Status Update

Just because I haven't been posting doesn't mean I haven't been working on it.  June 29 - July 1 I was gone at the college orientation, but I did manage to put a coat of primer on before I left. Even before that, I drilled out as much of the control panel as I could, but I'll get into that later. As soon as I got home, my friend Wesley arrived from Oklahoma, and we worked on it a lot, but we were having so much fun I didn't get a chance to blog about it. To start with, we put more coats of paint on. The primer was white, and I wanted the cabinet to be black, so we ended up putting 2 coats on. We had some paint left, so we added another coat on the side that will be seen when walking into my room.

Here it is painted. That's my elbow sticking out.

We also spent a lot of time on the software aspect. We were originally going to go with Windows 2000, but we were having so much trouble trying to get it to boot up to do a fresh install, we gave up on that computer and went with Windows XP. We are going to use MAMEWah for the frontend. A really cool thing that Wes did was modify the Windows XP splash/loading screen to have the MAME logo instead, so this way when you boot up you will see a MAME logo instead of Windows XP.
We didn't do much with the controls other than a couple of things. One thing we did was hook up the spinner. This was the easiest thing to do since it just hooks up via USB. It is recognized as a mouse, so we had to configure both the frontend and the actual emulator to accept mouse input. We also visited my neighbor to get some advice. He sometimes wires up airplane control panels, so we figured he would be a good person to ask about wiring. One thing he told us was that we should use different colors of wire for the controls, to distinguish the different buttons, and make different bundles to rout around. He showed us a connector, and when he told us we didn't have to have them all in a sheath, as his were, but when I saw that, I remembered that my dad had a big spool of Cat5e ethernet cable. It will work great, since the biggest number of buttons we will have is 6, and and Cat5e has 8 wires, so we will have 1 left over, assuming I run all the ground together, which it will be eventually anyway. We also worked on the speakers. I had a set of computer speakers in my shop, so we took them apart, and hooked them up to the 4" speakers we had. Also for convenience sake, we used hot glue and glued the amplifier onto one of the speakers, simply to make it easier when installing them.
July 7-14 I was in Florida visiting my uncle. We did some woodworking, watched the shuttle launch, went to the beach, and when I got back, the paint was dry. Finally!
I didn't do much work when I got back, because I had a gig that night, then a weekly acting camp that I nearly forgot about while laying around recovering, and then the very next day (Sunday), I was off to UNT for a jazz combo camp. Once I got home Friday, there wasn't much time, and the next day, I was off to the acting camp again, and then spent most of the rest of the day at Half-Price Books, and ended up with some good CDs. Monday I mainly recovered from jazz camp, and also went to the consultation to have my wisdom teeth pulled. Tuesday I finally dragged myself back out to the shop to try out the drill guide that I got, since my drill press isn't deep enough for all the holes in the control panel. I bought the Lee Valley guide, because I know that they usually have excellent quality, but this was terrible! There was so much play in it that it is nowhere near close to drill press accuracy, even a crummy one. I am sending it back, and after doing some research online, I am actually going with the Craftsman brand. It got the best reviews, so I figure it's more or less the lesser of x evils. Of course, this morning I had my wisdom teeth pulled, so I'm pretty much out of commission for at least a week. Luckily, thanks to the wonders of teh interwebs I can order the drill guide so it will be here and ready when I am.

Cool Stuff and More Work

Wow, it's been a while since I've posted! I got more supplies last Friday, but I had to leave before UPS came, or else I would have posted pictures, and the last few days, I have been blowing and going. Anyways, there were actually two different packages, but they just happened to come on the same day. The first box was from Rockler, which had the T-Molding and router bit. I took a picture of the box right when I got it, at first because I thought it was funny, but then I realized it was a good thing I did, and here's why:

This is pretty much exactly how it looked when I got it. The papers you see on top were in the box, but fell out when I picked it up to bring it inside. Like I said, at first I thought it was funny, but then I realized the router bit could have easily fallen out; luckily it didn't.

The other box I got was from Hagstrom Electronics, which contained the keyboard encoder, breakout board, and two PS/2 cables. I'll get into this more when I start wiring it up, but anyway, I got them.

Once I got the router bit, I could start on cutting the slots.

I started by making some test cuts in a scrap board to make sure it was centered. I did this by cutting a slot, it doesn't have to be very long, and then I took a piece of the T-Molding, and hammered it in, to see how centered it was. It took me quite a few tries to get it right, but I eventually did, and started on the big piece. Interestingly, when I started to cut the slot on the first side, despite the weight of all that MDF, it tried to shift on me. The solution? 50-pound weight to the rescue! It worked perfectly, and allowed me to easily rout the slot all around.

After I routed out the slot, I could get to work screwing it together. I had actually already drilled and countersunk the holes while I was waiting for the stuff to come, so it was a fairly quick assembly, except for one problem. I had planned for the base to be flush with the sides, but when I got it together, one side was further forward than the base, and the other side was too far back. After thinking about it for a while, I ended up planing/shaving/sanding the base down on the other side, so that it looked about the same on both sides.

This is the side of the base that was too far back.

And this is the side of the base that I had to plane down.

Here it is standing up. The board on the back is just clamped on to provide rigidity while I got the other pieces screwed in. It's at this point that you really start to realize how massive this thing is.

I am actually farther than I have pictures of. I have the front screwed in, as well as the top and diagonal piece.
And now, for the mistakes I made. When I was cutting the sides out, I misread the measurement on the plans and had the diagonal cut as 18" from the corner on either side, as opposed to 16", which is what it should have been. What this means is that I had to cut the top piece down to 7" from 9". This also means that the diagonal is too short, but in the spirit of engineers everywhere, it's not a flaw, it's a feature, it makes for better ventilation! I also failed to read the instructions that said to cut a slot for the T-molding in the base, but it's too late for that. I'm sure it will look fine, but I wish I had noticed that. I don't know if I would call it a mistake exactly, but I wasn't exactly consistent in whether I glued-and-screwed, or just screwed. A mistake I did make was when I was drilled the holes in the top piece. I started by drilling the front screw on either side, but I failed to clamp it the whole time. This  made the board sag in the back a little when I drilled the back holes, and in turn screwed it in. Once I noticed this, I backed the rear screws out, lined it back up, and clamped it down hard, and re-screwed it. Of course later I realized I needed to cut a bevel on the front edge of the top piece, and when I took it off, there were cracks in the sides. It may have been fine had I done nothing, but I decided to water down some wood glue, and drizzled that on the edges. I would recommend using a brush of some kind, but I couldn't find one, and this worked fine. The MDF is so porous that it soaked it right up. I'll see how it turns out tomorrow. I also made a template out of 1/4" plywood for the speaker holes, and I can make those holes tomorrow as well. All I did was mark out a circle with a compass, and once I did that, I drilled holes all the way around and used a coping saw to saw out the middle circle. After that, I put a drum sander on the drill press, and sanded to the line. There are definitely much better ways to do this, but it doesn't have to be too precise, as there will be a grill covering it up.