(10-30-2012) More work on the arcade cabinet

Tonight Jody and I worked on the arcade cabinet.  I bought a new marquee light and a smart power strip to turn on/off the machine with a single button.  We worked out an idea for how the control panel will be laid out and did a small amount of work on it and we sanded a lot (Jody did most of this) on the outside of the machine.  It's nasty work, but it's really shaping up and hopefully it will be ready for paint and graphics soon.

I still need to figure out where to put all of the controls on the panel, but it's coming along and I can't wait to get it all wired up and working.

(10-17-2012) Arcade controls

Last night I worked on the arcade control panel a little bit.  I cut a piece of metal to weld over the original control panel and got it to fit fairly well.  I'm not sure about placement of the controls, but at least the control panel has a fresh top to be welded on and allow for a smooth surface.  It's hard to figure out placement for 20 buttons, 2 joysticks, a trackball and a spinner control on one small area.

(10-13-2012) Just working on stuff...

Flash, Austin and I hung out in the shop and just worked on whatever seemed like it needed attention.  We worked on a kart motor for a while, started and checked out some cars (70 Chevy truck, a Porsche 914 and a 2000 Beetle), put new rear suspension on my GTi (it's much better!), reinstalled the interior in my GTi, worked on the MAME cabinet some (paint tests and some sanding of the cabinet) and played a bit of Virtua Racing as well.

(10-10-2012) MAME machine arrives

Here's a picture of the new cabinet for the MAME machine.  It's an old Zaxxon cabinet that's in pretty rough shape (left out in the rain for too long), but I think it will make a good cabinet for a MAME machine.  Some sanding and paint should do wonders for how it looks, maybe...

(10-09-2012) Two Player Virtua Racing Lives!! ...again...

It's alive, again!!  It's still a mess, but both sides of the machine are back up and running.  I will finish up the mounting of boards and cleaning up the interior of the machine and we will back to racing again.  Can't wait to play some head to head VR again.

...and later on that evening the Etchison boys came over to test it out.  Shannon got a bit over excited and did a brake check.  Or is that break check?  A little bit of cabinet work needs to be done, but this cabinet has always been rough and needed some help.  I hope Shannon doesn't feel bad about the problem, it could haven happened to anyone playing the game.

 

Also, Shannon said I could have this old empty arcade cabinet he has to turn into a MAME machine.  The PC is almost ready, but the cabinet and control panel will need lots of work.  Can't wait to get started on it.

(10-06-2012) Blondie repair

Blondie, my trusty old VW GTI, has been giving me some problems for the past month or so and today I think I finally figured it out.  Last weekend, I replaced the mass air flow sensor, but it didn't help.  The error code reported by the ECU was a P1136 - which says that the fuel mixture is too lean or some such thing.  I took all of the covers off the engine and spend a loooong time listening to the engine.  I could hear a vacuum leak somewhere, but for the longest time I couldn't find it.  Eventually I brushed the broken hose with my fingers enough to change the sound and I was able to find it.  The hose was located on the underneath side of the intake manifold - a real bear to find, see and replace.  I replaced the hose and gave it a test fire, and it does seem to idle much better, but only time will tell if this really fixes the occasional stalling that she's been suffering.

(10-06-2012) Steam engine

Today Flash and I looked at this Hack A Day article and decided to give it a try.  The video is an example of our results.  We used a piece of a plastic ball point pen as a push rod to open the valve and it didn't last too long, but otherwise it works very well.  Not very efficient, but a whole lot of fun and easy to make.  We probably had it running in less than 30 minutes, and most of that time was hunting for adapters to connect the air hose to the engine.

(10-06-2012) Games!

The past week has been a lot of fun playing Viruta Racing with Jody when he comes over.  The only bad part is that it's a two-player cabinet and one of the sides died a while back.  This weekend I finally figured out what's "dead" (one of the three power supplies had died for that side) and ordered a new one to fix the second player.  I can't wait to get it operational and have some good head-to-head racing action again.

Also, I started working on a MAME cabinet and have an awesome configuration set up now using a piece of software called Hyperspin.  The PC that will be used in the cabinet has a fully functional MAME, Daphne, Sega Genesis and Atari 2600 install currently and hopefully I'll add a few more systems in the next week or so.  It's great and it will only get better once it's installed in the cabinet.