Moon Patrol and Me - DONE!

[Portnoy]

3rd time posting. First, it disappeared. Second, I timed out..ugh.  Anywayz, I was able to get to the power and monitor controls.  I wanted the power to have a clean look and also to keep my 4 year old from discovering high voltage. I was able to get this out of some old equipment and wired it for an inside outlet...



Mounted to the back dead center..



I built a housing for a one outlet plug which will have a Craftsman Auto Switch plugged in..




The monitor needed the controls relocated.  I was dreading this step due to the extremely short ribbon cable I had to work with.



I cut out the face plate from the monitor housing. Why not? It was already a perfect fit for the buttons and gave them the support they needed.  I accidentally sent one of the buttons across my garage floor with my knee.  It happened to be the one that let you choose between the BNC or VGA input.  I had to solder two points together on the back of the board to get the VGA to work again..



The control board came out like so ( yes those ARE Legos )




I wrapped the wire in spiral wrap.  I now have enough slack to make adjustments to the screen comfortably and this will tuck away with velcro up in the cab when not in use..



I hope to be posting completed picks of the cab in 2 weeks.  Until then.

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[cmoses]

Very small update.  I painted the cab with semi-gloss black. 2 coats of primer, and..well I lost count on the semi-gloss.  I thought this would be the easiest part of the whole process but nooooo.  I must have sanded down the sides of the cab 3 times to finally get something I was satisfied with.  Roller marks..uneven shining in the coat...large moths stuck to the paint.  Me not leaving well enough alone! The funny part is the back of the cab I painted once and it is easily the best looking side.  Of course this will be backed against a wall where no one will see it.  The bottom looks fabulous as well.   Considering I can only work on this every other weekend each bad coat cost me quite a bit of time.  Next cab is sooo getting laminated!  Anyway, it looks great now and I was actually able to apply the Tmolding.  Tmolding=sexy....but then again I don't get out much so take that with a grain of salt.   

Can you tell me what kind of primer and paint you used?  Did you get the primer tinted gray for the black paint?

[Portnoy]

The primer was white, Benjamin Moore Fresh Start -  Alkyd- #024 00 and the finish was Benjamin Moore Regal Acrylic semi-gloss black, # N333 80.  The finish looks much better in person. The flash on the camera tends to show what you wouldn't see with the naked eye. 

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[Portnoy]

It was September 24th at 9:45pm when I stepped back and stared in amazement that this project was finally completed! This project that started with this forum and a rusty coin door acquired off Ebay. As it is far from a moon patrol cab anymore aside from the profile, I have renamed with the front end that makes me drool. I should have renamed it "Where the summer of '08 went". I have new respect for those that put these things out in 2 months time.
I started to slack on documenting the progress, but at most you don't get to see 35 zip ties running wires around the inside of the cab. Here are a few shots of the remaining construction.

I have two 12volt fans taking the monitor heat up and out.


Here is a shot of the wiring under the control panel. If you look towards the bottom on either side of the TB you can see two brass inserts. These recieve 2 long screws/bolts that come up through the bottom of the control panel. I originally thought the front two blocks would be enough to secure the panel down...hardly.


This was a really tight fit for everything. I actually sat the GPwiz higher than the Ledwiz to have room for getting the wires in.


Lighting the coin door was done with 2 12v car lights and attached with a wire tie and a bracket I fashioned out of spare PCI slot covers.



The marquee light from Groovey, the fans, the LED's, and the coin icons
are all ran off a spare PC power supply that I have wired to barrier strips. 

AND NOW......THE THING THAT MAKES ME SMILE....









Friends breaking her in....




It's been fun!  Now....what to build next?

[NipRing]

Great job, amazingly colorful! What type of sticks did you use? And is it MAME only?

[Portnoy]

Thanks NipRing! For right now it is only MAME.  I do have NES, SNES, N64, and Atari 2600 roms as well.  I plan on loading those up and to also get Dragon's Lair running...eventually. I'm taking a gaming break for a while.  The Joys are Ultimarc Ultrasticks.

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[Ummon]

I think the CP is awesome. Whole cabinet is great of course. Very nice wiring.

[Martijn]

why did you not connect the buttons to the u360?

[Franco B]

I just wanted to say great work

I missed your last couple of updates some how. I like how you havent scrimped on any of the build/wiring etc. Going that extra mile really finishes it off nicely. 

[DaOld Man]

I somehow missed the finished work in this thread..

Great work Portnoy!
You got yourself one heck of a beauty there!

 

[Portnoy]

Thanks for the compliments! I thought it would never get done at one point.  Martijn, when I originally purchased the U360 ( almost two years before finishing this thing ) I forgot to order the wire harness.  Fast forward to this past August and I figure while I'm ordering my new EI trackball ball I might as well pick up the encoder solution for all my buttons. It wasn't until I tried to configure Project64 that I realized the corner I painted myself in.  I now had the choice of using a joysick OR buttons  but not both at the same time since the emu only allows you to specify A joystick per player.  If there were a way to mix one joy in windows with another I would be fine. Anywho,  I just received the wire harness for each 360 and will be removing the GPwiz for a later project.   

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