ITS CLICKBAIT FINISHED (ie not finished, nearly finished)

PREVIOUSLY

I left the last blog entry with the panel in the grip of some clamps having corrected the mistake I made with the height it was mounted on the desk. As you can see, it is now around the same height as my desktop. Nice and straight too.

The spinner, under the panel, is too big if I want to eventually put a base on this. I will do that at some point as I want to fit feet so it can be used away from my desk. Won't be the most elegant controller, with large bits of wood sticking out the back, but will serve as an excellent test controller for any arcade machines I happen to be building (keep an eye open for PROJECT TERRYCADE, coming soon™).

I had already routed out a recess for the spinner, about half the thickness of the MDF, before I put all this together. Now I needed to think about how to mount it. 

As you can see, it's a massive unit. Solid aluminium. Very heavy. 

And in the wrong place. The routed out section underneath needs to be a little larger to allow the base to move down to centre the stem. Took a few seconds to extend the recess.

No point mounting the spinner until the finish is, um, finished.

I glued a couple of bits of wood to each end of the inside to give me something to screw a base to. I'll probably cut a piece of thin ply for this later.

And the first coat of paint goes on. Primed the whole thing in white acrylic primer. Then decided I wanted some contrast, so painted some black paint on the sides and front (and back).

A second coat of primer on the top.

And then a coat of white eggshell. Lovely stuff to paint with, goes on very nice with a foam roller. 

More black on the sides and front.

I was supposed to start painting pacman ghosts on this. Instead I cracked and started putting the controls in. I know, I am weak. I might still paint the ghosts on it one day. But for now I needed to play some games and these are the best quality controls I have ever used, so you can understand my need.

The side buttons are not the same as the ones up top. These I bought from Amazon in a warehouse deal, they were crazy cheap. They aren't microswitched and are a little more clicky than the leaf switches I have in the main buttons, but they are still really nice. Push fit, I kept the holes very tight and there is no way these are ever coming out without destroying the wood. They actually feel really nice and are perfect for this.

Marked out and pilot drilled the holes for the spinner to be mounted.

Holes made bigger for the bolts. I used countersunk machine bolts. I will probably, at some later stage, 3d print a cover for the bolts and the hole to neaten this up.

The bolts were way too long. Five minutes with a hacksaw and a file sorted them.

The blue tape is on the spinning section of the VHS head, this gives the mouse sensor something to read against.

Wired up the extra buttons. 

Its a bit of a rats nest, some hot glue will sort that once everything is finalised.

It sat like this for a week while I waited on the postman to bring the T-molding to trim the edges.

And it was worth the wait! I think it looks stunning. Some small bits of paint that need touching up but it really does look the part now. And not only that, it plays fantastically well too. Very satisfying to use.

I still need to install the mouse sensor. But that can wait for now. 

Very happy!

NINE POINT THREE DEGREES OF SEPARATION

Hi!

First off, thanks for following along. Nearly a thousand people have viewed this blog which is quite insane. Also bonkers: zero followers! I don't know if you know, but there is a way to follow this blog if you want to be informed when a new post comes along. You, yes you, could be the very first one! Wouldn't that be crazy? You could also be the last one, so don't get too excited ;)

Right. A fairly long one coming. Lots to catch up on, as I've been a bit snowed under and the weather has been fairly crap, which always slows me down.

I got two packages in the post. The top one is the upgrade for my Mag Stik to make it into a plus version. I had worried that it wouldn't be as nice as an off-the-shelf Mag Stik Plus as you have to carve bits off the plastic of your Mag Stik in order to make it into a plus. Well, my neighbour (who has asked me to build him an arcade machine, so that is the next project decided!) ordered a couple of the Plus versions and they are just the standard version with the modifications done (not as well as I did mine I might add!). Anyway, upgraded and it works a treat.

The second thing is an Arduino Pro Micro, and this gave me headaches. Like an idiot, I didn't bother testing it by plugging it into my PC to see if it worked. Instead, I went right ahead and soldered the pins onto the board. Now, I am a competent solderer. I have in the distant past chipped a few PS2's, something that requires the ability to solder a gnats nadgers to its leg. And so I arrogantly ploughed ahead and soldered it without checking. When I came to program it the software couldn't see the board. In fact, it didn't even show in windows device manager (should show up as a COM port). I swapped the USB cable for another, grabbing the best looking one from my cable nest, and it still didn't work. 

Assuming it was broken, and knowing that it would not be possible to send it back now I'd soldered it, I ordered another from a different seller - in case it was a bad one from a bad seller. Ten minutes after ordering the second one (they are very cheap, just £5.50 delivered) I was having a conversation on WhatsApp with a friend and explaining the predicament. He, quite rightly, asked if I'd tried another USB cable. I scoffed at him, explaining that I wasn't a complete moron and that of course I had tried another cable, what sort of idiot do you take me for? At that moment I glanced across at the cables I had tried which were sitting conveniently on the desk next to me. Something struck me; they looked very similar. In fact, they were more than similar, I had managed to pick up two identical cables. They were charger cables for my HTC Vive controllers. I quickly grabbed another cable from the nest and plugged it in. BEE-BEEP. 

Turns out, I am a moron after all!

This is the upgrade kit fitted. It was pretty straight forward.

I whipped together (drilled a load of holes in the middle of the night) a temporary control panel to try out the stick in a realistic setup. 

And then tested it out with a real-world test. Sensible World of Soccer running on an Amiga emulator. The Solomon Islands didn't know what hit them!

Testing complete I thought it would be a good idea to start building something for the new controls to live in. I whipped this up in Sketchup, note the height of the control panel relative to the desktop. 

Armed with a cut list, and dodging rain showers, I found this lump of MDF which was just big enough to cut all the parts from.

The top of the panel is sloped for comfort. The front and back boards would need a nine-point-three-degree bevel. This amazingly handy gadget allows you to do this with ease. You zero it on the tabletop of the saw, then it sticks with magnets to the blade telling you exactly how far to go. It's a bit tricky to get spot-on as even leaning against the table to press zero will move the angle. I got it this close and it turned out to be close enough!

See! Nine-point-three-degrees. Go ahead, measure it!

All the parts cut to width on the table saw. I switched to the mitre saw for all the lengths. 

And a first mockup of the final shape. It's all a bit pointy still. 

Clamped the two side panels together and began sanding off the corners.

Marked a line and cut the waste off with a jigsaw, not too close to the line as the blade tends to wander.

Back in the vice and a palm sander to finish off the curves. 

Another mockup. Much better looking. 

I decided to not cheap out (so much) on this build. And so I will be finishing the edges in T-molding to give it a little more of an authentic arcade feel. These slot-cutters are expensive, I bought this one years ago when I did my first arcade machine (which never actually had T-molding as I never actually finished it.)

Sides slotted. Will run T-molding all the way around with a join on the base section.

Cut a slot in the front of the control panel board. Hard to see in the pic, but it isn't straight. Turns out this piece of MDF, which used to be part of my desk, is bent. When I ran this over my router table the bow in the board made the slot run away from the centre line. I flipped it round and cut the slot, correctly, on the other edge. I will probably fill the wonky one.

Arcade holes. I really should credit where I downloaded the layouts for these, they are super handy. If you go to THIS website you will find all the layout plans you could ever wish for.

Decided to add pinball buttons on the sides. These will be wired in parallel with four of the top buttons. They don't need their own controller but it would be trivial to do so. Maybe I will do that later. 

The other hole in the panel is for this. My old spinner. My lovely step-father made this for me years ago and it deserves to be in a panel. Also, I will get to play Tempest again. I marked out where it needed to go, it's a bit too deep for the space under the control panel so I routed out a recess for it.

A coat of PVA mixed 50\50 with water. This is always a good idea with MDF.

That recess for the spinner. Also slapped some PVA around underneath to firm up the edges of the holes. They can crumble with buttons being pushed through them. 

Decided to mark out a couple of extra side panels for a player two module to make later. Figured it would be easier to get them now before I assembled.

Rough cut with the jigsaw.

Fitted a pattern bit to my router. This one turned out to be very blunt so swapped it for another.

Double-sided tape to hold the template and the new parts together.

And they are now identical. The tape worked really well. Came apart without too much of a struggle too.

And most importantly came off without damaging the surface.

These will be stored away for the player two panel.

Another mockup, this time with many holes. The pinball holes look like they are wrong, with the lower hole where your fingers are not. But this is by design, the lower hole is going to be a nudge button, and I don't want to accidentally hit this. So I put it slightly forward so I have to deliberately reach for it.

This is balanced on the wood that is inserted into the mortices in the front of the desk. 

I need to figure out how to mount this. I can't run the tenons that go into the desk right into this box as they would interfere with the buttons and the spinner. 

I cut a chunk of the large centre tenon off and decided to use that as a backboard. I would need to make a very strong joint between these two pieces of wood.

With my ryoba saw I cut very carefully (after marking the lines with a very sharp knife).

With the tenons in the desk I clamped the board and glued it in place with a few brad nails fired into the larger tenon.

I planed and sanded the top edge level. 

This is the back board of the control panel. I drilled some holes and...

screwed it to the mounting board. 

No reason not to start putting this together. I will be painting it, so after a thorough sanding, I got on with glueing it together.

A few brad nails again to keep things in place while the glue dries. These will be trivial to fill.

Getting excited by the prospect of making progress I suddenly realise I had made a mistake. The panel is much too high. It will be too uncomfortable to use like this. I had already glued it to the mounting board, fortunately the glue was not completely dry, so I was able to tear it off. 

Once I had repaired the damage caused by my slipup I fixed the mounting board to the control panel in the right place. 

And that's where I got to tonight. After I post this blog I will remove the clamps and test it in the desk again. 

Next some paint and maybe some art. Not sure what to do with this yet. 

Don't forget to subscribe! (if you want to, no pressure)

Oh! One last thing! I am thinking about streaming some retro games. Specifically, the games that I grew up with. Anyone interested in that? Let me know. If there's enough interest I will make it happen.