Jimmy's Arcade! Old School Style!
I finally made the keyboard drawer today. Since the monitor stand got in the way, I decided to put my drawer sliders on their own 2X2. This involved the least amount of cutting and actually made the drawer look quite good. I just used nails and some wood glue to hold it together. Since people will be looking inside the drawer, I didn't want to have metal brackets and stuff holding it together. I put the handle on the front of the drawer but I have yet to secure the front of the drawer on the rest of the drawer. I'm not quite sure how I'm going to do that. I would like to be able to make the front fold down, but that might be out of the question due to drawer location, which was due to the stupid monitor stand. Anyway, all I really need to do beside secure the drawer front is sand a little off of the 2X2's that the sliders are mounted to. This should allow the drawer to slide almost effortlessly.
Today I screwed on the speaker grills. I wasn't too sure if I was going to use them because you could sort of see right thru them, but I do like how they look and if the see-thruness really bothers me I can always get some really black mesh to block the view of the square speakers that lie beyond.
I soldered up the coin slot to the 9-pin connector. Well, actually I used those crimp on ones and I was quite disappointed. Next time, I'll be using the soldering ones once again. But the coin slots do work. I tested them out and everything looks good. I'll have to figure out some way to make the wire look a little neater, but that's miniscule stuff.
Today I bought serial connector ends that I will use to connect the coin mech to the IPac keyboard emulator. I could just wire it straight in, but if ever want to take the control panel off, it would be a huge hassle. This way I will just plug the coin mech into the back of the control panel which will be connected to the IPac. I'm used to soldering connector ends, but the ones I bought are crimp-able. I don't know what I use to crimp them, but I may have to find out. If you've ever tried to solder your own 9 pin, or 25 pin connectors it's a real hassle. I usually wind up melting some of the black plastic and that always smells good.
I finally cut what I thought was going to be the last few pieces today. First I cut out the front of The Arcade where the coin mech will go. I used the circular saw for the sides and a jigsaw for the inner hole for the coin mech to fit. The coin mech itself has rounded edged that I measured to be 1.5 inched in diameter. The coin mech fit perfectly! Once I screwed the wood and mech into place, The Arcade is looking wonderful! The second piece I cut was for the base of the keyboard drawer. I designed the drawer to big quite big so I could throw extra junk in it if I needed to. Unfortunately, Since I had to reposition the TV stand, the drawer does not fit now. The end of the drawer hits the first 2X2's I glued into place for the TV. Since I can't take those 2X2's out (I glued them in there and wood glue create a bond stronger than the wood itself) I will either have to make the drawer not as deep and buy new sliders for it, or make the drawer not as wide and mount it on 2X2's also so the drawer will no longer hit the 2X2's that used to support the TV. I haven't decided which option yet to take. Sometimes I just don't think ahead enough.
The PC came today. Everything looked great expect for the missing processor. Of course this happens to be the most important component of a PC. I called TigerDirect and asked them what was up. Now I have to wait for an investigation to take place and call them back on Tuesday. I will not except "tough luck" as answer. And I will blast the company if they do not make good. I've never had a problem ordering from there before. Their prices are great and usually their service is too. Let's hope they can still keep me as their customer.
I ordered the arcade PC today. I figured I'd go high-end just in case I ever wanted to use it for something else. It's a 3.0 GHz P4 with 800MHz FSB motherboard. We're talking uber fast here! Also I decided to go with 512 Mb of DDR RAM and a Radeon 9200 video card. I bought a cheap-o case that came with a free 425W power supply. I don't care about the looks since you won't be able to see it anyway. All together it only cost me $700! Quite a steal I believe. It should be here the 8th of April so I'll be able to test drive the arcade then! Oh yeah!
Things have been going pretty well. I've added the monitor stand and test fitted the 27" TM I'm using as a monitor. The first time I got the stand a bit too low. Lucky for me, I already glued and screwed in the 2X2 supports for the stand. So, I just added another 2X2 on top of the old one and re-secured the TV stand. It's not the ideal way of doing, but I figure it can't hurt anything. No one sees the inside anyway. Anyway, with the extra 1.5" adjustment, the TV looks great! So far I haven't been able to test it due to the fact that my current video card likes to malfunction when I'm using the S-Video output and Microsoft Windows boots up. Microsoft Windows seems to have issues with NVidia cards so I'm thinking that my arcade PC will be using a Radeon instead. Despite my devotion to NVidia who took over the glorified Voodoo FX cards that I absolutely loved. Never had a problem with one. But, I guess the wonderful days of Voodoo are now over and so is my devotion to their appropriator.
I hear you want to see how my new arcade building project is going. Well my friend, you've come to the right place. This should keep you up to date!
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