Main > Project Announcements
It's back again!
rufio:
Nice work, a lot of inspiration to my future vertical cabinet.
Anyway, just thought I let you know that the bottom speakers you thought were dummies are most certain passive slave-elements.
A link with little onfo if you are interested:
http://www.diysubwoofers.org/prd/
M.Lanza:
Thanks.
I didn't know that the fakies actually did anything.
I don't think I'd consider my cabinet an inspiration since their are
far better vertical cabinet examples, but I do make a lot of mistakes
that others may learn from.
Best of luck on your project,
It's never too soon to start. :)
M.Lanza:
Much progress has been made. :D
I got the AC adapter in the mail today to power the proximity sensors and turn the motors
that activate the power and exit microswitches.
The adapter supplies 12V DC at 200 mA, so it falls within the limits of the proximity sensor
while still allowing enough power to pass through the sensor to turn the motor and activate the microswitch.
So far, i've tested the power switch and found that it works perfectly, even behind tinted glass.
I've still got to test wether the adapter will power both proximity sensors because there is no more
room on the smart strip to accomidate 2 adapters.
This is the front of the cabinet so far.
I've got the control panel installed along with the two ultrasticks and ultralux buttons.
I still have to wire up all of the controls.
A couple of inside shots showing everything connected.
I've still got to clean up the wiring and finish connecting the remote switch assembly for the proximity sensors.
The computer i'm using is an asus p4sp-mx motherboard with a celeron d 3.2 GHZ processor, 1GB of pc 2700 ram,
a nvidia 6200 gt agp card, 40GB hard drive, 450 watt powersupply, and stuffed inside an e-machines case.
Currently, the coin door lights are powered by the pc's powersupply, but i've still got to pull a 5v line
from it to power the led's in the ultralux buttons as well as a 12v line to power the 120mm fans that will
be installed later.
I wanted to use the the 110v AC fans that came with the cabinet, but I don't have any room on the smart strip
to power them, so I had to order some pc case fans.
Close up of the control panel and the monitor area.
I'm not too happy with the cp layout, but it works for now.
The action buttons are too far apart to be comfortable and the 2nd player buttons arn't aligned properly.
Eventully, I plan on having another cp bent from sheet metal and maybe adding a third action button per player,
but that will have to wait for a while.
The ultralux buttons felt too stiff with the sanwa microswitches, so they were replaced with cherries.
The buttons are much more tolerable now, but i'll have to put in some playtime to decide how well I like them.
I know my tinting job sucks.
It was much more difficult then I had imagined.
This is the result of my third attempt before I ran out of tinting film.
I used 20% VLT film and the screen still looks crystal clear, though I can still see some of the area
surronding the monitor, so my next attempt will be with 10% VLT window film.
I get three tries with on roll of tint, so if my tinting skills haven't improved dramitically with the
next three tries, I'll just give up and take the glass to a professional.
This is what the screen looks like in normal light, only a lot less blurry.
It's kind of hard to find the proximity sensors behind the tinted glass, so I may end up placing
some LED's around the sensors so I can just touch the correct spot on the glass rather than
rubbing my fingers along the glass untill power is activated.
M.Lanza:
It's been awhile since I've posted on the progress of the cabinet and
it's been more or less finished and playable for a few months now,
so i'm going to show off where i'm at right now.
I've since moved and this is the cabinets resting place for now.
This is just a pic with the room lights on.
The monitor looks quiet dim in the pic, but is easily visible under most conditions.
This is just a close up shot in normal light.
You can see that my tinting skills have much improved.
I decided to use 5% vlt window tint. For some reason the camera can see what the eye cannot,
so it would seem that the area around the monitor isn't hidden very well, but to the naked eye,
the monitors image appears to be floating in blackness.
This pic is just showing off all of the cabinets bling in the darkness.
The ultralux buttons look better than in the pic and do look nice but the white
p1 and 2 start buttons are just too bright and distracting for my taste,
so I may replace them with a different color.
Just showing how the inside looks at this point.
I've decided to strip everything that wasn't necessary to hold the computer components
from the case. This helps to keep the components cooler and provides easier access to the
components if I need to adjust or replace anything.
The bungee cables that are holding the case inside the cabinet looks kind of cheap,
but the pc is totally secure and that's all that really matters.
I ended up replacing the motherboard so I could use a different processor.
For some reason, the 3.2GHz celeron D wasn't enough to run games like
Pacmania and Gunlock at full speed and the tempreture inside the cabinet
reached 80 degree C at times.
I had a 3.0 GHz pentium 4 that I could use, but I needed a new motherboard
before I could use it.
I bought an Asus p4v8x-mx and mounted it in the case with the pentium 4 and pc 3600 memory.
Now everything runs at full speed and the cabinet tempreture dropped to about 28 C.
The only problem is that the motherboard bios takes about 2 minutes to boot to windows
and I can find a way to fix it.
Oh well, even at 2 steps foward and one step back, it's still an improvement.
I decided to do away with powering the cabinet with the proximity switch and just
mounted buttons behind the coin door to controll admin functions.
I did have the computer powering on and off from the proximity switch by just touching
the glass bezel where the switch was located, but it only worked for about a day
untill somthing burned up and it didn't work any more.
I was happy that it worked, especially since I was just guesstimating for the most part
and was bummed when it failed, so I just gave up.
Perhaps someone with more knoledge on electrical engineering experiance could make this idea work.
The underside of the control panel.
The wiring is kind of neat. I can't imagine what it would look like with more buttons.
For some reason I only ordered one U360 wiring harness, so I had to make another
with old motherboard header connectors.
The ultralux buttons felt too stiff for my tastes, so I replaced the microswitches with cherry's
and they feel almost perfect now.
I also made a usb extention cable and bracket and mounted it under the control panel.
There's really no reason to have a keyboard and mouse constantly connect to the computer.
If I need one or both, i'll just open the cp and connect them.
It's also usefull for transfering files from a thumbdrive to the pc.
I'm still looking for a 21" monitor.
When I get one, i'm not sure wether I want to keep it vertical.
I may just mount it horizontial and go with the standard six button cp layout.
I can't seem to make up my mind.
In case I haven't mentioned already.
I'm using MAME .127 with MALA as my frontend.
I also used romlister to to remove all non vertical/joystick/2 button games form my romset.
M.Lanza:
Well, I just can't leave well enough alone and I have idle hands, so i've decided
to change the cabinet once again.
Right now, i'm leaning toward a neo geo style setup.
As such, it's current monitor will be removed and replaced with a larger horizontal monitor,
possibly a t.v. with component inputs unless I can find a cheap 19" RGB monitor.
The cabinet may possibly be de-mamed' and converted back to JAMMA so that I can
run my neo mv1-f and other JAMMA boards. If so, that I may sell the U-360's to help
fund the conversion since I have no money right now.
The artwork will definetly be neo geo. I'll probably use conversion style side art and
control panel overlay, along with changing the t-molding from blue to red.
I've already got a 1-slot marquee so i'm off to a good start so far.
Right now, i'm working on the control panel.
I've already removed all of the controlls and stripped the overlay.
You can see the original holes that were stamped into it back when the cabinet was
still a M.A.C.H. 3 along with the holes that were drilled into it during it's conversion
into WWF Superstars.
During it's conversion, this peice of plywood was screwed to the bottom of the CP
and the MACH 3 holes were filled in with bondo.
This is what I was left with once I drilled out the screws holding the plywood in.
And... the bottom without the plywood.
It would seem that I have quite a bit of work ahead of me if i'm going to mount
a correct 2 player neo geo layout on this control panel.
I may have to resort to professional assistance on the control panel,
but I may figure it out on my own.