This is my review of the redoctane.com Arcade Style Case and playstation pcb.
http://www.redoctane.com/arcadecasepcb.htmlQuick and dirty review:
Minuses:
-Had this horrible fake t-molding stuff on it and took 1+ hour to get it all off. It looks decent on the website but trust be really crappy looking when you get it.
-The painted on craphics on the plexi top they might be ok it they where done better but they look slap dash and when I tried to stip the paint off I killed the plexi and had to get a new piece of lexan.
-The PCB had no instructions with it, if a layout hadnt been on the net already it would have been really interesting to figure out. I also had to take off the extra ground wires because there was one for each switch.
-The bloddy bolt holes didn't line up!!! It was fixed easilly enough but it was a pain.
-Controller cable was pretty short, they seemed shorter then the official PS2 ones
-Have to use a chisel to raise the competition stick up higher
Pluses:
+After everything was stripped of the the black vinear stuff was pretty nice looking and all the rounded corners where done well
+They gave me two PCB controller boards so I can now build a second stick I dont know if they always do this but it was pretty cool.
+Playstation PCB seems to work really well
Overall:
I was kind of disappointed with the entire thing with all the exrtra work I had to do just to take all of the extra "finishing" stuff they put on there off. Some one needs to tell these people less is more! If you wanted a arcade stick quick and dirty you might consider this if you didnt really care about the plexi graphics or having all 8 buttons you could get it setup pretty quick. If they hadnt given me the extra playstaion PCB I would have felt much more ripped off but I with it I can do my next custom built stick and not have to do a controller hack so that made me happy.
In Depth Review and details on how I built mine.
A little backround: I was really dying for an arcadestick to play Guilty Gear X2 and looking around I found some decent sounding arcade stick but they where pretty expensive about 50 bucks plus shipping from Japan which wouldnt be cheap. I found this extremely great site with all you great people then somehow found the redoctane stick. I thought it a decent deal and I could get a decent stick together real quick. Ideally I would like to build my own and will this x-mas break I think I will with a friend who has a lot of tools that we can use.
Stupidlly I didnt take pictures but this is basically what mine looked like minus the game and controlls.
http://store3.yimg.com/I/adux_1764_364730For some reason it looks kind of blue in the pic but it is really this textured black laminate stuff that looks pretty decent. But the stuff that looks like t-molding with the red and the white isn't acutally t-molding at all!! Its really just these thin plastic strips taped to the sides and it looks like total CRAP!!! I can't stress this enough it does look truly horrid, the plastic does come off pretty easy but it leaves this super sticky double sided tape stuff all the way around the sides and the front. Did I mention it was SUPER STICKY!!! It seriously took me like 1+ to get all the sticky stuff off. You first need to rub the top layer of it to get this fiber stuff off then you need goo gone stuff to get rid of the actual sticky stuff. And you cant just spray the goo gone stuff on the case either because the laminite stuff starts to come off, so you have to apply it to the rag then rub rub rub my fingers where killing me by the end of the nite.
After the removal of the fake t-molding crap it looked pretty good. But the plexi had these wierd designs on it and they where kind of half-a$$ed done so I had this brilliant idea to use the anti stick stuff I had used to get the tape off the side to try and remove the paint on the plexi. At first it seemed to be working because the paint looked like it was comming off but then something wierd happened the plexi started to become goo like on the surface. So in the end I killed it the paint was mostly removed but the plexi looked like it had been slightly melted and some of the paint was still mixed it with the melted part. Of course all this is probably my fault because I used the wrong type of stuff but it still sucked and if they had just not put graphics on it I would have been much happier. In the end I bought some new lexan and and cut to shape and it all worked out.
This part only really applies to people that want happs competition sticks. The comp stick is about 1/4 inch shorter so you have thin the wood out on the case. If you where building your own stick you could route out the section no problem but the prebuilt case you cant fit in the router. I found the below post on the forums about chiseling out the 1/4 inch this would only work on MDF and fortunatally the case was MDF so it all worked out fine it only took 30-45 min and it worked very very well.
http://www.arcadecontrols.org/yabbse/index.php?board=1;action=display;threadid=2496;start=0http://www.oscarcontrols.com/tmp/router-chisel.jpgI also drilled two extra holes that where off center of the capcom 6 so I could make an arc that would work better for NEOGeo games and such. This worked pretty well and no complaints there.
At this point I had cut my lexan and drilled holes in it and was basically read to install the buttons and stick. Then I ran into this BIG problem the bolt holes for the stick didnt line up!!! I dont know if the stick bolt holes are stnadardized or not but this really pissed me off. They where about 1/4 inch to far apart they would almost fit in the joystick at an angle but it didnt quite work. I ended up getting some new bolts and drilling the holes bigger then counter sinking them so they layed flush withe the top and they worked just fine from there but it was a pain in the but and I really didnt appreciate it.
After that whole debacle I had to setup the playstaion PCB. Another strange thing is that the case came with a PCB attached to a pretty short playstation controller cord it also had a second PCB without any controller cable attached to it and quick disconnects at the ends of the wires. At first I thought I was supposed to use both somehow, but I looked into it further and all you need to do is hook up one of them. So it was a definite bonus to the entire thing I dont have to do a controller hack for my next joystick anymore. For some strange reason the PCB that was already installed had a ground wire for each switch this made for basically twice as many wires to deal with, the second PCB I had only had the one ground wire so I dont know why the other one had all of them. I ended up soldering off all but one of the ground wires and also attaching the L1 L2 wires. After that I hooked up some quick disconnects and bam I was done!!
Here is the pcb layout just so you know what goes to what.
http://www.geocities.com/armad1ll0/images/RedOctanePCB.jpgOver all I wasn't to thrilled with the entire experience maybe if I had used supers and hadnt had to chisel out the 1/4 inch and redrill the bolt holes and then strip the crap fake t-molding and and replace the plexi it would have been better but it was a lot more work that I had planned. Like I said in the above short review if you dont mind the plexi graphics and only want six buttons and a super joystick this would be an easy joystick project. You would still have to strip the fake t-molding because it looks horrid but other than that it would be an 2 hour project I probably spent more like 4-5 on mine.