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Author Topic: Megatouch project - Done!  (Read 15026 times)

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Paladin

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Megatouch project - Done!
« on: March 17, 2009, 07:10:28 pm »
I bought 3 Megatouch XL cabinets which each needed some repairs.  I ended up buying enough spare parts on ebay that after fixing and selling the 3 cabinets, I still had an extra motherboard and I/O board.  I decided to make a cabinet for myself.

The plan is a 3 sided countertop with a 15" LCD touchscreen based on a design from another BYOAC'er.  I'm making it as compact as I can, which is going to make it very difficult if I ever need to do any repairs to the electronics.  I ran out of wood, so I need to get more to make the bottom panel and side panels.

Here's a mock up with cardboard models of the internal parts:


Here's the front panel with a rounded edge around the monitor opening:


Next I routed out the inside to fit the touchscreen monitor.  I bought the monitor off ebay, like just about everybody:


At the top of the monitor panel I added another triangle to help support the back panel:


I've now added half a dowl to the back panel so that the top will be rounded.  You can also see how the extra triangle will help hold everything together:


I routed the back panel for a vent grill.  I plan on placing an intake fan at the bottom of the cab that blows cold air upwards:



Here's where I'm at as of now.  I've added quick connectors to where the speaker wires attach, and the locations of the software setup menu and screen calibration buttons.  I'll put setup and calibrate buttons on the underside of the cab, and the speaker will be on the bottom panel facing down. 
You can also see that I'll be using a compactflash setup instead of a CD or HD.  If you search ebay for 'titanium upgrade' you should find the seller that I got mine from.  I bought the HD version and then made my own compactflash conversion. 
Please don't ask me for a copy.


« Last Edit: April 13, 2009, 12:17:41 am by Paladin »

Ralman

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Re: Megatouch project
« Reply #1 on: March 18, 2009, 12:02:31 pm »
Looks good so far.

Keep us updated.

Paladin

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Re: Megatouch project
« Reply #2 on: April 06, 2009, 12:51:32 am »
I had a heck of a time getting the touchscreen to work.  I think it was due to having it pressing up against foam that I put around the monitor opening.  The pressure of the compressed foam on the 'active' part of the outside edge of the touchscreen was causing it not to register.  I ended up cutting some posterboard strips to stick around the monitor opening so the touchscreen 'active' area isn't touching anything.

It worked while I tested it with my spare boardset, so I stuck it all back together and will do a final test tomorrow.  I can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel!

Mock up with the side panels resting against the rest of the cabinet.


Bottom panel after being primed and painted with Rustoleum Hammered paint.
You can see the on/off switch, speaker, fans with filters and the buttons for entering screen calibration and software setup.



Bottom panel wired up.

Paladin

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Re: Megatouch project
« Reply #3 on: April 06, 2009, 02:16:26 pm »
I've got the elctronics all verified working, and have glued the right side panel on.  After this it's just adding some support blocks for the removable bottom panel, paint and T molding!

I used the side of my Tempest cabinet as a straight edge to make sure the 4 feet of the cab will be level when the unit is placed on a table top.

Martijn

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Re: Megatouch project
« Reply #4 on: April 08, 2009, 11:33:51 am »
Looking good. I was thinking for something like this for my children.
Strong, solid and easy placement.



You could sand down the edges, it will hide the wobble i see when the straight line goes into the halve circle

Keep it up!

Paladin

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Re: Megatouch project
« Reply #5 on: April 12, 2009, 04:45:01 pm »
Now for a description of the hardware.  Here is a Merit Megatouch XL 'Telco' brand motherboard.   It has 3 pieces, the motherboard, the I/O board and the riser board that connects the two.

I've outlined the CR2032 motherboard battery in this picture.  It's a good idea to replace it, because if it's the original one it will either be dead or close to it.

The motherboard ports from left to right are: keyboard, mouse, com1, com2, parallel and video.  The touchscreen goes into com1, the original Megatouch also has a network jack that plugs into com2.  I don't know what the parallel port is for.


This next picture has 4 things outlined.
The 2 sets of jumpers at the top of the board should be shorted if you're using the original CD drive, and open if using a hard drive.
The lower right red connector is where the speaker is connected.  Connect one lead to the top pin, and one lead to the bottom pin.
The blue object next to the speaker connection is the volume potentiometer.  There's a volume control in the software menu, as well as this hardware volume control.
The bottom center white connector is where the pins are that connect to the buttons for bringing up the software setup menu, touchscreen calibration menu and coin input.


Here's a closeup showing where to wire up buttons to be able to access the software setup menu, and the touchscreen calibration.

Just connect one lead of a momentary pushbutton to a ground, and the other to the specified pin.  I'm sure one of the other pins will add credits to the game, but I've got mine set for free play so I didn't bother trying to find which one(s).
If you don't have a button handy, you can strip both ends of a piece of wire and carefully touch one end to a ground pin, and the other end to the setup or touchscreen pin.

Paladin

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Re: Megatouch project
« Reply #6 on: April 13, 2009, 12:17:11 am »
Done!




Lucky S.O.B.

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Re: Megatouch project - Done!
« Reply #7 on: April 13, 2009, 12:44:37 am »
Damn I was hoping you were doing complete emulation... Is there anything free/emulated out there with the same type of games?

BobA

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Re: Megatouch project - Done!
« Reply #8 on: April 13, 2009, 07:51:48 am »
When you changed the foam tape to poster board strips how did you make sure they were not touching the active area of the touchscreen?   Are they there just to fill the gap between the front panel and the touchscreen?

Paladin

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Re: Megatouch project - Done!
« Reply #9 on: April 13, 2009, 11:37:41 am »
The posterboard strips are about 1/8" wide, which is thin enough that they don't touch the active area.

If anyone's interested there are some more construction photos on my website:
http://home.comcast.net/~dark.paladin/megatouch

BobA

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Re: Megatouch project - Done!
« Reply #10 on: April 13, 2009, 03:29:02 pm »
Thanks for the info.  Looks great, have fun playing it.

Sarver Systems

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Re: Megatouch project - Done!
« Reply #11 on: November 12, 2013, 04:32:38 pm »
So wait a minute. You have a way to run this without a HD or CD, by using a CF card?

Where does the CF card plug in? ANd how do you boot to it?

lilshawn

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Re: Megatouch project - Done!
« Reply #12 on: November 13, 2013, 12:15:54 am »


i'd imagine something like this. most of these would work with any of the megatouch machines. compact flash is basically EIDE with a fancy proprietary connector. you can get these adapters to basically plug any memory card to either IDE or SATA

for instance i have this SD to SATA adapter so i can boot a computer from an SD memory card


Sarver Systems

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Re: Megatouch project - Done!
« Reply #13 on: November 13, 2013, 12:29:31 am »
This would plug into the IDE cable in place of the HD? Or better yet..the CDROM?

lilshawn

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Re: Megatouch project - Done!
« Reply #14 on: November 13, 2013, 11:39:29 am »
yes i belive so...there was some hack instructions on the net someplace where you could dump the megatouch XL CD contents to an HD and have it just boot off the HD.

Sarver Systems

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Re: Megatouch project - Done!
« Reply #15 on: November 13, 2013, 11:58:33 am »
Perfect scenario:

Dump the HD and/or CDROM.
Install CF card.

No more moving parts! (except the fans of course).

lilshawn

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Re: Megatouch project - Done!
« Reply #16 on: November 13, 2013, 12:11:03 pm »
or SSD. they have been really comming down in price too as of late. you can get a SATA to EIDE adapter too.


Sarver Systems

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Re: Megatouch project - Done!
« Reply #17 on: November 13, 2013, 02:37:18 pm »
CF card: $12
CF-IDE adapter: $8.

Can't beat that!!!

Would 8GB be enough?

lilshawn

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Re: Megatouch project - Done!
« Reply #18 on: November 13, 2013, 02:57:11 pm »
CF card: $12
CF-IDE adapter: $8.

Can't beat that!!!

Would 8GB be enough?

that would be good for most of the older machines. some of the newer versions that came on DVD later might not.

you have to watch with the older software though, they expect a certain harddrive ID to be returned ("merrit01" or the like instead of "samsung") it was an anti copying/cloning protection that merrit did to have you buy drives from them only. with some creative software plonking, you can edit the data of the "drive" and have it say whatever.

Sarver Systems

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Re: Megatouch project - Done!
« Reply #19 on: November 13, 2013, 03:44:48 pm »
I would only do this for left-over machines that had bad hard drives, but I still had keys for. Trying to keep the landfills empty!

ed12

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Re: Megatouch project - Done!
« Reply #20 on: November 13, 2013, 03:50:19 pm »
u could easliy make them into touch style juke boxes
there a perfect fit

ed
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Sarver Systems

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Re: Megatouch project - Done!
« Reply #21 on: November 14, 2013, 10:03:30 am »
WHat all is involved with getting the HD copied over to the CF card?

Freeware app?

mahkeymike

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Re: Megatouch project - Done!
« Reply #22 on: November 14, 2013, 05:12:43 pm »
WHat all is involved with getting the HD copied over to the CF card?

Freeware app?

Ghost 4 Linux (G4L)
http://sourceforge.net/projects/g4l/
You want to select directly clone a drive and be careful using the space bar to highlight the correct drives.

Sarver Systems

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Re: Megatouch project - Done!
« Reply #23 on: November 14, 2013, 07:54:59 pm »
So plug the CF card and adapter into the motherboard, boot up, then run the program to copy from C: to D:?

Or is it reguired to get pull the drive and connect it to a Windows machine?

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Re: Megatouch project - Done!
« Reply #24 on: November 15, 2013, 12:06:20 am »
So plug the CF card and adapter into the motherboard, boot up, then run the program to copy from C: to D:?

Or is it reguired to get pull the drive and connect it to a Windows machine?

Connect both drives. If you have any other hard drives, its best to unplug them temporarily. Burn the iso file in the link i gave you to a cd and boot the program off your cdrom drive. Follow the instructions in the menu and make sure you have the drives selected correctly.

ed12

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Re: Megatouch project - Done!
« Reply #25 on: November 15, 2013, 12:52:51 am »
master/slave before u ask...
also rember this dose not replace your key
also rember merits like  there drive in >cable-celect-mode< >cs<
u MUST COPY A ISO OF THE ORIGNAIL S/W,or a running hardrive
what u are doing is clonning to a dif level >sd-card or such<
thus taking out a clunky harddrive..why is beyond me ? as i have a boat load of 40gig and larger drives,just for this reason..but is but
it still comes back to the :key:...please for gods sake print all 400 pages of them..
read them
i tend to use easydos..with removable bays..marking my >cs< unit when i switch it
over..if on the road i use a dif style of colner..
ide to ide...but the same rules apply
cs-cs/master-slave
but they must match the hard drive serial #
all this is covered in the manuals

ed
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Sarver Systems

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Re: Megatouch project - Done!
« Reply #26 on: November 15, 2013, 08:40:01 am »
I'm just looking for a way to get some older machines up and running that are missing hard drives because they've failed. Or to replace some scratched CDs. I know I have at least 6 machines missing hard drives, and at least 1 scratched CD. Most have dead power supplies, and a few have dead motherboards as well.

I just dont want to fill up a landfill if these can be repaired easily enough.

mahkeymike

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Re: Megatouch project - Done!
« Reply #27 on: November 15, 2013, 10:43:01 am »
I'm just looking for a way to get some older machines up and running that are missing hard drives because they've failed. Or to replace some scratched CDs. I know I have at least 6 machines missing hard drives, and at least 1 scratched CD. Most have dead power supplies, and a few have dead motherboards as well.

I just dont want to fill up a landfill if these can be repaired easily enough.

Unless you have spare hard drives, power supplys, and mobo's laying around, its going to cost more then there worth. Atleast in my area, old machines in working condition selling for $150 or less. I had a hard time selling a 2010 radeon for $350. Had it listed for months before someone eventually bought it.

Sarver Systems

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Re: Megatouch project - Done!
« Reply #28 on: November 15, 2013, 11:13:27 am »
I'm pretty sure he's selling them for more than that. But, then again, I don't know what he's sold any of my repairs for, so I can say for sure.

ed12

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Re: Megatouch project - Done!
« Reply #29 on: November 15, 2013, 12:51:45 pm »
80% of them can be brought back to life
but at what cost ?
at point and click they sell for about 150.00 each
now lets say u are getting 15.00 phr >fair price<
and it takes 4hrs to repair it
thats the first 60.00 out of 150.00
so this guy will settle for 90.00 ?
alot of ppl convert them
i do to rockolas..cant keep them in stock once i do

ed
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Re: Megatouch project - Done!
« Reply #30 on: November 15, 2013, 04:00:31 pm »
I was not even considering the time, just the hard drive and power supply will end up costing on average atleast $20 each used. Unless you are repairing the power supplies or have access to a local computer graveyard i cant see getting those parts any cheaper if you consider shipping. If you factor in possibly other parts like the mobo, your talking even more costs to repair. I just think those old models are beyond the point where its worth fixing for even the most tech savy repairman. If you have  a venue to use these systems for profit like a jukebox then i suppose it could be worth it, but here in the states thats not a legal option.

An example from personal experience is i had picked up a few of these old maxx units for $25 each. Some had either a bad monitor (burned out tube), or the touch glass was bad. Either way it costs more to repair/replace the old crt touchscreens, so I had to convert them to 15" lcd touchscreens. Till it was all said and done i had roughly $100-$150 invested in each (not including my time) and was lucky to get beteen $200-$300 (some i converted to force)

In the end i just decided it wasnt worth it to continue to rebuild/retrofit  them anymore.