UAII - coerced into creating thread

[ids]

Cab has been in a relative state of completion for some time, but I've recently been coerced into creating this thread.  I'll start with recent pics, and work backwards.

"Finished" cab.  Mess of wires on top is actually a currently unused AimTrack.  Left of the cab, the Atari labelled tube is a Centipede wall sticker thing waiting for a home.  Bottom-right, the gears and attached crap on the floor is a temp hacked mount for the elusive ram controls star wars yoke.  Coin-door: I replaced the default/ugly coin rejects with some blue and red to match the overall theme, (from Happ via theplaydiumstore).  I then made custom LED based lights for them (detailed in a thread somewhere), as the default bulbs really suck.  USB based display embedded in the control panel.  Was driven via MameHooker, but now switching over to a raspberry-pi (wip) and custom software - this gives me the animated displays I want, while not competing with Mame for the CPU.  Spinners on left and right are actually GGG turbotwists with Ultimarc tops (I had to drill the tops a bit to fit the shaft).  Spinner in centre is the GGG push/pull.  Not showing anywhere is a small rocker-switch on the top of the cab which controls all the power to the built-in outlets - a master power switch.

Please ignore the surrounding mess.




Got these from CoryBee - just held on with carpet tape for the moment, will do something better later.


Now, the embarrassing rats nest - i really need to clean this up some day.  Two LED-Wiz's, two optical encoders, four U360's (only P1+2 wired to keyboard encoder), thrust vector keyboard encoder w/ expansion board, happ stick with the tron restrictor and GGG's tron handle replacements.  Replaced U360 handles with hollow ones, glued the magnet to the bottom - this sucks as the wires tend to wrap around a lot, and I have to fix them often .  Buttons lit with Paradise led's, which dont snap in as advertised - these are all hot-glued in.



Bottom of the CP box.  This pic, just taken, is already out of date.  I've since wired wired the raspberry pi, and cleaned up a tiny bit:



The guts.  You can see the little circuit I made to control coin counters, which I've attached to each coin-mech.  Those puppies eat 24V iirc, so I needed a separate pwr supply and opto-isolators to keep it all safe.  Needless to say then, coin door is fully functional, but admin panel also has coin buttons.  The network hub allows me to connect the main PC and the raspberry-pi together, and put them on the interwebs if I want.  The pink box is a cheap amp, accessible through the coin door if need be.  Running Cabvol, so the need is pretty much non-existent.  Got a std pwr receptacle in there (the very shiny metal box top/right) - the grey item plugged into it is one of those relay based thingies - so when I power up the PC, everything else comes on as well (e.g. screen, marquee light).  Got it at HomeDespot, good for tools (e.g. turns on the dust collection/shop-vac when tool comes on).  Blue horizontal line near top is the edge of my keyboard.  Computer on the left.  Not visible, to the right, is the Q*bert knocker and driving circuit - thanks again to MameHooker, this thing is awesome.

[CoryBee]

 

Thanks for the read, looking good.

[eds1275]

I have a box of loose wire that looks like that But hey yours works and mine isn't even done yet. I like the labels, good job corybee. The red and blue t-molding is a nice touch, really subtle but definitely fits with the red and blue theme. The art looks faded, is that just in the photos?

[ids]

Thanks Cory - those serial plates are very cool.  I hope I can find a way to mount them properly to do them justice.

eds - yes, a box of loose wire probably looks more organized  - clean-up is on my to-do list.  You noticed the tmolding!  Not many people do.  Wanted to somehow do the same around the CP, but wasnt sure I could splice cleanly, so i bailed on the idea.

The art looks much better in reality - i think its a bad/fuzzy pic, some glare/reflections etc causing it.  The marquee art width is a bit shy of the goal, as you can see in the pic (to-do list).

Here are some other pics - maybe a bit better....First shows admin panel wip as well:


This one has finished admin panel, and the beginnings of running the display with the r-pi:


you'll notice some markings above the embedded display - this is left over adhesive from a failed admin panel i mounted there ealier (pics to come).  Some heated rounds of Golden Tee proved that this was a bad place to put it.  Adhesive since cleaned up.


Some pics of the surrounding area.  I made the dartboard cabinet myself, including the chalkboard (hardboard + chalkboard paint).  Chess set hand painted by SO - characters up to ~6" in height, board is very big.

[ids]

Going back in time....

I never took a pic of the failed admin panel - but here's a printed mockup.

Numbers are player coin buttons.  Top/centre black button was meant to be pressed in concert with Power, to avoid accidental power downs.

[Nephasth]

Buttons lit with Paradise led's, which dont snap in as advertised - these are all hot-glued in.

Which ones are supposed to snap in that style of button?

[ids]

These:  http://www.paradisearcadeshop.com/en/button-leds/101-il-lumination-5vdc-led.html


Tho I see the snap in part is no longer mentioned.    Not a big deal tho, that's what hot glue is for.

[ids]

More early pics...

1.  This was on my desk for a looooong time - made building a cab difficult.  Sure it's ugly but it worked.

2. Basic cab put together.  I dont recommend cheap plywood, unless you're covering it with formica or something.  I spent way too much time trying to make it smooth via sanding, bondo, spot putty, sanding, ....

2. Testing the final (iirc) panel - this was before the mini display arrived and had it's hole cut in there.  From here you can see that the plr3+4 sticks are not angled - not that there's anything wrong with that 

[ids]

Oh, forgot to mention, colour matched custom dust-washers by Randy (GGG) - love those things.

Related (or not) Links:

• Custom coin door lighting
• Q*bert knocker
• Custom software for the raspberry-pi
• Ms Pac desktop panel
• Air Hockey Build
• The workshop

[ids]

Mounted the serial plate properly:



also made some improvements to my software which is running on the r-pi, and configured Hyperspin (via the autohotkey script) to call out to it - working quite well at the moment