Sorry for the lack of updates but as you can see from my pics that I am a little more than halfway to completing my cabinet. These last few months have been very busy from:
- Spending as much time as I can with my daughter everyday when I get home from work, who has now learned how to be mobile and crawling forward for the last 2 weeks.
- Sister in-law had a baby boy back in August but found out from her landlord 1 week before her due date that she had to move out of the house they were renting because he wanted to sell the house ASAP. I had to help them find a new place to rent, pack and move. They use to live about 1 hour north of Toronto in a city called Barrie but now they live just 5 mins down the road from me. I have a friend who knew someone that had a vacant house which needed a lot of work but rent was cheap to compensate. This move actually made sense since my brother in-law would spend 3-4 hours commuting from Barrie to Toronto, so this move not only saved them money but time as well.
to the landlord for giving no notice, he's lucky my brother in-law doesn't take him to court and sue cause he will win for sure.
- Took a much needed family vacation down to Miami in September to see my cousins and introduce them to my girlfriend and daughter. Can't believe it has been 20 years since I was down there last. I had a blast catching up with all my cousins and joking about the music we use to listen to back then like Timmy T and 2 Live Crew on vinyl
- Work has also been keeping me very busy with lots of traveling and in the last two months I've been to Northern Arizona, Shreveport, Arkansas, Southern California, Reno, Northern Mississipi and Lousiana.
- Also got bit with the Forza 3 bug after they had a sale for the Microsoft V2 racing wheel for $79.99 and the soft/TV table combo just wasn't cutting it so I was going to do a mini weekend project using ABS plumbing piping to make a racing cockpit like this:
But my friend who was also into Forza found someone on kijiji in London, which is about 2 hours away from Toronto, selling a pair of Playseat racing seats complete with Microsoft V2 racing wheels for $550. The Playseat setup alone costs $349 euros not including shipping or the cost of the wheel. Luckily my friend has a company car (Toyota Matrix) which is pretty big when the backseats are folded down and had a client in London which he had to meet the following week so off he went
It must have been fate because everything worked out just fine and I ended up returning my wheel to Walmart since the setup came with one already.
My daughter sits beside me in her Little Tike's car as I am playing
Now I finally have use for my 51" projection tv down in the basement because this racing seat takes up too much space in the living room upstairs. I don't mind anyways because my plasma upstairs is wall mounted above my fireplace and the projection is just at the right level when in racing position.
Anyways, onto my project as there really has been much progress except I was too busy before to take any pics to document my last progress. I would say I am more than halfway done or could consider it done if I plan on keeping it a "mobile" podium only arcade cabinet. It has been moved around in my house to play on my 50" plasma upstairs and even made an appearance at a friend's birthday party in his home theatre room via 120" projector screen. It was a hit and everyone was getting all nostalgic playing all these old games and lots of trash talking in SFII, MK, NBA JAM and Blitz
This is my first timing wiring arcade parts and it went quite well with the exception of a few bad crimps for the common ground which were easily traced because I didn't put all my eggs in one basket and grounded each player's controls in it's own series. Here are some pics that I took from underneath to show my work, nothing special and I tried to keep things as neat as possible using cat 5 network cable. I probably would have done a few things differently but maybe in my next cabinet because everything worked.
Because the bottom of my control panel is open from underneath on the sides I am able to hide and map three micro switches to the GGG Keywiz for admin functions such as "ENTER", "TAB" and "ESC".
I also got some more groovygamegear goodness from Randy and changed the bat top to the Versaball 2 on my dedicated 4 way stick.
I was debating on replacing the coin drop bulbs with LEDs but found a way to wiring them up using the 12V power from one of the molex connectors on the power supply. So they come on when I turn my computer off. They are not as bright because I am under powering them with 12V instead of 14V, regardless this only took me 5 mins to wire up and maybe in the future I will put in the LEDs. On the topic of power, I also zip tied two leaf microswitches behind the coin drop buttons. If you press the left coin drop button it will give you a credit in mame and the right one is used to turn the computer on and off.
Here is a quick shot of the inside with my motherboard mounted using the copper stand offs that come with computer cases. I don't know why people use BIC pens or buy plastic PCB standoffs when all I did was drill a hole and then screw in these copper stand offs. Holds pretty well and costs $0.00
The inside here is far from complete because I need to figure out how and where I want to mount the power supply and hard drive.
Last item to figure out on my control panel was my HAPP trackball which I didn't know how to connect to GGG's optiwiz interface board because it came with molex style connectors. Thankfully Randy T was able to provide me with this wiring diagram and worked like a charm