Well, as with all things round here, the documentation starts off well and deteriorates rapidly and often the projects stalls itself. Well, no surprise then that here's another!
After the stage you see here the rig is pretty much completed. It needs the documentation finishing (obviously!) and then it needs to be completely stripped back down again and painted up and finally labels applied. However, there is a snag. I'm finding that due to a design flaw i can't adjust the voltage of the internal PSU without removing the lid - if i try to through the purpose built hole in the front i invariably short it out (oops). I'll need to come up with something to solve that before i can finish this completely...
Anyway, as always, here's the progress so far:
FRONT VIEW
Pretty much unpopulated at this stage...
This view basically just shows the power input, the line filter and the independant positive and negative fuses. The rusty screw above is where the earth tab is screwed to the back panel inside.
And just for the hell of it, a view from the side - not much going on here!
Okay then. Top view. Shows all the wiring so far. Basically power input goes from the IEC socket to the fuses and then onto the filter. Then it goes down the side to the arcade psu. Here it terminates in an ampex connector with the idea being that the front panel should always be able to be disconnected and removed. Coming out of the ampex connector is a pair of wires which may be used to power a second 12V 1A DC supply just for the monitor. The power to the arcade psu has a 2PST switch inline which is hanging out of the rig, just out of frame (the long red and black wires in the picture above). This is a left over from when this was all just a bunch of wires on my desk. All i need to do is shorten the wires.
As can be seen, there isn't too much room for the second psu at this stage. So i need to try and find a damn small one. The ampex connector with all the different wires is the power FROM the arcade psu which used to go to the board when the loom was in an Electrocoin Special Criminal Investigations cab. This will be removed and the wires connected via independent fuses to the jamma connector.
Here we have the front panel taking shape. Sadly the buttons aren't aligned quite as well as i'd have liked. It's proved to be a bit awkward measuring this all out and then making the holes in the metal. Never mind. It won't look too bad when it's all painted up.
Fairly obviously, we have Up, Down, Left, Right in a triangle. Then along the bottom are 1P Fire 1, Fire 2 and Fire 3. Moving up we have Start 1, Start 2 and Test. Finally on the top row we have Coin 1, Coin 2 and Service. To the right of the buttons is a space where a slide switch will go for test. Some boards like a button for test, some an on off switch. Can't fit that switch in until i find my metal files!!
Above the switches is a bit more of an unknown area. Along the top we have room for fuse holders for the +5v, +12v and -5v connections for the jamma connector, and then room for a couple of power switches. These will either be jamma power and main rig power, or they will be internal monitor power, jamma power with the main rig power on the back. Undecided at the moment. Whatever happens, there will be a small LED underneath each switch. This is all marked out.
The area between the fuse holders and the buttons will hold a 25way D connector with all the controls duplicated in it to allow me to make up an external joystick, or other controller options as needed. 25way will allow plenty of room for expansion for future use.
Finally a couple of shots of the wiring inside the front panel. Again, i've gone to pains to keep it nice and neat, and also to ensure that i can remove all of this to paint the panel up when i'm sure it's all where i want it to be. Hopefully very soon now. Wandering whether to double the controls up onto the two player inputs as well.
Next up, drilling the holes for the fuse holders, then wiring the power up, then finally onto that monitor...
The monitor expects to see TTL input levels with positive seperate sync's but is gonna get RGB input with composite negative sync, so a little PCB needs making up there for the conversion. There will also be a 6way connector on the back of the rig where an external monitor can plug in so i can provide a signal when working on fixing up monitors. Power for external monitors will have to be provided seperately. I wanted to include an isolation transformer to make this a truely portable solution but it became obvious very quickly there simply wouldn't be the space inside. Oh, there will be a 12v PC fan on the back blowing air in to keep it all cool too.
I suspect this rig could see quite a bit of use once the power is finished before i get round to completing all that though!
Test Rig: Part 2
