Project Too Big and Spinny

[TheRetroCarrot]

Starting this thread to document my journey into my 3rd cabinet build. The last 2 being LCD bartops, this is a bit more in depth. Current plans, 32" RGB converted Sony Trinitron for the monitor. 9700k, 32gbs ram, 280x PC for crt-emudriver. Hopefully running launchbox frontend with retroarch as I have a lot of experience with them and find them easy to work with, though I'm a little worried about how 240p and 480i will work with them. 2 4" speakers under the marquee box, subwoofer. 2 player control panel, hidden USB ports to connect additional arcade pads. Probably going to use an LED pixelcade panel for the marquee as I've always thought they looked cool. I considered LCD but unfortunately I can't find anyone that makes an LCD panel larger than 28", which is much too small for this build.

The most fun part to me, the monitor will rotate on a 40" lazy susan bearing. I only plan on manual rotation not motorized. I'll cut a small 3/4" slot into the marquee box and the control panel so the entire screen bezel can rotate with it. This avoids having an ugly cutout around the screen to accommodate both orientations. Bezel will be outset from the side panels and edge routed to slope down into where the edge molding meets. It's designed as seated cab, same control height as a candy cab. Though I'm considering insetting the entire cab into a riser with a joke to raise and lower it to standing height.

90% of parts are on order, once those arrive this will probably be a very fast project with a lot of updates. Once I get going I don't sleep until a project is done (unfortunately).

Behold:



Did a quick design in fusion to make sure all my dimensions work. Seems good, the slewing bearing should fit perfect and rotating doesn't get in the way of the screen inset luckily. It appears this thing is going to be absolutely massive to accommodate the 32" display, 44" wide and 46" depth. Going to take a lot of space in the house...

[TheRetroCarrot]

Basically the final design finished and ready to cut. Just waiting on materials. 40" rotating bearing assembly, 2 5" shielded mids and tweaters, 2 6" woofers in a ported box will go below. Coin operated. Pixelcade marquee on order. Trying crown 202 switches this time since they have nice colors.

[Daniel B.]

be aware that many tvs are quick to be magnetized upon rotation if on. sometimes more than the degaussing coil can correct. happened on my trinitron and wega terribly.

[TheRetroCarrot]

That's not something I considered, I'll have to test this particular set. Hopefully it's fine as all parts are on order at this point.

Edit: A quick test shows a bit of discoloration in one corner. The tv actually has some purity issues in the top left when horizontal, this moves to the top right (previously bottom right) when vertical. I was going to have to apply a magnet to correct purity horizontally, I may have to do something funny to improve it in both positions.

Purity issues in either location go away when the tv faces south, unfortunately that isn't the direction the cabinet will end up in.

[Daniel B.]

Yeah so just power her on, I would suggest might as well test your PC connection or whatever this bad boy is going to run, and then rotate the monitor on it's side - Look for discoloration. Try both directions because sometimes, depending on the set and where we are located on the globe, only one direction will be a problem.

You can solve by either making a degaussing coil or buying one of those green wands from amazon or ali-express, but they are not very strong.

The situation here is that it may come back while rotated no matter what you do - I've been experiencing this with one of my sony sets and it seems like the mask is just magnetized anytime the set is on while in vertical mode. I first wondered if one of the color drive chips were bad, and what I ended up doing in my troubleshooting was trying to ACTIVELY COOL the chassis board with a fan in my candy cab. I don't think the temperature was the problem, but one side effect i noticed is that as long as there is a fan (AC powered, desk fan, clip fan, etc) in the cabinet, I believe the rotor of the fan is acting like an electro magnet and it keeps my screen completely clear!

Like I said, I had 2 sony sets, higher end consumer, not pvm/bvm and they both seemed to experience this. The trinitron, no matter what I do will always discolor when rotated, the wega seemed to do it only when power was on to the monitor.

so what I'm trying to say is - test it out, with the set on/off and maybe everything will be fine and no issue. If there is an issue, you can try to solve the issue with magnets, coils, wands IF AND ONLY IF the degaussing circuit doesn't solve it. If for some reason these sets are similar, you can try to put a fan near the set and see if it prevents the issue. Freaking voodoo man, I swear.

If it does discolor when you rotate, turn it off and back on to trigger the coil on the monitor and see if that solves the problem first, which it probably will.


Sorry to ramble so much about this issue but I wanted to offer some additional detail and hopefully save you a headache. I hope it works just fine, or worse case you turn the tv off when you rotate. Crossing my fingers for you.

Also, I think this build looks super over the top and BADASS and I can't wait to see some more progress. This is freaking cool!

Daniel

[TheRetroCarrot]

Disaster struck. Went to put the back panel on and didn't notice s-video port was misaligned by about a mm, tiniest bit of pressure snapped the PCB. Now no video input and severe purity issues on the OSD. Not sure if it's repairable at this point.... 32" CRTs are incredibly difficult to find where I live and all the parts are on order and designed around the size of this display. I'm pretty distraught right now...

[TheRetroCarrot]

Well that was incredibly stressful:





These traces are very small, originally I thought the crack might be mild enough I could just scrape back a mm and solder direct, but that was very unreliable. So I bypassed the worst of it with jumper wires. Some of the lower breaks I had no problem bridging. I'm still missing some as s-video and likely my scart input isn't working yet, but my color is normal again and composite video is back...




The purity issue I'll get back to, it's interesting the purity rings seem to do absolutely nothing on this set. It's very sensitive to direction, I get 1 corner discolored if I face it North, but not South. It absolutely does need to degauss on rotation, not a big deal though, it has a very strong degauss coil in this set actually. I also have a manual coil. Magnets correct purity, the issue is as soon as the set degausses it undoes the improvement from magnet placement. The fan thing is very interesting, how close were you putting it? I mean a degaussing tool is basically just a bunch of wire wrapped in a circle from what I understand.

[emphatic]

Way to go saving that TV. 

[Daniel B.]

1st - good job fixing that pcb. I snapped a neck board in half and had no luck and ended up tossing a nice 27" sony about a year ago.

I know it's crazy but it's like the fan motor is acting like a constant degauss which is what is required on one of my sets. Somehow, facing either east or north I cannot get the shadow mask demagnetized even with a powerful coil, or magnets on the metal ring around the tube like I've done in the past. Its a sega astro city cabinet, and I place the fan on the inside of the coin box so honestly the fan is within 12"-20" from the top of the tube, basically next to the chassis board because I at first thought it was overheating because It would get more and more screwy the longer it was on, so I thought an IC was overheating. I'm not super smart with electronics but I understand enough to be dangerous.

You could likely fit a box fan or any fan really either behind the tube or in the base of the cabinet - for example I've also sat the fan on top of my computer tower in the base and that is close enough - I've tried different types of fans, like squirrel cage blowers and regular fans and to be honest the cheapest ones I found at goodwill seemed to be the most reliable. 

Anyways - hope this helps and PM me if you need anymore information. Can't wait to see how you progress on this project!

[TheRetroCarrot]

Thanks all , I'll definitely experiment with a fan, it'd cool the PC as well haha.

The TV isn't quite saved yet, something is still missing on the s-video side. I have an image, but black and white only. I can trace continuity all the way through from the chroma pin so I'm not sure what's going on there. I have beautiful color through RGB now, but I can't get it to sync whatsoever. Currently testing with a SNES Jr and N64 since both are RGB modded, I've tried connecting csync to the svideo luma pin, composite, and main-y on the PCB, none seem to make a difference. I'm not particularly knowledgeable when it comes to electronics, so if anyone is an expert on sync at all help would be appreciated! I've never had to worry about it since I run component for every system I own. The TV Is an AA-2D chassis so plenty of documented mods that all obtain sync from similar locations.

I'd really like to get s-video fully functioning to ensure nothing there is messing with my sync, otherwise I couldn't really care less about it.

EDIT: GOOD NEWSSSSSS. Found another trace and fixed my chroma issues, had a pad I fixed spliced to the wrong side of a resistor. S video fully functional and more importantly RGB is working great and looks absolutely incredible. Back to finalizing my design plans so the woodworking is as easy as scribe and cut... And finish my coin slides and sensor circuitry. It was a sad 15 hour day of no food or breaks, but what a relief to have it working.

[javeryh]

Looking good. Love the CRT - nothing beats it!

[TheRetroCarrot]

Attached the design plans if anyone wants to see them for whatever reason. Basically ready for cutting now, other than the screen assembly will need to wait on the bearing arrival.

[mourix]

Attached the design plans if anyone wants to see them for whatever reason. Basically ready for cutting now, other than the screen assembly will need to wait on the bearing arrival.

Before reading the dimensions I was confused at the low control panel. What a colossus, love it!

With this level of overkill you might as well add a trackball btw.

[TheRetroCarrot]

Haha ya it's candy cab seated height. I have 2 official Taito stools on the way.

I'd love a trackball however the only game I'd use it for is marble madness, so I'd want 2. I'm having a difficult time finding a good layout that gives enough distance for the players, the original was 14.75"ish. The control panel acrylic is already cut and I don't want to move the existing controls at all. Hrm...

[TheRetroCarrot]

So I made them fit.... Thanks for spending my money.... About 1mm clearance under the panel for all this haha. It'll work though, they're a little closer together than ideal, but not enough to make it unfun. I could've moved them further into the control panel, but since it's a seated cab that would make it quite uncomfortable. I also changed the control under panel angle, as I realized while working with the trackballs it would've hit your knees...

[TheRetroCarrot]

Made some simple coin sliders with photointerrupters for input.

[javeryh]

"simple" haha

Are you sure about that encoder?

[TheRetroCarrot]

I've used it in my last 2 builds and it never gives me any issues. I'm not doing RGB or anything fancy so I just need reliable inputs.

[TheRetroCarrot]

The panels are pretty far along, and my bearing for the screen arrived and seems great. I would've liked to document a bit more but it's just such a pain in the ass taking photos, video, living, with all the MDF dust even outside. This is my first time working with MDF, I sure like how it's flat and has nice factory edges though.

Got the kick panel done:


Control panel bottom:


Computer is built:


Worked on the side panels, had an unfortunate mishap ruining my first panel. I've now learned the painters tape CA glue+activator template trick for routing:


Side panels mostly done:


My work area is a mess:


Control panel acrylic came, pixelcade folks laser cut a couple for me with my marquee which is awesome!:


Got the computer outputting RGB to the TV and groovymame setup. Launchbox big box looks surprisingly good even with the stock theme, though I intend to find one more like hyperspin:


Got the sub made up. Realized my blades aren't going to cut it for cutting panels cleanly. I did this first and am now routing every edge after rough cutting. It'll be painted though and I filled it all smooth:


Got my panels routed for t-molding today. I also did a little dado cut in the side panels so that the marquee can just slide in prior to the top panel being installed, then the t-molding will hide that.


Did some test fitment for the mid-speakers being flush mounted.

[TheRetroCarrot]

Had a bit of a disaster. Left the house for a morning and got a bit of sun in my work area.... Didn't take much to turn all my panels into pretzels, had no idea MDF warped this easily. Panic assembled everything I could to add support and pull it back square. Luckily it worked well and everything fit great.

All that's left of the woodworking is the coin box shelf, the screen surround, cleaning up a router slip on the control panel, and venting the back panel. Not really sure what I'm going to do for the back panel venting yet.

[TheRetroCarrot]

Today was a monumental day, screen was mounted and spins better than I could've imagined, only takes a finger. Only thing left of the initial build is the screen bezel, and installing hinges for the back door. Should be ready for disassembly and then paint by Sunday. Project should be complete within two weeks. I'm amazed how little I've had to deviate from my designs, a couple tiny little adjustments here and there but altogether everything worked out.

[emphatic]

Groovy.