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Battle Chasers Upright - Frankenpanel started!
Boz:
--- Quote from: johnperkins21 on July 13, 2006, 02:20:29 pm ---Where you at in Phoenix? You'll have to invite one of your fellow BYOCers over to play this bad boy once it's up. :cheers: I'm currently in Chandler, but will be moving to Laveen as soon as someone decides to buy my house.
--- End quote ---
I'm in the North Valley at 19th Ave and I-17. Absolutely I'll have you over. I'm still optimistic that I'll be able to finish it by the 28th of the month.
--- Quote ---I am in awe at your ability to work in this heat. My main reason for waiting to start my project is that I'm moving, but a secondary reason is this desert heat.
--- End quote ---
The heat, while you are in it, really isn't that bad. The thing that becomes bothersome is the amount of liquid you sweat out while trying to work on stuff that should probably stay dry (cardboard). I've gotten into the routine of wearing over-sized T-shirts so that I can lean my forehead down and wipe the sweat away from my forehead without interupting my work. Otherwise it just drips all over the place like a leaky faucet.
Boz:
--- Quote from: somunny on July 13, 2006, 04:10:05 pm ---I'm in Scottsdale and while I know it doesn't help you now, I can give you the name of an *honest and reasonable* auto repair shop if you're ever in need again. They're few and far between and I know how it feels to get ripped off.
--- End quote ---
Yeah... PM me with details...
I'm not 100% certain that I got ripped off in the truest (sp?) sense of the word. But, I don't buy the owner's story that he "didn't make any money" off this deal. In fact, I think his mark up was plenty big. Thinking back, I probably ended up paying what I did merely because I blurted out (right in front of him) what the dealership had intended on charging me. So, he knew he could come in a couple hundred lower and still "claim" that he was cheaper than the dealership.
EDIT: typo
Boz:
Update: July 13, 2006
I didn't cut-out every last remaining plane for the mock-up. But, I did need to see what the monitor would kind of look like inside the cabinet. It was a real b1tch getting it to hang just right with long pieces of tape, and still I had to reach out to help position it while getting a birds-eye-full from only an arm's length. I think I got it though.
You'll notice in the pics above that I have what appear to be wings hanging off the ends of the control panel. The benefits of building a cardboard mock-up is that you can judge scale and size before you cut any wood. I determined after hanging the control panel on the model that it really, truly wasn't going to be wide enough for four people to stand/sit side-by-side comfortably. Comfort is a huge factor in this cabinet build. I'm not trying to break any molds or be "the biggest", but when a project like this costs the money that it does to build, you want it to be right the first time.
So, here are the visual adjustments I've made thanks to the cardboard model...
o I've widened the control panel by 13 inches to make it a nice round 60" across.
It should fit four adults in four-player battle with relative comfort standing or sitting.
o I'm leaving the depth the same at 27 inches (or so), but am moving the CP forward
about 3 inches. The monitor fits, but with only a few inches to spare on the back
panel. I'd like a few extra inches for the fudge factor.
o With the CP moving forward, so will the entire plane that represents the display
front (where smoked glass will go). From the first fully-cut side, I've always thought
that the top section (monitor) was a little shallow. This will bring it forward.
o I may eliminate the angle of the CP base (the part the CP will rest on) altogether or
make it less severe. Right now it's at 10
Boz:
Thought I'd post the 4x6 of my measurements for comment. Photoshopery applied. When you pull up the image, if it's too small to see detail, click "all sizes" above the image for more detail.
Boz:
Update: July 14, 2006
The heat is prohibiting me from working outside (on my cabinet) today. So... after reasonable assurances that I have not only purchased the right monitor, but that it will be "kick-ass", I decided to give it a whirl. Surprisingly, there was very little fuss with setup. I walked through the RetroBlast! article for arcade monitor setup (which I had read many times previously) to make sure I was covering the bases. My Arcade VGA card hasn't arrived yet, so I just used the standard video card in a spare computer. I made sure to download the application Refresh Force to make sure Windows and the card didn't set resolution and refresh without my explicit instruction.
The pics are kind of rotten, but I'm no photographer. :)
I set (with the app named above) and tried the following resolutions:
640 x 480 x 32bpp x 60Mhz
800 x 600 x 32bpp x 60Mhz
1024 x 768 x 32bpp x 60Mhz
None of the resolutions gave me any trouble and I could see and "read" all corners of the screen with no difficulty. I actually happen to like 640 x 480 more than the others for the size of text on the screen. It seemed to represent what one should expect to see on a TV / arcade monitor.
It seems there will probably be quite a lot of customizing each display resolution and refresh once I have it all installed in a cabinet. Some of the games I launched looked very small on the screen and others tended to bleed off the screen entirely. None of the sample games I launched failed to display.
All-in-all I'm very pleased, though my exuberance is tempered by the fact that I can't make any progress today (and likely tomorrow) until the heat breaks a bit. There's still plenty of hours left in the day today, so maybe I'll actually get some construction done. We'll see.
EDIT: spelling. Grrrr!!!
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