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| Pac-Man Cabaret scratch build - 100% complete! |
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| Shun:
Ok, time to fit the TV/monitor. I've been dreading this for a while now as its probably one of the most difficult parts of the build. New video of the build is here: The first thing to do was to fit the mounting points, this is where the monitor/tv will be attached to. It took a couple of attempts to get the first mounting point in place but at the third time of asking I managed to get it positioned correctly. Once it was attached and the glue had dried, I cheated a little by lifting the monitor into place and with the help of the missus I managed to attach the top mounting point temporarily with hot glue and then later with no more nails glue. When all of the glue had dried I did a test fit of the monitor, which only just squeezed into place. So I trimmed the wooden frame down a little so that it would fit easier. To make sure the monitor wouldn't fall if for some reason the glue failed, I added some additional support to the mounting points with screws and more glue. With these fitted, I was confident that I could attach the monitor to the mounting points. To do this I clamped the frame in to place with the monitor attached and drilled 6 holes and secured with nuts and bolts. Next I screwed the chassis mount to the inside of the cab and re-connected the cables to the monitor. Finally it was time to test the tv/monitor to see if it still works... and it does! The next thing to do is to connect a game board up and see what it look like... |
| Shun:
More progress. I received an original Midway Ms. Pacman through the post a few months ago and I have been trying to get it to work with the scart TV that I have mounted in the cab. Video here: I bought the pcb on eBay for £70 delivered from the US to the UK. It made the journey almost in one piece, however the Sync Bus controller came loose and its adaptor was damaged. Most of the pins were bent or had fallen out. Luckily its a standard socket size, so a quick trip to Maplin and a replacement was found and fitted. With the Sync Bus controller fitted back on the board, I created a Jamma to Pac adaptor to provide power and video to the board to try it out on my test scart tv. I powered it up and got what looked like a scrambled mess. Thinking it was an issue with the TV, I plugged the board into the tv in the cab but got the same thing. So I wired up a speaker to the jamma adaptor and tried to coin up and it played blind! So the issue seemed to be a sync issue. I tried a few different things to get it to work (thanks to matsadona for the help and suggestions: http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php/topic,143558.0.html). Eventually I rewired everything from scratch and double checked the continuity of the sync cable. Powered it up on the test tv and I got sync! Also tested it out on the TV in the cab and it works and with the correct orientation. Now that I have the wiring to connect the board directly to scart, the next thing to do is to transfer the wiring into the cab. |
| Shun:
Now that I had the board working with the scart TV connection, it was time to tidy up the wiring. Video here: . In most arcade machines there are wiring looms to connect the PCB to the power, sound, controls and video. For my build I decided to group the wires up into different connection by making a sort of IO board. To do this I mounted a scart socket, two din connectors (a 6 way one for the test and coin switches etc and a 7 way one for the player controls) and a two socket molex connector for the audio to a thin piece of MDF. I then mounted a 22 pin edge connector and also a pc power molex connector. I then wired up the pinout of the Pac-Man board from the edge connector to each of the other connectors. I added some wood to the edge of the MDF to make a small box, which will be mounted above the Pac-Man PCB. However before I could do this, I needed to mount the PCB to work out where the IO box would go. In the original cab the board is mounted to the inside of the cab with some metal brackets that allow the pcb to be slid into position. I couldn't source any of these locally, so I thought I would use my circular saw to make some. To this, I cut a slot into a piece of MDF which I then connected to a wooden baton. I made 4 of these of various sizes and screwed them in to the inside of the cab. Once done, I was able to slide the board into place. I haven't mounted the Ms. Pac-Man daughter board yet as I am unsure if I will use it. Once the board was in the cab I could mount the IO box to the inside of the cab. I then measured the distance to the PCB and made a small extender that connected the IO box to the PCB. I then plugged the scart cable from the TV to the IO box and a PC power supply into the molex connector on the IO box. The first time I switched it on, I had an issue with the sync again, but this turned out to be an issue with the pin that I connected the sync to on the scart socket. Once I connected it to the correct one, the PCB displayed correctly on the TV. The next thing to do is to sort the alignment on the TV and connect the speaker up. |
| Shun:
More progress on the Pac Cabaret. I've had a few goodies sent over from the US and replaced the TV. New video here: The first thing to arrive in the post was a NOS Wico 4 way Pac-Man joystick! I'd been looking for one for a while and one came up on eBay for a reasonable price. Looking forward to installing this on the cab in future. I had to replace the TV as the original one that I had didn't have the controls on the chassis to align the screen and the service mode was of no help either. I have several 13/14 inch TVs and so deceased the one that I was able to align correctly with its service mode. I removed the old TV and luckily the new TV dropped into place perfectly ;D. The only problem I have now is that the TV doesn't come out of standby automatically, so will need to find a solution for that. The other thing that I had issues with was the speaker that I got of eBay months ago. It was a car speaker so therefore wasn't shielded and caused distortions to the TV. For some reason, I couldn't find shielded 6x9 speakers for sale in the UK, so I ordered a speaker and speaker grille from Mike's Arcade in the US. Both parts were easy to fit using the existing bolt holes that I had created for the original 6x9 speaker, however the hole for the speaker was slightly bigger than the speaker grille. So I had to make a little wooden adaptor that reduced the size of the hole. This was glued in to place and then I used P38/bondo to fill the gaps. I also created a wire that connected between the IO board and the speaker. I then fitted the speaker, speaker grille and marquee light panel (after slightly modifying it to fit). The next thing to do is the control panel! |
| harveybirdman:
Looking good man, looking forward to seeing the progress. |
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