The 90's Arcade Racers - Twin LCD Racing cabs

[TopJimmyCooks]

summits got good rep with the car crowd, except sometimes on sales of actual car engines.  but for parts they won't jack you around. 

[TKW4rr10r]

Looking at other seats on ebay, there are four or five sellers with the same address. 
Finally found one that I kinda liked on the east coat, look at their feedback and..."seller didn't actually have the seats".

I'm finding ebay to be full of these operations. Why have multiple store-fronts, selling the same items from the same location, if for no other reason to deceive people?

Trying to get some computer parts facing the same issues. Seller that sold me defective junk has at least 6 other different accounts on ebay. All have "top-rated uber classy" ratings, too 

[BadMouth]

Ordered seats from Summit yesterday.  Seats arrived today.   

Seat drama over.  Less discussion, more pics, more working......

Overall, I'm happy with them.  One has some creases where it laid at a bad angle in the box for a while.
(they came fully assembled and fully reclined in a long box)
I'm hoping the foam fluffs back up and it corrects itself, but it wouldn't bee too hard to open the bottom of the seat skin and add some foam.  Definitely not sending it back!


Mounting bolts are spaced 11" front to back, same as the original Virtual On seats.
Wasn't as lucky on the width.  These are 15.5" and the Sega spacing was slightly less.
I still wanted to keep the mounting points where the Virtual On bases had extra reinforcements welded in, so I just widened the holes a bit.
(the jigsaw worked better than anything else I tried)


They have the recline dial on both sides, so they can be used as driver or passenger.


The slide thingy on the sides is a release to make the seat flip forward.


Both the seats and the bases are bolted down and done, not just propped up for a pic. 

Tomorrow I hope to find time to build a temporary framework to dial in the placement of the wheel, pedals, screen, & speakers.
.....or I might build handbrakes, lol.

[BadMouth]

Threw together a basic frame to test things like screen position and angle of controls.
Didn't actually have time to install controls and test anything, but here is pretty much how things are going to be set up:


The TV will have to be decased.  I thought there would be more unused space on each side of the dashboard, but it's almost as wide as the TV.  Been looking at cabs with 42"ers I guess.



Hopefully sawdust will be flying the last week of this month.

[Malenko]

I really like those seats!
Cant wait to see this come together mang.

[leapinlew]

7/10's of a percent is the difference between a low percent seller and a reputable seller?

Yes. Was I not clear? 

I've bought a variety of different items from ebay, from small sellers and from conglomerates like this car parts store.  Anything less than 99.5 from a "top seller" means they have a decent amount of problems.  Unconfirmed, but I suspect that the top seller status allows their % to skew upwards above what it really is. 

Some individual selling his stuff, better go for 100% otherwise you just have no predictor of how it might go.

You were clear I just think its dumb that you have every grade of seller between 7/10 of a percent. 

I bought something from someone who had a 99.3% because I like living on the edge! 

[TopJimmyCooks]

I don't have every grade.  I have 2 grades.  Or maybe three depending on how you look at it.

professional stores:  have to be 99.5 or better to avoid risking getting jerked.
individual sellers:  have to be basically 100 to avoid risking getting jerked. 

Or, the 3rd grade - I might buy something cheap from someone rated lower if I really don't care much if it ever arrives or not or is crappy/in bad condition. 

Make all the fun you want (or preferably not ) but I buy from ebay and I don't get jerked.  By the way I didn't make this up, I learned it from Ken Rockwell and confirmed it by personal experience.

[ant2]

Looking good bad mouth.

ive finally finished waterproofing and redecorating my outhouse (well 95%)

I too have started planning the build of a second unit for link ups and hope to start this properly in a few more weeks...

Unfortunately its not so easy to get racing cabinets here in the UK, unless you want to pay over well over $1200 and get them shipped and thats annoying as I wanted an authentic cabinet that I could fix up and modify.. ah well..

I found someone on ebay getting rid of a wooden racing unit they had built, I plan on painting it and sprucing it up a bit.
http://i.ebayimg.com/t/Racing-Simulator-Cockpit-Sim-Rig-Gaming-Wooden-for-G25-/00/s/MTIwMFgxNjAw/z/kooAAOxyXVBSOKzc/$(KGrHqZHJC!FIcI2KLjgBSOKzbi8N!~~60_58.JPG

my wood work sucks and building it from the ground up would take me absolutely months..

I then sourced a mint condition seat from an RX7 from a guy in my rx7 car club.
I am sticking the logitech driving force GT in this one as this build is meant to be budget, as it will be barely be used.

I have started sourcing the computer bits and this is going to be running a core 2 duo 8500, 2GB RAM, 160GB HD, ATI 5850. This will then plug in to my 40" TV which is already used for the game cube, then probably headphones for sound but I may get some cheap speakers later..


Its going to run hyperspin the same as my other cabinet, model2 should be easy to set up for link ups and I was going to set up another Model2 directory pre configured with 2 player in the game inis and set up individual batch files with the networking configuration. then simply have another wheel in hyperspin for "LAN Play" to launch each of these.

It looks like you can get N64 working with kaillera for mario kart, diddy kong etc, I was trying to find some way of getting n64 lan play working with command line, as batch files would be so much easire.
 but the best I could find is preconfiguring kaillera with all the settings and then perhaps and AHK script to launch the keyboard combinations...
We could also try MESS, as this is command line based but last time i tried n64 it ran like a pig.


Gamecube is networkable, but I think automating the multiplayer is going to be even worse, perhaps this may work with an ahk.

PC games non steam should be fine. Ive got most of the NFS series so I will get those bad boys set up, carmageddon and some others.

be interesting to hear you get along with the networking side of things and pm me any of your thoughts as we will be both battling out the same things.

[BadMouth]

I need to make some decisions and move forward, even if they are partial or small decisions.
Please excuse me working through the thought process here, hopefully there will be pics of sawdust within a couple weeks.

1.  I'm using Sega Model 2 dashboards.  The two I originally had were slightly mismatched because one was from an Outrun 2.
     ABACABB gave me a Sega Rally control panel to mess around (if I ever build an L2M2 interface for it, I'm building an extra for him).
     It needs some repair work done, but the shell is identical to another one I have.   

     New matching decals, including ones for around the gauges will be done.
     
     I don't like the location of the extra buttons that I added to the one I hacked up before.  Going to put them below this time.

2.  I'm using Ketz 4-speed shifters from Super GT.  I have two in very good condition.
     I prefer paddle shifters for games that have more than 4 gears anyway.

3.  I need paddle shifters and at least four buttons (if not six) on the wheel, so using a standard arcade setup isn't going to work.
     Virtua Racing had paddle shifters, but both paddles are one solid piece balancing on a fulcrum in the middle and I just don't
     care for the feel of it.

4.  I don't want to just install a G27 in the dash.  That would be the simplest and quickest route to getting the cabs playable,
     but I'd like to preserve the arcade look of the Sega dash and not worry about people lifting themselves in and out of the seat
     with the wheel.

5.  I don't like the paddle and button wiring outside the steering shaft like on the dash that's already built, so considering points
     3&4, I'm going to need to order hollow steering shaft.  I already have two quick release mechs for 3/4" shaft.
     I'm leaning toward mounting a G27 wheel (with it's six buttons and paddle shifters) on the end
     regardless of what ffb mechanism and interface are on the other.  on the other hand,
     I already have two 280mm wheels and adapters that bolt right up to the quick releases.
     It's just a matter of adding more buttons without it looking bad and making a paddle shift mechanism for them.
     
6. I want Logitech profiler software: so that means I'm either using a Logitech wheel or hacked Logitech wheel. 
    I have a Logitech MOMO pcb, a complete MOMO, a Driving Force EX pcb, an entire G27, and a Driving Force GT
    pcb that I bought by itself and haven't worked the pinouts out for yet.  The benefit fo the G27 or DFGT is that they
    support rumble in games that only had rumble instead of real ffb.  The problem with hacking them is that the gearing
    and resolution to the optical encoder need to be perfect for them to pass their startup test, otherwise they don't work.
   
I guess what I need to do at this point is get Aganyte's L2m2 interface built and compare it to the other options.  I also want to try his Happ interface. 
Just haven't been able to bring myself to figure out how to order the PCBs and can't get past wanting to build a CNC machine to cut them myself, which would probably add another year to the wait. 

Anyone using that interface still have the specs of what you ordered and what you submitted?  (I assume it requires pretty thick copper)

be interesting to hear you get along with the networking side of things and pm me any of your thoughts as we will be both battling out the same things.

It will probably be a while before I get to the networking.  I don't plan to run any console emulators, so won't be any help there.

I'm only planning to network:
Model 2 emulator
Supermodel (if Bart holds true to the pattern, he will release the next version on April 1 2014)
SailorSat's MAME build for Virtua Racing

That's about it for arcade.

On the PC side, most of my games are steam.  I haven't delved into how that will work yet.
I'm hoping that I can set the second cab for family sharing so that either cab can run any steam game, just not at the same time.
Then I'll have a third account which will own another copy of each game I want to be able to run simultaneously.
There are command lines for steam that can log you out and log in as a different user when the game is selected, but I don't know how the actual linking will work.

I'm looking forward to having Outrun 2006 networked.

The old PC games like Daytona and Sega Rally for PC look like they linked over a serial cable.
I doubt I bother with them since the real versions are linkable in m2emulator. 

[charlieram]

I'm very much looking forward to this, How you decide to do the steering assembly and network the games will, I fear, heavily influence my decision on whether to build a multi player cab for my next build, unfortunately the cabinets aren't readily available so I will probably have to build it from scratch. Just don't tell the wife! Oh still got to finish my light gun mods on my other cab too. 

[Superfrog]

How is this project coming along these days

I hope you did not trash it like the one before I did followed 

There are lots of driving cabs these days .. in bartop ore seats.

See you

[Malenko]

He's not allowed to trash them, worst case he gives them to me. I'll make a run to state college!

[BadMouth]

I've been busy with home improvement projects despite renting.  I still want to refinish a small deck and paint the foundation before getting back to this.  The landlord reimburses materials, but not my time. I want the house I live in to be nice, but can't commit to this town long-term at the moment.  If that means that I have to tear out moldy drywall around the shower and refinish the tub and surround in a house I don't own, so be it. 
(I had friggin 30+ hours in that project.)
My rent hasn't been raised in 5 years because the landlord likes the fact that he doesn't ever have to deal with anything.
Also been re-arranging the house, decorating and building furniture.  I just picked up some canvases to do some crappy abstract oil paintings for my "chill room".

Not sure what I'm doing with this project at the moment.  My basemement bar is no more.  I sold the kegerator, sold the jukebox, threw the bar on a trash pile where it was immediately crushed by a giant claw.  I don't know why I find satisfaction in seeing my work destroyed, but I do.  I'm like the monks that do sand art and sweep it up when finished.  It's the creation process that's fun.  The arcade area was an extension of the bar, so I'm not sure where these cabs will go.  I have a small room upstairs where I work on projects.  It's always piled up with too much stuff to get any work done.  The plan is to make a workshop area downstairs, but I'm not sure if the room upstairs is big enough for two driving cabs and a slim stand-up.  It's doubtful 2 cabs will get used more than a few times a year, but I'd still like to go through the process building them and setting up the networking stuff for the benefit of the driving cab subforum.

If I decide to just throw G27's in both of them, they wouldn't take that long to complete.
One actually has a ramshackle framework holding a G27 and the screen in place.  Despite being playable, I haven't fired it up in months.
There are just too many other things I want to do with my spare time at the moment.

[Malenko]

I dont mind if you finish them before you give them to me 

[Superfrog]

" It's the creation process that's fun "
I know what you'r feeling here, bud I NEVER crush my projects 

Why don't you sell the stuff and make a new one for the smaller room that will fit the room, I think Malenko will have ears for it