(http://img70.imageshack.us/img70/2581/plansummarylt6.th.png) (http://img70.imageshack.us/my.php?image=plansummarylt6.png) | Here's what I was thinking before we began:
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I hope to throw up a website for it sometime, perhaps when it's more nearing completion. So far it's a nice box of old and dirty ply :) | (http://img138.imageshack.us/img138/9009/rawboxsz6.th.jpg) (http://img138.imageshack.us/my.php?image=rawboxsz6.jpg) |
Nothing like working with monitors to slow you down somewhat....Be careful of your lower back, not to mention the "big red wire". Welcome & good luck with the build.
Hey I'm an auzzie too (Sydney) .. Where is that Website?
[monitor] Cage is to be essentially plural strips of ply ... All I need is a couple of hours where I can operate a circular saw without having to hold a 3 month old baby
(http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=51525.0;attach=69226;image]) (http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=51525.0;attach=69225;image) | I've cut the control panels out. Hooray! Here's a shot showing the panel layout for one side. It's all drilled now, as is the other one. |
(http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=51525.0;attach=69228;image) (http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=51525.0;attach=69227;image) | Here is the monitor cage. Looking at the dirt factor on it, you'd be forgiven for assuming I'm not planning a very tidy cabinet at all. This will all be hidden, and I'll give it a good wash down first anyway to prevent cement dust getting in all the nooks and crannies, like, say, hard drives... |
(http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=51525.0;attach=69230;image) (http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=51525.0;attach=69229;image) | Here is the cage with the monitor sitting inside. Note that it has not collapsed in a pile of splinters. This is a good thing, and completely took me by surprise! That piece on the bottom will mate with the top of a lazy susan. Adjusting for height will be fun. |
All you people suffering through your northern winter where it's too cold to do any meaningful cabinetry work because your fingertips will snap off, think of poor me sweating here in 38°C (http://www.google.com/search?&q=38+degrees+celsius+in+fahrenheit) temperatures being eaten by hundreds of mosquitoes and doing the type of work I hate just so I can bring you these boring and butt-ugly pictures!
My first officially hidden piece of form ply :)
oh, and persevere with it. i picked a rotating cocktail for my first effort too. its damn worth it in the end (",) .I hope you're right!! I have been struggling with how to cope with the bezel lately, and after re-watching your rotatin' video the other night I realised another approach to the problem, far simpler than what I had imagined I'd need to do. Far too complicated to put into words out here, but think of the shutter of a camera lens, manipulated by a piece of bicycle brake wire connected to door security chains and you begin to see how insane I was going. (Yes, I have a Visio diagram of it, too)
i cheated. i used the magic of black paint and darkness to disguise the fact that the bezel is basically a picture frame made of quad (",)
(http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=51525.0;attach=75924;image) (http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=51525.0;attach=75923;image) | I'm not too worried about the interface between the Gaping Hole and the tabletop. I've chamfered that edge of the cutout. | |
(http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=51525.0;attach=75922;image) (http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=51525.0;attach=75921;image) | I'm planning to use some picture framing card that I'll spraypaint and affix to the underside of the tabletop. The square hole inside that card will be a snug fit for the longest edge of the visible screen in both directions. The monitor casing itself will either be sprayed to match or masked somehow. | |
(http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=51525.0;attach=75920;image) (http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=51525.0;attach=75919;image) | IMHO the job of any bezel is to be entirely ignorable and let you concentrate on the screen itself - unless it's specifically created as an artistic addition to the game, which doesn't make a lot of sense to me for a multi-game capable box. Hopefully mine will be quickly forgotten too. | |
(http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=51525.0;attach=75918;image) (http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=51525.0;attach=75917;image) | I mentioned earlier something about a camera shutter design. Here's what it was to look like - with each of the four corners sliding on their own concealed track from one position to the other, their edges overlapping in a continuous loop. This was to be all rigged up using something like bicycle brake wire attached to the lazy susan so the one movement would rotate the screen and also shift the proportions of the aperture. Just nuts. If James Bond had a cocktail he'd do it like that. |
Have you worked on a Mala layout for this beaut? I remember you doing some amazing looking stuff in the software forum a few months back.
(http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=51525.0;attach=77158;image) (http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=51525.0;attach=77157;image) | One is a custom version of the applesque layout, with an emulator menu built in (not MaLa tree). I don't have a current pic of it, but here it is semi-recently. I like it because it's very specific to my machine, and I've got some great "starting" screens that change depending on the emulator too. I've actually added a red version of the background pattern you can see in the other layout below, since my buttons/sticks/ball/t-moulding will be red. It's given the layout a bit more depth. |
(http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=69785.0;attach=81055;image) (http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=69785.0;attach=81054;image) | The other is something I've released as beta (http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=69785.msg713022#msg713022), but nobody ever got back to me with bug reports... :'( There are bugs I found in it anyway, such as faux scanlines that don't scale well so they'll have to go, or I'll provide it as a series of fixed resolutions. I'll re-release another version soon - in a range of colours since I can never decide. |
edit: here are more/updated screenshots for the layouts above. | (http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=51525.0;attach=82668;image) (http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=51525.0;attach=82667;image) | (http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=51525.0;attach=82672;image) (http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=51525.0;attach=82671;image) | (http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=51525.0;attach=82670;image) (http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=51525.0;attach=82669;image) |
I turned on one that I was planning to use and found that the motherboard died in its sleep sometime in the past couple of months.
Have you tried raplacing the watch battery on the Mb? Or is it something more terminal?
look great bro.
just a funny FYI.... when this thread is #1 it says
"Topic: shock_'s Aussie cock..."
on the main forum listing, made me laugh
thanks, but I can't use it. All the fancy icons you made me would be gone :'( oh well, thanks anyhow and keep up the great work
(http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=51525.0;attach=86978;image) (http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=51525.0;attach=86977;image) ^ quick disconnects for control panels so the unit can be moved through standard doorways. | So all that has led to a lot more soldering than seems to go on for all you lucky people who just have your buttons wired straight into your encoder. I've been making these sorts of things with the second-cheapest soldering iron they had when I bought it many years ago, with the second-biggest tip I'm sure. :cry: Side 1 (with the trackball) has 22 switches plus ground, all going through that D25 plug you see in the photo. The matching female for that (not pictured) has three lengths of cat5 hanging out of it which will lead into the encoder. Side 2 has far fewer switches to handle, but there is that matter of the trackball and spinner (Opti-Wiz, anyway) that need to communicate, so more plugs and sockets there too. The ground from both sides is going through a DP switch so I can isolate one of the "player 1" controls depending on which side the players are sitting at. There are also three admin buttons, identical on both sides, in the carcass itself (just above the control panels) that don't need to go through the plugs since they don't detach. |
(http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=51525.0;attach=86986;image) (http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=51525.0;attach=86985;image) ^ Power input bottom-left, monitor killswitch bottom right. | The first thing I did was actually get power inside the box. A kettle cord socket on the outside means I don't have to wrap the wire around the legs when transporting it, and is generally a bit neater. Inside that the wiring goes through a connector block and powers a powerstrip for the PSU, monitor and amplifier. Luckily for me the motherboard I am using supports "always on" for "AC power loss restart status" in the BIOS. I have one switch on the outside of the cab that boots the PC, powers the monitor and turns on the sound. The monitor cable from the powerstrip actually passes through a junction box with a switch behind it (bottom right of the picture). This SPST switch cuts the neutral wire, allowing me to turn the monitor off and on without needing to touch any buttons inside the case. Kinda important for forcing a degauss in this rotating monitor cabinet. I should note here that the flash is VERY unkind to the cabinet in this photo - the big gougey shapes visible in the wood are not at all obvious IRL, and that side of the cab is intended to face the wall as well. The wood I started with had, after all, been boxing in concrete until last year ;) The edges will be covered with aluminium angle strips too. |
(http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=51525.0;attach=86976;image) (http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=51525.0;attach=86975;image) ^ On a temporary bench for... benchtesting, I suppose. | I've dug an Athlon 2500+ and motherboard out of a box that I bought from some guy a few years ago and never actually tested when I got it. A bit of thermal paste, a quick repair job to the chipset heatsink that had come loose in transit and bounced around all over the motherboard for a thousand kilometres ( :dizzy: ), quick injection of some fast-moving electrons and hooray, it booted first time ! That photo shows a green motherboard attached to the side wall of the cabinet. That's a dead mobo I'm just using to locate the screwholes for the real mobo which is the red one. (Yes, I know one is μATX and not all the holes will match!) That's also not the actual monitor. The motherboard will be fastened to the wall using the Bic Trick (slices of ballpoint pen used as insulated spacers and a normal pan-head screw through the guts). The good news is that the software side of things should be fine. I've migrated MAME and Vpin over from my desktop machine and playtested a little. |
(http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=51525.0;attach=86984;image) (http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=51525.0;attach=86983;image) ^ A little mounted panel for all the stuff you don't want to have to open to lid to reach. | Some of the niceties I wanted for this cab were two headphone jacks, a couple of USB ports for mouse/kb as required and a volume knob for the speakers. To get my wish I had to create a metal mounting plate that could house the USB and headphone jacks (they don't seem to make them to fit 17mm form ply, for some reason). I jigsawed the wall of an old PC case to get a metal plate, then drilled, then filed the rectangular holes for the USB jacks, and drilled through for the headphones and volume potentiometer. Note for those who aren't up with these things, the old Oscar Controls site had a nice tute on adding a volume knob (http://web.archive.org/web/20061025182800/http://www.oscarcontrols.com/volume/index.shtml) to a cab. (nb: link via Wayback machine since site is defunct and I don't know if/where it's mirrored?) |
(http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=51525.0;attach=86982;image) (http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=51525.0;attach=86981;image) ^ Hand-made headphone splitter. Just parallel wiring, nothing to see here. (http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=51525.0;attach=86980;image) (http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=51525.0;attach=86979;image) ^ Little hack for connecting the front panel audio wiring to my headphone jacks. | I wanted two headphone jacks so that two players could play happily until silly hours of the morning, and the music/fx from the games wouldn't wake up my wife or kids (assuming the kids weren't the ones playing). Instead they can get woken up by the microswitches and constant swearing. I tore up some old "CDROM audio connector" cables which were just perfect to fit over standard jumper pins for the front panel audio connector. And luckily for me, they had just enough actual wire in the right spaces to fit the pins that I needed to cover. The motherboard I'm using (Abit NF7-S) has this dorky front panel audio header that kills the rear output if you try to use it. Not just when the headphones are attached (which would be fine) - but if you want to use the normal, back-o-the-mobo audio output at all (which I do, for my speakers), you have to 'close' the front panel by leaving a couple of jumpers across that pinout, or plugging in headphones. I didn't want to have to leave 'phones, or some dummy plug, connected all the time in those sockets so I wired it all up using an additional CDROM cable. The upshot is that I am telling the rear connector that it's on, while using the headphones through the "front panel". Actually muting the speakers while headphones are in use is managed by turning the volume knob right down. Hooray! That paragraph may make no sense to anyone other than Abit NF7-S owners, but please take away from it that if you choose to use surplus hardware, be prepared for it to be not quite up to the task in bizarre little ways you don't discover until you're up to your neck in it. Squeezing two back-to-back like this meant I had to gnaw off part of the plastic housing intended to guide the plug into the right pins. Long-nosed pliers worked a treat and they were soon squeezed together. |
So I have to either painstakingly glue and clamp this chrome stuff and hope it doesn't pop out, or fill / purchase-slot-cutter-again / re-cut / re-paint-since-I-will-scratch-the-bejebus-out-of-it.
So I have to either painstakingly glue and clamp this chrome stuff and hope it doesn't pop out, or fill / purchase-slot-cutter-again / re-cut / re-paint-since-I-will-scratch-the-bejebus-out-of-it.
I had the same problem with my cab and I solved it by using a glue gun to hold the new t-moulding. It was easy, sets quick, and will certainly be a lot easier than refilling the groove. Good luck!
Since I only have one Keywiz (1.5) to share between both panels (and one Opti-Wiz on the TurboTwist and shared with the trackball on the other side) this means that I had to sort out a quick-release system or face rewiring every time I lugged the thing in- or outside
Use some lengths of masking tape on the T-Moldings barb, squeeze it onto the barb and hammer it in. Works fairly well.
Should I sell you my spare ipac at mates rates?
(http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=51525.0;attach=90604;image) (http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=51525.0;attach=90603;image) | Had some troubles (http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=72949.0) interfacing a GGG Opti-Wiz with an STC/Ultimarc 2.25" trackball, but that's been resolved with some pull-up resistors. Crazy harness time. The resistors are hidden inside those D9 backshells. | |
(http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=51525.0;attach=90606;image) (http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=51525.0;attach=90605;image) (http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=51525.0;attach=90608;image) (http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=51525.0;attach=90607;image) | Finally finished the t-molding yesterday - five layers of PVC electrical tape to thicken up the 1.5mm spine to fit the 3mm slot and a bunch of mallet action = hooray. The protective plastic strip is still on the t-mold in these pictures so it'll look better once it's all off. One of Spacies' lovely clips is hiding the join in the first photo. You can just make out the control panels sitting off on the floor behind the cab - I will put those on after I get it through various doorways. Calvin will live on my back deck under a nylon car cover. Tried a 1000CC bike one but it wasn't big enough !! |
(http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=51525.0;attach=90922;image) (http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=51525.0;attach=90921;image) | (http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=51525.0;attach=90924;image) (http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=51525.0;attach=90923;image) | Sneaking along. Aside from the addition of a bit of Spacies' stainless, faux-chrome and aluminium (5 syllables in that word where I come from!) here's the photo mounting board bezel (see above (http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=60685.msg679693#msg679693)). Two parts - the big square to be affixed under the lid, and a rotating part to be affixed to the monitor. Double-sided tape to the rescue. |
(http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=51525.0;attach=90926;image) (http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=51525.0;attach=90925;image) | Oh, and I've gotten bored with the MaLa layout again. Here's version 7 WIP. |
hmmmm I like the old layout better ;)
Are you having a mob over at Xmas to play on your new cocktail?
got about 800 solder buckets to do all in all. :o
(http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=51525.0;attach=91320;image) (http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=51525.0;attach=91319;image) | I spent between about 10pm and 2am on Friday night in low light conditions, with a bad back, hunched over the cabinet properly installing my cat-5 cable harnesses and continuity-testing each microswitch to work out which switch related to which wire, and measuring, stripping, tinning and running extra hookup as required to my happy little Keywiz or elsewhere. Ouch. Oh well, at least it's earthed. That's that trace of half-speaker-wire snaking across the middle of the side wall. | |
(http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=51525.0;attach=91322;image) (http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=51525.0;attach=91321;image) | As superbigjay said recently (http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=64434.msg761323#msg761323), you start out with the best of intentions to create the wiring equivalent of an origami crane, you end up hoping nobody ever reaches inside there without their eyes wide open and a bloody good reason. |
(http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=51525.0;attach=91316;image) (http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=51525.0;attach=91315;image) | Oh, and just for loadman, here's the MaLa layout, all vertical-friendly. :cheers: | (http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=51525.0;attach=91318;image) (http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=51525.0;attach=91317;image) |
(http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=51525.0;attach=91316;image) (http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=51525.0;attach=91315;image) Oh, and just for loadman, here's the MaLa layout, all vertical-friendly. :cheers:
(http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=51525.0;attach=91318;image) (http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=51525.0;attach=91317;image)
rboTwist and shared with the trackball on the other side) this means that I had to sort out a quick-release system or face rewiring every time I lugged the thing in- or outside. I remind you, dear reader, that I live in subtropical Brisbane, Australia (http://maps.google.com.au/maps?q=Brisbane,+QLD,+Australia&sa=X&oi=map&ct=title) where The Done Thing is to sit with mates on your back deck, throwing back plenty of Very (http://www.coopers.com.au/beer.php), Cold (http://www.cascadebrewery.com.au/), Beer (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crown_Lager). Not inviting Calvin the Cocktail Cab would be unthinkable.
wait... all this time you were in brissie?