OK Kaytrim, I am starting to worry about you . . .
Life is too short to spend an entire hour worrying about my control panel!!!
But hey, a guy who quotes Casteneda has to be cool so I'll cut you some slack here.
(Hey, maybe you can remember they guy who 'made the mountains tremble' in one of his books???) OK, on to my mini-update:
Got my TB mount
(WOOHOO!) and then discovered an un-nerving thing about them, they don't mount flush!
I'd set the router for what I though was the proper depth but the plate tends to be somewhat lower in the corners and crowns upward in the centers, making highspots. I took another pass and compromised somewhere in between, by using some filler to smooth things out.
You can see where I'll have to cut away at the front panel to make from for the CP to slide in and out.
Also made a hole for the coin door that I got from Wyluli.
It cleaned up very nicely and the hole, with one minor exception, (that had to be in the most obvious place of course!) turned out very nicely.
I remember seeing someones thread asking about using body filler to fill a gap like this. Have to go hunting for that one I guess. It isn't too bad but I just know at some point it'll bother me to the point I have to do something about it.
Back to the Control Panel. . .
I am thinking of mounting the admin panel in a fixed perpendicular arrangement at the back edge of the control panel. It'll then slide forward with the CP avoiding all the hinges, springs and pinched wires etc...
I did get the slide rails mounted and came up with a cool 'quick-disconnect' method of mounting the panel to the rails. I am using a slotted hole in one of the rails to fit a modified dryway screw into. Notice how the head has been ground flat to provide more clearance.
Once the back edge of the CP is dropped into these slotted holes, I take up the slack and put the front screws in to keep everything in place. When needed, I can pop the panel off by removing only 2 screws from underneath.
Something else I'd like to show you guys...
Notice the trackball mount had to be squeezed into the controls arrangement and there wasn't much room to work with it. But I came up with a method that allows me to double up on the amount of 'real estate' used in the 2P joystick area. See the upper highlighted area in this picture:
Basically I just shortented one of the TB plate studs and countersunk it's hole to rest below the joystick mount. If you try this, be sure to make the hole big enough to accommodate your socket wrench.
And more good news!I was able to save my GP-Wiz, basically took the IDE cable pin from an old hard drive and sweated them into the holes on the PCB, then ran a small wire from the leg of the chip to replace the damaged trace. I'm back in business AND I can now use the IDE cable for connections, no more messy wire congestion at the GP-Wiz PCB!
And I have a partially scavenged hard drive to tinker with,
Hellooooooooooo Spinner!