Gingerballs 2.1 the rebuild starts

[thomas_surles]

Ouch. That sucks. Good luck with the repairs

[Malenko]

So I cleaned up the all the corners and cut a new base. Painted the inside primer white, but left the fan hole piece original black, its an accent wall!


Then I moved stuff around loose forever till finally settling on this footprint. Its not quite what I wanted but its the best I could do without having to cut new front, back, and bottom pieces.
Yes, I installed motherboard standoffs.




I did clone the SATA SSD over to an M.2 SSD so that there are fewer power and data cables. Next step is to route all the power supply cables along the sides, determine if I want to put an intake fan in and if so where. After all that is done, I'll have to mount the "force feedback" solenoids , driver board, etc  Last step will be mounting the last piece of wood to the base that the backbox sits on then figuring out all that cabling. I'm still not sure if I should keep the Dell soundbar or put speakers in the cab body.


That GTX1080 GPU isnt staying, the previous GTX 1660Ti goes back in. Its a great card that keeps temps low but can still run VPX like a champ.

As for the hardware upgrade:
Old:   i5-3570K 16GB DDR3 256GB SATA SSD
New: i5-8500   24GB DDR4 256GB M.2 SSD

I will likely put another M.2 in this just to be sure I have plenty of room for expansion. I don't see me adding MAME style controls to the lock-down bar like some people do, but I may add a button in the middle if I get enough tables that need it. You may notice I pulled the IPAC2, I replaced it with a zero delay as the IPAC2 is kind of wasted on this build. Another change is that I wont be running power to the start or coin buttons; I prefer to have as little wiring as possible now. I will also be powering the Pin2DMD with a USB cable (plugged into the power strip not the PC) instead of a molex connector for the sake of wiring as well.
Will also probably get a beefier aftermarket CPU air cooler to exhaust air to the back of the cab.

[Malenko]

So when trying to sort the wiring, the layout I chose just wont work. So I pulled it all out, filled in the hole and moved stuff to here:

Slapped a 2nd M.2 SSD in there so I have almost 1TB of storage. Plopped in the 1660Ti video card and mounted all the force feed solenoids.... they really make the wiring look like a mess.
I decided to just keep the existing wiring because Im just not up for running all new neater cables; out of sight out of mind?  Either way this is still a step up from before.



Only big changes are:
Mounted PSU vertically
Had to add a thunderbolt USB hub because I needed 5 ports and only had 4.
Pin2DMD will get powered over USB, fed from the USB on the outlet, not the PC, instead of tapping the molex connector.


Things still left to do:
install an intake fan or two (might have one blow up vertically, and then stand one up to blow air towards the GPU/PSU)
fabricate and install air flow guides (specifically directing intake to GPU/PS and directing PSU exhaust to big fan in the back)
update the software that's been stale for almost 2 years
play some virtual pinball!

[thomas_surles]

Love that this is happening.  Ball buster was out of commission for almost 2 years when the power supply died. Ended up using that as an opportunity to upgrade the pc inside. And since the old pc had an old hard drive, I had to start from scratch on software which is way more annoying than a mame machine. I'm back to 4 playable tables at the moment.
Looking great. Glad you got it repaired.

[Malenko]

Love that this is happening.  Ball buster was out of commission for almost 2 years when the power supply died......

Well my buddy built a new PC and couldn't get a GPU anywhere, so I pulled the GPU from ginger for him to use. Fast forward 18 months, and I got a 3060ti for my PC, so he gets my 1080 and I get my 1660Ti back.
The PC inside ginger, while better than the ---steaming pile of meadow muffin--- they put in most commercial VPINs, was still a little dated for my tastes. I dont see me replacing this 8th gen i5 for a loooooooong time.

I did get the intake blowhole done, just going to angle it a little bit and tape off the bottom. If temps become a problem, I'll get an aftermarket CPU cooler.


I also had to flip the "sling shot" solenoids over to make clearance for the monitor.  Ginger 3.0 is still in the planning stages, but I'm kind of looking forward to a full sized VPIN. Already have the 4K TV and the analog plunger kit thingie.

I will probably clean the wiring up a bit more, and Im going to order shorter power and video cables for the playfield monitor.

EDIT: For those wondering, here are the benchmark scores
https://www.userbenchmark.com/UserRun/46033418

no overclocking, no ram timing adjustments, bone stock. In a really  long time I'll throw a 9th gen K series processor in here but its not likely

[Ond]

I'm still a fan of this build.  Nice to see you working at something arcade related again. 

[Malenko]

I'm still a fan of this build.  Nice to see you working at something arcade related again. 

Im actually working on 2 other things right now, but this is my focus. I'll take pics and post threads for the other things when I get back to them.

I ended up plopping my other 1080 (SC) in:


and it clocks pretty great, but I think it might run too hot.
https://www.userbenchmark.com/UserRun/46127837

[Billy_Goatfeet]

  Hey Malenko, this VP looks great!  How do you like the Pin2DMD?  I just picked one up for my Williams Wide Body VP.   


- Steve