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It's back again!
M.Lanza:
:'(
I am mourning the loss of an electrohome G07.
I was mounting the xbox and other components to the bottom of the cabinet
when the dog decided he wanted to play.
He jumped on me with one of his toys and I jumped up and snapped the neck
glass with my head.
I'm really bummed about it.
It's not all bad though.
I just decased a 19" kds vga monitor and will be using that instead.
This means that I will no longer be using an xbox.
I do have a component to vga adapter, but I'm just going to use a pc.
This has been a major setback and has crushed my will to move on with the project
since I may not have it playable in time before I move.
I will move on though and have the cabinet together hardware wise before the move,
I'll just have to worry about the software configuration later on.
Mauzy:
Damn dude, good thing you didnt get the crap shocked out of you. Good luck PC mame-ing that cab.
M.Lanza:
I discharged the monitor before removing it from the cabinet and hadn't plugged it in yet.
I got my new monitor mounted.
It didn't turn out too bad.
I lost about 1 1/4" of diagonal screen size, but I plan on buying either a 21" or 22"
monitor that I can swap out once I get settled into my new place.
I made the mounting board from a spare peice of plywood that I had laying around.
I thought that I wasn't going to be able to do it properly since i'm not a very good carperter,
but it turned out really well.
I was never too good at math, especially fractions, and it was only by the good grace
of my math teachers that I was ever able to pass any math classes, but all of my measurements turned out perfectly.
I have no clue where I learned how to multiply and devide fractions because I certianly didn't learn any of that at school.
Anyway, the monitor adjustment board is just kind of hanging from the monitor at the moment.
I plan on extending the cable and mounting the board on the back of my control panel
since I bought more heat shrink tubing than I think I will ever use.
I had planned on using a cheap car stereo, powered by a pc power supply and connected to the cabinets original speakers.
It didn't sound too bad considering that it's a cheap car stereo connected to a 25 year old set of speakers,
but I was getting a lot of electrical interference and constant feedback, so I removed that crap and bought
some hopefully decent pc speakers.
I'm thinking of removing the power and volume adjustment board and mounting it behind the coin door,
but at this point anything can happen.
M.Lanza:
I got the speaker system installed.
I had to chop up the case quite a bit since they wouldn't fit on the speaker panel as-is.
It took a while to remove the power transformer and volume control board and I had
to cut up much of the wiring due to everything being caked in glue.
When I opened up the speakers I found that the bottom speakers were dummies.
I kind of feel like I didn't get what I thought I was paying for. Oh well.
I was just testing out the arrangment here to see if all of the wiring would reach their necessary components
before I started soldering and attaching everything to it's permanent place.
This is what I have after soldering everything together and securing everything down
with velcro, with the exception of the power transformer which was screwed down.
Everything is pretty secure, so I attached the speaker panel to the cabinet.
I guess that the cabinet's sound system is complete, so I started working on the microswitch
assembly that the proximity sensors to interact with.
One switch will power on and off the computer along with the rest of the cabinet through the smart strip.
The other will be connected to the encoder and will operate as an exit game button.
I just have to find some power adapters with the proper voltage and mA ratings and I should
be ready to wire everything up.
I'm sure there is some kind of circuit that can do the same thing as the motors and microswitches,
but this is the the best solution I could come up with that used up the least amount of space.
I had originally decided to use the knocker assemblies from a door bell to activate the microswitches,
so I think that I scaled this down quite well.
M.Lanza:
It's almost working. :)
I mounted the control panel with the 49-way joysticks and did not like the feel
of the 49-ways. The joystick top seems to be overmolded with polypropelene
instead of the ABS plastic that seems to be standard on most joysticks.
This makes the joysticks feel really cheap. the action of the joysticks just feels
really mushy and I wasn't liking it too well, so I placed an order with ultimarc.
I ordered a pair of ultrasticks with red bat tops, a pair of circular restrictor kits,
a pair of wiring harnesses, along with 4 red ultralux buttons, 2 white ultralux buttons,
and a set of inserts for player 1 and 2 start.
The total with shipping came out to over $200.00. Wow!
That's a lot of money to spend on controlls, but i'm positive that it will be worth it.
The products will be pure quallity, and the service will be exceptional.
I had ordered a pair of ultrasticks a year ago for a project that I never started
so I ended up selling them without ever trying them out.
I guess I kind of regret that, but am now making up for it.
I also bought a 21" viewsonic monitor a few days ago through a "buy it now" on ebay
that I had planned on upgrading the cabinet with once I had finished moving.
The monitor was about $40.00 plus about $65.00 for shipping, which I thought
seemed reasonable, but I guess it wasn't.
The seller emailed me eariler today and said that they packaging and shipping
the monitor would come to about $150.00 through the UPS store.
They gave me the option to either pay an extra $90.00 for shipping,
or just have my money refunded, so I took the refund.
This kind of sucks.
I guess I'll be on the look out of another monitor.