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Game Gauntlet - DONE!... well mostly.
c64rulez:
I bet you were thrilled when you got it. It looks simply great. Enjoy
Mark70:
Well, I'm mostly done. Still a lot of setup to do. Smart strip, back door, bezel art, etc.
Some things I learned.
-the changeable control panel design I came up with is not as changeable as I thought it would be. I'm going to fix it in there and if in the future I decide to put a different one on it will be fairly easy to switch. It's just not, plug and play switching.
-tolerance, tolerance, tolerance. MDF has very flat smooth surface. It's easy to make things to very very tight tolerances and they mock up just fine. Paint is thicker than you thought it was. It will make drawers stick, doors stick, CPs fit too tight etc.
-MDF dust is insidious. I spent about 2.5 hours in the garage with the shop vac running. I vaccumed everything. I mean everthing. Walls, my lawn mower, last summer's dead potted plants, my tools, the whole floor..... and little pieces of mdf shavings are still showing up on the carpet in the living rooom. To think I nearly decided to build this in my basement instead of the garage.
Anyhow. without further adeu
Mark70:
Laying on the floor will reveal the hidden, countersunk, credit buttons.... and the scuffs from the keyboard drawer, starting already, and some abuse from taking the CP on and off. Well....it's all in black on the underside.
Yes the paint I used isn't as black as it should have been.
Keep that in mind. If you choose a colour chip at the paint store, the black has white in the mixture. I bought mine, one guy took the order, I said as black as you can get it and handed him the "black onyx" paint chip. When I picked up, another guy had mixed it and presented it. He asked what it was for, and I had forgotten to dress up like a goth and say "my living room" so I told him it was to paint out parts of a cabinet I was making. I said I needed it as black as I could get it, and he said "oh you should have told me that, I could have left out the white". Dumbass.
Add that to the list of what I've learned.
Mark70:
My bezel glass is made of acrylic. It's about two inches shorter than the whole opeing, including up behind the speaker fascia. The bezel and acrylic slip up behind the speaker fascia then drop down in behind an aluminum channel at the bottom. I built the bottm part out of an aluminum 90 degree angle which I bought at the local hardware chain store. I had to bend it to an acute angle a bit at a time working along the length of the piece with my bench vise. then sand out the teeth marks from the vise and paint black.
Those are the dust covers from a $20 set of speakers I got at future shop. They're fixed over holes in the speaker fascia, and the speakers will soon be mounted inside the cab behind.
Mark70:
The flash really makes all of the blacks look different, but in the dark basement, under incandescent light, it really all looks much the same.
Here's the bottom of the bezel