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Galaxian Mame Conversion
csa3d:
--- Quote from: shilmover on October 14, 2007, 04:29:17 am ---
--- Quote from: csa3d on February 24, 2007, 04:06:51 pm ---Restoration on my coin door continues, and is at what I'm calling 90% completed. What still needs done... (snip)
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Door looks great! I need to restore a couple of mine... a question. after cleaning with the Dremel disk, how did you paint it? what paint, etc?
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I used Rustoleum Automotive Primer (#2089 Dark Gray) as the base and a bunch of coats of Rustoleum Textured finishing paint (#7220 Black). You can read full details here
I've recently purchased a can of Rustoleum Hammered paint, and am considering redoing the door paint one more time. Why? Well.. since It's been sitting in the garadge with the cab (my current workshop), it got dusty pretty quickly. Well, because the texture finish is mostly flat, it's very tough to clean. The hammered stuff probably is a closer texture match, but it's a bit on the glossy side. Look wise, this is probably undesirable. Maintenance wise, this is ideal for washing. I will probably spray it again, and see how the color turns out. If it like it.. call it done. If not, I will probably go back over it with 1 more coat of that texture paint, leaving the hammered texture coat underneath.
I originally quoted out have that thing powder coated, and all my bids came back at ridiculous rates of 150-300$ Guess I don't know the right folks.. so I went to Home Depot and figured it out myself.
-csa
csa3d:
--- Quote from: Level42 on October 14, 2007, 04:46:58 am ---I agree, it's great to have the trackball recessed, and this is a very nice way to do it. The Galaxian CP (wood with metal on top of it) makes it possible...... :D
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Yeah, I considered bondo filling the original metal panel, and redrilling. However, I didn't want to mess with all that, and figured making a brand new one completely out of wood was the way to go. The only thing I might change next time around, would be to use a more substantially sound wood. MDF doesn't hold screws worth a dang. So yeah.. note this control panel is 100% mdf ;)
-csa
csa3d:
Trackball Havok!
Ok, apparently when reading these forums, I confused "trackball up" in one of the prior threads. Well, Silly me couldn't get my trackball to work by just plugging it into the computer during my initial test, so I assumed this had something to do with grounding and would fix itself upon wiring. Looking back, I'm wondering if plugging it directly into the ps2 port and not into a usb->ps2 adapter was the problem (since it's likely that adapter didn't carry power).
At any rate, upon getting my panel wired up and plugging it in, firing it up, I discovered that up/down was switched with left/right. An email to good ole' RandyT, and it turns out I installed my trackball wrongly. Take this image:
Note that top of this picture is bottom of the monitor.
Randy informed me of two issues. First, I should have rotated the unit 90 counter clockwise before routing. OOooopsss.. you'll see i'm out of room.. and definately once I show you the wiring in a few days. This was my 2nd control panel, and no way am I making that again! Second, there are no magical jumpers to reverse things.. but you CAN cross wires. Green/Yellow is one axis, Blue/Brown the other. He noted that in doing this, I'd notice a different roll in GoldenTee and other fast spin games, due to the top roller not being at the top of the panel.
After some sulking, and dismantling.. here's my solution. Using the same hole cutout, rotate the top mount 180 degrees. This gives you a roller positioned at the top. Sure, left and right roller will be backwards, but I figured this direction was relatively arbitrary for the sake of golfing. So far so good, you have a top roller, but you still have wrong axis. Good to note, is that the interior molex connectors/circuit boards can be moved, swapped. I swapped the boards so that Y was X and X was Y. One more test, and seems that now with roller at top, I have the axis right, but polarity of the up/down reversed. A quick splice of the brown and blue wires.. and reversing them (brown->blue, blue->brown) and everything was in the right position.
Whew!
Only mod I had to make was to get a sanding bit on the dremmel to cut a new ambilical divet on the opposite side of the routed hole.
Not a lot of pics.. this was touch and go, but wanted to make sure no one else followed my example without warning ;) Apparent, "wires forward" should be interpreted as "wires facing you" if you come across the same thread I did. At this point, I'm not sure doing it over from scratch, I still get which way is up. Mine works now, so I'm happy.
-csa
leapinlew:
--- Quote from: patrickl on October 14, 2007, 04:34:12 am ---That's a clever way to mount that trackball. Nice finish with the paint too.
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I agree. Killer work.
DaOld Man:
Sweet mother of Galaga!
Very nice work, csa3d!!!!!!!!!!!!
:applaud:
Sorry about dropping in on this thread so late in the show, but I have to give you two thumbs up!
Great craftsmanship!