new unnamed project

[malelanct]

Hey guys.

This is going to be the slowest moving project thread ever.  First i'm going to provide you with a little background.

I've been lurking these boards for about 2 years now.  As soon as I found this board I was totally interested in starting up a cabinet.  The problem was I lived in a small apartment.  I immediately went out and bought the book, started flipping through it.  My plan was to build just a CP to use with my tv/computer, and then build a cab later when i had more space and attach the CP.  I later decided against that.

I've been reading and following the projects on here quite a bit.  and even though 2 years seems like a long time, I think it worked out for the best.  Throughout that time I've been able to see tons of great ideas here, and now with all my knowledge I think I can build a better cab then I would have two years ago.

I've also just purchased my first house.  I have tons of room to work on this  (full basement and 2 car garage)  I'm very excited to start this project.
First i'm going to lay out what i'm planning to do.

I'm aiming for an upright cab, traditional, I don't think I want to go lusid, I think i'm going to go for something like a midway series 3 (killer instinct/mortal combat 3) style cab.   I'm a bit younger then some of the veterans here and as I grew up the popular games in the arcade were street fighter 2,  I missed most of the galaga/centipede days.  so it makes sense that I will direct my project towards these types of games.  I plan to make it two players, but I'd like a detachable CP.  I plan atleast 1 other cp to be made with the cab at the start.  a simple trackball cp for golden tee. 

I plan to use lights, I don't know if i'll use lighted buttons.  I'll probably use car audio components for sound, I will more than likely buy a betson or wells gardner multisync monitor.

I'm thinking vinyl siding with regular tmolding.

I plan to get started in the first week of august.  I would love any input anyone can give me.

At the moment i'm finishing up wiring the entire house with cat5e cable , i'm mostly done with this, it was important i did this first so that I could have connectivity where i plan to build the cabinet.

I will try to keep this as up to date as possible my goal for this thread is to provide as much feedback as I possibly can get on the progress of my cab (hopefully so I don't have to re-do as many things) and to also motivate myself to work on this fairly often (to have something to post)

[malelanct]

First weekend has passed and I have not been able to do a single thing, not even a sketch or plan, been so busy with other ---steaming pile of meadow muffin---.  I hope this isnt a sign of things to come.  I hope to sketch something out during the week. and next weekend maybe put together a list of materials needed.

small off-topic electrical question

figured someone on this forum may know this.  My house is wired with what looks like cat5e for my phone jacks?  is this possible?  I need to terminate the ends (in the basement) into small 6 pin (rj11?) crimping ends, so I can plug them into my vonage modem.  However the only rj11 pinout diagrams I can find are for regular flat phone cable, i can't find any info on an 8 wire twisted pair (cat5e) cable.  can anyone shed some light on this?

[Dudeman]

Sometimes electricians will run CAT5 instead of pulling seperate wire for phones. My dad is an electrician, and I've wired MANY houses with him. we'll pull CAT5 for both phone and internet. You need to trace the wires out and make sure of the color code. A single line phone only uses 2 wires out of a cable. You can buy a RG11 connector an hook it up to your CAT5 cable. The Blue(Ring) and White/Blue wires (Tip)are the ones you should use. They go into the center pins of the connector. If you can get a hold of a toner, put it on the Blue wire in the cable and find out where it is connected. It probably runs to the telephone box on the outside of the house.

[TOK]

It's probably CAT3. Newer houses are wired with that for multi line phones/faxes. If you're doing 1 phone line with Vonage, you just need one pair. The standard is to use the blue and blue/white for line 1. Since I always wire every jack for 2 lines whether they're going to be used or not, I wire orange and orange/white to the outer line 2 positions on the RJ11 jack.

Blue=Red
Blue/White=Green

Orange=Yellow
Orange/White=Black

I just skin off the jacket, make my connections and wind the other colors back around the jacket in case you need them in the future.

[malelanct]

Thanks guys for the awesome responses, i'll comment below on what i was able to figure out so far.

Sometimes electricians will run CAT5 instead of pulling seperate wire for phones. My dad is an electrician, and I've wired MANY houses with him. we'll pull CAT5 for both phone and internet. You need to trace the wires out and make sure of the color code. A single line phone only uses 2 wires out of a cable. You can buy a RG11 connector an hook it up to your CAT5 cable. The Blue(Ring) and White/Blue wires (Tip)are the ones you should use. They go into the center pins of the connector. If you can get a hold of a toner, put it on the Blue wire in the cable and find out where it is connected. It probably runs to the telephone box on the outside of the house.

The line actually doesnt run out to the telephone box outside, it runs to my basement, and had i called the phone company to install my phone, they would run the wire out to the box, i assume.  since i went with vonage, i was thinking i'd just terminate the cable in the basement into my router, and use the preset walljack in the livingroom.  because its already wired to one end, i'm going to try to pop the wallplate off and see which wires they used. and try to match that on the otherside.

It's probably CAT3. Newer houses are wired with that for multi line phones/faxes. If you're doing 1 phone line with Vonage, you just need one pair. The standard is to use the blue and blue/white for line 1. Since I always wire every jack for 2 lines whether they're going to be used or not, I wire orange and orange/white to the outer line 2 positions on the RJ11 jack.

Blue=Red
Blue/White=Green

Orange=Yellow
Orange/White=Black

I just skin off the jacket, make my connections and wind the other colors back around the jacket in case you need them in the future.

i'm pretty sure this is cat5e, i do not know the specs of cat3, but i know the wire sheath is stamped with cat5e and that its 8 wires twisted pair.  i also know its an exact match to the cat5e that i purchased (to run to the other bedrooms)  since all the cables terminate in the basement, i noticed the similarity.


thanks for the awesome responses guys i'll post what happens next, who knows maybe this thread will actually turn into me working my arcade cabinet one day.

[malelanct]

update on this,

pulled the outlet cover off last night in the living room, looks like 4 wires are wired in (so its setup for 2 lines?),  even though i only have 1 line atm i will probably crimp the other end to match, for consistency, i'm going to try to sneak some time in tonight to crimp it out and see if it works.   thanks for all the help.

[Dudeman]

Not that it really matters, but you can also terminate the end with a standard ethernet jack and plug a telephone cord into it. I've done that in a space that had an ethernet drop but no phone. I just re-wired the other end to go to the telephone block. A 4 wire RJ11 jack will plug into a 8 wire RJ45 jack. Remember, they're just electrons. As long as they can get from A to B, they don't care how.

Update: If 4 wires are hooked up, then it should be capable of 2 lines. The fact that it's a CAT5 cable, and 4 wires are not hooked up, whoever terminated that must have been planning on a dual line setup.

[malelanct]

Not that it really matters, but you can also terminate the end with a standard ethernet jack and plug a telephone cord into it. I've done that in a space that had an ethernet drop but no phone. I just re-wired the other end to go to the telephone block. A 4 wire RJ11 jack will plug into a 8 wire RJ45 jack. Remember, they're just electrons. As long as they can get from A to B, they don't care how.

Update: If 4 wires are hooked up, then it should be capable of 2 lines. The fact that it's a CAT5 cable, and 4 wires are not hooked up, whoever terminated that must have been planning on a dual line setup.

yeah, i'm not gonna mess with the wallplate/jack side since its done, and i can't terminate the other end into rj45 because it has to go into my vonage router (in the rj11 slot) 

as for what the outlet was meant for , its a new construction house, so i don't think he planned for anything but probably wired it as flexible as possible so that i'd be able to do what i needed with it.

or he could have just not had any other wire so he used the cat5e

[malelanct]

foiled again,  finished rewiring all network/phone jacks, started a rough sketch on cabinet, and the fiance tells me she wants me to work on some "built-in shelves" in the dining room first.   owned.

the plan is to goto lowes/home depot and buy the supplies for the shelves, as well as some of the wood for my cabinet, so i can take this cost off my bottom line and say its part of the shelving budget.

atleast i got lucky there, will keep you updated

[Dudeman]

God... Haven't we all been there!   

They just don't understand the importance, do they?