i just wanted to point out this guy’s awesome paint job that he did on his (and his brother’s) cabinets. we’re going to have to do at least that well. :)

oh, and whatever MDO/MDF we buy, we need to make sure that the T-molding we get can match the same width. yeah, mostly a note to myself.

with all the parts coming in, we’re almost ready to build the pc part of the project!

on the other hand, we need to take the next step on the cabinet. mitch and i talked and we think that the best thing to do is to take measurements, disassemble, take the measurements we couldn’t get when it was in one piece, make plans, then revise them for accomodating a wider control panel, finalize the plans, and start building a new cabinet. unless anyone has a better idea (please speak up if you do, we’re just wingin’ it here), that’s what we’ll do as soon as we can.

as for the panel, i envisioned it working kind of like a jewelry box, where the sides and bottom are built as part of the cabinet, and then the lid (sticks and buttons) has an internal hinge and flips up so that we can get at the underbelly when necessary. this is just off the top of my head, so again — if anyone has any better ideas about how to engineer that part, let me know. we’ll obviously need something strong as a hinge and latching mechanism so that it can take the abuse of the joysticks being jerked around a lot. i’m open to ideas.

so that’s where we’re headed. i’m looking into the possiblity of using MDO (medium-density-overlay) instead of MDF for the cabinet body, since it’s less susceptible to weathering. it’s probably more expensive, but i’m not sure of the cost right now. we’ll burn that bridge when we get to it. ^_^

jeff tells me that he’s brought in the motherboard/cpu/ram today! things are definitely moving along.

i’m also going to look today at a place that kurt tells me has links there for getting your MDF on, with the cutting and everything. dunno how expensive it will be, but if it’s too rich for our blood, there’s nothing wrong with a few days of DIY cabinet-making.

onward and upward, my evil minions!

update — we now have motherboardity. it’s what we need, and it’s got the CPU which is also nice. oh, look, half a gig of RAM! and a fancy firewire card to boot. that’s nice. thanksvery much to jeff for donating. however, we’re still missing a fan for the CPU. i’m going to see if we can’t scratch one up, and if no, then jeff is going to order one for us. wheeeee!

parts are starting to come in. we already have a PSU, NIC, and a nice audigy soundcard. i think once the dust settles, we’ll only be lacking a DVD-ROM drive. looks like that’s going to be a hard one to find, at least right now. i’m sure we’ll find one on the cheap soon enough. thanks again to everyone who coughed up a part or two.

just posted a bunch of photos from the gory disassembling that just took place. link is also over on the right, under ‘Photos’. enjoy!

so i promised an update to my peeps, and here it is. it’s wound up being a lot longer than i had intended, but i do tend to ramble on. please read on, though — i’m about to cover a lot of different topics. :)

CAB CLEANUP

so mitch and harrison and i met up at about 11:45 and went down to the cabinet to unmount the monitor. we brought tools and cleaning supplies with us, and within about 20 minutes we had the necessary bolts undone and the monitor out of the cabinet. we dumped the bezel and the cardboard thing that goes around it, and the monitor is ready for pickup now by whoever wants it. we cleaned the monitor glass a little, and there’s some bad ‘credits’ and ‘game over’ burn-in, so probably good that we’re tossing it. we had time left over so we cleaned up the rest of the cab as much as we could, vacuumed it up and wiped it down a little. it definitely looks nicer. i’ll be posting pics later this afternoon. the coinbox and marquee held up to the cleaning and will likely be kept. the rest of the cab is still crap since the sides are useless.

THE NEXT STEP

so mitch and harrison and i decided that we’re going to start the process of building a cab from scratch, unless an undamaged one comes up in the next few days for the Right Price.

AND ANOTHER THE NEXT STEP

SO — in the interim, because building the cabinet could take a little while getting everything together and having time and everything, we also decided to start putting the actual CPU together while we’re at it, so that if one half of the project slows down or is on hold for one reason or another, we have another half one we can work on until we get back to the first. tweaking the interface etc should provide hours of clueless entertainment. :)

what this means to you is that it’s time to bring in the spare PC parts that you’ve all so kindly donated! the running tally of what we have and what we need is here.

right now the things we still need are a HDD (possibly donated by steve, thanks!) and a DVD-ROM drive. i have a Geforce2 that we can use for now, but we’ll probably want a more powerful card once things get really rolling. does anyone have a spare HDD that they’d be willing to donate or sell for cheap? same thing for a DVD-rom drive.

jeff is going to bring in his mobo/cpu and RAM, and seth still has his power supply, and will be bringing it in. viv is bringing in her monitor! minus the DVD drive and cables, i think we have a whole working computer!

thanks to everyone who’s helped out so far,

-tony.

not being fans of burn-in and interlaced 15kHz video modes, we’ve decided to toss the monitor for these 20″ sgi monitors. craigslist, that ephemeral phenom of internet flea markets, coughed up a taker for our monitor within thirty minutes of my having posted the ad. granted, we’re giving it away, but still. it saves us a trip to the hazardous waste recycling plant and lets us move on to the next phase of the project — what to do with the actual cabinet? keep for now, or go MDF shopping?

*sigh*. i think that until we rebuild the cabinet, we’re kinda stuck for it. i kind of want a nice fresh cab to drop into our laps, which i doubt is going to happen. i just need to decide to do it and get it over with, i think. :P

so i went out back after lunch and wrote down everything i could about the monitor we have in the cabinet. hopefully kurt will know more about whether this monitor is one that we want to keep or toss, and we can go from there.

here’s the specs:

• Wells Gardner monitor
• model# 19K4903
• chassis serial #: WG484120
• manufactured: September 1982
• CRT type: 19VLTP22 19VMCP22 19VMKP22
• RCA manufactured tube
• Taito serial #: 145264
• PIX tube serial #: WG484120 (same as chassis ser#)

sounds dry and boring, but hopefully that will scare up some pertinent info. :)

viviana’s spare monitor is also available, and she says she has a spare keyboard, which we need.

i had written our local electricity guy about helping us to test the arcade monitor, and he wrote back today, saying that he’d be available. we’re going to try and get some specs on the monitor, do a little net research and see what we can find out about how to go about testing the signal. i’ll head out there after lunch and see if i can get any useful info off the guts.

well, no sign of monitors from viv yet, but no worries — mitch and i just picked up two SGI monitors from work. TWO! we’re not sure which one is in better condition yet, but we’ll find out and keep the best one.