Building Arcade Hyperspin/Mame cabinet - Part 4

With the help of some friends I got the cabinet built from painted pieces in a solid day. It mostly comes together with IKEA type fasteners and you'd want at least another person to help build it.

I haven't gone into too much detail on the build process as Troy from ArcadeWorx provides very detailed build instructions with the kit.

Half built, adding speakers.

Completed product!

I'm very happy with the result and the colour looks great.

I was hoping to print the artwork at a professional printing shop on a nice material, however I was running out of time so I just measured the perspex panels and printed the artwork to size on multiple pages on my home laser jet. I then cut out the artwork and glued it to the back of the perspex with a UHU waterbased gluestick. My artwork source for the move lists was from Donovan Myers blog.

Street Fighter artwork for the control panel

I got a great hand from a friend with the console wiring. If I had been left to my own devices it would be a birds nest rather than the "milspec" result below.

Very neat wiring.

I'm using two Akishop PS360+ PCBs for the controllers which I purchased from In2Amusements. The autodetect their USB host on the other end when powered up and are compatible with PC, PS3 and XBOX 360.

At the moment I have the controllers configured as XBOX controllers for Windows, as this allows the joysticks to be compatible with Street Fighter 4 Arcade Edition (PC) which doesn't detect the joysticks when they appear to Windows as the "hat" pad. This has also lead to issues with Hyperspin as the Hyperspin 1.3x releases seem to have a compatibility problem issues with XBOX 360 controllers.

At the moment I am working around these issues by disabling the Joysticks in Hyperspin and using Xpadder software (~$10) to make the Joysticks send actions as keyboard key presses. For some reason Xpadder would hang as not responding when I first ran it so I set the executable as "Run as Administrator" and XP Compatability mode and it started working properly.

Every thing was setup for my New Years Eve party (~30 guests) and everyone had a great time reliving some of the classics from their youth. Later in the night I was even asked to attach my two USB joysticks for some 4 player games.

In use - 4 player with 2 USB Sticks connected.

I've still got a lot of work to do with Hyperspin and setting up all the emulators. Currently I'm still in a bit of semi-manual process with the keyboard required for certain features, so I think that the next couple of months will be spent on software configuration and possibly some rewiring of extra buttons and adding new features.

Building Arcade Hyperspin/Mame cabinet - Part 3

The final coat of blue added this morning. Sanded back the first coat of blue and then put on the last coat as evenly as possible. 

The console. Just add buttons and artwork!

Some of the front, sides and edges.

Although the paint isn't as glossy as I imaged it to be overall I am very happy with the result - it isn't perfect, but I've been told that gloss paint is one of the more difficult paints to get a flat finish on and I'm happy to have learned a new skill.

I have packed up the Dexter shed - there'll be no more painting this year. There might be a edge piece or two where the paint isn't complete that might be visible and if that is the case I might be a small very fine air gun to paint those parts after the cabinet has been built.

I will try seeing how far I can get with wiring up the console this evening and am hoping to enlist the assistance of a couple of friends in putting the cabinet tomorrow morning.

Hopefully the next post has completed pictures :)

Building Arcade Hyperspin/Mame cabinet - Part 2

It's been a busy couple of painting days!

Firstly I went back to Super Cheap Auto and picked up a proper painting mask and better safety goggles. I didn't mind the white too much with the bad mask, but wasn't looking forward to the blue paint.

I then sanded the pieces back and put on the second layer of primer. I was smart enough to have stored a couple of pieces on top of each other before they were fully dry so I needed to pry them apart and then repair the MDF with some white TimberMate wood putty that I had spare from a previous project. I find it is best to just apply the putty with your hands rather than using a putty knife.

I also used the TimberMate again to seal some very small gaps in the console where some of the panels met. I was expecting the paint to fill the gaps, and it probably would have by the last coat, but better to be safe and sorry and it only takes a couple of minutes to do.

At the end of the day I had re-primed most of the pieces.

The next day I did some more minor repairs with the primer here and there and then sanded the paint back one more time. I then put on my first blue coat. The blue paint came much easier out of the spray gun which is making the job faster, but more challenging as it is easier to get a build up of paint.

First coat of the blue paint

I think the colour looks great. On a couple of the pieces I struggled getting even coverage (I had to turn  up the pressure a little bit on the air compressor to fix this) so I will sand these pieces back tomorrow morning and do them again for a final coat *fingers crossed*.

I'm glad I got the painting mask. Below is a picture of the mask after painting the first coat of blue.

The blue pad in the mask was originally white!

So my current plan is to finish up the blue painting tomorrow morning and wire up the console in the evenings over the next couple of days. Then on Sunday I hope I'll be able to put it all together and finish tweaking on Monday.

Building Arcade Hyperspin/Mame cabinet - Part 1

About 5 years ago I had a project on the back of my mind to build an Arcade cabinet for home. At the time I looked into buying a build it yourself kit, however I could only find a company in Texas that did the parts and it would have been thousands to have it built and shipped to Australia. The other parts were also expensive so I let the dream slide.

Enter ArcadeWorx. Recommended to me by a guy in the office who has been looking at building his own cabinet. Troy at ArcadeWorx is a great guy to work with and cuts a variety of designs from MDF.

I found the Viewlix 32" Clone cabinet on their site and then emailed Troy with a couple of design changes I wanted - extra buttons and speaker layout. These weren't a problem however there were some restrictions on the TV to use so I started researching on-line and ordering parts.

The inside parts of the machine

Initial Parts list: 

TV - 32" LG 32LS4600. Fit the cabinet and supported 1080P which I was after not that easy to find in an afforable screen. Bought from Bing Lee online.

Speakers - 4" Polk DXi400 car speakers bought from Amazon. I love Polk stuff.

AMP - 2 Channel LP 2020A Lepai amplifer order from HK on eBay. Small unit I found recommended on AussieArcade forums.

It took a couple of weeks for the Viewlix clone to arrive. The shipment arrived in three flat pack boxes.

Sides and Back

Control Panel

Lots of pieces!

Initially I wanted to get the cabinet professionally painted. I visited an Auto Paint and Panel place across the road but they wouldn't have been able to start until the new year (for ~$700!) and my target is to have this done by New Years Eve.

I have never used a paint spray gun before so I watched a bunch of YouTube videos online and then obviously a qualified expert went to the Bunnings. 

It turns out that Bunnings doesn't sell Two Pack paint (used on cars). Being new to spray painting I was a bit nervous and was talked into trying the water based Dulux Aquanamel Gloss paint normally used for Trim and Window frames. This type of paint apparently "won't yellow" and should provide a good result.

I figured Water based would also be a safer option and would make it easier to clean up mistakes.

Primer and Aquanamel paint and paint mask

From the wall of colours, I chose Wing Commander Blue - seemed fitting. It will be interesting to see how it looks in gloss when it goes on.

While in Bunnings I also bought a Wagner W550 Fine Spray gun ($129), drop sheets, masking tape and simple paint masks. I then went home and prepared my "Dexter shed" for paining.

Dexter Shed

The Wagner W550 is an electric all-in-one unit which is very simple to setup and clean, however on a test piece I found it was spattering the paint too much, and using too much for an even coat. I tried making a few adjustments but I was not getting a good finish.

Wagner W550

The box showed people painting fences and kitchen cabinets. I'd recommend maybe for a picket fence or similar however I don't think I would have been happy with the result.

On the weekend my Dad came round to help with the Wagner and after giving it another go we decided to go buy a proper air spray gun kit. Off to SuperCheap Auto where we bought a SCA Gravity Feed Pro spray gun ($99) and a Black Ridge 2HP/21L air compressor ($119) and a hose. We were flying a bit blind here and the staff weren't very helpful, but everything seemed to come together.

Air Compressor

Serious Spray Gun

The difference between the Air Spray Gun and the Wagner was night and day. I was also using a LOT less paint with a much better result. I painted the primer on most of the outward facing pieces over a couple of hours and called it a day.

Drying parts inside the shed.

Storing dried parts outside.

The plan over the next couple of days is to sand back the primer and prime again - I will have to buy another tin of primer as the small tins are a bit small and the edges of the MDF where it was cut is very thirsty.

I will also have to go an buy a real paint mask. The simple masks aren't good enough - the hair in my nose was white!

Stay tuned for updates over the next couple of days.

Resolved Macbook Pro sound and Thunderbolt issues on Windows 8 RTM

I've had Windows 8 RTM installed on my Macbook Pro (8,1) for a number of weeks now and I haven't had any sound (Device Manager sees a High Definition Audio Device, but it cannot start) on the laptop. In addition to this my Thunderbolt display also did not work - the sound and USB ports did work, but the display did not come on during boot.

I read on-line that there were some issues related to EFI and Windows 8 x64 so I reinstalled MacOS X, then installed Windows 8 using the boot camp assistant. I then installed the bootcamp drivers in Windows.

After this I booted into MacOS and installed rEFIt and ran the "/efi/refit/enable-always.sh" script. Then on reboot I chose Windows from the rEFIt boot menu, and the Windows logo appeared on my Thunderbolt display and sound worked correctly.

From MACOS you can also edit /efi/refit/refitrefit.conf to set the default OS and timeout period if you want to boot into Windows most of the time and not have to push enter.

I'm happy now, but I'll suppose I'll have to wait for an EFI update or new drivers before I can remove reFIt and have Windows 8 running fine.

Bonus tip: I've also purchased Start8 ($4.95) to add the Windows start button back. In addition, Start8 also boots your directly to the desktop rather than the "Metro" interface.

I like what Microsoft is trying to do with the "Metro" interface, but it just doesn't work for me and how I use my computer. If I just wrote some emails and could live on an IPad - Metro would most likely be fine.

Windows 8 with Start8 installed

Installing Polk 8" RC80i ceiling speakers

A long time overdue, I installed one of my 8" Polk RC80i ceiling speakers which I purchased last November in the study today. I've been meaning to do this since the start of the year and had not gotten round to this yet knowing that it would be a bit of a task.

I started by roughly working out the position that I wanted the speaker on the ceiling by measuring the distance from the walls adjacent to the where I wanted the speaker to be. I then climbed into the roof and measured the same distance from the walls and found a place as close a possible to where I wanted the speaker without a beam or power cables in the way. 

I then cleaned away the insulation in the ceiling (wear gloves and a dusk mask) and placed down the cardboard circle shaped paint shield that was supplied with the speaker to make sure that the speaker would fit in the place I had chosen. I then made a small hole in the centre of the shield and through the ceiling with a drywall saw.

Drywall saw - essential tool.

It was quite difficult to push through the hole as my ceiling is made of a combination of mortar, horse hair (?) and wooden slats. This installation would be much easier in a modern house.

From inside the room I was relieved to see the hole where I wanted it to be and then used a pencil to draw the 8" circle from the cardboard cutout guide supplied with the speaker and then used masking tape to make a circle around the outside of the speaker to try and minimise any damage to the ceiling and keep the ceiling clean. 

I then used the drywall saw (wear eyewear protection and a dusk mask) to cut from the hole from below in the center of the circle to the edge and started to cut away the plaster around the inside of the circle.  

Initial hole and vacuum cleaner setup to collect dust.

Circle to remove outlined with masking tape and initial cut.

Once I started pulling away larger pieces of the plaster ceiling the wooden slats were visible from below. It was quite difficult to cut the slats with the drywall saw so I used my Dremel 3000 with the cutting piece attached. I was considering using my jigsaw, but I think the Dremel did a better job as it allowed better control.

Horse hair and slat ceiling

Dremel with cutting piece.

Next I then unpacked the speaker and then used a paper clip to remove the speaker grill from the speaker. This step was actually quite time consuming and eventually I had to hook through the paper clip through the grill and then pull the ends with a pair of pliers to get the grill free. Access under the grill is necessary to screw the clamps on the speaker down from inside the room with a philips-head screwdriver. At this point I enlisted the help of the Drinks Master to hold the speaker up from the bottom and tighten the clamp screws while I positioned the clamps on to the slats with most support from with-in the ceiling.

Ceiling speaker installed in the ceiling without the grill.

Speaker installed with grill.

The whole process took quite a few hours working mostly solo, although I needed assistance from the Drinks Master to push the speaker into the ceiling while I was in the roof above. The dust and masonry from the ceiling made a terrible mess and took quite a while to clean up even with painters drop sheets over the desks in the room below.

Although I have only done the single speaker so far, the sound is great connected to a Sonos Connect:AMP.  I now have three of them: Bathroom and Kitchen, Library, and Patio with a Sonos PLAY:5 in the Bedroom.

Sound wise - definitely more bass than the 6" RC60i speakers that I have installed the kitchen and the bathroom. I'm very happy with the result - once I can build up the energy to make a mess again I'll tackle the second speaker :)

Nike+ Fuelband hangs on Connecting to Nikeplus.com

I have sold a number of Nike+ Fuelbands recently - they're great devices and not yet available in Australia. A great review can be found here.

A couple of people I have sold them to have had a problem that after a period of use when connecting the device to a computer running the Nike+ Connect software the software will start and hang on "Connecting to Nikeplus.com".

Reseting the device manually from the band does not resolve the problem. The fix is to  disconnect the computer from the internet. Then reconnect the band and you will be able to access the Nike Connect software and reset the band from with-in the software which appears to resolve the problem. You can then reconnect to the internet and follow the setup wizard for the band and everything should be back to normal.


Hope this helps. I couldn't find this solution searching the internet...