Well its been nearly 4 months since my last post, and a lot has happened! First off, I became a Dad for the first time!
Little Luke was born in August, and has totally changed our lives (for the better, of course!) and that's the main reason for things taking longer than normal. That said - I've still got a fair bit done on the cab over the past weeks, so here's an update...
OK to recap: I'm building a swappable control panel system. I'm putting an I-PAC4 and an Opti-PAC inside the cab, and running from them 2 x 50pin SCSI cables up to the CP. Also running to the CP are a +12v/+5v power lead (from PC PSU, with a molex connector on the end) and a USB cable. This means each CP I want to build (I currently only have one) should have everything it needs, although I may upgrade later to one of Ultimarc's U-HID boards.
I screwed in some PCB mounting feet for the I-PAC and Opti-PAC inside the cab's front panel, right under where the CP will sit. They were a bugger to mount in such an enclosed space. Note to self: think about these things earlier next time...
Then I mounted both boards - I-PAC on the left, Opti-PAC on the right. As I'm using 2 x 50pin SCSI cables, I couldn't give the I-PAC its dedicated cable (too many connectors). Instead the first 3 players are connected to SCSI cable 1, and player 4 and the Opti-PAC are connected to SCSI cable 2. All the tiny individual SCSI leads are labelled and colour coded, so its still just as easy to connect up at the CP end...
I also wired up the coin mech to the I-PAC. It was a bit fiddly getting the "template" coin to sit in place, and I had a switch set wrong on the door for a while, so it wasn't working as expected, but I got there in the end...
Here in the top left, you can see the coin mech's zener diode, along with my ridiculously neat wiring. Lights on the I-PAC indicate all systems go!
I clipped all the wiring from the interfaces and the coin mech to the PC along the inside frame of the cab. Basically there's USB, PS2 and power leads there. Man am I glad I bought a good modular PSU, all those extra power cables came in real handy! The white lead you see going out of the cab is for my temp keyboard, which I've now replaced with a small black bluetooth one from Keysonic (which rocks!).
OK, here you can see where I cut holes in the CP base for the leads to pop through. You can also see I'm attaching the CP to the cab using 4 bolts, held in place underneath with wingnuts for easy swapping of panels.
And here's underneath... The plywood splintered when I drilled the holes for the bolts so I'll clean that up later. Kinda wish I'd drilled them before painting the cab. Another note to self.
To run power to the CP I built a cable and that connects to one of the 12V and 5v molex connectors from my PC's PSU. The top cable you see here is the one going from the PC to the CP, the bottom one is for inside the CP. For each CP I make, I'll need one of the bottom ones if I want to run 12V or 5V power to it.
Through the right-hand-side hole in the CP base, I pass through one of the SCSI cables, the USB cable, and the power cable...
Through the left-hand-side hole I'm passing the other SCSI cable.
Now to the wiring up of my first CP itself. I mounted a small non-powered 4-port USB hub in the back right, which the USB cable feeds directly into. This will power the 3 USB devices in the panel (2 x U360s and the TT2 spinner interface board). One port spare
Round the front edge of the panel, I've mounted the TT2 spinner board. Damn those USB cables were long!
Inside the cab, down the front of the side panel, I clipped the cables in (they are still loose) with conduit clamps. This makes it pretty easy for me to swap panels, and means the leads don't fall back inside the cab if I drop them.
I tested the 5V power feed by lighting up the trackball with an LED
Artwork on the panel still to come. It looks like ---steaming pile of meadow muffin--- with that plexi protective film on it!
I managed to bevel the edge of the trackball hole in the plexi too. It's a crap pic... the trackball when lit is a cool fiery read, not as yellow/orange as it looks here. I'll get better pics soon, I promise!
Next up, my first ever CP wiring attempt. All went pretty smoothly.
P1/2 start buttons in the back corners, the 2 red buttons are for PAUSE and EXIT, then there's 6 black pushbuttons for each player. All pushbuttons are connected to the 2 x U360s via the wiring harnesses. I only have 1 x TT2 spinner hooked up here, was waiting on a slave cable from Randy (got it now, thanks!). Happ 3" high-ball sits in the middle with an LED stuck to the bottom. OK so its not the neatest wiring in the world, but it works so I'm happy. You can see I'm only actually using one SCSI cable, and that's to connect the trackball to the Opti-PAC. I'm not actually using the I-PAC in this panel so the other SCSI is sitting there unused.
So here's the latest pic of the CP top. Doesn't look anything special just yet, but it works, that's the main thing. So how does it play? Well, as you'd expect I've given it a good trial run!
The 2 angled spinners are great, and don't get in the way, and are pretty comfortable. With the mini-racers, they're just as fun too. Trackball sticks a bit when rolling left, but its been sitting in a room of dust for months, so I'll clean it out when I have time. Plenty of room around the ball for faster spins too.
The other thing I have worked on, which I've been meaning to do for a while now, is to redo the rotating monitor wheel. I cut the old circle with a jigsaw (stupidly) and it's never rotated smoothly, and was really starting to piss me off. I basically copied DaOld Man's excellent idea (
link) and made a jig so I could cut perfect circles with my router. All credit to DaOld Man for this one, thanks mate!
You can see in this pic the rotating wheel that I wanted to replace... its plywood, cut poorly and rotates like a bastard. It had to go.
First thing, I decided to use MDF for the new rotating wheel (and the circle cutting jig). I don't know why... I know ply is supposed to be stronger, but something drew me towards MDF, maybe curiosity. Anyway, apart from the dust (I wore a good mask and goggles) I found it WAAAY much easier to work with!
For the jig, I got a piece of MDF slightly wider than the base of the router, and about a metre long. At one end I routed out about a 1/4 inch for the base of the router (just copied what DaOld Man did, basically). I didn't secure the base of the router with conduit clamps, as my router has holes for machine-screws to secure it, which you can see nearest the centre hole...
Underneath the jig, I countersunk the screw heads and marked out the centre hole for the pivot bolt...
Here's the jig all setup and ready to rumble. The pivot hole was slightly too large for the bolt I was using, and the wood was moving very slightly, so I wrapped the bolt with a bit of tape before threading it through the hole, which worked perfectly. Nice and snug...
Jig in action... first circle cutting commences!
First circle cut, and its perfectly round with a nice smooth edge...
Backplate circle cut to exactly the same size
Next I used the old crappy rotating wheel to trace the outline for the hole where the monitor goes. When I did the old hole I remember it taking me AGES to get the hole the right size, so this cut out a whole load of headache...
For the backplate, I made the monitor-hole cutout a little bigger, as there was no need to get the hole exactly the same as the top plate...
OK, now I know some of you reading this might wince at what I'm about to do next, but here goes... I am postponing the motorised rotation idea for now, and putting in a temporary manual solution. Basically I want to use the cab, and I don't have the time right now to work out and build a motorised rotator. With such a heavy monitor and limited space inside the cab it was proving much more hassle that its (currently) worth. That's not to say I've given up on the idea, far from it. I'm just postponing it. Basically, I've decided to cut a "door" on one of the side panels that will open to allow the player to rotate the monitor by hand. I'm planning on making the door look nice by putting some JIMBOZONE artwork on it, so I think it will still look pretty groovy.
First off I measured the door on the inside (where I have a reference to the 45 degree angle it needs to be at), then drilled holes in the corners and scored where I want to cut (to prevent the plywood splitting when I cut it)...
Then I cut inside the score-mark with a jigsaw, just to get the bulk of the redundant wood out the way and make the routing easier...
Next I routed each side of the door hole to get as perfect a rectangle as I could...
Damn router got away from me a couple of times... I'll have to clean that up. All in all, the sides look pretty straight though
Here's the new monitor wheel mounted in the cab, with the hole for the manual rotation. Next I have to build the door that you open when you want to rotate the monitor (hinges on the bottom edge, small knob on the top edge, cool JIMBOZONE artwork on the face).
Last thing before I sign off, here's the first draft of the CP artwork. Comments/suggestions welcome
Stay tuned for the next installment (whenever that may be LOL!)
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Topic: JIMBO's scratch designed cab [motorised monitor rotation begins] (Read 54999 times)
