Rock-ola TriVue with heart transplant

[Chris]

I got this in E-Mail today:
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First of all, what a great jukebox program, it's first class, hands down, nice job!

I've tried joining the ArcadeControls forum but they don't have me up and working yet due to their database issues.   I wanted to post this to the DOS/WinCab section for those who might be interested.   

This was an unintended summer project, but very happy with the results. I bought the Rock-ola 506 TriVue wallbox at a local antique show with the idea of doing something like this. After completely gutting the wallbox,  my old Dell laptop was dismembered and cut to fit inside.  A PS2 encoder was cannibalized from a $5 keyboard in order to use the existing buttons on the wallbox.  I also modified the knobs on the sides of the wallbox with switches to flip the title strips forwards and backwards.  The coin return outlet is being used as a cooling intake, so I added a switch to the coin return button and configured it as a one button shutdown for the laptop.  PS2 and USB port access was added to the rear of the case.  I also added an internal audio amp with new speakers as the old rock-ola speaker cones were punched.  An audio out jack was also added to the rear of the case to pipe it to a surround sound system while cutting off the internal amp.  If you look closely at the title strips you can see how I group songs with a common genre by prefacing the artist with a two letter designation to indicate the genre.  The blue light strips flicker with the audio.  Together with your program this Rock-ola TriVue wallbox  has found new life again.

Dan

[Chris]

A write-up for this project has been posted at http://hscience.tripod.com/Rockola_Trivue.html .  Good stuff!

[RacerX]

Okay, that is friggin' incredible!

I've been away from BYOAC for awhile, and I wanted to see what has been going on.  I'm not disappointed!

 

[hscience]

We're finally a part of this forum now, Yeh!   Any way I can now answer any questions anyone has about the rock-ola trivue jukebox project right here.

Dan

[JustMichael]

When will you be reversing the \ in the image links on your page?

The current links look like: http://hscience.tripod.com/Trivue%5Ctrivue_backside.jpg

%5C is \

[hscience]

Thanks,  It worked with IE, but not when I tested with Linux via Firefox, it should now.  I just tested it with Firefox and it should work fine now, I figured it was a typo of some sort.  Let me know if there is anything else!

Dan 

[cripto9t]

Nice job Dan

I've got an old ami-rowe wallbox that I want to convert and I'm interested in how you hooked the wires to the wallbox keys. I cant make heads or tails of mine  . 
Also, the letter keys above the numbers, they don't look original. Did you make them? If so, how?
I had thought about making a touchpad for the keys, but I couldn't find any info about it and I don't have anything to tear apart and reverse engineer.

Thats all and again nice work.

[Chris]

Don't forget that the skin and input system can be changed to suit the keys available, rather than modifying the hardware to match the software.  So if all you have is numbers, all that needs to change is a couple of lines in the skin file and the alpha-images on the background image, and I'll be happy to help with both if necessary.

--Chris

[hscience]

How to hook up the Wall box buttons:   you will need to either salvage the encoder from an existing key board like I did, see the pic


or buy an encoder made for projects like you find on this forum.   I'm pretty sure there are some links to good encoders that you can just buy.   They should come with three big advantages, 1 - instructions/documentation, 2 - screw terminals for attaching leads to your buttons and 3 - programmable.

  I chose the cost factor with salvaging a keyboard encoder.  With one of these, before you tear it out you have to trace back all the leads to each key and create a connection map.  Each make of keyboard is probably very different.  The next difficulty is hooking leads down to a salvaged board.   I scrapped off the carbon surface material off of the contacts that were used to mate with the traces on the upper and lower plastic sheets for the old keyboard.  Then I used a small circuit board drill to make holes in the existing traces in order to anchor my leads in before soldering.  I needed a magnifying glass to to this as it was too hard for me to see those tiny traces otherwise.   Much patience and effort required to go this route vs buying nicer programmable encoder.

After removing all existing wiring in the wall box and cleaning everything up I used the Common and Normally Open contacts of each of the switches and wired them as follows:  0 - 9 wall box buttons to 0 - 9 across the top of the keyboard,   Reset to the "Esc" key, switches I added to the side rotary knobs to  page up & page down keys,  volume up to F9, volume down to F11, and the coin return switch to the F6 key.   

I then used Chris's controls.ini to remap those keys to their respective functions as follows:

0 to pause, 1 - 6 to A - F, 7 to Back, 8 to Skip, 9 to Radio,F9 to Volume Up, F11 to Volume Down and F6 to Shutdown.

At first I was interested in using just the numbers for selection and modified a skin to show just the numbers.   This worked great on my main laptop with a 1024 x 768 screen size, but when I moved it to the laptop in the wall box it wouldn't re size properly to 800 x 600.  It's something I did in editing the background for the skin I'm sure but still not sure why.   I really wanted a few other functions anyway so I used the test skin and used the alpha toggle for selections.  I may still want to go back to just numbers and will take advantage of your help Chris when I do.  I know how to limit the numbers that are used but modifying the background so that it would work on the older laptop is what stopped me.  The yellow letters are just labels I printed with a label maker.  I want to redo that part with back-lit art work eventually.

Dan

Edit by Chris: Fixed image link