Gauntlet: Phase 1 Complete (Basically)

I haven’t updated lately, but mainly because the progress I’ve been making is pretty incremental in size. I didn’t want to waste a post on one or two smaller tasks, but I’ll do my best to recap what I’ve been up to in the past two weeks.

I had twelve tasks left on my previous post, but have decided that the beverage holders belong in phase 2, so I’ve nixed that. Also, I’m going to leave the dual RCA jacks I previously hooked up, as is. That left me with ten tasks to complete, and as of today, I have completed 8 and a half of them. Of course, there were a couple tasks I forgot about when making my last task list, as well as a couple I just added while working over the past two weeks, either because they needed to be done, or I just had time to work on them:

* Mount PC power switch to back of machine.
* Setup Frontend software (Hyperspin) as well as emulators (MAME, Nestopia, Kega Fusion & Snes9x)
* Install cable holders to keep floating cables tucked away

While I wrote my last post, I was in the middle of patching the old holes that were left on the front panel (with the coin doors and start buttons). I patched them up, some of which were deeper than others, and let the wood putty dry a couple days before sanding it down.

Previously, the panel was screwed and glued to the front of the machine, but I wanted to allow this panel to be removed fairly easily next time I wanted to make a modification to the machine (plus it will lighten the machine a bit if I can remove it before moving it into my basement). So I needed to come up with a way to fasten the front panel without the use of glue.

Since there was already a small strip of wood on the bottom of the cabinet cavity that acted as a stop for the bottom of the front panel, I would just have to come up with a way to have the bottom of the panel latch on to that strip, and then I could screw in the top of the panel.  I figured this would be better than just using screws, since the way the cabinet was manufactured, there is no easy way to put screws in on the bottom of the cabinet after the fact.

I went to the hardware store to see if I could find any metal pieces that were shaped like the kind of bracket you would use to secure a door with a 2×4 (or for you video gaming geeks, the the S or Z pieces in Tetris), but smaller (approximately 1 inch in depth and no more than 2 inches in length).

Unfortunately, I couldn’t find anything small enough, so I had an idea.  I could use just a few small L-shaped corner braces, and join two of them together with a bolt and nut, making an S piece.  None of the smaller L’s at the hardware store had two screw holes on any flat surface, so I would need to butt two of the things together to ensure that they wouldn’t spin around.

I got home, made my S’s, and fastened them to the front panel and even though they were closer to an inch deep than I wanted (I was shooting for 3/4″), it turns out the full inch was better. Because of the angle of insertion of the panel needed that 1/4″ of wiggle room.  The panel didn’t fall out when I put it into place, but I tossed some (blue painter’s) tape on it in the meantime, to just make sure it stays in place before I permanently screw it down on the top-side.

It was around this time that I received my new FrankenPC case from Newegg.  I put the components into the cvase and realized that the fan I had needed a longer cable in order to be mounted in the spot I needed on the case, so I snipped the fan’s wires and added about a foot of wire in the middle.  I closed the machine up, and like butter, it fit neatly into the cavity on the bottom of the machine, next to the power supply for the monitor and sound system.

The only downer is that the case was made of paper-thin metal, so I stripped out about 3 screw holes while putting it together, but for less than $20, what do you expect?  Luckily, I won’t need to open up this machine very often.

My next big task was going to be tackling the control panel.  I still had a lot to do.  First step was going to be installing the hardware to be used for the joysticks.

My plan was to bottom mount the joysticks using screw in hex insert nuts, the kind you might see on pre-fab furniture from Ikea. I mounted them onto the control panel, and so far, so good.

Next, I needed to route out a channel for the T-molding.  This couldn’t have gone easier, considering I had never used a router that wasn’t used for data transmission.  However, the slot cutting bits that are used for the T-molding channel spit out a TON of sawdust.  Make sure to do this in a well ventilated area!  The T-Molding fit right into the groove (needed to use a rubber mallet to help it in) and to my surprise, it was centered!

Now it was time for the scariest part of the project: adhering the control panel overlay I had previously purchased from Arcade Overlays onto the control panel.  I didn’t want to have to order a new one, so with the help of my wonderful wife, we slowly started at one side, adhering and pulling the backing paper as we went.  as luck would have it, everything matched up, just as intended!

I now had to cut out 22 holes for the buttons and joysticks.  The overlay material is very thick, and rather than use power tools to cut through thick, but ultimately too thin for anything more than a knife, I opted to cut them out using an X-Acto knife.  This was a painfully slow process, and even though things looked good at the end, the blister on my middle finger was not so appreciative of the method I chose. I don’t know what a better alternative would be, but be prepared for pain if you go the X-Acto route.

With the control panel overlay now installed, I needed to begin the tedious task of transferring the controls from the mockup control panel to the real thing.  Much like when I first installed the controls onto the mockup panel, this was a slow process, and was only made more complicated by the fact that the wiring, while labeled and nicely organized, just got in the way.

It took well over an hour to transfer everything, but when it was done, things were starting to look real nice.

Since I had the control panel put together, it was a good time to mount the I-PAC and J-PAC to the underside of the control panel (which will make things easier if I ever need to remove the control panel.  This was a fairly straight forward process, however, one of the holes on the J-PAC was smaller than the mounting screws that came with it, so it was a little unnerving enlarging the hole on the J-Pac with my cordless drill, but I did it, and it looks good.

I then turned my attention back to the cabinet itself, for a couple tasks that I had recently realized I needed to do.  I installed my PC power switch, an inch or two away from the Monitor/Audio power switch, and luckily the switch was just deep enough to be mounted in this fashion, as I neglected to measure anything before drilling the hole.

Next I recognized that there were a few cables for the monitor that would get in my way any time I needed to move the computer case in or out of the machine, so I used a couple small, nail-in clips to fasten the wiring to the side of the arcade cabinet, making things easier for me in the future.

…and that brings you up to date with the progress on the Gauntlet project.  I am in the middle of configuring the front end software, and I recently decided I was going to re-key the arcade locks (on my own), so I’ll let you all know how that went, very shortly!

Gauntlet: Assessment and Control Panel Work

It’s coming close to the point where I need to make a list of the items I need to finish to complete Phase 1 of this project (Phase 2 will involve prettying up the rest of the machine, including replacing the side graphics/marquee and installing new t-molding).  I’ve got several small tasks, while not unimportant, they can be easy to overlook. Here’s a quick rundown of what I’ve got left (in no particular order):

* Mount PC into cabinet (either in a case (easy) or free (more difficult)).
* Replace old locks with Hex locks.
* Modify control panel layout and create new mockup for brief testing.
* Assuming the new control panel works out, transfer this to permanent control panel on 3/4″ plywood, including cutting panel, drilling holes and spraying with black paint (in case there are spots not covered by the control panel overlay or t-molding).
* Install mounting hardware from old control panel to new control panel.
* Replace wire-nutted splicing of video wiring with insulated quick connects.
* Patch front panel (damage from old screws) and scrape off front panel fragments that are stuck to mounting strips.
* Install front panel to cabinet.
* Replace stereo RCA jacks on audio amp with stereo 3.5mm headphone jack and mount the jack.
* Install new mounting hardware for the joysticks onto the new control panel.
* Install/adhere the new control Panel Overlay to permanent control panel.
* Move controls from mock-up control panel to permanent control panel.
* Create replacement back access panel, including mount for PC power button and port for power cable to route out of cabinet.
* Mount fan on vent grate on back of cabinet to allow sufficient ventilation in cabinet (particularly for the PC).
* Install T-Molding on new control panel.
* Mount J-PAC and I-PAC2 to underside of control panel (if room permits) or next to audio amp (less desirable, as removing the control panel will be more difficult).
* Install beverage holders on sides or front of machine (This is certainly not a requirement, but I’d like it, just for the fact that it would make a spill less likely, and I need to put my beer somewhere… right?!).

So I began working on Friday, and started with something easy that had began bugging me; I swapped out all of the locks for the Hex locks.  I had actually removed the locks a week or two ago, so any time I needed to move the front panel, I’d get coin doors flipping open and whacking me in  the arms, face or shins, depending on where I was when it was being moved. I then moved onto making a new mock-up control panel, using an isosceles triangle button pattern for the red and green stations (rather than the more spread out formation I was previously using).  I cut out the control panel, again using the control panel overlay as a guide.  However, this time I bought a new Milwaukee hole saw to drill my holes (the whole saw kit I bought from Harbor Freight is fine for a hole here or a hole there, but not up to the challenge of 32 holes on the mockup and then another 32 on the real deal.  I had already put 64 holes with the Harbor Freight bit, and it was a pain in the ass).

While the new hole saw is a vast improvement, the hole cutting still went slow, as the bit invariably gets clogged with wood particles. I had the foresight this time to find a wire brush to quickly clean the teeth of the bit, which sped up the drill time a bit (no pun intended).

I test fitted one of the changed stations, and things felt alright, so I moved on to the final control panel.

I traced the outline mockup control panel onto the plywood, as well as all the button holes to make quick work of the transfer.  The ¾” plywood was a little more difficult to drill through, as the bit would get bogged down about halfway through.  What I ended up doing is drilling until at least the guide bit got through, and then flip the board, and drill in the other direction (I actually grouped them together, so I wasn’t flipping the board back and forth.  I did all of the front cuts and then all of the back cuts).  This cut down on splintering on the surface, and the bit seemed to go through the first ¼” a little faster this way.  I did have a little piece of the plywood break off between buttons, but I patched that up with wood putty and let it dry overnight.  I sanded it down the next day, and the panel was ready to paint (after hitting it with a tack cloth).

Painting was nice, as it allowed me to get rid of 4 miscellaneous cans of black spray paint I had laying around that were previously used on various projects, but not empty.  I put on several coats, and by the end had a nice smooth surface that I was confident would allow the control panel overlay to adhere properly.

Next I started working on transferring the control panel mounting hardware from the original control panel to the new one.  The existing hardware bolted through the entire control panel, so a bolt was visible on the top side of the panel.  Also, there was a small wooden spacer used, to lift the hardware off of the underside of the control panel by about an eighth of an inch.

Since I wasn’t going to pull the wood spacer off of the old board, I found a suitable replacement: old paint stir sticks (which were coincidentally from the now defunct Knox Lumber). They were almost the same dimensions, and required only minimal cutting on the top two inserts, cutting that was easily performed with a utility knife. Using a staple gun, I fastened them into place.

I didn’t want the bolts exposed on the top of the control panel, so I opted to use wood screws that were nice and beefy, and that would come within fractions of an inch of the surface of the control panel, ensuring the best hold possible.  I installed the screws, with the hardware, and it fit like a glove!

My last task for the weekend was to replace the wire nuts that I had recently installed on my video wiring splicing, with insulated quick connectors.  I decided to do this because if I left it hardwired, I wouldn’t be able to completely remove the control panel without clipping wires.  While I don’t plan on having to remove the control panel, for well, anything, I am going to want it removed for when I move the beast into my house.  The cabinet will fit through the doors with the control panel installed, but I don’t want to risk damaging the work I’ve made on the control panel, nor my door frames or walls.  Snipping the wires and installing the insulated quick connects was a breeze.  I guess I’ll find out whether my crimping was good whenever I get the machine back up and running.

So that’s five tasks down, twelve to go.  Looks like I’m still going to be plenty busy!

Gauntlet: Figuring Shit Out

After successfully getting the monitor to work, rather than continue on with the cabinet, I played games for a few hours.  What can I say, I am hopeless.

The next day, I figured I’d better get things more permanently affixed within the cabinet.  On my lunch break, I stopped up at Ax-Man, looking for a molex connector with .156 pin spacing, preferably for 2 or 3 pin connectors.  I was prepared to kludge something together (like hack up a 4+ pin connector, to serve as my connector for the composite sync.  Luckily I found a 2 pin connector.

While I was at Ax Man, I decided I would look for a power switch for the frankenputer.  I knew I wasn’t going to be reaching into the cabinet every time I wanted to turn the thing on, and the power switch that was affixed to the case was quite lame, so I found an apt alternative:

Oddly, you can get the SAME exact switch at allelectronics.com and I’ve noticed that they routinely has many of the same components as Ax-Man. Unfortunately, it’s not illuminated, but at least it won’t look out of place on an arcade machine, I just need to find an out of the way spot to mount it, so it isn’t accidentally hit during the heat of battle.

Additionally I found some replacement “locks” for my coin doors (I don’t have any keys for the existing ones).  The locks are opened with a hex wrench rather than a key.  I’ll probably eventually get the locks re-keyed, but at 95 cents a piece, the hex wrench ones will work for now.

Again, you can get almost the exact same locks from allelectronics.com.  Weird.

When I got home, I first wired up the new power button.  I didn’t know how much slack I was going to need, as I didn’t know where I was going to mount it, so I gave myself about 4 feet of wire, twisted it up, to keep things neat, and crimped some connectors on the wire.  I soldered the molex that goes to the PC motherboard and used heat shrink to hide the solder splice.  Plugged it in, and it worked like a charm.

Since I already had the blue and yellow stations wired up to the JAMMA interface, I needed to get the I-PAC2 hooked up.  Since the Red and Green controls were already wired all I had to do was get the front start buttons wired up, and I could begin plugging wires into the I-PAC2.

This was relatively quick, or at least a lot less time than it took me to do the rest of the control panel.

After that, I wanted to get the Comp Sync wire mounted in the Molex connector I picked up.  Using a razor blade, I chopped off the keying that was present on the connector, so it would fit on the monitor side. I soldered the wire into the metal connector and slid the connector into the molex housing.  Luckily, it worked without a hitch.

(the top connector is the connector I made, and the two empty spots on the connector below it are where the old horizontal and vertical wires were going into).

Now I needed to program the I-PAC, since it was by default setup to run as Player 1 and Player 2.  Unfortunately, WinPAC, which comes bundled with the cards, cannot program both cards while they are attached to the system, and since the J-PAC was running my video, I needed to use my laptop to program the I-PAC.  WinPAC was surprisingly easy to use though, and I had things programmed in less than 5 minutes.

I powered the machine on, and like clockwork, everything was operating as planned.

In a further attempt to wrap things up (for phase 1), I tried to fit the case for the Frankenputer into the bottom cavity of the cabinet.  I had measured this out, and it was just going to fit.  Unfortunately, I neglected to account for the small retaining piece on the back that keeps the PC cards in the PCI/ACG slots.  Nor did I account for the cables coming off the back of the motherboard.  I don’t have another case available, so either I’m going to have to find another case on the cheap, or figure out a way to mount all of the components into the machine without it being a complete clusterfuck.

But that’s for next time.

Gauntlet: It’s ALIVE!!!

Two weeks ago I received the last of the arcade parts (for now : ), and invited Xiv over to help me calibrate and test out the games.

I first hooked up the Arcade VGA to get the drivers installed, and with the DVI to VGA converter, I was able to see the picture on the VGA Monitor while I did this.  After the drivers were installed, I shut down the PC and hooked the Arcade VGA card up to the J-PAC (JAMMA to USB converter).  I turned on the arcade monitor and fired the PC back up, and we got a whole load of back and forth shifting of video.  We played with the vertical sync and horizontal sync a bit, but I was concerned because there was an amber LED lit up on the J-PAC board, and that it possibly meant that there was an issue.  So we opted instead to plug the card into the VGA monitor I had, and go through control panel “testing” (aka. play a bunch of video games).

Unfortunately, something with the Arcade VGA drivers seemed to be messed up, as any game we’d fire up would be choppy and the audio would be unintelligible.  The previous video card I had in it (an ATI AGP card) worked fine, so I rolled back the system with a system restore, pulled the Arcade VGA card, re-installed the crappier AGP card, and fired the machine up.  No problems.  Not caring to deal with the video sync or video card issues, I tabled those sub-projects and we got our game on.

Fast forward to yesterday. After letting this sit around for a week and a half (and working on some other (neglected) projects), I got back to work on the Gauntlet machine.  I had exchanged a few e-mails with Andy @ Ultimarc, to see if he knew why the drivers on the Arcade VGA had fucked up the performance of my machine, and he wasn’t sure.  He did confirm that the amber LED on the J-PAC board was normal though, so I figured I’d give things another shot. But first I was going to see if I could resolve the sync issues.

I powered on the monitor and the PC, and quickly found out that by playing with the Vertical Sync, Horizontal Sync and Horizontal Position, I could get a somewhat acceptable image, however the image wasn’t staying still.  For example, if dialog box popped up on the black desktop, the screen would start flipping left and right and/or up and down.  I thought this might be because I was still using the AGP video card, so I tossed the Arcade VGA card in.

Unfortunately, this did not solve anything.  I was still having sync issues.  I even tried testing the continuity on the composite video sync wire (coming off of the JAMMA), but that was good. I wasn’t getting system slow down this time (from the video card), but since I couldn’t test it in game, I couldn’t be sure.  I decided to sleep on it and tackle it later.

Today, I got home and looked hard and long at the machine.  I started tracing wires.  Off of the JAMMA board I had a red wire for red signal, blue wire for blue signal, green wire for green signal, a black video ground wire and a brown composite sync wire. There were two unused wires from the video harness, a white wire and a purple wire, for vertical sync and horizontal sync.

I followed Red to red.  Blue went to blue. Green went to green. Black went to black. Brown went to another Molex connector that was not connected to the monitor chassis, even indirectly (this connector was daisy chained off of the Molex connector I was using, so it had RGB and ground going to it as well).  The purple and white wires were hooked up to the Molex I had connected.  It was an A-Ha! moment. So I needed to hook up the Brown composite sync wire to the monitor chassis, but where?  There were four pins on the chassis that would make sense: Positive Horizontal Sync, Positive Vertical Sync, Negative Horizontal Sync or Negative Vertical Sync.

The brown wire was wired to the Positive Veritcal Sync slot on the Molex connector, so I figured that might be it.  I fired up the machine and the sync was still bad (was synced vertically, but flipped horizontally depending on the image displayed).  Stumped, I looked up at the monitor control diagram inside of the monitor and noticed the following passage “WHEN USING COMPOSITE SYNC USE HORIZONTAL SYNC INPUTS”.  OK, but which one?

Since the brown was already wired up to the positive vertical sync, I popped the pin out and moved it to the positive horizontal sync, housed in the same connector.  Fired it up, and the image was stable!  …Except not centered correctly.  The image looked like the offset filter in photoshop.  The edges of the image were in the center of the screen and the center of the image was on the outside corners of the screen. I tried playing with the horizontal and vertical position knobs, but no go.  I couldn’t get the picture to move over that much.  So I turned to the internet.

In a stroke of serendipity, Google led me back to Mr. Bob Roberts (from whom I had purchased a good deal of my replacement parts), in a page where he breaks down monitor sync issues. After a quick scan, it seemed obvious that I needed to hook up the composite scan wire on the JAMMA board to the negative horizontal sync pin on the monitor chassis (for those that are wondering and for the aid of Googlers out there like myself, the Gauntlet cabinet has a Wells Gardner 19k4914 monitor in it).

I hooked the wire up to the pin using a hook-up wire, fired up the PC, and it looked VERY promising.  Shit wasn’t moving around like before.  Once XP was fully booted, I started fiddling with knobs and BINGO!  It works!  Of course I had to fire up a game:

What’s next? Well hook up the rest of the controls to the I-PAC2, and start fastening shit down. Then it will be time to work on the permanent control panel!

T1 Corruption: Soldering, Shrinking and Troubleshooting

It was high time I took a break from working on the Gauntlet machine, so I decided to put forth some effort to finishing up the T1 Corruption.

This has been the most complex circuit I’ve worked with (as far as number of components and number of external controls (Pots & switches), so using Visio, I began to map out how I was going to lay this thing out on a PCB I picked up from Rat Shack (Part No. 276-150, the same board I used for the Triggered Drum Light).

I probably spent two or three hours mapping out how I wanted to lay things out, trying to leave room in case I wanted to piggy back some LEDs onto the board (there are standoffs built into the faceplate of the enclosure I bought for this project, and they are perfectly spaced to fit the pre-drilled holes on the PCB.  The board would then sit right in front of the old 7-segment LED window.  Putting a few LEDs on the board, I could then make a logo up and have a little backlit nameplate, or at least that’s the idea).  Overall I was happy with how things turned out:

(Click Image for Larger View)

As you can see, there is a lot going on here. It wasn’t going to be a quick project to solder up, nevermind the fact that I was manufacturing my own cables to run from the faceplate to the control boxes (that I bought from Ax-Man).

I ended up starting with the cables.  They were going to be about a foot and a half long, with a 1/4″ phono jack on one end (to go into the faceplate), and an RCA jack on the other end (to go into the controller).  I started soldering them up, but quickly realized that the shrink tubing I had bought (on-line) was too narrow to fit the two wires I had soldered up.  Luckily I knew a place locally that sold shrink tubing in longer lengths, and while it probably took me an hour of cutting wire, stripping wire, soldering screwing on connectors and shrinking the tubing, they ended up turning out pretty nice.

I was able to hook them up to my breadboard, and surprisingly they all worked like a charm.

Within the next few days I figured I’d get started in transferring the parts to the PCB.  This was not an easy process.  With over 100 solder points, I was going to be at this for a while.

Over two nights and probably four hours of soldering, I finally finished with the soldering.  I hooked everything up, including the new switches I had bought a day or two prior, and it wasn’t working.  ICs were there, so I hadn’t made that mistake twice.  Everything looked solid, no components were loose.  The only thing left I could think of was the soldering.

I started to check each solder point, making sure nothing was loose, and nothing was shorting.  quickly I found two spots where the leg from a component or a wire was too far over, and probably shorting.  These were kind of long as it is, so I took out the clippers and nipped off the long shorting ends.  Fired it up, and now I was getting sound!

Unfortunately, some of the controls were not working, particularly the two components that were hooked up to the switches, the killswitch and one of the tone knobs.  I had already put in enough time that night, so I called it a day, knowing that was the next thing on my plate.

Today I picked up the PCB, after letting it sit for a day, and started troubleshooting. Using the continuity setting on my multimeter, I went looking for shorts on or near the switches, and couldn’t find any.  Switches seemed to be working fine, so I couldn’t figure out what was the problem.  So I snipped the wires on the switches and using some jumpers, hooked up a switch I had been working with on this project prior to finding these new switches.  And….

“Great”, now the switch that was working, no longer was working. It didn’t take long to figure out why.  One of the wires had wiggled loose from it’s solder point.  Soldered it back up, and the switch worked perfectly.  Resoldered the snipped wires back to the existing switch, and went to work on the other switch (to activate the killswitch).

This one was acting as if it was always on, regardless of what position I had it in.  In the off position, the signal should be routed to the Out Jack, and in the on position, the signal should be routed to the killswitch and then to the Out Jack.  A simple SPDT switch setup.  Hooking up my multimeter, the continuity was acting just like I thought it should, but it wasn’t working right when I had everything running.  I snipped the wires on this one, and used three jumpers, and started playing around how they were hooked up to the switch.

It turns out that this switch is just funky (or at least I’m not familiar with).  Basically the switch will send signal to one out pin, or both out pins, depending on the position.  So I would need the “always on” pin to be to the killswitch, and the “part on” pin to be wired directly to the out.  This was as easy as flipping the outputs around.

I soldered everything back up.  Powered it on, and bingo, everything is working!  Short of the case and running power, this project is getting really close to done.  I enlarged a few of the existing holes on the faceplate and started mounting up the jacks, switches and pots.

It’s looking really sharp.  Next step is working on the lighting that I’m going to install in this box!

P.S. – I’ve also decided on a name for this project. From here on out, it will be the T1 Corruption, in homage to it’s humble beginnings as a T1 Test Unit.

Gauntlet: Wiring and the Frankenputer

After putting it off for a couple weeks, I figured it was high time to start working on the PC I was planning on tossing into this beast.

I had a Athlon 64 XP CPU and motherboard that I salvaged from a PC repair I made a few years back, but I was pretty sure that either the motherboard or the CPU was bad. I cobbled a machine together and got to installing Windows XP.  Everything installed fine, but I was running into some really bizarre issues.  Task manager was showing CPU Usage of 100%, but under Processes, System Idle Process was sitting anywhere between 95 and 100 usage, which would suggest that something just wasn’t right (for the record, these were the same symptoms I was seeing a few years back).

I searched the net for a solution, and the best I could come up with was a guy who suggested it might be a bad motherboard, but I just couldn’t confirm it, since I didn’t have a spare socket 939 motherboard.  Luckily, my buddy Andrew had one laying around that he was willing to sell me for a little more than I wanted to pay (but ultimately cheaper than I was going to find locally, and short of going the Ebay route).  I swapped out the motherboard, and bingo, the Task manager was now showing an accurate CPU usage (and the other idiosyncrasies I was seeing went away).

Now that I had Windows up an running, I tossed the Arcade VGA card into the machine, but nothing was coming out on the small CRT monitor I had.  I tried the projector I had.  No go.  I tried the S-Video out to a TV.  No go.  I pulled the card out, and realized that there was a PAL sticker on the bottom of it.  I then realized I was an idiot, and was trying to send PAL signal to an NTSC TV (which of course makes sense, since the company is based out of the UK).  Still didn’t explain why the VGA port wasn’t working (I didn’t have a DVI device to test the DVI port on).

I then checked the Ultimarc website, and little did I realize, but I wouldn’t be able to use the VGA port with any device other than the arcade monitor.  Crap.  Luckily they sold DVI to VGA adapters and I still needed to order an I-PAC2 from them anyhow, so I ordered it up.

While I was waiting for the rest of my arcade parts to arrive, I decided it was time to get to work cutting wire, stripping wire and crimping on connectors for my temporary control panel.  I had no idea it was going to be such a time intensive task.  After probably 3 hours of cutting, stripping, crimping and labeling (to make it easier to track wires), I had the temp control panel wired up.

Unfortunately, I still had to solder a couple dozen of these wires up to the JAMMA harness I had picked up from Bob Roberts. This took me at least another hour or so.  Basically, over a four day period I spent over 4 hours working on the control panel wiring, but the time I spent now was going to be time saved when I transfer this to it’s permanent control panel.

Now that I had things partially wired up, I couldn’t help testing it out, even if it was just running to my laptop.  Boy was it sweet.

Gauntlet: Control Panel Mock-Up, Take 2

I spent a good deal of time on Thursday and Friday working on the waferboard mock-up of the control panel.  I printed out four sheets of paper, one for every station, and luckily this included the system buttons that arc around the center of the control panel. I then took the printouts and taped them to the waferboard.

I then went to town and started drilling.  I quickly found out why waferboard was a poor choice.  First off, even with a good bit and a steady hand, the hole saw wandered quite a bit while drilling through the irregular waferboard. After the first hole, I used a center punch to cut down on drifting, but even that was only partially effective.  Secondly, drilling waferboard is messier than normal particle board, as the backside tends to “explode” as the hole saw pops through the backside of the board.

I went through it though, and tossed buttons onto one station and realized I had a few issues.  Because of the wandering bit, some of the buttons were way too close to each other.  This was going to be basically unusable as a template.  Additionally, the seventh button (where the pinky would go) was way too high, leaving the feel of the layout uncomfortable.  So I decided I was going to have to redo it, but this time I’d do it right.

I was sick over the weekend, but by Monday had felt good enough to get back to work. I went and picked up a 4′x4′ sheet of 1/4″ hardboard.  This was still going to be messy, but the consistency would be much more desirable.  Plus, with a 4×4 sheet, I had enough board to make 4 templates, if the next one didn’t satisfy me.

I laid out the updated control panel configuration, and started drilling. And drilling.  And drilling.  I seriously was drilling 1 1/8″ holes for what seemed like 2 hours.  I think I need a better hole saw bit.

I also fastened a board near the bottom edge of the mock up, to add support, as well as to serve as an indicator on how close to the front of the cabinet the controls were coming (in case I felt like moving things around a bit).  I then began to attach the controls I had recently received from Bob Roberts to the mock panel.  This took much longer than I thought, partially because I put half of the buttons on backwards (so the switch connectors would face each other, making hook up a difficult proposition).

All in all, I’m happy with the layout, however after a bit of research, I might adjust the button layout on the red and green stations from an arced layout to an isosceles triangle formation, and move the blue and yellow stations down just a hair (to give a little more elbow space).  I’m supposed to receive the rest of my parts (wiring and I-PAC) any day now, so I’ll hook stuff up and invite some folks over to test this layout out.  In the meantime, here’s a picture of the CPO I received from Arcade Overlays:

Looks fantastic!

Gauntlet: Audio Test

I’m somewhat in a hold pattern right now as I wait on more parts (that and the Frankenputer I’ve built has a shit mobo in it, thus I need to find a replacement), so I decided I would start snipping some wires and see if I could get the stock speakers (and audio amp) working.

Luckily, there is a site called The Gauntlet Hackers, which has a bunch of information on the arcade machines, including the pinouts for all of the boards in the machine (mainboard, power supply and audio amp).  I printed them out and started snipping.  Using some leftover parts and a kludge of audio adapters, I was able to get a small MP3 player running through the speakers.

Not too bad eh?  Both speakers work, so I’ll have full stereo sound (I made sure to label which is left and which is right, to save me hassle down the road).  However I still have to figure out how I want to permanently wire the audio up on this, but my first impulse is just to use RCA jacks and run a standard 3.5mm to dual RCA cable from the PC to the cabinet.  I guess we’ll see what I decide on.

Gauntlet: Control Panel Mock-Up

Earlier this week I received my shipment from Arcade Overlays.   The CPO from Arcade Overlays is better (and thicker) than I had expected, but that’s a good thing.  I would highly recommend them for anyone building or refurbishing an arcade machine.

Since I had the overlay and was waiting on controls, I figured I’d start working on a mockup of the control panel.  My plan is to install the controls into a mockup, making sure everything fits right and is ergonomically pleasing.  Assuming that works, I could then use the mockup as a template for the real thing.

I went to the local hardware store and bought a 2×4 sheet of 3/4″ plywood (sanded, the nice stuff) and a 2×4 sheet of 1/4″ particle board.  Together with a set of new jigsaw blades, I spent less than $15.

I took the overlay, laid it flat on the particle board, and traced the outline.  I then brought it outside and used the jigsaw to cut the outline.  It turned out pretty well aside from the one part I had to freehand (since I forgot to lay a straight edge down for it, but I figure it’s a template and not a big deal.

Now I’m just waiting on my order from Bob Roberts, and once they arrive my next task will be drilling out holes for the controls.

Gauntlet: Control Layout and Another Tweak Attempt

Tonight, Xiv and I had a pow-wow to discuss control panel layout and we came to a consensus on what made sense.  Four stations, Red (Player 1 in a four player game), Blue (Player 2 in a four player game, Player 1 in a two player game), Yellow (Player 3 in a four player game, Player 2 in a two player game) and Green (Player 4 in a four player game).  Since there are fewer four player games out there, and few, if any require more than three buttons, both the Red and Green stations will use three buttons (plus a fourth start button located on the lower control panel).  Since I want this to support MAME as well as NES, SNES, Genesis and Sega Master System, I went with the Blue and Yellow stations having seven buttons (eight if you include the start button).  This would fully support the SNES layout of A, B, X, Y, Select, Start and the two shoulder buttons, as well as just about any arcade fighter out there (I’m thinking Street Fighter II and Mortal Kombat).

While Xiv was over, we also gave another shot at adjusting the Horizontal Width Coil.  I had the idea of whittling down a chopstick, pressing it into the hex nut on the coil and trying to turn it that way.  This worked well, however we saw no improvement.  Either the hex nut is hitting resistance (which means I’ll need to drop some cash for the adjustment tool) or I’ve got bad caps (ugh).  It’s not bad enough to make me obsess over it, but I’ll have to fix it eventually.

In the meantime, I’m just waiting on parts.  Probably will be like this for a week or so.

Gauntlet: Adjustments and Parts Begin To Arrive

On Thursday, Kenney was over and we started poking around the machine seeing what the various knobs did.  Found out that there is one pot on the audio amp that is, not surprisingly, the volume control.  I haven’t been able to test the speakers yet, but turning the volume up makes a louder popping noise when the machine is turned on, so I figure that is a good sign.  Once I figure out what wires are the line-in, I’ll give it a shot.

We then turned our attention to the dozen-plus knobs on the arcade monitor.

That picture only shows 9 of the knobs (6 white knobs on main board, a blue knob on the small daughter board to the right of the white knobs and two white knobs that are out of focus in the foreground), but you get the idea.  We’ve got knobs for the following controls: Red Cutoff, Green Cutoff, Blue Cutoff, Green Drive, Red Drive (but no Blue Drive), Black Level, Vertical Hold, Horizontal Hold, Horizontal Centering, Vertical Damping, Vertical Size, Vertical Raster Position, Focus & Screen.  Noticeably missing is Horizontal Size.  We adjusted the monitor so the garbled characters that were coming up on boot-up at least looked like what we thought they should look like, but we couldn’t get the Horizontal Size adjusted, as there was no pot for this.

I then noticed a diagram of the controls on the side of the screen, amongst other “HIGH VOLTAGE” warnings:

So instead of a Horizontal Size knob, we had a Horizontal Width Coil.  Great.  How the fuck is that supposed to be adjusted.  Hell, can it be adjusted?  Neither of us were daring enough to stick a piece of metal with a handle down into it, so we went inside and played some NBA Jam.

The next day (Today/Friday) I started checking on-line, and found out there is a tool for this, basically a plastic hex wrench (so you won’t shock the shit out of yourself while adjusting it).  Luckily you could adjust it with a regular hex wrench, you just need to turn off the machine to adjust it.

I went out to the garage, powered the machine on and marked where the image was on the screen with blue tape and turned off the machine.  I twisted the small hex screw clockwise and turned the machine on.  The image was now even narrower.  I powered the machine off again, and turned the hux screw counterclockwise a bit.  I repeated this a few times, but it seems the largest I could get the image was back to the original tape marks.  I’m guessing either it’s too cold out (it is unseasonably cold in Minnesota right now), the image has too much black on it (I’ve noticed that the pixels on tube displays get wider when displaying white, and narrower when displaying black) or I need to get a cap kit and re-cap the monitor.  Since I’m getting a good enough image, I’m not going to worry about that for now.  I’ll cross that path down the road.

Today I also received my parts from Ultimarc, which means I can start working on getting the MAME PC up and running.  The MAME PC was cobbled together from parts I had sitting around my basement.  Unfortunately, I found out that I had one bad power supply in the basement, and it seems like either the motherboard or the CPU I picked out is fucked up too, as the XP install locked up at two separate points, and the machine won’t properly shut-down (sits at the Shutting Down… screen forever).  Luckily I have another motherboard/CPU combo downstairs, as well as a working power supply, so I will need to see if I can get those to work together.

That will be my project while I wait for the Bob Roberts and Arcade Overlays orders to arrive.

Gauntlet: Bringing It Home & Ordering Parts

While I was waiting for a chance to pick up the machine, I decided I would order up some parts. I knew I was going to need a JAMMA adapter and a VGA card that could deliver signal to the JAMMA card at the right frequencies and resolutions. So I ordered those up from ultimarc.com as well as some mounting parts for the JAMMA adapter.

Today I arranged to pick up the machine from the guy. Me and My dad drove out with his covered trailer to the north side of White Bear Lake, and got the machine loaded into the trailer, but had to lay it on it’s back (was about 2 or 3 inches too tall). Got it back to my house and pulled it into my garage on a hand truck. I would guess that the machine weighs about 200 pounds, which is pretty amazing considering how hollow it is.

Now with the machine at my house, it gave me a good chance to look everything over.  This is when I realized that my cabinet is not a JAMMA cabinet.  The JAMMA standard wasn’t created until 1985, the same year this cabinet was manufactured.  I had went ahead with the JAMMA adapter purchase because I was basing a lot of this off of a guy named Mike who had converted a Gauntlet II machine into a MAME machine, not realizing that JAMMA wasn’t introduced until 1985, and that his machine may have been converted to JAMMA prior to his purchase of the machine. Regardless, I am going to need to create a JAMMA harness for this machine in order to get the JAMMA adapter working (and in particular, the stock cabinet monitor).  Since I was planning on replacing all of the joysticks and buttons (including adding buttons) I placed an order with Bob Roberts, and one of his Lagniappe (aka. Free Stuff) that he offers with orders of a certain price, is a JAMMA connector.  It was serendipity.

Going back to those controls, the ones that are currently on the machine are in rough shape, but appear to be functional.  The downside is that they are old, and use larger leaf switches, rather than smaller microswitches.  It was a no-brainer to upgrade the switches, if only for the ability to pack them in tighter than the leaf switches.

Since I am adding buttons, I decided I’m also going to adjust how they are laid out.  It’s obvious that Gauntlet is an older machine since the two buttons are located to the left of each joystick, rather than the now-standard joystick/d-pad on the left and buttons on the right layout.  Moving these buttons while maintaining the original artwork would be basically impossible.  Luckily, Mike (the guy who did the Gauntlet II conversion) also laid out where he got replacement Gauntlet graphics from, a place called Arcade Overlays. On their product pages I noticed that they offered to produce the art at non-standard sizes, so I hoped that they were printing these at time of order, and that I might be able to get the Gauntlet graphics customized.

The standard Gauntlet Control Panel Overlay (CPO) has markings where the buttons and joystick go. I would prefer that these weren’t printed and just left a solid color so I could place the buttons and joystick wherever I wanted without it looking like a giant kludge.  I e-mailed them, and as sure as shit, they’d be able to nix those markings for a small extra charge.  I jumped all over that.

Now I’ve got to wait for parts to arrive.

Gauntlet: A New Project

Well, I’ve done it.

After wanting an arcade video game machine for years, I finally broke down and bought one.  I had been trolling Craigslist for a week or so and found a Mortal Kombat arcade machine that was in good shape, but the board didn’t work.  I called the guy up, and unfortunately, it had sold (the ad just hadn’t been removed).  So I kept on looking.

I got home late last night, and checked Craigslist, and I saw what I really wanted.  Someone was selling a Gauntlet arcade machine.  The board didn’t work, but that was fine with me, as I didn’t want to gut a perfectly working machine (it’s similar to how I feel about people using working, non-scratched, vinyl albums for their craft projects.  DON’T DO IT). The monitor worked and the cabinet was a little beat up, but not so much where I couldn’t bring it back to it’s former glory.

I called the guy early this morning and arranged to go have a look at it.  It was awesome.  The guy runs a business where he spiffs up old machines and re-sells them.  This one was going to be too expensive for him (a new board plus what he paid for the cabinet was going to be about the same as he could sell it for), so he just wanted to get rid of it.  I bought it, straight cash homey, and let him know I’d be back later in the week to pick it up.

Eventually I’m going to gut the boards, replace all of the controls, add more buttons and turn this into a four-player MAME cabinet.

This is going to be awesome.

T1 Corruption: Breadboarding and Demo

Since it has been a while since I put anything on the breadboard, I figured it wouldn’t hurt to start working on the T1 Corruption. I found some time, and started tossing parts onto the board. I was working off of this schematic for the “Weird Sound Generator”, and unfortunately I wasn’t totally familiar with this style of schematic, but I worked through it, until I had something that seemed accurate.

I had to solder up the potentiometers, since none of them were using the third terminal. Fortunately for me, all of them double back on themselves to the middle terminal, so it was a simple soldering job.  However, when I turned the unit on, I got sound, but half of the potentiometers didn’t work, and it just didn’t sound like the samples I had seen on-line.  Since I had already been working on this for a while, I decided to set it aside and come back to it at a later point.

So a few days passed and I started troubleshooting.  After making sure none of the component’s leads were touching each other creating a short, I started comparing my layout to the schematic, and realized that A) my diode was reversed and B) a couple of my pots were wired to the board in reverse.  I fixed these, and power the thing on.  I had sound!

So the next step will be getting this on a PCB and figuring out how I’m going to stuff this into the old T1 Test unit.

T1 Corruption: What The Hell Am I Doing?

I have known for a while now that once I finished The Mole, I would begin working on A Weird Sound Generator.  I had found the schematic when I was looking for projects to make with the ICs that I had on-hand, and it seemed like a fun project.  The nice thing is that I could concentrate more on the superficial stuff (crazy case and controls), rather than the actual schematic and electronics behind the project.

I ordered the parts for this back in February, when I ordered parts for the Triggered Drum Light, but since I only have one breadboard, it was going to be a bit until I could get to it.  Until then, I decided I was just going to keep my eyes open for weird and unusual parts that I could slap onto this thing.

I knew that the schematic called for several 1MOhm potentiometers, and one day when I was in Ax-Man, I spotted these groovy pots that were in enclosures and wired up to RCA jacks.  I figured these would be perfect as the main controls for this project.

Now I just needed a box to house everything.

While I was in Florida on vacation, me and the wife went to several Flea Markets, and it was in the last one we visited, in Saint Augustine, FL, that I found the box I was looking for.  It was an old case for testing T1 lines, made by Western Electric, the hardware manufacturing arm of Ma Bell.  I dickered with the guy selling it (he wanted $20) and bought it for $5.

This is certainly going to be an interesting project.

The Mole: Finished!

So there are a few things I need/want to do to get The Mole wrapped up. I need to sand the case, getting rid of the flaws in the surface. I need to prime it, paint it, apply decals and then clear coat it.

Since I have never done anything like this before (I made a couple model cars as a kid, but I’ll be honest, my paint jobs sucked), so I started checking the net for ideas on how to do this. I found a giant thread of completed DIY stompbox project pictures at http://www.diystompboxes.com, and in this thread, I found a post by a fellow that laid out his process.  I thought his results were nice, so I went with it.

1) Sand the enclosure starting with 150 grit. Continue sanding with finer and finer grit. Then sand with steelwool going from coarse to fine.

I cheated a bit here.  I sanded until the case was shiny, and skipped the steel wool. Basically once all the imperfections were worked out, it was good enough for me.

2) Wash box with water and dish soap.

Having worked in the paint department at a hardware store as a teenager, I knew that getting rid of the debris on the working surface was important, so I made sure to do this step.

3) A shot of primer (using Rustoleum). Let dry overnight.

This was a no-brainer. Some paints may have a tough time adhering to metal, so a metal primer makes total sense.

4) Apply spray paint (mostly have been using Rustoleum – have also tried automotive spraypaint from the automotive aisle which works good, but pricey and Testors model spraypaint). Spray once in the morning before work and once in the evening. Typically about 4 coats. Just until the box has good coverage, watching specifically for the edges.

I knew I wanted to use a silver paint with a metal fleck in it, and I knew I could find something that fit that role from Testors. I ended up getting a can of Testors “Diamond Dust” One-Coat Lacquer (1830M) from a local hobby shop.

Here’s where I should warn that I absolutely suck as spray painting shit.  Rather than sticking with thin coats, I second-guessed my approach and ended up overspraying a bit (the metal fleck looked uneven, which led to overspray). So after a few coats, the bottoms of the sides of the enclosure were thicker than I wanted as the paint pooled there.  I let it dry for a few days, sanded it down, and resprayed.  It’s still thicker than I’d like, but much better than it was prior to the sanding.

5) Once happy with paint, let dry for 3 days before applying clearcoat.

This is the hardest step, but it’s the most important.

6) Once I’m happy with the design in Photoshop and I know it will line up with the holes, print off waterslide decal (been using Testors clear decals). I usually do this during the 3 days I’m waiting for the box to fully dry.

This was nice, as it gave me something to do while I was waiting for the paint to dry. I couldn’t find the laserjet version of the Testors decal paper at the local hobby shop (only the inkjet version), but I found another place locally (a model train store) that carried laserjet decal paper under a different brand name (Experts-Choice).

The paper wasn’t cheap ($6.95 plus tax for three 8 1/2″x 11″ sheets), so I was definitely in “measure twice, cut once” mode.  I must have printed 10-20 test prints on regular paper to make sure everything was perfect, but I finally decided on a finished decal design for the enclosure.

(Click image for larger view)

7) Clearcoat decal paper with 3-4 coats.

I knew I was going to be able to skip this step.  The inkjet decal paper needs this clearcoat to ensure that the ink doesn’t run.  The laser decal paper doesn’t have the same issues, however I did read that you can clearcoat the laser paper, if you want, to give the decal a little more rigidity when applying it, but like I said, I skipped this.

8 ) Apply decal. Once dry, apply decal softener. Then once dry again, cut out holes and give it some more decal softener around the holes.

Since I had never done this before, and since I had printed out an entire sheet with copies of The Mole graphics to allow for errors (there was enough space for four copies of the decals), I decided to do a test run on one of the extra joiner plates.  I followed the instructions on the decal paper packaging to apply the decal, and to my surprise, it went on like butter.  The key is being gentle, as the decal it very delicate once you’ve got it in the water.

Without wasting time, I worked on getting the decals applied to the enclosure.  This wasn’t as easy.  The front face wet on without a hitch, however the back panel (power, on/off, out) got wrinkled in on itself, and after working with it for a minute or two, failing to unfold it, I gave up and grabbed one of the extras that I printed.  In hindsight, those duplicates I printed were well worth it.  I was able to get the backplate on on my second try.

I let it dry and cut out the holes. I then brushed on the decal softener, and much like waiting for paint to dry, this was tough waiting for.  Once the softener goes on, you can touch the box, at all. If you do, you risk damaging the decal beyond repair, and would have to sand the case down and start back at the paint steps. I made sure to wait 24 hours before handling the box, and the waiting paid off, as the decal looked sharp!

9) Clearcoat box. Typically 6 coats. Wet sand (under a running tap) with 2000 grit automotive sandpaper after the first 3 coats. Nothing the final 3 coats.

I did at least 6 coats, maybe more, but I was fighting a dust problem.  I’d spray it (using Testors high-gloss clear coat), and while it was drying, a piece of dirt or dust would inevitably end up on the face of the box.  So I’d sand, and respray, over an over.  It finally got to a point where none of the flecks on the surface were noticeable enough for me to OCD over.  The clear coat process was the slowest taking at least a week, as the Testors high-gloss was agonizingly slow drying.

10) After it’s dry (typically leave it overnight), grab my “Mother’s Carwax” and wax and buff the box.

I skipped this.  In hindsight, I probably shouldn’t have, but I guess you live and learn.

11) Grab a drink and enjoy!

This was the easiest step, and I certainly didn’t skip it.

Final notes:

I made a big mistake by switching out a part so close to finish.  While on a regular trip to Ax-Man, I found a momentary switch that was bigger and sturdier than the tiny one I had purchased from allelectronics.com. I bought it and instantly worked it into the project.  However, I neglected to move it over enough from the side of the enclosure, so in order to fasten it to the face, I had to spin the switch, leaving the bolt on the backside butted up against the side of the enclosure.  Luckily this worked out for me.  An additional error was made with regards to this switch, as I failed to move the label for the switch on the decal, so with the bigger hole, most of the “KILL” label is obscured. So, if you’re going to add something late in the game, make sure you measure EVERYTHING it will effect, or else you’ll end up kicking yourself.  I got lucky, and things worked out, but next time I might not be so lucky.

Additionally, I wish I would have let this dry for a lot longer before assembling.  If I use similar paint in the future, I’ll probably let it dry for a week or two before assembling.  Right now I’ve already put a couple dings in the paint since it was so soft/not completely cured.  Again, live and learn!

And here’s a video of The Mole in action:

Triggered Drum Light: Transfer to PCB and Initial Casing

Much like The Mole, I wanted a detailed diagram of this drum light’s board layout before I started soldering (I still consider myself a newb, and a schematic alone wasn’t going to be enough for me.  So much like The Mole, I started laying things out in Visio.

My original intention was to use the other board that came in the package for The Mole (it came as two 1 3/4″x1 3/4″ boards with a perforation in the middle), but I couldn’t get everything to fit on the board without having some janky in-line components.  Being an impatient guy and not wanting to wait for an on-line PCB order to arrive, I ran up to Rat Shack and bought a slightly larger board measuring 1 7/8″x2 7/8″ (Part No. 276-150).  It had plenty of buses for me to run the project on, the only unfortunate thing is that I still only needed half of this board.  Luckily it’s still small enough to fit in a lot of smaller enclosures.

(Click Image for Larger View)

So I had a layout made, it was now time to get soldering.

I spent about 3 hours meticulously soldering part after part onto the PCB, stopping a few times to clean up solder messes I had made.  When it was done, I hooked up power, hooked up the trigger, switched the power on…

And there was nothing.

I started pouring over every solder point, making sure all components were soldered in nice and good and that my solder sloppiness didn’t create a short. Everything looked good.  Swapped out 1/4″ cable on the trigger.  Nothing. Checked the battery and there was plenty of juice.  Started looking at parts again, and had a “DUH” moment. I forgot to put the 555 IC into the socket I had soldered into the board.  Put the chip in, and what do you know, it worked!

Since I wanted at least a temporary housing for this, when I was at Rat Shack I also picked up a plastic enclosure.  I drilled up some holes and put it in the box.

Here’s another test of the Light, this time with a rundown of controls.

Next step will be getting this mounted to the drum.

Triggered Drum Light: Breadboarding and Testing.

Once I had the parts, and once I could clear The Mole off the breadboard, I got started on prototyping the Triggered Drum Light.

Since the schematic was fairly simple I breezed through things, using jumper wires to hook up the LED, which was actually the trickiest part of the whole project, since the contact pads on the light were so irregular.

As you can see, things worked awesome (aside from me having The Mole on my mind and calling it a “Light Sensitive Drum Trigger”, granted that would be pretty cool too). This is using a small piezo element as a trigger (taped to the drum head), but I was able to plug in a Roland PD-6 drum pad and that worked just as well.  There are two potentiometers on this, one for sensitivity and one for pulse length.  The pulse length works great, but I was having a little difficulty with sensitivity, as anything less than “most sensitive” yielded sporadic results.  I left it in anyway, as I didn’t know how it would perform with the kick trigger, and it would be easier to take it out down the road rather than add it back in.

Next step is working on the board layout and getting this thing soldered to a PCB.

The Mole: Enclosure Prep

I placed my latest parts order, and promptly began working on the enclosure I purchased.  It’s a Hammond 1590B, which is about the same size as a traditional guitar stompbox.  I knew the board was small, so fitting that in would be easy, however, all of the jacks, sensors, switches and pots I was tossing into this made it a logistical nightmare.

I got to work in photoshop, lining up parts and seeing what would fit, how they would fit and if they would clear the edges sides and “screw holes” on the box. I would make one layout and then within an hour or two, I’d find a flaw in the placement of one of the components.

This went on for days. I eventually decided I would make a mock up, using some hardboard that I had laying around in the garage.  The only problem with that is the hardboard is much thicker than the aluminum enclosure, so I wasn’t able to fasten the parts onto the board.

I then figured I would just pick-up some joiner plates (typically used in house framing).  Even though they had holes in them for nails, they’re cheap enough where I could test several layout ideas, to both check if the parts all fit, and to see if they are laid out in a manner that made it easy to use the device.

I finally came to a conclusion on how I was going to lay things out, so I printed out a template on my printer, and used glue sticks (the kind kids or crafters might use) to adhere the template to the enclosure.

(Click image for larger view)

I then used a center punch to mark the centers of the holes so my drill bit wouldn’t wander. Using a step drill bit, I carefully began to drill the holes.  The first thing I noticed was how much softer the aluminum case was compared to the steel joiner plates. I ended up over-drilling one of the holes, but luckily that was a hole that was a little tight anyway, and the mounting bolts would cover the gap.

I just had to put the thing together and see how it looked/felt, and honestly, it was awesome.

Next step is finishing the enclosure.

Triggered Drum Light: Research and Purchasing

Kenney and I have been kicking around the idea of setting up a light system in his kick drum for a while now, with the original idea being that we could mount an LED panel in the kick drum and run a DMX line off of Arkaos and control the light from there.  He’s using a drum trigger pedal, so the actual kick drum housing would be just for show.

Unfortunately, my calculations based on the throw distance and the angles on the available LED panels meant that this wasn’t going to be a doable project, as the light wouldn’t fill the entire face of the drum, nevermind the cost of the LED panel and a DMX controller.

I got the idea that I could maybe just use a single high-power LED or a series of lower powered LEDs in the drum, and along with a piezo trigger, run a lower-tech version of what we wanted, at a fraction of the price.

Rather than planning everything out on my own, I began scouring the net to see if someone else had already done this, and sure enough, I found a guy that had done this, and even had provided a schematic to a novice like myself (you need to create an account to view the schematic).

The hardest part to find was the 3W Luxeon III LED, but luckily I was able to pick it up from allelectronics.com for $5.  While I was at it I grabbed the rest of the parts I needed from either there or from Mouser.com.

Now I just need to wait for the parts to arrive.