On top of the bar...

Myrddin

Doing the ground loops now on the cp for both players, such a chore. I didn't bother using crimp connections or anything like that as the cp will never change configuration, & I can swap out buttons/sticks if needed by leaving the microswitches in place, so figured I'd just solder the wires onto the spade terminals. It's a diy bartop, not a candy cab after all

I managed to fix the sticks into position using an extremely complex solution which I'll detail shortly.

I did it that way once,
was a pain in the swiss.
Started to give problems!like solder failing!
you should of got the pre crimped stuff with the Ipac.so handy and such a time saver.
well worth the tenner or so!

Myrddin

urbanledge wrote: »

I did it that way once,
was a pain in the swiss.
Started to give problems!like solder failing!
you should of got the pre crimped stuff with the Ipac.so handy and such a time saver.
well worth the tenner or so!

Ah I'm nearly done now, it's not difficult in any way just monotonous. The Mame cab was done the same way & never gave any hassle, maybe you're using the lead-free muck? The only time I'll need to resolder anything is if I change out a microswitch, & ecause they separate from the sticks & buttons, it means they can be changed in seconds. No big deal, & again with this I didn't see the point of using the crimp connectors...I would if I was chopping/changing cp's, button config etc..but once this is built it'll never be changed.

Myrddin

Pics from earlier, re mounting the sticks. I found some perfectly suited woodscrews, which fit through the stick mounting holes, into the wood of the cp, but weren't long enough to protrude on the other side. As simple as it gets really, & they're perfectly secured (Also found 2 spare leaf spring micro switches that I was missing for the P2 stick, hence the blue colour)





I've the ground loop done for everything now, & the P1 side fully wired. No pics as I'm done for the evening, & the wires are far too long as I'm not quite decided on where to mount the Ipac yet so will trim to length at a later stage

Andrew76

For a minute I was worried your 'extremely complex solution' involved some sticky-backed plastic and blu-tack! :eek:



Looks well though.

Yeah best to leave the wires longer than needed even after you decide on the final location for the ipac, just in case you decide to move it. Easy to just tie up the extra length rather than have to extend. Small cable ties or some electrical tape come in handy to keep the wiring neat and tidy, less likely to snag on anything too.

Myrddin

I've the cp wiring done now (dummy coin button in place, just so I could get the wiring done while waiting on the proper button to arrive), & can begin the process of figuring out where everything will go...



Loads of slack left on the wires at the ipac end...



Trimmed to correct length, & ipac secured using pcb feet

The Last Bandit

That's waaaaaaaaaaaay too neatly done

Optimus Prime

Nice Job, mine i just stuff the wires in the cab when im finished haha..

o1s1n

That's a nice neat job alright. Remind me to never let you see under my control panels :eek:

Myrddin

Ok, made a lot of progress on this today. Thus far:

PSU fixed into position L shaped brackets



Monitor & pc psu power chords routed & tacked to the side wall. I'm going to mount the double socket to the back of the back-piece, which will allow me to disconnect the back panel easily. I was initially going to mount the double socket on the side wall somewhere, but had I have done that the back piece would have been semi-permanently tethered to the whole unit. This way I can disconnect the two plugs & the back panel can be removed.



The motherboard will go here. I'm waiting on a delivery which includes pcb feet, so I can't fix it into position just yet, hopefully they arrive at some stage next week.



Oh ****! The drill slipped & I accidentally drilled three completely parallel holes in the side...



Yep, right through too. Damn.



Hang on....I know something that might fit there...



No way, phew, what a stroke of luck!



Bass, Treble & Volume



Ipac wired up with the packaged ps2/usb cable



Hdd mounted. I might get an SSD at some stage to act as the boot drive, but for now this will suffice.



Ok, so, next up. The speaker amp I bought needs a 12v power source. Time for the floppy drive connector to step up to the plate. Here's the supplied cable, jack on one end, bare wires on the other. So, 12v & ground...

Myrddin

Left side speaker installed & wired





So, apart from the pcb feet for the motherboard, & the coin chute button...tis done...



So, double socket mounted on inside of rear panel



Switch wired



Handy for connecting/disconnecting the back panel



Ok then, it's make or break time. Using a temp switch to turn the pc on...time to find out if this whole thing works or not...



Phew, relief. It's a milestone for the build, first power on test & everything is working as expected. Time to now focus on the software side of things, ya know...the easy bit...

Oh but before that, one last thing. Auto-power on when ac is detected is now enabled so I don't need a second switch to power it all on. The switch on the power input on the back panel will now control everything

Steve X2

Looking very sweet dude

On the software side, hmm, if you don't fancy spending ages on the software why not just grab someone's hard drive and get the Hyperspin from that? You'll still need to change a few bits but it'll be up and running in no time.

Of course you wouldn't copy the roms or anything illegal like that, just the completely legal Hyperspins files

Myrddin

Steve SI wrote: »

Looking very sweet dude

Cheers dude, am pretty happy with it so far.

On the software side, hmm, if you don't fancy spending ages on the software why not just grab someone's hard drive and get the Hyperspin from that? You'll still need to change a few bits but it'll be up and running in no time.

Of course you wouldn't copy the roms or anything illegal like that, just the completely legal Hyperspins files

I'm not a huge fan of the idea of dropping in a pre-configured HS setup tbh. I think if you invest yourself in the original setup, you'll be more than equipped to handle inevitable tasks like adding new systems & games etc...just my own opinion ofc

What I will need at some stage, is access to some emu-movies content for preview vids...I used to a be a subscriber there but when I got all I needed I didn't renew my sub

Steve X2

Myrddin wrote: »

I'm not a huge fan of the idea of dropping in a pre-configured HS setup tbh. I think if you invest yourself in the original setup, you'll be more than equipped to handle inevitable tasks like adding new systems & games etc...just my own opinion ofc

What I will need at some stage, is access to some emu-movies content for preview vids...I used to a be a subscriber there but when I got all I needed I didn't renew my sub

Yeah, you're dead right on the setup. I spent many months tweaking my one and doing all sorts of crazy OCD things to it. I even brushed up on my C# programming to create a few little apps to run in the background(although ReSharper for Visual studio fixed a lot of my mistakes and kept me on track )

You really do need those preview vids. Makes a big difference to the whole thing.

Myrddin

Steve SI wrote: »

You really do need those preview vids. Makes a big difference to the whole thing.

They take a mamecab from being cool, to being really really cool...such a difference from such a small little feature Is anyone here a member? If I gave them a list of games would they grab some of the vids for me? Or even give me the login credentials for a few hours? I won't need them for a while yet, still have the OS & actual HS setup to get through first...

The Last Bandit

I used to be a member there and of HS as well, only ever downloaded the older 240p videos though.

Steve X2

Myrddin wrote: »

They take a mamecab from being cool, to being really really cool...such a difference from such a small little feature Is anyone here a member? If I gave them a list of games would they grab some of the vids for me? Or even give me the login credentials for a few hours? I won't need them for a while yet, still have the OS & actual HS setup to get through first...

I used to be a member, think I still am. Will have to check.
Definitely still a gold member on Hyperspin, emumovies may have lapsed.

Edit:
Emumovies has indeed lapsed.
I have all the vids for mame .145/146 I think in the higher resolution. As well as all the other systems.

Myrddin

The Last Bandit wrote: »

I used to be a member there and of HS as well, only ever downloaded the older 240p videos though.

I think on my old cab I had the lower res ones too

Steve SI wrote: »

I used to be a member, think I still am. Will have to check.
Definitely still a gold member on Hyperspin, emumovies may have lapsed.

Edit:
Emumovies has indeed lapsed.
I have all the vids for mame .145/146 I think in the higher resolution. As well as all the other systems.

Cheers for checking anyway folks. Is there any performance hit using the higher res vids? My specs are posted earlier, not too sure if I used the low res vids before, I think I did & they were fine...

Steve X2

Myrddin wrote: »

I think on my old cab I had the lower res ones too



Cheers for checking anyway folks. Is there any performance hit using the higher res vids? My specs are posted earlier, not too sure if I used the low res vids before, I think I did & they were fine...

You'll be fine with the higher res vids. The aren't HD, just 480p or something like that.

Myrddin

Steve SI wrote: »

You'll be fine with the higher res vids. The aren't HD, just 480p or something like that.

Ah cool, sure I'll drop you a pm maybe at some stage when I'm ready to drop a few vids into the installation? You can use up some of that new google drive space they gifted you Cheers dude

Steve X2

Myrddin wrote: »

Ah cool, sure I'll drop you a pm maybe at some stage when I'm ready to drop a few vids into the installation? You can use up some of that new google drive space they gifted you Cheers dude

Yeah no bother.
Speaking of drive space, all this talk of arcadey stuff i decided to download the latest MAME 0.152. It's 357GB for the full thing!!

Myrddin

Steve SI wrote: »

Yeah no bother.
Speaking of drive space, all this talk of arcadey stuff i decided to download the latest MAME 0.152. It's 357GB for the full thing!!

Jebus H....not far off half a terabyte :eek:

Myrddin

So, the final bits arrived this morning



If I tilt the bartop forward, the bottom panel will remove bringing the whole pc with it. This way I could easily put the motherboard onto pcb feet



Coin button wired



Everything back in, this is more or less the finished innards. Small problem with the audio amp, but the seller is kindly sending me a replacement one so fingers crossed that one will be ok. It'll be handy to swap that out too, no dis-assembly required.



All done with the hardware now. I have to say, it was a ton of fun assembling it, deciding what to put where, how to do the wiring etc...hopefully playing the thing will yield as much entertainment One final hurdle though, Hyperspin...coming soon.

Looks tidy!
well done!

MrVestek

Myrddin wrote: »

Short woodscrews in from the underside maybe?

That's how I mounted mine. The bartop has had it's fare share of abuse since it's been built including being taken apart a few times and it seems to hold up fine.

The Last Bandit

Great job on it !!

Having a awesome base to work from helps

MrVestek

Forget my last post, I wasn't fully caught up on the thread.

That looks excellent. I have a vague memory of sending The Last Bandit those speaker yokes at some stage as they were too big for my build.

Does a little bit of MrVestek Arcade live on in this machine? :-)

Seriously excellent work so far mate. Mine was tidy on the inside once like yours but I'm constantly adding / removing stuff to and from it so it's a bit of a mess in there right now.

Good call on the coin chute buttons, they look excellent don't they?

How did you power that if you don't mind me asking? Did you just shove bare wire into a molex like I did or was there a more elegant solution?

*edit*

I have emu movies for a bunch of systems if you need them.

Myrddin

MrVestek wrote: »

That's how I mounted mine. The bartop has had it's fare share of abuse since it's been built including being taken apart a few times and it seems to hold up fine.

Yep working perfectly on mine too, keep it simple et all

The Last Bandit wrote: »

Great job on it !!

Having a awesome base to work from helps

Cheers dude. Absolutely, hats off to yourself for making the base unit...everything was well thought out & made the assembly a pleasure.

MrVestek wrote: »

Forget my last post, I wasn't fully caught up on the thread.

That looks excellent. I have a vague memory of sending The Last Bandit those speaker yokes at some stage as they were too big for my build.

Does a little bit of MrVestek Arcade live on in this machine? :-)

Ha, it's possible!

Seriously excellent work so far mate. Mine was tidy on the inside once like yours but I'm constantly adding / removing stuff to and from it so it's a bit of a mess in there right now.

Good call on the coin chute buttons, they look excellent don't they?

How did you power that if you don't mind me asking? Did you just shove bare wire into a molex like I did or was there a more elegant solution?

*edit*

I have emu movies for a bunch of systems if you need them.

Cheers dude The coin chute button was something recommended by your good self. Definitely glad you did, they look amazing. Very hard to get them right in a photo, as the light doesn't look right...but in person they're so very similar to the real thing.

Powering it was easy enough. As it happens, the audio amp I have needs 12v & a ground. The coin chute button needs 5v and a ground...the exact pinout of a floppy connector (12v, 5v & ground x2). So I snipped off the floppy connector, wired the connections to the appropriate device, & soldered/insulated them

Cheers on the emu movies stuff too. Between yourself & Steve I should be well sorted

Myrddin

The Hyperspin myth is once again busted. There's nothing to it, really. It is an example though of "you really do have to rtfm", as parts of the setup are essential but not apparent. About half hour after starting the install tutorial, I had it up & running playing a game. I was going to outline some of the steps to setting this up, but tbh, there's a comprehensive setup guide here which is pretty much idiot proof - http://www.hyperspin-fe.com/forum/showthread.php?29481-How-to-install-HyperSpin

The latest Hyperlaunch has a bug in it which is causing Mame validation errors & minimized gameplay. A small edit to the Mame ahk file in the Hyperlaunch modules folder do resolves it.

Steve X2

Myrddin wrote: »

The Hyperspin myth is once again busted. There's nothing to it, really. It is an example though of "you really do have to rtfm", as parts of the setup are essential but not apparent. About half hour after starting the install tutorial, I had it up & running playing a game. I was going to outline some of the steps to setting this up, but tbh, there's a comprehensive setup guide here which is pretty much idiot proof - http://www.hyperspin-fe.com/forum/showthread.php?29481-How-to-install-HyperSpin

The latest Hyperlaunch has a bug in it which is causing Mame validation errors & minimized gameplay. A small edit to the Mame ahk file in the Hyperlaunch modules folder do resolves it.

Yeah, it's not so bad to setup.
But if you start adding emulators and systems and custom wheels it can be a little bit of a pain. Still, it's not rocket science :0)