Hi everybody.
I'd like to thank all the community members here for the vast wealth of knowledge available. It really wouldn't haave been remotely possible for me to complete this project without you guys. I figure a quick writeup on my conversion is the least I can do to repay you all.
As you can see in the picture, this wasn't a terribly ambitious conversion, compared with some of the wonderful work I've seen on the boards here, but my goal was to create a cabinet on a fairly strict budget and without any workshop to speak of. In fact, the only powertool I ended up using was a drill. As a result, some things did come out less well than I'd have liked, and there are certainly things I'd have done differently.
I started out with a stripped joust cabinet. Literally everything had been removed, and the sideart was gone, so I didn't feel too bad converting it.
After stripping off the old t-molding and vacuuming the cabinet (found a bunch of quarters, too!), I painted the thing. In my kitchen. Two layers of rustoleum painter's touch black did the trick fairly well. I used a disposalbe foam roller for a nice smooth surface. In retrospect I should have probably tried to smooth out some of the surface damage a bit better, but It's none too bad. New t-molding was easy to apply using a hammer and a folded up piece of cloth to prevent damage to the molding. I cut out little wedges in the sharp corners. Easy peasy.
Next step was the monitor. I used an old 19" NEC multisync which I decased using a screw driver at first and a judicious amount of violence towards the end. The front panel controls are kinda dangling off the front right now, but the bezel does its work and you can't see any of the mess. I used some electrical tape to mask the foil that was wrapped around the side of the tube and over the edges on the front. The bezel is a standard, commercially available one, cut to size with a sharp knife and straight edge. It's meant for a slightly more curved panel, but the difference is hardly noticable. It's maybe a quarter of an inch off in the middle. 1/8" plexi covers the whole thing. the bezel and plexi are clamped between what was originally speaker board beneath the bezel, and the control panel. It lies nice and flat, so no need to put rails or anything on the sides. The monitor itself doesn't slide around or anything, but to be sure I mounted a piece of scrap wood against the back of it on the shelf.
The unit came with an original control panel, which was fastened using piano hinges and some clamps on the inside. Unfortunately somebody had already tried to convert this once, apparently using a crowbar. The panel couldn't be salvaged. Off to home depot, measurements in hand. I ended up using chipboard instead of MDF because Home Depot actually had 3/4" chipboard in sizes smaller than an acre. I had them cut three pieces to my measurement, and while I was at it, had them use the leftover bit to cut a new speaker panel. I had to go with a simple control panel design since they can only do straight cuts. Now comes the one and only powertool part of the entire conversion. Drilled out 1 1/8" holes on the CP using some scrap material as a workbench on my kitchen floor. The neighbours no longer love me. The top of the control panel has about a one inch lip and is attached using deck screws and yellow glue. The bottom's only about an inch deep and attached the same way. Holes were predrilled and countersunk. The entire control panel (top, front, and bottom) are covered in basic black self adhesive control panel overlay. Beats trying to get a smooth coat of paint on chipboard, and a single overlay sheet was just enough to cover all of the surfaces. I applied the overlay before cutting the holes in the overlay. I simply cut them out afterwards with a sharp knife. Doesn't have to be perfect since the buttons have some overlap and the joysticks have the nifty little covers. The t-molding on the front of the control panel didn't work out too well. Since I didn't have a router or even a dremel, I tried to cut off the stem of a length of molding and glue it on. That didn't work (probably should use hot glue or something), so I had to tack it on. I expect I'll revisit this soon and see if I can't come up with a less ugly solution. Controllers are happ competition, and the buttons are happ microswitches.
The controller I used was a minipac, which accepts a standard IDE cable. Cut off one connector and soldered the wires individually to the various switches. Ground is daisy chained 18 gauge wire. With the control panel wired up, I simply reattached it to the piano hinge using short wood screws, removed the clasps from the inside of the cab and relocated them to fit the new cp profile. The minipac works like a charm. Driverless and easy to use. The default escape key needed to be remapped though. It's too easy to accidentally hit p1 and p2 simultaneously. I decided to wire up a custom button, a simple square momentary, acquired from radio shack. I used a half inch hole that was already in the cabinet, about an inch from the coin door. I presume this was used to mount some form of deadbolt originally.
Next I repelaced the missing speaker panel. This one I just painted. It's not in the most visible of places, so the fact that the surface is a bit rough doesn't bother me too much. Since I have no jigsaw or anything, I decided to move the speakers elsewhere. A nice little sixteen inch fluorescent was simply screwed down at the back of the resulting box, and the power routed to a powerstrip mounted towards the bottom of the cab. Two lengths of maquee holders were installed, the bottom one with screws, and the top one with velcro, so I can access the light box when needed. Two 1/8" thick plexi panels went in, with the marquee in between (More on the marquee later)
This can has two separate openings in the front. One standard sized one on the top for the coin mechanisms, and a rather odd one at the bottom for the coin box. Since I couldn't find a replacement for the bottom one I decided to use the opening for my speakers (a cheap little computer speaker set for now). Finding a speaker cover turned out to be more difficult than I expected, so I improvised. I bought the cheapest piece of framed art the wal mart clearance department had to offer. One of those fake canvas thingies stapled to a wooden frame. I proceeded to pry off the fake canvas and throw it away, with some prejudice. It was an exceedingly ugly piece of art. I then simply stapled some fairly thin black fabric to this frame and attached it to the front of the cab using velcro for easy access.
Once the coin door arrived, attaching it was easy. Wired up the slots for coin 1 and 2, popped in some 12v 120ma bayonets, connected to a standalone 12v adapter, plugged into the powerstrip. Worked first time and I was lucky enough to find a coin door in very nice shape indeed. Luckily I still had the old carriage bolts from the cp hinge. I was able to use those to attach the door.
Finally, the marquee and side art. I designed the stuff myself (does it show?
), and printed it on my poor little lexmark. The sides cosists of two letter sized, self adhesive pages each, covered with transparent self adhesive plastic, such as you would use to protect the cover of a book from undue wear and tear. The marquee was printed on banner paper, using a piece of software called panorama studio. It was the only thing I had lying around that didn't mind printing over several pages without page borders. The whole artwork thing is something I intend to revisit. The side art looks decent enough, but the glossy foil looks fairly ugly in my opinion, especially since it seems to highlight unevenness in the surface of the cab. I'll probably come up with a slightly less nerdy design and have it printed on vinyl or something. The marquee is not without its problems either. It looks decent enough, but the fibers of the paper show and the black is fairly washed out. Again, redesign and a commercial printer are in its future.
Software and hardware are pretty straightforward. An old computer running mamewah on xp, a wireless card for easy maintenance, and a little piece of software that allows me to change the system volume using shifted control panel input.
So there you have it, my first conversion. None too ambitious, but proof that such a project can be undertaken with an absolute minimum of tools and a small budget. Well, not so small maybe, but at least it didn't break the bank. Thanks again to the wonderful community here for the motivation and knowledge I needed to undertake and complete this project.
Larger pic:
http://www.kentuckyfriedorphan.com/images/gvg.JPG
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Topic: Completed my first conversion - a writeup (Read 2872 times)
