21 replies to this topic

[guruguys]

First, mega thanks to to Spanner over at the hyper forums for putting Hyperpin on a torrent (the official download link had been down)! I finally have my test station working and bought a new monitor for the mini hyperpin today build. I went ahead and purchased a 16:10 ratio 1920x1200 resolutions HannG. I didn't want to spend a lot and even though they are a cheap brand I have had pretty good luck with their products. Originally I was going to use a 26" Emprex monitor I had laying around, also 1920x1200 16:10 ratio, but the viewing angle was just too horrible to use. The new monitor is going to be a very tight fit in the cab but I think I can get it to work (worst case scenario I have a new huge monitor for my desktop and use the Emprex with less desirable results...). If anyone can talk me out of using a 16:10 ration monitor do so, I can still return the monitor I bought and get a 27" 16:9 that will easily fit, but won't cover as much room or look as good IMO.


I disassembled the Zizzle cabinet today. Here are some pictures of the progress.


New monitor testing, still not sure to go with 19" 4:3 for backglass or a 16:9 vertical.


First thing I removed was the flipper solenoids.


The Zizzle is actually wired very well, all the suader connections are reinforced by hot glue. Nothing should come undone in the removal process.


Why am I being so careful and not just tearing it all out? I'm going to use it in the Mini pinball build. I will remount the flipper solenoids under the screen and use the Pirates PCB to control it. The start button will send the signal to the Pirates board to allow use of the flippers. Until the machine is turned off the flippers will fire the solenoids. Down the road I may be able to use the other solenoids to mimic the bumpers etc, but I'm not sure how I would do that with VP. Certainly another piece of hardware would be needed, but I can still incoorporate the relays on the Pirates PCB, or at least make use of the other two solenoids.


Sliding the playfield out.


Playfield out, nice and clean. If anyone needs I can take nice pics of the play-field to use in a Zizzle pirates recreation (I think there is already one somewhere though?)

Thats it for now. Next up to brainstorm how the components are going to fit in the case. I'd like to modify the chassis to hold the PC in the back, I will have to add ventilation. I also want the PC speaker subwoofer to be housed in the chassis if room allows. A lot of work ahead!

Edited by guruguys, 26 January 2012 - 01:49 AM.

[guruguys]

I opened the brand new 28" 16x10 monitor I bought to use. I knew from the display that it was too wide with the case so I would have to take it apart. What I didn't know is how big the internal frame would be. I have about 1.5" to spare from the screen size (edge to edge of actual display). The Zizzle measures 14 1/2 inches from inside edge to inside edge, so it would have to fit in there.

I took it apart, knowing worst case scenario I have a monitor I can use on my main PC, and hoped for the best...



It was time for the ultimate test, would it fit....



It was soo close! The frame of the monitor measures 14 6/16th of an inch!!! 2/16th of an inch clearance but it DOES FIT! Yes! It will fill most of the cabinet space side to side as well, so will look VERY nice! The picture shows it resting (barely) on the cabinet l-brackets which reinforce the wood. With just a tiny bit of pressure it slides down past them and perfectly into place!




I hope to spend many hours working on it tomorrow! Sorry about photo quality (lack thereof), in the future I will ditch the crappy cell phone pics and use my real digi-cam instead.

[guruguys]

Built a box to house the PC and other parts which mounts underneath the Zizzle cabinet. My iPac-2 arrived as well as the Logitech s220 speakers which were inexpensive and highly rated at Amazon, the feature a small sub-woofer which I will mount in the PC box . I started placing components to get an idea of how to mount. I think I am going to put the mainboard on a sliding platform so I can easily slide it out the back when necessary. I think I will cut out a spot to place the PC Power Supply in the back of the original Zizzle cab. I also sourced a refurbished NEC 19" 4:3 monitor glass art and a small 13" 16:9 monitor to frame out for a dedicate DMD display. Plan to disassemble those and make drawings for the backbox this week.


I am going to build the back part of the CPU box to incoorporate the small subwoofer, I cut a hole for the port on the side and will frame out the speaker box as well. Should be nice and tight so no rattling.

[T-800]

Cool... I look forward to seeing the final build. Seems like a reasonable way to get a mini cab at a good price...

[guruguys]

The hardest part for me is the woodwork, I'm not even close to a carpenter... I worked on building a backbox today to house the two monitors. I'm pretty happy with the results considering the lack of cutting tools I had and lack of wood work skills...


I built the backbox as best I could, there are some cracks here and there but it will all be disassembled, cracks filled and painted in the end and should look good.


The monitors fit in nice. The bottom 13" monitor has to be disassembled but the guys were easy to mount and the screen is very light weight 720p LED which also give in to a tiny bit of flex (since my woodwork isnt perfect that is a good thing).


A closer look at the guts of the 13" display for DMD (it will be framed out in the front with some foam or posterboard, or something.


Front view with monitors inside backbox. The speakers will be placed to the left and right of the DMD, and the sub-woofer is housed underneath. Again sorry for the crappy cell phone pics. I will find my regular camera at some point...


I plan to fit the playfield monitor next then mount the CPU and set it up for a simple test run (not button controls yet just computer etc).

[guruguys]

What is the aspect ratio and/or standard size of a normal pinball DMD? Since the Zizzle is essentially 1/3 scale, I'd like to get the DMD scalled to 1/3 scale if it doesn't look too bad. Still haven't tested it on this 720- 13" screen, hope it looks decent.

Edited by guruguys, 05 February 2012 - 07:43 AM.

[guruguys]

What is the aspect ratio and/or standard size of a normal pinball DMD? Since the Zizzle is essentially 1/3 scale, I'd like to get the DMD scalled to 1/3 scale if it doesn't look too bad. Still haven't tested it on this 720- 13" screen, hope it looks decent.

I think I found my own answer at hyperspin-fe.

DMD/Scoreboard cutout = 34 * 9cm (approximately) (13.38 inches x 3.5 inches)

Does this sound correct?

[guruguys]

A quick update. Got the guts all setup for a test run. Looking good so far, the only dissapointment was the 13" screen I am using for the DMD is real crap when it comes to vieweing angles, I had to re-mount it vertically in order for the DMD to display well which makes it a bit smaller screen area than I orginally hoped for. Being that it is a mini-pin, it won't look too undersized when framed out etc. No other real major hurdles aside from that, the sound is great and the subwoofer shakes the cabinet just enough to make it feel like it has some feedback. Next to setup the Zizzle Solenoids and flipper buttons and wire the ipac and rig the zizzle plunger. Not sure if I want to fork out the $150 for the ion plunger kit.

[bolt]

Nice one, thanks for the picture.

[kruge99]

What was the issue with the DMD screen exactly?

There are vb script commands that can be used to rotate the screen and if you right click on the pinmame DMD you can temorarily enable the boarder, resize it, then hit F3 to reset pinmame (and save the new setting), then right click the DMD and disable the boarder.
(That's from memory, at least I'm pretty sure that's the proceedure.)


Best Regards,
Todd.

[guruguys]

What was the issue with the DMD screen exactly?

There are vb script commands that can be used to rotate the screen and if you right click on the pinmame DMD you can temorarily enable the boarder, resize it, then hit F3 to reset pinmame (and save the new setting), then right click the DMD and disable the boarder.
(That's from memory, at least I'm pretty sure that's the proceedure.)


Best Regards,
Todd.

The issue with the screen was the viewing angle of the the actual LED lit panel, it wasn't an issue with getting it to display properly. The cheap 13" HDTV I used had a really bad viewing angle, something like 50 degrees, and when mounted horizontally you could not see the DMD, the screen just looked bright white at normal play viewing angles. I solved it by rotating the screen vertically since the viewing angle was actually much wider (something like 90 degrees) and the DMD was much brighter and more visible, but much smaller.

I was too dissatisfied with the size so today I found a cheap $30 refurbished 15" IBM LCD panel which fit perfectly in the place I already had cut out, so now it is much larger and brighter.

Edited by guruguys, 16 February 2012 - 12:48 AM.

[guruguys]

Slow but sure progress. Made a temporary frame with poster board to frame out the dmd and backboard monitor. Wired up some temporary buttons to the ipac until my led-wiz and buttons get here (already ordered, just waiting for them to get back with me and confirm it...). Here is a pic of where it is at today. I replaced the dmd monitor with a larger one and it looks much better and closer to the actual scaled sized (according to the Attack from Mars Marquee above it at least). Took me forever to get it scaled to a size that looked good and didn't seem to cause pinmame to get all sluggish, does everyone have this problem?



Until I decide if I want to get he mot-ion plunger kit I wired up the Zizzle plunger with a switch. It was easier than I expected, the microswitch fit right in with little modification.

Edited by guruguys, 15 February 2012 - 05:16 AM.

[guruguys]

Updated the computer to an i5-2500k and graphics card to a 460GTX. All tables I have tried are playing great (too great in fact, I've spend more time playing than working on the cab lately!).

I tried messing with Future Pinball, I am having NO LUCK.

I can't seem to get the DMD to display on my backglass and I've read there is no third monitor DMD support. I can't get the backglass to display in my backglass mintor (its monitor 2, and set to monitor 2 with matched resolution). If I set it to monitor 3, my DMD monitor, it does show but of course its my DMD monitor so you can't see it all... Most of the tables I have downloaded look and sound awesome but seem to have programming issues and poor physics.

Has anyone managed to get FP running on a two or three monitor setup?

[guruguys]

Ok, on future pinball I managed to remove the playfield DMD by manually moving them off of the playfield in the editor. I also managed to get the backglass to display in the second monitor, to do so I had to physically switch my monitors which means that visual pinball will not run as well because the DMD will be driven by the secondary graphics card instead of the playfield graphics card... As long as it doesn't hinder performance too much I guess it will be ok, I wish FP would work the other way however. It seems to want its 'display backglass on second monitor' to be on a separate card than the playfield's.

[guruguys]

I'm going to double post here, I posted in the add-on section about a problem I am having with UltraVP Server. Everytime I load it (either through hyperpin. vpinball, or just by clicking on vpserver.exe) I get an error The Adams Family (Williams) failed to load number 3 (but its in spanish, thats my best translation). This causes UVP server to stall untill that error is bypasses which is hard to do when launching through hyperpin so the backglass just doesnt work at all.


I've looks through the registry, deleted all references to adams family in MRU's, etc etc. I can't figure out why it is doing this. My hunch is there is an .ini or registry entry somewhere referencing this. Again, it does this no matter what pinball I am launching (it always says The Adams Family fallo en el numero 3).

Any suggestions much appreciated.

[guruguys]

I'm going to double post here, I posted in the add-on section about a problem I am having with UltraVP Server. Everytime I load it (either through hyperpin. vpinball, or just by clicking on vpserver.exe) I get an error The Adams Family (Williams) failed to load number 3 (but its in spanish, thats my best translation). This causes UVP server to stall untill that error is bypasses which is hard to do when launching through hyperpin so the backglass just doesnt work at all.


I've looks through the registry, deleted all references to adams family in MRU's, etc etc. I can't figure out why it is doing this. My hunch is there is an .ini or registry entry somewhere referencing this. Again, it does this no matter what pinball I am launching (it always says The Adams Family fallo en el numero 3).

Any suggestions much appreciated.

Fixed my problem, it was an error in the visual pinball database xml file, apparently I commented out a game improperly.

In other news, I ordered the Mot-ion plunger. Hope it doesn't take as long to get here as the Ledwiz (still haven't heard back from them after placing the order a week ago).

[guruguys]

I setup the led-wiz for some testing. When I try to use it the games stagger badly when led-wiz events are triggered. Most of what I read about this says I need to upgrade to windows 7 from XP... Is this the most common solution?

[guruguys]

Current status is 'beta' as far as I'm concerned. I'm just enjoying playing it for a bit now. Have everything working, still missing speaker covers and need to decide on artwork. I am most likely going to use the black area below the screen (which is why its mounted so high up) for controls to turn this into a dual mame/vp combo machine.



Thanks for all the help and things I've learned a lot from the people here and over at hyperspin-fe. Everyone who has played it doesn't want to stop.

Summary:
Cabinet, legs, flipper solenoids from Zizzle Pirate of the Carribean Mini-pin.
Custom built backboard which houses 19" and 13" Dell LCD monitors, Logitech S22 PC speakers.
32" 16:10 1080P Hanns-g monitor for playfield
Expanded cabinet underneath to house PC, fans and logitech s22 subwoofer.
Used Zizzle flippers to provide flipper solenoid effects.
Mot-ion plunger / nudge.
Ledwiz.
Vibration motors from old XBOX joypads used for 'shaker motor' feedback. Works suprisingly well on this minipin case. A real shaker would move the entire machine!
Led lit flipper/magna save buttons , Insert Coin replacement button and micro true leaf switches from Groovygamegear.com
i5-2500k overclocked with asrock Z77 MicroATX mainboard, 4 gigs ram, GTS250 and GTX480 graphics cards.
Adesson WKB-3000UB wireless keyboard with trackball for easy maintenance.
Silverstone SG02-f MicroATX case


Still to do:
Replace playfield plexi with real glass.
Have backbox rebuilt by a 'real' carpenter.
Add led lighting effects.
And finally, which will be basically an new project all in its own, add controls, load mame and turn into vertical Mame/VP combo.

The early pics of the build are in this thread, the later pics are at [url=http://www.hyperspin-fe.com/forum/showthread.php?17445-Zizzled-Out-Zizzle-POTC-to-Mini-hyperpin-build-log}here[/url].

[bsl1970]

Do you have any directions or info on how you used the xbox joypad vibrators?  I love the idea!

[unclewilly]

Are the gen 1 sizzle pins smaller then the gen 2.

I just got a gen 2 and it's 16 1/2 inside dimensions. I think a decades 32 inch might fit