It's been awhile, and I got a bit sidetracked, but, still making progress!
First, I finished up the contract I was on end of june, and other work hasn't materialized yet. Not great, but not terrible. Lots of work out there, but nothing that's quite the right fit for me (at least not yet).
However, I've had some time to take care of a few things in the interim.
First, sidetracked.... (For the Arcade part of this post, you may want to skip down a bit<g>)
I started cleaning out my garage and turned up a cuckoo clock I'd actually found in the attic 7 years ago when we moved in. At the time, I had no idea what I might do with it, so, up on shelf it went.
Well, I had a bit of time, so what the hell. I pulled it down and started taking inventory of the situation....
Some of the numbers were missing, the hands were busted, one bird on the front is gone, and all the brass (chains, etc) is tarnished beyond belief, and the pendulum was gone, but, it still appeared to be otherwise complete, and I even found the weights (in another part of the attic).
I knocked together a little testing stand for it, hooked up the weights, make a fake pendulum from some copper wire, and lo-and-behold, the thing ticked!
Ok, First, clean that chain with buckets of Brasso...
Next, get the bellows and mechanism out, then soak it in water/ammonia/Murphy's Oil soap. Comes out shiny! Finally, drop a few drops of oil in all the right places...
I had to buy new numerals, hands, bellow paper, and pendulum, then replace the bellows paper (it was completely rotten).
Reinstall everything....
Put the new numbers and hands on, with the new pendulum and....
Been running 4 days on one winding and still shows correct time!
Back to Arcade stuffAnyway, you may recall, I'd gotten off on a little bender making up a brass and copper "bar" to house the Aimtrak IR transmitters.
Here's a pic of what I ended up with there.
There was A LOT more to it, and when I finally got it all installed, turns out it was just too heavy to stay in the proper place. Needless to say, I was pretty bummed about it.
But, when you spend months to end up with a lemon, you damned sure better figure out how to make lemonade!
So, I desoldered some bits, added a few more bits, and rejiggered mercilessly.
And I ended up with this....
The gizmos on the left hand side are oilers from an old steam engine. They actually light up when you power the cab up. You can see them better here.
and from the left side...
In case you're wondering, no, it doesn't interfere with player 4 seeing the screen. I was a bit concerned about that, but it ended up not being a problem.
The top bar itself I ended up scavenging from what I'd already built, just simplified it immensely.
And the good news it, it works
great with my aimtrak, the cabinet still closes up cleanly, and I think I can put away all my metal cutting and welding gear!