With summer officially starting today I got a chance to get the main part of the arcade project underway. First a quick update on what I’ve done since I last wrote about this project. Over spring break I built a mock-up of the control panel:
[singlepic=8170,320,240,,center]
I’m glad that I took the time to do this I learned a lot about how to do the wiring and also about some modifications I’ll have to make on the real panel.
The wiring below the panel:
[singlepic=8171,320,240,,center]
I also got it hooked up to the PC for testing and everything seemed to work great. I’ve also finished my layout. I’m basing my plans on another set, but the space I have is about 1/4 of the one I’m using as my model, so really I guess I’m starting from scratch. Unfortunately, it wasn’t as easy as just scaling everything down, since the moniter, PC, and control panel needed to be the same size. Here’s what (I hope) the final thing will look like.
As you can see above, I’ve changed the control panel from a one-player setup to two-player. I was a bit concerned that two-player would be too cramped, but I’m pretty happy with the mock-up I did. The final product will also be about 2-4 inches shorter than this picture. The spaces inside from the top down are: marquee, monitor, control panel with CPU behind, speakers and (someday coin door), the bottom two will be open for cabinet space/storage.
That’s a lot of wires, good thing you know what you’re doing!