Pics of my PC speaker hack

[krick]

I've been using the amplifier from a pair of Benwin SP691 USB powered speakers in my MAME cabinet since back in February or so.  Until this weekend, the board was just laying in the bottom of my cabinet with wires everywhere from where I "temporarily" rigged it up.  Well, the mess finally got to me and  I decided to try to mount it properly.

At first, I was planning on just slapping some double sided tape on it but after looking at it a while, I thought that it would look more professional if I used some PCB mounting feet.  The problem was that there were no mounting holes in corners.  So I got out my dremel tool and made holes in three of the corners.  The fourth corner had a resistor in the way so I de-soldered it re-routed it away from the corner so I could drill the final hole.

The other thing I did was wire a proper connector for the speakers.  I soldered on a length of multi conductior wire and terminated it with a 3 position molex connector (left, common ground, right) that mates with the harness I made for my stock cabinet speakers.  








The diagram below is basically how my wiring will look when I'm finished.  I'll post more pics of the mounted board and the wiring job when I finish it tomorrow.

[wboy]

Whats the sound clarity and volume like on these suckers?

I've been eyeing some of these speakers for use in my sit down cabinet.

Being cheap I don't expect much of them, but that said, are you happy with the general performance?

[microwrx]

That's how I did mine but not quite as neatly.  I still have the bottom half of the speaker housing in there to hold it all together.  Nice job though.  Mine sounds incredibly good using the cabinet speakers rather than the ones I hacked for the amp.  I used Molex connectors too.

[krick]

Whats the sound clarity and volume like on these suckers?

I've been eyeing some of these speakers for use in my sit down cabinet.

Being cheap I don't expect much of them, but that said, are you happy with the general performance?

I've got the amplifier hooked up to a pair of 5 watt shielded arcade speakers that I bought from Bob Roberts (http://www.therealbobroberts.com/) for $4.00 each...



...and I think it sounds great.

[krick]

Mine sounds incredibly good using the cabinet speakers rather than the ones I hacked for the amp.  I used Molex connectors too.

I'm totally pleased with the sound through my cabinet speakers as well.

I'm curious, did you use a 3 position or 4 position molex?  I debated about it for quite some time.  Eventually, I ended up using a 3 pin connector with a common shared ground (like a pair of headphones) for two reasons:

1) On the amplifer board, the two speaker negative wires are electrically tied together anyway.

2) I saw an MVS cabinet stereo speaker harness that only used one ground for both speakers.  I assume that this is a cost cutting measure to save wire.

I still have 4 wires in the harness that I made for my speakers though.  The two ground wires are just attached to the center pin on my molex connector.  That way, if I change my mind and want independent grounds for the speakers, I can just snip off the connector and change it to a 4 pin connector.

[krick]

Anybody have opinions on which side of my coin door I should mount this on?

My door is hinged on the left and I had planned to mount it in the upper left corner, just inside the door.  but I'm starting to think that it might be easier to reach on the upper right side of the door.

[microwrx]

I'm curious, did you use a 3 position or 4 position molex?

I used 4 only because the speakers were already wired up to a 4 pin Molex from the control box my JAMMA harness is wired to.  That way all I needed was another Molex connector with 4 wires to the amp and I just happened to have a 4 pin Molex with wires from another harness I pulled apart.  4 crimps and I was done.

[krick]

I'm curious, did you use a 3 position or 4 position molex?

I used 4 only because the speakers were already wired up to a 4 pin Molex from the control box my JAMMA harness is wired to.

Was it a factory harness?  Which game?  I'm looking for examples of cabinets wired with stereo speaker harnesses to see how real manufacturers did it.

[microwrx]

Was it a factory harness?  Which game?  I'm looking for examples of cabinets wired with stereo speaker harnesses to see how real manufacturers did it.

I am in Australia.  My cabinet was made by a company called Galaxy and was most likely a generic cabinet for any 4 player game (or 2 player as I bought it with blanks in player 3 and 4) as the origianl CPO was not game specific but just a rainbow of colors with 'Galaxy' on it.

[Sasquatch!]

Nice and clean-looking, krick.  Great job.