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Author Topic: shock_'s Aussie cocktail [Complete. Plans now attached]  (Read 39675 times)

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shock_

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Re: shock_'s Aussie cocktail [Mmmm paint]
« Reply #40 on: September 04, 2007, 10:02:19 am »
I've mounted the controls now - they're hanging there by a swag of angle brackets.  I will need to take them off to get the thing in the house and complete painting but couldn't resist mounting both sides and taking a happy snap!

Just a couple more holes (for passing through panel wiring, mounting fan grilles etc) to drill and then it's off for hopefully a final coat of paint.

It's so cool when it starts to resemble the picture :)

Final dimensions are approximately 1000 x 1000 (inc c/panels) x 670 - which translated to oldskool is about 1.1 yards square by a bit over 2 feet high. 

RXII

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Re: shock_'s Aussie cocktail [pics of it largely bolted together]
« Reply #41 on: September 05, 2007, 03:35:49 pm »
Looks great, well done -  :applaud:
Operation Aussie Lowboy http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=68962.0
Soon I may actually be able to play it!

Malenko

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Re: shock_'s Aussie cocktail [pics of it largely bolted together]
« Reply #42 on: September 05, 2007, 04:19:44 pm »
look great bro.

just a funny FYI.... when this thread is #1 it says
"Topic: shock_'s Aussie cock..."

on the main forum listing, made me laugh
« Last Edit: September 05, 2007, 04:21:45 pm by Malenko »
If you're replying to a troll you are part of the problem.
I also need to follow this advice. Ignore or report, don't reply.

shock_

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Re: shock_'s Aussie cocktail [pics of it largely bolted together]
« Reply #43 on: September 05, 2007, 10:58:58 pm »
Well that's sure to get a few extra clicks :)  I don't even own a rooster.

loadman

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Re: shock_'s Aussie cocktail [pics of it largely bolted together]
« Reply #44 on: September 11, 2007, 07:30:29 pm »

Sweeeeeeet   :P

shock_

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Re: shock_'s Aussie cocktail [pics of it largely bolted together]
« Reply #45 on: September 11, 2007, 09:49:33 pm »
I've moved it upstairs to the room where it might live.  Now the wiring begins.

Still don't actually have a reliable PC to put in it yet... I turned on one that I was planning to use and found that the motherboard died in its sleep sometime in the past couple of months.

I'm working on quick-release plugs for the control panels since they'll need to be removed in order to shift the cabinet outside the room it's in right now.  I have a lot of soldering ahead!

I also found that the brand new piece of glass I have had under a protective sheet of upholstery vinyl since January actually has some bloody big scratches in it from something (they weren't there when I bought it).  I've got no idea what cost or effort is involved in polishing those out.  :hissy:

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Re: shock_'s Aussie cocktail [pics of it largely bolted together]
« Reply #46 on: September 12, 2007, 12:13:30 am »
shock, she's coming along beautifully.

loadman

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Re: shock_'s Aussie cocktail [pics of it largely bolted together]
« Reply #47 on: September 12, 2007, 07:03:40 am »
I turned on one that I was planning to use and found that the motherboard died in its sleep sometime in the past couple of months.

Have you tried raplacing the watch battery on the Mb? Or is it something more terminal?

shock_

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Re: shock_'s Aussie cocktail [pics of it largely bolted together]
« Reply #48 on: September 12, 2007, 07:16:17 am »
Have you tried raplacing the watch battery on the Mb? Or is it something more terminal?

That battery just keeps the clock / BIOS running while she's without juice I think.  I did remove it and replace it in order to reset the bios in case something weird had happened, but it wouldn't POST nor wake up the monitor attached (various video cards tried).  I'll rip everything off it sometime and do a proper troubleshoot, but it pishes me off because that mobo is almost new - but just out of warranty after sitting idle for months and months...

Meanwhile I'll keep sitting here stripping the ends off old lengths of CAT5 ready for soldering.  Surely there's a third world out there where I can get people do do this !!

loadman

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Re: shock_'s Aussie cocktail [pics of it largely bolted together]
« Reply #49 on: September 13, 2007, 06:20:32 am »
I used cat 5 cable too.  Keeps it nice and neat in a cochtail cable where you have controls on opposite sides.  Good call, and a cheap option as there is always some lying around ;D

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Re: shock_'s Aussie cocktail [pics of it largely bolted together]
« Reply #50 on: October 03, 2007, 05:48:10 am »
look great bro.

just a funny FYI.... when this thread is #1 it says
"Topic: shock_'s Aussie cock..."

on the main forum listing, made me laugh

hehe. that reminds me of when my mum was visiting and i was showing her my website which was headed 'dans cocktail lounge' and sure enough initially it just said 'dans cock' which alarmed her just a tad...


ROUGHING UP THE SUSPECT SINCE 1981

squirrellydw

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Re: shock_'s Aussie cocktail [pics of it largely bolted together]
« Reply #51 on: October 06, 2007, 10:57:25 pm »
dude that is looking really nice, keep up the great work.  I also like what you've done with the layout, I bet the one you made for me would look really sweet with that background in blue  ;D
I b**ch. People listen!!

shock_

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Re: shock_'s Aussie cocktail [pics of it largely bolted together]
« Reply #52 on: October 07, 2007, 05:24:38 am »
Cheers squirellydw  :cheers:

The least you could do though is link to the actual size image :P   ;)

»»

Attached below is that texture in blue... if you can make any use of it!

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Re: shock_'s Aussie cocktail [pics of it largely bolted together]
« Reply #53 on: October 13, 2007, 12:28:43 pm »
thanks, but I can't use it.  All the fancy icons you made me would be gone :'(  oh well, thanks anyhow and keep up the great work
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Re: shock_'s Aussie cocktail [pics of it largely bolted together]
« Reply #54 on: October 18, 2007, 08:03:36 am »
thanks, but I can't use it.  All the fancy icons you made me would be gone :'(  oh well, thanks anyhow and keep up the great work

(yet another) PM sent.  :angel:


shock_

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Re: shock_'s Aussie cocktail [pics of it largely bolted together]
« Reply #55 on: October 18, 2007, 09:58:49 am »
So anyways, back to the project at hand.

I deeply understand why people choose to gut existing generic cabs for their first efforts.  I don't regret what I've undertaken although I wish it was done already.

Please excuse the detail below, but it's been a while since I bumped this thread and this is my way of convincing myself I'm making progress.

So it's been upstairs for a while with its panels detached.  Kinda necessary to remove the panels or it won't fit through doorways.  Since I only have one Keywiz (1.5) to share between both panels (and one Opti-Wiz on the TurboTwist and shared with the trackball on the other side) this means that I had to sort out a quick-release system or face rewiring every time I lugged the thing in- or outside.  I remind you, dear reader, that I live in subtropical Brisbane, Australia where The Done Thing is to sit with mates on your back deck, throwing back plenty of Very, Cold, Beer.  Not inviting Calvin the Cocktail Cab would be unthinkable.

My particular back deck, however, is still just that, a roofed deck - and Calvin will be exposed to the splash from the rare shower of rain, at least a little bit.  I plan to get something like a motobike cover for it, but I'll need to drag it inside occasionally - during winter, leaving the house for extended periods, passing cyclones etc.


^ quick disconnects for control
panels so the unit can be moved
through standard doorways.
So all that has led to a lot more soldering than seems to go on for all you lucky people who just have your buttons wired straight into your encoder.

I've been making these sorts of things with the second-cheapest soldering iron they had when I bought it many years ago, with the second-biggest tip I'm sure.
 :cry:
Side 1 (with the trackball) has 22 switches plus ground, all going through that D25 plug you see in the photo.  The matching female for that (not pictured) has three lengths of cat5 hanging out of it which will lead into the encoder.

Side 2 has far fewer switches to handle, but there is that matter of the trackball and spinner (Opti-Wiz, anyway) that need to communicate, so more plugs and sockets there too.

The ground from both sides is going through a DP switch so I can isolate one of the "player 1" controls depending on which side the players are sitting at.

There are also three admin buttons, identical on both sides, in the carcass itself (just above the control panels) that don't need to go through the plugs since they don't detach.



^ Power input bottom-left,
monitor killswitch bottom right.

  The first thing I did was actually get power inside the box.  A kettle cord socket on the outside means I don't have to wrap the wire around the legs when transporting it, and is generally a bit neater.  Inside that the wiring goes through a connector block and powers a powerstrip for the PSU, monitor and amplifier.

Luckily for me the motherboard I am using supports "always on" for "AC power loss restart status" in the BIOS.  I have one switch on the outside of the cab that boots the PC, powers the monitor and turns on the sound.

The monitor cable from the powerstrip actually passes through a junction box with a switch behind it (bottom right of the picture).  This SPST switch cuts the neutral wire, allowing me to turn the monitor off and on without needing to touch any buttons inside the case.  Kinda important for forcing a degauss in this rotating monitor cabinet.

I should note here that the flash is VERY unkind to the cabinet in this photo - the big gougey shapes visible in the wood are not at all obvious IRL, and that side of the cab is intended to face the wall as well.  The wood I started with had, after all, been boxing in concrete until last year ;)  The edges will be covered with aluminium angle strips too.


^ On a temporary bench for... benchtesting, I suppose.
  I've dug an Athlon 2500+ and motherboard out of a box that I bought from some guy a few years ago and never actually tested when I got it. A bit of thermal paste, a quick repair job to the chipset heatsink that had come loose in transit and bounced around all over the motherboard for a thousand kilometres ( :dizzy: ), quick injection of some fast-moving electrons and hooray, it booted first time !

That photo shows a green motherboard attached to the side wall of the cabinet.  That's a dead mobo I'm just using to locate the screwholes for the real mobo which is the red one.  (Yes, I know one is μATX and not all the holes will match!)  That's also not the actual monitor.

The motherboard will be fastened to the wall using the Bic Trick (slices of ballpoint pen used as insulated spacers and a normal pan-head screw through the guts).

The good news is that the software side of things should be fine.  I've migrated MAME and Vpin over from my desktop machine and playtested a little.



^ A little mounted panel for all the stuff you don't want to have to open to lid to reach.
  Some of the niceties I wanted for this cab were two headphone jacks, a couple of USB ports for mouse/kb as required and a volume knob for the speakers. To get my wish I had to create a metal mounting plate that could house the USB and headphone jacks (they don't seem to make them to fit 17mm form ply, for some reason).  I jigsawed the wall of an old PC case to get a metal plate, then drilled, then filed the rectangular holes for the USB jacks, and drilled through for the headphones and volume potentiometer. Note for those who aren't up with these things, the old Oscar Controls site had a nice tute on adding a volume knob to a cab. (nb: link via Wayback machine since site is defunct and I don't know if/where it's mirrored?)



^ Hand-made headphone splitter.
Just parallel wiring, nothing to see here.



^ Little hack for connecting the front panel audio wiring to my headphone jacks.
  I wanted two headphone jacks so that two players could play happily until silly hours of the morning, and the music/fx from the games wouldn't wake up my wife or kids (assuming the kids weren't the ones playing).  Instead they can get woken up by the microswitches and constant swearing.

I tore up some old "CDROM audio connector" cables which were just perfect to fit over standard jumper pins for the front panel audio connector. And luckily for me, they had just enough actual wire in the right spaces to fit the pins that I needed to cover.

The motherboard I'm using (Abit NF7-S) has this dorky front panel audio header that kills the rear output if you try to use it.  Not just when the headphones are attached (which would be fine) - but if you want to use the normal, back-o-the-mobo audio output at all (which I do, for my speakers), you have to 'close' the front panel by leaving a couple of jumpers across that pinout, or plugging in headphones.  I didn't want to have to leave 'phones, or some dummy plug, connected all the time in those sockets so I wired it all up using an additional CDROM cable.  The upshot is that I am telling the rear connector that it's on, while using the headphones through the "front panel".  Actually muting the speakers while headphones are in use is managed by turning the volume knob right down.  Hooray!

That paragraph may make no sense to anyone other than Abit NF7-S owners, but please take away from it that if you choose to use surplus hardware, be prepared for it to be not quite up to the task in bizarre little ways you don't discover until you're up to your neck in it.

Squeezing two back-to-back like this meant I had to gnaw off part of the plastic housing intended to guide the plug into the right pins.  Long-nosed pliers worked a treat and they were soon squeezed together.

Yesterday I made up a Things to Do list, and it has about forty-five things on it.  Only a couple are going to be tricky; I changed my mind on the t-molding recently, and bought some chrome.  The bad news is that the slot is already cut for the red stuff, and it's a thicker core (I needed the 1/16" for the chrome).  So I have to either painstakingly glue and clamp this chrome stuff and hope it doesn't pop out, or fill / purchase-slot-cutter-again / re-cut / re-paint-since-I-will-scratch-the-bejebus-out-of-it.  Or just put my tail between my legs and settle for the red molding after all.
 :hissy:  :banghead:
« Last Edit: October 18, 2007, 10:12:22 am by shock_ »

SithMaster

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Re: shock_'s Aussie cocktail [mmmm electrics]
« Reply #56 on: October 18, 2007, 01:58:16 pm »
Would using scraps of wood help?  Try gluing the chrome to the scraps and wedge that into the slot.
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Re: shock_'s Aussie cocktail [pics of it largely bolted together]
« Reply #57 on: October 18, 2007, 03:05:49 pm »
So I have to either painstakingly glue and clamp this chrome stuff and hope it doesn't pop out, or fill / purchase-slot-cutter-again / re-cut / re-paint-since-I-will-scratch-the-bejebus-out-of-it.

I had the same problem with my cab and I solved it by using a glue gun to hold the new t-moulding. It was easy, sets quick, and will certainly be a lot easier than refilling the groove. Good luck!

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Re: shock_'s Aussie cocktail [mmmm electrics]
« Reply #58 on: October 18, 2007, 04:19:17 pm »
Hey Shock,

Your machine is coming along very well.
I love your posts, very well laid out.  :applaud:

Use some lengths of masking tape on the T-Moldings barb,  squeeze it onto the barb and hammer it in. Works fairly well.

Good luck mate.

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Re: shock_'s Aussie cocktail [pics of it largely bolted together]
« Reply #59 on: October 18, 2007, 04:54:11 pm »
So I have to either painstakingly glue and clamp this chrome stuff and hope it doesn't pop out, or fill / purchase-slot-cutter-again / re-cut / re-paint-since-I-will-scratch-the-bejebus-out-of-it.

I had the same problem with my cab and I solved it by using a glue gun to hold the new t-moulding. It was easy, sets quick, and will certainly be a lot easier than refilling the groove. Good luck!


DING DING DING!!!! Here is your answer shock_.  Hot glue the stuff in place, works every time.  And if down the road you decide that you like the red better you can still strip out the chrome and put the red in it's place.

TTFN
Kaytrim

shock_

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Re: shock_'s Aussie cocktail [mmmm electrics]
« Reply #60 on: October 18, 2007, 06:59:59 pm »
Cheers all for the suggestions!

When I read the wiki (good people read the wiki first, you know  :angel: ) glue gunning got a mention there too.  What scares me is the "get a friend to help" and "whatever you do, don't stop" parts.

It's actually really fiddly to test-fit/measure that chrome stuff since it's so much stiffer. Especially around tight curves. 

Spacies your tape suggestion sounds bloody good, I'll give that a try first I think!  I don't doubt that the hot glue would give a proper result but I'm scared of effing it up.  Besides that, I have no glue, nor gun  :-\  Tape, I have kilometres of.

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Re: shock_'s Aussie cocktail [mmmm electrics]
« Reply #61 on: October 18, 2007, 08:01:55 pm »
Masking tape is paper thin... try some cloth tape

something like THIS?

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Re: shock_'s Aussie cocktail [mmmm electrics]
« Reply #62 on: October 18, 2007, 09:00:06 pm »
Quote
Since I only have one Keywiz (1.5) to share between both panels (and one Opti-Wiz on the TurboTwist and shared with the trackball on the other side) this means that I had to sort out a quick-release system or face rewiring every time I lugged the thing in- or outside

Oh my the pain.  :o

Should I sell you my spare ipac at mates rates?
« Last Edit: October 18, 2007, 09:01:41 pm by loadman »

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Re: shock_'s Aussie cocktail [mmmm electrics]
« Reply #63 on: October 19, 2007, 09:31:26 pm »
Use some lengths of masking tape on the T-Moldings barb,  squeeze it onto the barb and hammer it in. Works fairly well.

Whaddya know - I did a test piece on the edge of one of my panels and this kinda works!!  Very painstaking but at least I can take it a little at a time.  Six layers of masking tape is enough to require a rubber mallet to whack it in.  I may give dmworking247's gaffer tape suggestion a go too, if I can find some lying around.

See attachment (inset) for the gap I'm trying to plug.

Should I sell you my spare ipac at mates rates?

Nah that'd make it too easy :)  The work's almost done now!


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Re: shock_'s Aussie cocktail [mmmm electrics]
« Reply #64 on: November 28, 2007, 04:47:09 pm »
So here's the deal.  I clocked up 10 years with my employer and they gave me thirteen weeks of paid leave.  Good thing Howard hadn't gotten around to WorkChoices when I took the job!  So I've been at home looking after the two kids since 1 October, while Mrs shock_ went back to work full time to put away a bit of extra cash.

This has meant less, rather than more time to work on Calvin (yes, the name of this project has kinda stuck, although it won't be visible anywhere on the cab).  We're almost there.


  Had some troubles interfacing a GGG Opti-Wiz with an STC/Ultimarc 2.25" trackball, but that's been resolved with some pull-up resistors. Crazy harness time.  The resistors are hidden inside those D9 backshells.

Finally finished the t-molding yesterday - five layers of PVC electrical tape to thicken up the 1.5mm spine to fit the 3mm slot and a bunch of mallet action = hooray.

The protective plastic strip is still on the t-mold in these pictures so it'll look better once it's all off.  One of Spacies' lovely clips is hiding the join in the first photo.

You can just make out the control panels sitting off on the floor behind the cab - I will put those on after I get it through various doorways. Calvin will live on my back deck under a nylon car cover.  Tried a 1000CC bike one but it wasn't big enough !!

Just some internal wiring, bezel, angle strips for the corners etc. and it should be up in time for Christmas.
« Last Edit: November 28, 2007, 05:26:21 pm by shock_ »

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Re: shock_'s Aussie cocktail [shiny pics, sort of]
« Reply #65 on: November 28, 2007, 05:09:47 pm »

So close you can taste it.  :applaud:

Keep trucking mate, you're almost there.


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Re: shock_'s Aussie cocktail [shiny pics, sort of]
« Reply #66 on: December 06, 2007, 06:13:35 pm »
    Sneaking along.  Aside from the addition of a bit of Spacies' stainless, faux-chrome and aluminium (5 syllables in that word where I come from!) here's the photo mounting board bezel (see above). Two parts - the big square to be affixed under the lid, and a rotating part to be affixed to the monitor.

Double-sided tape to the rescue.

Once that's done, and the panels are re-attached, everything you can see from the outside will be finished.  Pesky internal wiring and wire-routing remains, and attaching a child-proof lock for the lid.  We don't want little ones reaching in to retrieve their coins and grabbing the anode wire by mistake now do we ?!

Tomorrow I have to move this to live outside the house... we need the room to whack up a Christmas tree, and this is the only room we can reliably secure from our 1-year-old!

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Re: shock_'s Aussie cocktail [shiny pics, sort of]
« Reply #67 on: December 06, 2007, 06:32:50 pm »
  Oh, and I've gotten bored with the MaLa layout again.  Here's version 7 WIP.


loadman

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Re: shock_'s Aussie cocktail [bezel, front end pics in progress]
« Reply #68 on: December 07, 2007, 03:44:05 am »
hmmmm I like the old layout better  ;)

Are you having  a mob over at Xmas to play on your new cocktail?

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Re: shock_'s Aussie cocktail [bezel, front end pics in progress]
« Reply #69 on: December 07, 2007, 07:15:14 am »
Looking awsome fella  8)

I feel your soldering pain. Im using D Subs too for my CPs but I have to do them for the three LED wiz's and the IPAC. I just started soldering the 60 odd 8,15 and 25 pin D Subs last night, got about 800 solder buckets to do all in all.  :o

Anyway, keep up ther good work, wish I was half as close to finishing main as you are yours! 

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Re: shock_'s Aussie cocktail [bezel, front end pics in progress]
« Reply #70 on: December 07, 2007, 04:13:39 pm »
hmmmm I like the old layout better  ;)

Well you would wouldn't you... I only showed you the horizontal version :)

Are you having  a mob over at Xmas to play on your new cocktail?

Yeah apparently.  My wife and a couple of friends decided that we need a good 80's party for Calvin's debut.  I've been deferring that event since about winter (that's OUR winter of course).

It pizzled down in Bris-Vegas last night (which is great), and the only dry-ish spot on my back deck is exactly where Calvin is going to live (which is even better!)

got about 800 solder buckets to do all in all.  :o

E-gads...  :o:o:o Good luck with those !!  Maybe there's an east-Asian country you could outsource to.

Yours is going to be spunktacular I reckon.  The little details like the button surrounds are amazing.  I wish I had your skills with metal, and access to the tools too, I guess. I am watching your thread with interest!

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Re: shock_'s Aussie cocktail [sea trials!]
« Reply #71 on: December 16, 2007, 07:50:04 am »
What a busy few days.  I have become a statistic in an infamous set; namely, one who makes a cabinet playable prior to completing absolutely everything.  But I had no choice, honestly!! How else do you test it?

This weekend saw my beautiful wife's 33rd birthday.  Two separate gatherings on my back deck provided some motivation to forego sleep in favour of wiring and general assembly.

  I spent between about 10pm and 2am on Friday night in low light conditions, with a bad back, hunched over the cabinet properly installing my cat-5 cable harnesses and continuity-testing each microswitch to work out which switch related to which wire, and measuring, stripping, tinning and running extra hookup as required to my happy little Keywiz or elsewhere.  Ouch.

Oh well, at least it's earthed.  That's that trace of half-speaker-wire snaking across the middle of the side wall.
  As superbigjay said recently, you start out with the best of intentions to create the wiring equivalent of an origami crane, you end up hoping nobody ever reaches inside there without their eyes wide open and a bloody good reason.

So just in time for Saturday night I dropped in the monitor, connected it up, screwed on the lid and invited a guest to flip the power switch while we all held our breath.  Thankfully, it booted straight to MaLa and invited us along for a friendly game of Galaga, Namco Revision B.  That was basically the last we saw of my friend's 11 year old daughter for the evening, except when she needed the spinner sensitivity adjusted for Arkanoid, which was fair enough :)

Still to do now:
  • attach the fixed-to-lid part of the bezel
  • tweak the monitor's image dimensions to bring the edge in a bit from the plastic surround (cocktail viewing angle makes it impossible to see the nearest 10mm or so)
  • Attach a proper lock to the lid to prevent my kids from lifting it (right now, at 17kg it's way too heavy for them which is good)
  • Take a long wander through gamelists and .ini files and what-not, setting up cocktail-friendly modes and a few planned keymapping tweaks
  • Clean all the grubby fingerprints from the glass, take some photos and post them here!


  Oh, and just for loadman, here's the MaLa layout, all vertical-friendly.   :cheers:  


I'm now thinking that the easiest way to maintain cocktail-mode flipping, correct rotations, all that stuff, is to maintain separate gamelists for horizontal and vertical.  MaLa has this nice feature which will rotate MAME to match the orientation of the MaLa display that launched it.  Still got to play with that and get my head around how it will / can work best, since I know others have had troubles with it, and it didn't seem to work for MAME when "flipping" rather than just "switching" (eg. horizontal but upside down should rotate MAME 180°).

The other downside to split gamelists is missing out on favourites / most played etc.  I'll have to do some more usability testing with friends, and with plenty of beer to make it realistic.

loadman

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Re: shock_'s Aussie cocktail [sea trials!]
« Reply #72 on: December 22, 2007, 04:49:44 am »

  Oh, and just for loadman, here's the MaLa layout, all vertical-friendly.   :cheers:  


hmmmm I like the old layout better    ... Sorry  :-[

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Re: shock_'s Aussie cocktail [sea trials!]
« Reply #73 on: December 22, 2007, 05:11:08 am »
It's okay Loadman, I like it too.  I've nearly gotten around to finishing a clean 4:3 ratio version, and since Swindus went AWOL and never uploaded it to the official MaLa page, I'll sneak it in as an update sometime :)

Anyways, here's some cab shots.  Still gotta get around to sticking on that top bezel piece... and found a major and stupid flaw in my wiring that will involve a teeny bit more solder!  :banghead:

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Re: shock_'s Aussie cocktail [sea trials!]
« Reply #74 on: December 22, 2007, 04:58:57 pm »
He He, I got the same kinda plastic stools from Bunnings Warehouse, except they are white. Or did I tell you that already?  :dizzy:

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Re: shock_'s Aussie cocktail [pics of it largely bolted together]
« Reply #75 on: December 22, 2007, 07:17:01 pm »
rboTwist and shared with the trackball on the other side) this means that I had to sort out a quick-release system or face rewiring every time I lugged the thing in- or outside.  I remind you, dear reader, that I live in subtropical Brisbane, Australia where The Done Thing is to sit with mates on your back deck, throwing back plenty of Very, Cold, Beer.  Not inviting Calvin the Cocktail Cab would be unthinkable.


wait... all this time you were in brissie? i'm going to have to drop in and 'roadtest' calvin, you realise that?

on the t-molding subject. what i did was cut the 'rib' every 5mm or so for in side curves, and make v-notches every 5mm or so for outside curves. to hold the inside curves, which had a much smaller radius i used 5 minute araldite. i was aptient enough to just hold it in place for ten minutes or so each time. epoxy wont stick to vinyl, therefore it is being held just by being really snug. it should also be possible to remove the t-molding again using araldite, although i can't imagine why i would need to. i know your t-molding will be much stiffer than the regular stuff but the same principles should apply...


ROUGHING UP THE SUSPECT SINCE 1981

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Re: shock_'s Aussie cocktail [Completed, with pics]
« Reply #76 on: December 23, 2007, 09:43:13 am »
wait... all this time you were in brissie?

Actually I was on Straddie for a few days in November, but, yeah !  :cheers:

There are a couple of spots where I'm not happy with the t-mold, on the inside corners.  Looked fine when I whacked it in there, but after a couple of days it's shrunk out again a little.  Already fixed it once, but I think I'll have to glue it, or just pretend it's perfect and not mention it to anyone.  One day, anyway.

I got that bezel mounted and fixed my wiring today (needed a distinct ground for Player2 for happy cocktail flipping).

The cab is now functionally complete, it's playing everything I have thrown at it, so I'm upgrading its status to "done".  Merry Christmas to me  ;D
« Last Edit: December 23, 2007, 08:19:56 pm by shock_ »

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Re: shock_'s Aussie cocktail [Completed, with pics]
« Reply #77 on: December 24, 2007, 02:27:59 am »
Enjoy  :cheers:

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Re: shock_'s Aussie cocktail [Completed, with pics]
« Reply #78 on: December 24, 2007, 10:43:20 am »
 :notworthy:

Stunning mate. Truly stunning.

shock_

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Re: shock_'s Aussie cocktail [Completed, with pics]
« Reply #79 on: December 25, 2007, 01:22:38 am »
 :cheers:

Quick front end shot, again.  Just cos I like it and to prove to loadman that the old stuff isn't dead yet.

Merry Christmas, all.


(edit: updated snaps, with improved controls help)

« Last Edit: January 06, 2008, 03:48:01 am by shock_ »