers



Switch rig from the rear. Note I plan on redoing the mounting of the pot later using probably the same bracket as the power button... it just has some scrap metal for mock-up right now that will likely eat away at me if I leave it.



And mounted button. Forgive the dirt/dust. It hasn't exactly gotten a coat of Pledge yet.



Yes, the knobs are different sizes. There are four knobs on the radio originally. The large SW knob now used for lift/lower duties, the logo but non SW knob used for a power button, and two more reduced size SW knobs not yet mounted.
One more knob will be used for volume control, but the fourth knob I have not determined what it will do, if anything. I am refraining from mounting a volume knob yet until I determine if I am going to use all four.

The speaker board is also mounted now with new speaker cloth... not original, but something I found a bit more modern that would blend in better than gold paisley etc that is typical of the era. It blends in with the wood well but still has some contrast to identify the area.



At the present state it is ready for a test run to check the amplifier set up to see if it will be sufficient and make adjustments to the box etc.



Sound is very good, nice warm tones like I wanted. Unfortunately the driver for the touch screen is jacked up, no matter how I calibrate it the pointed is very oddly wrong... several inches off in each direction, but not in a linear way; the farther off you get the narrower the difference is and then when you get to a certain position it will completely change the way it is opposed. ---smurfing--- weird. I switched to the single touch driver and it works fine.
This is why I wanted to run XP, but it doesn't appear that I am likely to get XP running on a last gen Atom with Intel video. Ugh.
I will probably keep at it before I give up on that, but this was just a dry run anyway. No hardware is mounted apart from speakers and the amplifier set up is not 100% for certain yet.

I have a full version of Album Player on there now, which seems to be one of the cleanest cut options.  While I found numerous other programs that had different features I preferred, none were as reliable as AP.  Even stuff like silverjuke had major bugs I couldn't get past.  I do wish AP had some sort of radio or pandora support.  Maybe soon.


With the slot and needle display I'm still at a loss for what to do.  I'm pretty much resigned to the slot being mostly useless. I have considered getting an LCD display for it, but I need to send some emails to vendors and see what the dimensions are so I can tell if they would be useful or not.  There are a few USB options on ebay for this, however they seem to all run as winamp plug ins which likely won't do anything with AP.

Current date:

I started... well attempted to make new lenses for the radio today. I'm trying to find something at least presentable until/if I come up with something better.
The slot in the radio right now again was a preset button slot before, and the larger opening (not yet cut) was the dial lens. Unfortunately I must find something to do with the larger opening, as the veneer is wavy due to lack of substrate there... it must be used to look proper.

So anyway, I made some Balsa plugs last night



Put em on the vacuum table



And managed to get one half way usable lens. I'm not 100% satisfied with it, but it is a start



Again forgive the filth on the radio and floor.  If you think that is bad you should see my workbench.  It's awful.  I need to finish this fast.

I did get my Philips speakers that I wanted, though used. They should be here next week and I can work on the permanent amp and sub mount and splice in the wiring it to the real speakers.

On a side note, if anyone has worked with clear PETG etc and a vacuum former and has any tips, I would like to hear them. This stuff is being very difficult to use without some discoloration or problems with sharper angles etc.  I have some Lexan in the mail too (a bit thinner though, this stuff is 1/32) that I am going to try.

Sooo.... does anyone have any thoughts on what to do with the needle lens opening or the preset slot opening?  Keep in mind there is limited distance behind them (3-5" depending on position) so options are limited.

[BobA]

Lots of work to get where you are.  Glad you could salvage something from the original radio.

XP should run fine on an intel atom board.  I run XP on all my builds using the next gen atom boards.  It is just a matter of getting the right drivers for the earlier boards.

[superbovine]

Thanks BobA

The problem with XP is the particular board I have.  The last generation Atoms on D2700 etc that have the Intel GMA3650 video is the problem.... zero XP driver support, even Intel pretty much has said "pound sand".  I didn't know this was a problem until after I ordered the board, and due to my requirements (fanless, COM port, etc) I didn't exactly have a huge selection
7 is working OK though, better than anticipated.  I heard back from Elo with regard to the latest drivers, and apparently there is a compatibility issue with my screen and multi touch, which is what was freaking out the drivers, so that is resolved using the older driver.  Funny side note.... they asked for the serial number then told me it wasn't an Elo screen.  I had to photograph the manufacturer label and email it to them, apparently the person I was dealing with hadn't been there as long as that screen had been around

I'm still waiting on my speakers and some new Lexan to arrive (both ebay, neither gave any ship information or even responds to email.  Ugh).  Hopefully next week.  I have a marathon tomorrow so I am going to be out of commission for the weekend even if they did arrive.