Bartop - "NEONCADE"

[firedance]

Finished the bezel and almost done the marquee

Used chrome stick on letters from "The Range" (uk shop) 49p each,should be used for the rears of cars lol, they are approx 28mm high, used some EL (neon) wire that i had from way back when, thought it might give it that "neon" glow, sadly they aren't bright enough (not switched on in picture) plus they can be seen a little when sat at the bartop (not the greatest of pictures, sorry)

will look into some led strip lights at some point instead, maybe some multi coloured ones, might add them to the underside as well 

the bezel is covered in a light grey tinted perspex 3mm thick, from eBay, just over £7 plus £5.50 postage !!!! need to sand one edge slightly as it's got a small bow to it as it's wedged in pretty tight.

not sure for the sides, might just leave them plain white or add some manufactures names in a line to make it a little "ricey" 

still a bit to do, such as tidy up some cables inside, replace some of the fans as they are too noisy, add some warning/caution stickers to the rear, get windows to load just hyperspin but still need to work on the roms etc......................... trouble is i've made it fully playable, so they may have to wait 

maybe over the winter i will get the bits sorted out and again famous last words 

[firedance]

Just a small update, tidied some more inside the bartop, shortened the power cable for the monitor, got a bag full that i rescued, was being thrown out and going to land fill  , added a fan and controller, Ebay for just under £5, cycles thru 256 colours or can be set to any colour you like, much better than the previous one.

Changed the CPU fan as that was noisy as well, again much better, left the intake fan disabled, not sure if its needed now, will have to play some more to see how warm it gets.

The small black box just below the monitor to the right is for the neon string, got a LED strip replacement coming from china, should be here early December - http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/301771095349?_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2649&var=600588612154&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT

Should be able to wire to the 5v easily enough, not sure why anyone would light up their underwear tho (see ebay advert above).

Thanks again for reading

[firedance]

Hi All,

Just a small update, had friends and family over the festive period, they all loved the bartop  , nephew wants his own now, might be another couple of years tho 

had a major software update, from windows vista to windows 8,even with a SSD i couldn't get vista to boot as quick as i would have liked hence the change, also removed the 60gb ssd and hard drive, replaced with a single 120gb SSD to save on weight, will have to look into replacing the PSU as well as the fan is constantly running at full speed even with the door fully lowered, it's plugged into the motherboard, wether it's because i changed the CPU fan and cant regulate it's own temperatures  would need to replace it if i upgraded the gfx card anyways.

Also printed some warning/caution labels for the rear and a sticker for the sides from this site - http://www.flamingtext.co.uk/logo/Design-Chrominium not sure what to add to the rest of the sides tho, will also add some stickers to the front maybe.

One thing that will need changing at some point is the control panel as player 1 side is too far over to the left and your fingers hang over the side, that can wait until the better weather tho.

thanks again for reading

Cheers

Firedance

[firedance]

Holy thread revival batman 

having robbed this bartop of some components for other projects/bartops i thought it about time to install a new pc setup and get it back up and running -

Dell optiplex 3010 SFF
i3 3225 3.3ghz
4gb g.skill ram (had this for a while in my parts box)
500gb HD (might swap for a SSD tho)
AMD Radeon R5 340X 2GB OEM
Windows 10 pro


various holes in the mount board where other parts used to be.

running hyperspin with a few more systems added such as naomi, will add a full list when its complete.



 

[firedance]

For the motherboard stand offs I just cut a used biro into 10mm pieces then used wood screws to fasten it down, a little tricky lining up some of them but worked a treat.

[firedance]

got the old gal back together, need to add the warning stickers back to the rear panel again as i vinyl wrapped it this time, sanded the outside as the spray paint was scuffed and scratched, went with some quick drying gloss and a mini foam roller, never used this type of roller before, left a nice texture which i quite like

As i had removed the speakers i looked for a replacement, stumbled across this - https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B01LWQBKMO?smid=A3P5ROKL5A1OLE got mine for £5.81  not going to blow your socks off but adds a nice sound to the previous speakers, secured with a  bracket so it doesn't move, wasn't sure if it was going to fit but its in there and nothing catches, another bullet dodged  had to extend the speaker wires as they were very short, used some from a old pc case.

Used 2 arctic 80mm fans as yes you guessed it the others were removed for other projects  used some mesh from a old wire waste paper basket I've had for years from "poundworld" (dollartree),used the same mesh for the speakers too.

thought id change out the controls as well for some other Chinese ones, this time they light up, hell why not for £23 delivered, again not greatest by any means, the joysticks do a random colour pattern and not in sync even tho they are powered by the same wire (used a spare sata cable on the PSU, cut the 12v and ground wire then extended them towards the control panel, the buttons are solid colours, work well and are quite sensitive, will have to change out the vinyl on the panel as when u get hot hands they kinda stick a little to it, will look for some with a little texture perhaps.

systems are now -

MAME
Atari 2600
Atari 5200
Atari 7800
Atari Jaguar
GCE Vectrex
Mattel Intellivision
NEC PC Engine
NEC SuperGrafx
NEC TurboGrafx-16
Nintendo Entertainment System
Panasonic 3DO
Sammy Atomiswave
Sega 32X
Sega Genesis
Sega Master System
Sega Model 2
Sega Naomi
Sega Saturn
SNK Neo Geo AES
Sony PlayStation
Super Nintendo Entertainment System

works out to about 6400+ games

the disc based systems have the best games and ones i can remember playing only due to HD space, plus i tried to keep the systems that kinda work well with bartop controls.

will tidy the wires for the control when i swap out the vinyl.

well that's enough waffling from me