Day 187

One thing I'd realized, is that with the power strip in the back the rocker switch that controls the main power is unreachable. This meant that while I could shut down the mini tower, the speakers, the monitor and the marquee light were still lit. I looked at the extension cords that were used for Christmas lights that had the foot switch, but those were two-prong outlets and all the equipment were three pronged.  So I found an extension cord at Fry's with a rocker switch near the outlets and I mounted it in one of the gun hardware holes in the front panel. It looks nasty now, but that will change when I pretty up the cabinet.

Now to the audio switch. Opening up the switch box, I found that there really wasn't a way to attach it to the left-hand side with the way it was configured.

So I thought, maybe the upper speaker grill would be large enough to reach through.

Came to find out that the rocker switch that controlled the speaker and headphone audio was the same size as the grill slots. So I opened up the marquee and attached the audio switch enough so it wouldn't slide around. Now I can reach up with my finger into the grill and press the switch.




Here's a small demonstration of the cabinet startup:

Day 176

Today I finally got the second side background done. I think I'll make a mental note to *NOT* ever mess around with contact paper again. I'd also started working on the Space Invader sprites and put a few of them up to get me started.

I also got my audio switch in the mail the other day. Now I can mount this somewhere and I can switch from the cabinet speakers to headphones. The problem is, where. I don't want to drill any new holes and I want the switch to be reachable without any bending or stretching. The only logical place would be one of the two holes in the front panel where the gun hardware used to be mounted. I'm also looking into the possibility of putting in a USB hub in the other panel hole so I can plug a flash drive in (or perhaps a 2nd-player joystick). But considering the PC is located where the coin box used to be, that may be a moot point. Oh well, I'll blow up that bridge when I come to it.

I'm still working on the marquee art and I'm not quite happy with the font I used, so I went to 1001freefonts.com to get something a little more appropriate. The next step is to get the acrylic sheeting from Home Depot and get that prepped and mounted so the cabinet doesn't look so ghetto.

The hard part is getting the arcade controls. My wife isn't too thrilled with the idea of spending a lot of bucks on that, so I'm going to keep my eyes out for a pre-made panel with a USB connector for a price that won't make her give me stink-eye about buying it.

One other thing I need is power control. I have a power strip which provides power to everything inside the cabinet, but it's difficult to reach. I need to see if there's a power strip with a separate rocker switch that I can mount in the recessed part of the top of the cabinet where the old switch now resides. Kind of like those extension cords for Christmas trees with the foot button. I know I could wire the current rocker switch up to the power strip but I don't know how and finding tutorials on that are proving difficult.

Day 159

Found a good Jukebox program called DWJukebox. Since I'm running low on hard drive space, I copied our music from the server onto a DVD and left it in the drive. The program has an unattended radio feature and I haven't explored that yet, but I do like the interface.

Yesterday was a test in patience as I started to work on the side art. I got two rolls of black contact paper and I worked on the side that would normally faced the wall, in case I really borked it up. But it was quite forgiving and didn't look too bad once I finished it. I'll post pictures once I've gotten both sides done. I decided to do the artwork based on this idea I found at the arcadecontrols website (http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=102621.0).

I also decided on a name for the cabinet. Whilest Googling for information on what other people did for side art, I kept seeing that same phrase: "I want my quarters back". So I decided to call it, Quartersback Arcade. At least it'll do until I come up with something a little more catchy.