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Rotating monitor construction *Project finished*
DaOld Man:
Thanks Ratzz..
Have you thought about doing a rotate with the monitor in its case?
On "The Rage", the 19" monitor I used had recessed buttons on the front, so I mounted the monitor in it's case.
Below is a couple of pics.
Just yesterday I helped my son move The Rage from his bachelor's house to his and his wife's rental house. We wound up having to transport it on its back, and the monitor didnt shift or come loose at all.
Here is a link to the blog I did on the construction:
http://skennys-arcade.blogspot.com/
Edited to remove the pictures, to cut down on this thread a little. If you are interested in seeing several pictures of The Rage, just follow the above link.
ratzz:
Hi DaOld Man,
I am very familiar with 'The Rage' having been a fan of the marquee you did.
My current project is a 80% cab and will really struggle for space, I think, for a rotating monitor, but it has to be the way forward for true arcade authenticity.
I'll be following the thread with interest! :cheers:
DaOld Man:
Yes, I remember your positive comments about the marquee now..
Do you have a thread started on your progress on the arcade you are doing?
BTW, I removed the two pics in the previous post to cut down the size of this thread a little.
DaOld Man:
Project update:
I am now throwing together the diagrams to build an isolator board, that will go between the computer and the H Drive.
I dont have a warm fuzzy feeling about interfacing my computer to the H Drive, so I plan to use opto isolators to separate the computer signals from the H Drive.
What is an opto isolator, you may ask?
It is a very small integrated circuit, (also called a "chip") that contains an led and a photo switch. (transistor)
You put power into the chip that lights the LED, then the led turns on the photo transistor.
The transistor is like a switch, that will turn on the H Drive. The computer power and the H drive power are completely separated.
Learn more about it here:
Wiki Clicky
I also plan to add a "auto/manual" switch so I can move the monitor with two pushbuttons, if the need arises.
I will need 6 opto isolators total.
(1) Rotate left (from computer)
(2) Rotate right (from computer)
(3) Monitor on (from computer)
(4) monitor degauss (from computer)
(5) CW limit switch (to computer)
(6) CCW limit switch (to computer)
Im hoping I wont need the degauss, but Im throwing that in, just in case.
*More crappy paint drawings coming soon*
koz319:
--- Quote from: DaOld Man on November 11, 2007, 01:26:50 pm ---Im hoping I wont need the degauss, but Im throwing that in, just in case.
--- End quote ---
If it's a CRT monitor, I would be very surprised if you didn't need the degauss circuit - if you want to check, just fire up whatever monitor you want to use, then turn it on its side. If the colors go funky, you will need to degauss.
On another note, I wrote a quick plugin for MALA that will automatically control the lport based on whatever game you launch. It uses the same pinout I described on my site, and a default rotate timeout of 5 seconds and a degauss of 3 seconds. I'll add some config options so this can be adjusted, but if you want to check it out, I have attached it here. Just unzip and copy to the 'plugins' folder of MALA.
I'm almost done with another cmd line prg that should be able to be used transparently with pretty much any front end, when its done I'll post it, and all the source for this stuff.
Looking at your idea for opto-isolators, you can probably get away with not opto-isolating the inputs for the limit switches, since you are already isolating the output from the lpt port to the h-bridge. This is the same signal used to trigger when the limit is reached, so its already isolated. If you use an SSR for monitor power, it's isolated by default. Then again, you can get multichannel isolators dirt cheap :) so what the heck.
For the MALA plugin, add the -autorol option to the 'Mame Config -> Basics -> command line ' field.
Also, put a check in the 'Rotate MaLa with Mame after quitting game if needed' box under 'Mame Config -> Options'
You will need to have installed the DLportIO driver from my site.
Anyway, here's the MALA plugin. (version double beta .1 :) )
Hope any of this helps,
Koz
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