Do you have a good horror story to tell???? (Cab and CP desing)

[jhsmith321]

Well this is not really about horror movies or stories, I just would like hear some of your VERY WORST mistakes that you made while designing or building your cabinet or CP. I know that some people have forgotten to trim the trail for the T-molding before assembling their cab, others just did not like at all their selection of joysticks, or someone who just forgot to add the right support to their cabs

[AlanS17]

When I cut the piano hinge for my CP top I accidentally cut it about 2" short. Whoops! No biggie, I'm sure, but it's noticeable up close cuz it's right there in front of you.. Measure twice/cut once. Those piano hinges are like $10 so I'm not gonna try it again. I'll just live with it...

Oh and I didn't a CRAPPY paint job on the sides so I'm stripping them and starting from scratch...

[grafixmonkey]

I have a horror story with a happy ending...  

While I was testing that rapid-fire circuit and looking for a 5v line on the IPAC to tap, I accidentally touched two pins together on the IPAC and heard Windows make the "device disconnected" noise.  Then it wouldn't read keystrokes anymore.  When I was done crapping my pants, I unplugged and replugged it several times, and eventually it started working again.  (<-- that was the happy ending)

Now I have a real horror story...  I'm taking this really dumb summer class that's the last class I need to graduate college.  Introduction to Listening To Music (it's a gen-ed requirement).  Yesterday I finished the holes for the joysticks and buttons in my panel, and I have everything ready to plug the joysticks and buttons in and try the first few rounds of street fighter 2 with the new controls!        but...
DUN    DUN    DUNNNN . . .
I have an exam in that dumb class and I can't play arcade games!!!

[OSCAR]

I purchased a new t-molding 1/16" slot cutter online, from one of those vendor links that rampy always posts...  

The bit came in, I put it in my router and proceeded to cut the slot on a control panel.  Smoke, squealing, dust, tears...

By the time I turned off the router, 2 of the 3 cutter blades were totally gone... burnt right off.  Needless to say the slot was completely ruined, it was all over the place.  When I took a closer look at the bit I noticed that the 3-wing cutter was installed upside-down on the arbor (backwards) from the supplier!!

Lesson learned.  I always double-check the orientation of the slot cutter now.  Heh...

[jhsmith321]

Well in my own experience, when I designed my first one person CP, I tried to make it as smaller as possible, so I forgot to take into account the inner measurements between the joysticks and the push buttons, the drilled holes looked ok from the outside of the CP, but they did not have enough space between to assemble each part, so my CP box ended as Firewood in my chimney, the sad part was that the CP was made of a nice pice of oak wood which was much more expensive than the MDF  

[AlanS17]

Well in my own experience, when I designed my first one person CP, I tried to make it as smaller as possible, so I forgot to take into account the inner measurements between the joysticks and the push buttons, the drilled holes looked ok from the outside of the CP, but they did not have enough space between to assemble each part, so my CP box ended as Firewood in my chimney, the sad was that the CP was made of a nice oak wood which was much more expensive than the MDF  

"Measure twice/cut once"

Something similar to that happenned when I was building a loft bed for my dorm room. I forgot that the boards had their own thickness in addition to my measurements (whoops). The thing barely fit and it scrapes the walls. We had to actually assemble it in a larger part of the room and then slide it into place (after removing a 2X10 on one end)!

[Thorn]

I was building an upright cabinet in my driveway and planned to bring it through the back door when I was done.  I had just finished assembling the pieces when it occured to me that I didn't know if it would fit through the doorway. Turned out it was the exact same width as the opening. I wouldn't be able to get it through! I disassembled the cabinet and trimmed everything and then put it back together.  I can't believe I didn't think of that before assembly. ooops

[SNAAAKE]

Only horror I can remember is I cracked plexi glass while drilling.like the last hole !    

and fried my dc trying to hack the L and R buttons(analog hall effect crap)  

[2slk]

 I had a monitor slide right off the sloped stand that I built to hold it. I was just testing it and hadn't secured it properly. POOF!

[Howard_Casto]

My horror story involved my first "cabinet" that actually looked more like a tv stand with a cp mounted to the front.... (man I'm ashamed of that pos)  

The thing actually worked great... I hacked snes pads as the ipac wasn't available at the time and made a nice two player setup.  The problem didn't arise until I was playing a heated round of sf2 with one of my friends. I went to do a spinning birdie kick (chun-li's move) and BAM!  Tv slides out and hits me in the head. You see I had made the thing out of a tv stand and thus it was much too narrow to withstand any wobbling.  When I did the sharp downward motion to do the bird kick I actually tipped over the whole thing.

So remember kiddies, when making a non traditional "cabinet" make sure it passes the wobble test before you put the monitor in.  

[AlanS17]

My horror story involved my first "cabinet" that actually looked more like a tv stand with a cp mounted to the front.... (man I'm ashamed of that pos)  

The thing actually worked great... I hacked snes pads as the ipac wasn't available at the time and made a nice two player setup.  The problem didn't arise until I was playing a heated round of sf2 with one of my friends. I went to do a spinning birdie kick (chun-li's move) and BAM!  Tv slides out and hits me in the head. You see I had made the thing out of a tv stand and thus it was much too narrow to withstand any wobbling.  When I did the sharp downward motion to do the bird kick I actually tipped over the whole thing.

So remember kiddies, when making a non traditional "cabinet" make sure it passes the wobble test before you put the monitor in.  

I don't know... A fighting game with real battle damage. Now THAT's a game!  

[Mike]

Mine can't top howard's. The stupidest thing I did was not take the t-molding off when i painted my cabinet thinking if i got paint on it, it would be no problem to get off. Well I had to replace brand new t-molding.

[jakejake28]

in haste to play, forgetting to attach the control panel via the nut and bolt setup i had. instead i just put it on the cab, not realizing my mistake. i then loaded up sfa3, and 10 minutes later was ordering a new keyboard encoder

[IceCold]

Right after I checked all my connections that I wired and had the computer all ready, I put it in the cabinet to play test.  I also put my 17" PC monitor in it.  The friction seemed to hold the monitor...

Well, a minute or so later, the monitor was sitting on the basement floor.  Luckily, it fell into a box that was sitting there, a box full of newspaper, so it didn't actually hit the concrete floor.  The screen got a little scratched, but it still works great!  It's still in there right now, been too busy playing it to put in my 21" monitor I bought for it.