Nintendo cabinet build - Wreck-It Ralph

[javeryh]

Looks GREAT.  The monitor issue stinks and I have no idea how to fix it but everyone says doing a cap kit is easy so maybe it won't be so bad. 

I'm sure you've said it before but how is Wreck-It-Ralph/Fix-It-Felix running?  Is there a ROM that runs in MAME or is it still a .exe file like it was a bunch of years ago?

[meyer980]

Looks GREAT.  The monitor issue stinks and I have no idea how to fix it but everyone says doing a cap kit is easy so maybe it won't be so bad. 

I'm sure you've said it before but how is Wreck-It-Ralph/Fix-It-Felix running?  Is there a ROM that runs in MAME or is it still a .exe file like it was a bunch of years ago?

Not to speak for UnclearHermit but the most common method is still running the leaked Disney copy of Fix It Felix which is a Windows .exe, often using the wrapper that Howard/The Dragon King made which lets you customize controls and other stuff. The game uses a plain old image sprite sheet so he edited one of the images to essentially "change" the title.

Unless someone codes a Z80/Assembly version of Felix I don't think it'll ever run in MAME    OR I guess if MAME starts emulating x86 Windows PCs!
There are some weird homebrew versions though, like one that runs on Genesis emulators. Not as good in my opinion.

[UnclearHermit]

I can't help you on sourcing the parts, but there are lots of good videos on YouTube showing how to do a cap kit. I'm especially a fan of John's Arcade. He often shows the full process, making some videos 1+ hours long but good for learning.

Thanks.  That's pretty much my plan, if I can source the parts.  I'm tempted to drop an email to some of the US-based sites selling the kits to see if I can buy the part list/instructions so they don't have to actually ship anything and I can then just try to order the individual caps locally.  Like I said though, I imagine this'll end up being a "later" thing.

Not to speak for UnclearHermit but the most common method is still running the leaked Disney copy of Fix It Felix which is a Windows .exe, often using the wrapper that Howard/The Dragon King made which lets you customize controls and other stuff. The game uses a plain old image sprite sheet so he edited one of the images to essentially "change" the title.

Yup, exactly that!  The cabinet will boot into that game, but allow exit to get to a selection of vertical games in MAME.  That's the plan, anyway.

I've been doing a bit of work on the control panel and come to realise that I have a small problem with the dust washer for the Servostik.  A DK control panel has a clear washer on top, black washer under the plexi, so nothing obscures the artwork and the hole is hidden by the black washer.  Because I'm not going down the original joystick route then things are a bit different.  The Servostik has a black dust washer that would cover the joystick hole, but it's so large (about 52mm) that it would cover the directional arrows that are part of the CPO art.  So I either need a smaller washer, or I need to mount it routed below the plexi (a bit worried about any potential damage to the reverse-printed art if it lifts at all) with a clear washer on top.  Obviously the EASIER route here is a smaller black washer, if I can source one.  I'm hoping that a plastic circle can't be that hard to find in some form.  I can find a few, but nothing so far that mentions dimensions.  My fallback is a joystick that I can pick up from eBay for under a tenner that looks to have a much smaller washer - an expensive way to just get a washer though!  That said, other places just selling the washers aren't actually that far off this price once I add in postage.
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Zippyy-Ball-Top-Short-Shaft-Arcade-Joystick-2-4-8-Way-Red-MAME-JAMMA/182485256588?epid=625059223&hash=item2a7cf8098c:g:Or4AAOSw~qxaufhC

[UnclearHermit]

Think I’ve sourced my dust washer...

[javeryh]

Think I’ve sourced my dust washer...

Focus Attack sells 38mm clear dust washers for $1.  Hit it with some black paint on the bottom and you are good to go.  That’s what I did and it came out looking great.

[ChanceKJ]

I’ve pulled the upper clear dustwasher off my red DK. It scratches the artwork.  I mean, arguably it’s something that adds patina, but I don’t like the idea of it. Its gone on so many cabs I see so I could care less myself.  Just put a regular black washer between the stick and the bottom of the wood. Use metal washers as spacers to allow the washer to move if needed.

[UnclearHermit]

Yeah, I was worried about scratching.  I remember reading something from someone on here about putting a thin layer of felt on the underside of the washer.

So is your black washer between the plexi and the wood?  I take it that means the top of the wood is routed out slightly to take it?  I should stress my joystick is not original and is under-mounted, so right now there'd be a big hole visible without a washer covering it somewhere 

[ChanceKJ]

More or less.

if you take a look at page 11 of the manual you'll see the control panel diagram, with the control panned in an exploded view upside down. Part 01-39, the "Control Lever Assembly Mount" is a square metal bit with screw threads, and a big space in the middle to house the dust washer (23-14), both sit flush into the wood surface under the artwork layer.

https://www.gamesdatabase.org/Media/SYSTEM/Arcade//Manual/formated/Donkey_Kong_-_1981_-_Nintendo.pdf

Mike actually sells these reproduction panels on his site MikesArcade.com. Its where we get 98% of our NOS and reproduction Nintendo parts from. He has the wood panels with the routing as well as the complete DK reproduction panels, (one of which I have on my red 5-slot DK). 

https://www.mikesarcade.com/cgi-bin/store.pl?sku=CPBLANKNIN

https://www.mikesarcade.com/cgi-bin/store.pl?sku=CPDKONG

[UnclearHermit]

Thanks, yes, I'd seen that but got confused by the mention of metal washers!

I could easily route and put a washer under the plexi, and it is tempting so long as I don't get a mountain of dust that then manages to get down there during normal use and gather where it's harder to clean!

[ChanceKJ]

If you've seen some of the control panels that I've pulled apart from the 90's where there was never a dust waster installed you'd realize that not much REALLLLY gets down there. especially in a home environment. On location with thousands of hands touching it, spilt drinks, etc, you'll find some chunks of dust bunnies, sticky crap, etc. Takes a lot to kill a joystick, especially Nintendo ones.  For a home use game its mostly for esthetics, and to keep your hand from being pinched in some cases. haha.


For the metal washer comment, I was revering to making set of standoffs to add a space between the top of the joystick base and the bottom of the panel surface. If you added 2-3 metal washers on each of the 4 places the joystick mounts you can fit a dust washer in between the panel and the stick. That is unless you are going to be using a stick like a Wico, which has a recess in the top of the joystick mounting plate to house a dust washer and still keep the stick flush to the underside of the panel.

[meyer980]

Saw this sideart image today and thought of your build. Very much a play on Donkey Kong Jr. sideart. I love how fun it is.

I know it doesn't fit your theme/style at all but just thought it would be fun to share.

[UnclearHermit]

Nice, where was that from? Another project?

Meanwhile, I've been having fun in software-land.  The plan, which I've probably mentioned before, is to have the cabinet boot into Wreck-It Ralph, then drop back into Attract Mode for a bunch of vertical titles with MAME.  This requires a bit of jiggling around to get Windows shell out of the way and have as clean an experience as possible.  The easiest way to do this is to replace Explorer as the shell, but I decided that the best replacement would be a little executable that did all the bits that I need.  After a bit of (very bad) coding I now have a tiny program that I can run as shell that does the following:
- Fires up WiR
- When that closes, terminate some of the WiR executables that sometimes seem to linger.  I found that sometimes I'd be in Attract Mode but WiR was still running in the background, stealing about half the CPU.
- Launch Attract Mode.
- When that closes (Attract Mode does confirm exit first) then shut down Windows and hence the cab.

This means that the "hidden" button now powers up the PC, which in turn triggers the smart strip to light the marquee and power the monitor.  When Windows shuts down, the smart strip kills the power to the monitor and marquee.  So far, so good.

I've also been testing the ServoStik and making sure I can switch between 4-way and 8-way when I switch between games.  There's a plug-in for Attract Mode that does this, so that bit was easy enough, but at some point I found that the switching wasn't happening any more and had to look into it.  I first assumed I had a loose wire or even the the control board or motor had died, but eventually I found that the joytray executable that does the switching was no longer switching.  After some more messing around I figured out that this was because the Explorer shell wasn't running.  If I put Explorer back in place of my launcher then it worked fine.

It seems that joytray.exe does switching, but that it also puts a little icon in the system tray (hence the name, I suppose).  I can only think that it's trying to do this even when called with a command line parameter that's explicit in telling it just to switch, but it's failing to register in systray (because it's not running) and so just fails.  This was a concern.  If I could only have the rotation switching working with Explorer then it screwed up the whole custom shell approach, leaving me to fight with Windows and the desktop etc. all the time.  I had a quick Google around, including this site, and found someone who had hit something a couple of years ago but no resolution.

The only approach I could think of was to write my own switching utility, but I had no idea how to interact with the control board.  A bit more Google uncovered that people had written things for Linux, but I couldn't find anything for Windows other than mention of native integration with other launchers.  The fact that other people had written such integration at least meant it must be possible, so I went back to the Ultimarc site and then kicked myself when I found that there was an API on the site.  Armed with that it didn't take me long to knock up "joytraylite", which now just switches to 4-way or 8-way and doesn't go near systray.  A quick test with my shell showed it works a treat 

So I'm getting there.  I need to look and see if I can hide some of the quick windows that pop up when the WiR wrappers fire up, and I need to trigger joytraylite to 4-way at start-up (otherwise it could be in 8-way from the previous machine boot) but that's pretty much it on the software side.  The only other thing that this has raised for me is that it's a pain getting to the back of the machine to plug in keyboard/USB storage when doing any updates or troubleshooting, so I've just spent a few pounds on eBay for a little USB hub.  I'll route that so that it's permanently connected and mount the ports somewhere accessible from the coin door. 

[meyer980]

I just stumbled upon it! I was doing some research for a Donkey Kong 3 style game I'm working on and saw it on Pinterest.

A few google searches later, and looking closer. It appears to be made by this guy: https://cargocollective.com/dcay
And at least at one point sold it: https://twitter.com/slashfilm/status/929857462412263424

Can't find it for sale now though. Which is too bad, it'd be a great hanging piece in a game room.

You should consider sharing your joytraylite app. If it helped you, it may help others!

[UnclearHermit]

Happy to share joytraylite with anyone who needs it, although I'll warn that it has absolutely zero error checking etc. and so isn't going to be popping up friendly error messages if anything goes wrong 

[UnclearHermit]

A few updates incoming.

I've been keeping quiet about this, but the artwork for the cabinet was finalised around Christmas and I've been working with Olly over at https://www.arcadeartshop.com/ since on getting it into its physical form.  In January I had an exciting moment when this lot arrived. 



Unfortunately there were a couple of issues, one with the marquee (position/scale got a bit corrupted somewhere along the way) and one with the bezel, which was suffering with some kind of marking on the surface, which is apparently grease that's hardened under UV light:



It also wasn't helped by the fact that, in cleaning up the Illustrator file for printing, I'd managed to remove the colour from behind the lower part of the building.  You can see the window surround has the "correct" colour in the upper window but it's missing from the lower one.



Given the problem with the marking Olly kindly offered to re-print.  I took the opportunity to fix the building colour issue, and also to brighten up a few of the bezel graphics since they were looking a little dark when printed on the tinted plexi.  Olly also said he'd print an extra layer of white on the next run to try and help lift the colours.

In better news, the CPO was perfect and allowed me to get on with drilling the control panel.  I had this cut from ages ago, and had done an initial bit of priming/painting, but I'd been unable to go any further until I could get exact hole positions from the overlay.  I used the overlay to mark the hole positions, then took exact centres by aligning a paper print of the CPO with hole centres marked.



I've had the control panel retainer piece since I got the order from Mike's Arcade, but finally got around to routing out the back of the control panel and figuring out the position on the front panel.  I stuck it in place temporarily so that I could get the position/depth right, the screwed it on when I was happy.





Once I was happy with the position I drilled and fixed it into place, and was then able to test putting the control panel into place and making sure the retainer worked as expected.  Needless to say, my routed hole ended up being slightly too far forward so I had to widen it a couple of times until I got the panel moving into place cleanly.

[UnclearHermit]

I just had to try quickly assembling it at this point...



On the rear side, I marked for the joystick and drilled/inserted the blind hole mounts.



So then I just had to actually add some controls to this thing and put in in place   My original paper print is above.



No wiring in place at this stage, so it's just a temporary showcase.

Meanwhile, the replacement bezel arrived.  Opening the package I was instantly a bit worried when I noticed some kind of tear in the top-left.



Upon closer inspection, the paper has been sliced by a break in the corner.



So it seems somewhere in delivery somebody dropped it hard or, more likely, actually trod on it



Again, Olly at https://www.arcadeartshop.com/ was fantastic and got to work on another replacement.  Meanwhile, I was at least able to use the bezel to figure out positioning of the bezel supports and the retainer bar.



I used little spacers to allow me to hold the side supports in place in the right place as I let the glue dry.

[meyer980]

Seeing artwork for the first time might be the BEST part of a build. And yours (the stuff that survived) looks excellent.

Super minor, but with all the red, I think a black ball-top on the joystick would look a little better. IMO

Anyway, great stuff.

[UnclearHermit]

I know, it's a great moment 

Black joystick ball is a very likely alteration.  It's in keeping with the cabinet's DK and FF roots, but being a Nintendo joystick the ball is slightly smaller.  I've been on the lookout for a smaller, black ball to replace the red one that came with the Servostik.  So far I can only find 35mm ones.  Worst case I'll grab one of those at some point down the line if I can't get hold of a smaller one that'll fit on the same thread.  I just haven't jumped at it yet because I didn't want to waste money if I could find something better.

[meyer980]

Looking a second time, did you get your CPO printed directly on plexi/glass? Cause if so wow! It looks slick. I didn't know you could essentially get remade DK CPO's with custom artwork like that.

[UnclearHermit]

Yes, it's reverse printed directly onto the plexi.  Looks REALLY good.  Just going to keep saying https://www.arcadeartshop.com/ for those in the UK!

[ChanceKJ]

Not just for those in the UK, Olly's a BAMF, I've got a bunch of his work on some of my more rare Nintendo cabs. Definitely one of the top 5 when it comes to reproduction art for us in the restoration game.

I love/hate that feeling when a bunch of parts arrive for a build but you have a million other things to do however you just can't help starting to assemble in hopes to physically manifest whats been stuck in your imagination for months.