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Glory Days - Completed!
dekar24k:
Day IV - Mounting the hardware
Hey folks!
I am still waiting for that wiring harness from Ultimarc which I need for the control panel, therefore I have instead been focusing on getting all the hardware mounted.
After some test-fitting, I marked the placement of the motherboard and started drilling the spacer holes.
I intentionally drilled the holes a little too tight, allowing the spacers to be screwed in, securely fastening them to the panels.
As I’ve mentioned earlier, I’m using an mATX motherboard, which suits perfectly for this type of project.
I had to be a bit creative to fasten the PSU, so I used a 3.5″ HDD plate from an old chassis and some fastening/foam tape for softening vibrations and securing the PSU to the panel.
PSU securely fastened to the cabinet. It could look better, but it really is sturdy. :)
You can see that after all the hardware is attached, there’s still plenty of room for the control panel wiring, power adapter(s) and monitor. I’m sure this can be done a lot prettier than how I’ve done it, but at least the hardware is properly secured and that’s all I wanted it to be.
.. And that’s all for now! Next up is mounting the monitor, which I predict will be a bit tricky. I really want that wiring harness to arrive soon as well, so I can finish this beast. :)
Thanks all for reading my blog and check back soon for an update!
IG-88:
I like how you fastened down the mobo. I can't believe I never thought of that. I know on my bartops I use ALOT of hot glue. You can buy the industrial strength stuff and it works fantastic. It will also let loose too with a little "persuasion" I like it for the fact that you can glue hardware in odd places without having to do alot of measuring and fastening. I've used it on all the stuff inside the cab without a bit of problems so far...
dekar24k:
--- Quote from: IG-88 on April 03, 2009, 05:16:50 pm ---I like how you fastened down the mobo. I can't believe I never thought of that. I know on my bartops I use ALOT of hot glue. You can buy the industrial strength stuff and it works fantastic. It will also let loose too with a little "persuasion" I like it for the fact that you can glue hardware in odd places without having to do alot of measuring and fastening. I've used it on all the stuff inside the cab without a bit of problems so far...
--- End quote ---
Thanks for the tip! I do have a glue gun here as well, but I was thinking of using it for fastening wires inside the cab. Also, the spacers lifts the mobo up a little so that air can flow underneath it.
dekar24k:
Day V - Wiring the control panel
Hey all,
Well, I never received the wiring harness and I refused to wait any longer, so I decided to cut the Happ-connectors and solder them directly to the trackball wires. Did it work? - Yes, it worked perfectly (massive props to smalltownguy and mayhem at BYOAC for helping me out with this).
First, I drilled holes in the control panel to fit the Mini-PAC.
Four screws and a few rubber feet is all it takes to securely fasten the light-weight Mini-PAC adapter.
I had to open up the Logitech PC-speakers to make them fit inside the cabinet. I first tried to fit them with the chassis intact but the control panel wouldn’t fit at all. Not too much space to work with here to be honest.
Without the speaker chassis, they both fit perfectly in the cabinet without interfering with anything else.
When wiring the control panel, the only way I could connect the trackball was to cut off the Happ plugs (to the left) and solder them with the Ultimarc harness attached to the trackball. It worked perfectly and I have no idea why I didn’t do this a lot earlier..
Wiring all the buttons and the joystick was quick and easy, using the pre-clamped Mini-PAC harness.
It’s important that all the microswitches are grounded using a daisy-chain harness, or else they won’t work at all… - I know, this is probably the messiest wiring you’ve ever seen, but I’m not very good at this yet. I’ll try to make it look better on my next project, promise. ;)
After wiring the microswitches, I hooked the Mini-PAC up to my desktop computer to make sure all the buttons and joystick worked perfectly. I also drink 6-7 bottles of soda every day.
If you look closely on this image you can see the wires I had to solder in order to make the trackball work.
After I finished wiring the control panel, I attached it to the cabinet. This was .. hell! It barely fits and I had to make sure I didn’t put too much pressure on any microswitches, wires or the speakers below. Also fastening it was damn hard and I wouldn’t have made it if I didn’t have an L-shaped screwdriver. I also mounted the marquee lights which you can see on the very top of the cabinet.
Fastening the marquee was quite easy. I just “sandwiched” the print between two pieces of plexiglass and fastened it with a couple of plastic retainers.
Yup! That’s all for today. Tomorrow I will try to tidy up the wires a little, mount the screen and hopefully install/configure the system. Until then, thanks again everyone for reading and check back soon for another update!
dekar24k:
Day VI - Configuring the system
Hey everyone!
First of all; I’m sorry I haven’t updated the blog in a few days, but I’ve been busy doing other stuff than working with the arcade. ;) Anyways, I am very close to finishing it all now and all I have left is a little tweaking and mounting a couple more things.
I chose not to mount the monitor the way Mameroom suggested, as it involved drilling holes in my monitor chassis and fastening it to the cabinet using wooden screws. Instead, I picked up a monitor/TV wall-mount, which will allow me to easily dismount the monitor, should it be necessary.
Two massive wooden screws attaches the mounting plate to the wooden panels. This is a very sturdy way of mounting a monitor and I can easily “slide” the monitor in and out of it’s mounted position.
After installing the monitor, it was time to start configuring the system. The system will run on a tiny Windows XP Pro setup (using Nlite to remove unwanted programs and services). The system boots in only a few seconds, which is optimal for an arcade cabinet.
After installing the OS it was time to start copying over all the software and ROM files. My ROM collection exceeds 100GB so it took quite a while to copy it all over.
Then it was time to configure my control panel the way I wanted it. Since I want this arcade cabinet to function entirely without a mouse or keyboard, it was important to set up a few shifted buttons to cover all necessary administrative tasks. Using Ultimarc’s WinIpac Panel Designer util, this was easy.
So, I’ve got the OS installed, the roms copied over, emulators are installed and the control panel is configured. Today I will focus on tweaking the OS and emulators, making sure that everything runs flawlessly. I’m going to completely cloak Windows XP so that the system boots directly into the Maximus Arcade frontend and you won’t even know what operative system the box runs on. After I’m done with that, I will mount the monitor bezel and the back-panel. I also have a couple of buttons coming with FedEx today that I will slap on the frontside of the control panel (for volume control, load/save etc.). I’ll show you when I’ve mounted them. ;)
So, that’s all for now! .. When I’m updating next time, I’m most likely finished with the cabinet. I’ll see if I can put a video together as well, showing it in all it’s glory. Peace!
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