176 replies to this topic

[DDH69]

I looked into the USB screen when I was shopping.  I decided that the wide laptop screen was better resolution for the price.  Still very happy with the outcome.

[blackvulcan3]

its a peach DDH69, my only concern is durability. Price wise its a no brainer. At $144 the USB looked okay but after Rusty's comments I wouldn't be sold on it.

 

I think it may just have to come down to finances, as the 3 monitors I have will not do as the backglass (23 inch monitor with green vertical pixel line, no good & 2 32 inch TV's that when even decased are too large).

 

A 27 inch monitor will set me back $200 & change on eBay for an Asus. Another $300 for the DMD will set me back to after christmas. I know what I want but finances are wearing thin.

Edited by blackvulcan3, 01 November 2016 - 09:48 AM.

[RustyCardores]

its a peach DDH69, my only concern is durability. Price wise its a no brainer. At $144 the USB looked okay but after Rusty's comments I wouldn't be sold on it.
 
I think it may just have to come down to finances, as the 3 monitors I have will not do as the backglass (23 inch monitor with green vertical pixel line, no good & 2 32 inch TV's that when even decased are too large).
 
A 27 inch monitor will set me back $200 & change on eBay for an Asus. Another $300 for the DMD will set me back to after christmas. I know what I want but finances are wearing thin.

Turn that 23 inch vertically and hide the green line inside the cab. There's your free DMD


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[blackvulcan3]

So I ran down the finances last night and cheap won out.

 

Use the available materials and make it as good as I can with what I have.

 

So today I bought a new jigsaw (I needed one after the debacle that was the front of the cab), some nuts and bolts & some 19mm pine that will serve to hold up the playfield and also to make the speaker cover.

 

I did some measurements last night, of course they were wrong today. I hadn't taken into account that the 150mm at the bottom of the backbox did not marry up with the 165 at the top of the cab due to the width of the ply. I ended up sitting the back box forward and drilling some support holes for some coach bolts. I clamped up the back box to the cab and drilled away. Things are never as easy as I think they will be with woodwork. The bolts were a tiny bit bigger than my biggest drill bit but I was able to widen it sufficiently to ease (with a hammer) the bolt through.

 

So then I predrilled holes for the letterbox style hole I was cutting through the bottom of the back box and top of the cab for the jigsaw. Great job, until I reached the back. Seems there was not quite enough clearance for the jigsaw for the back cut. This meant a shoddy (at best) cut that required considerable sanding. At least the measurements were right. Well sort of. The monitor didn't fit due to the shoddy cuts so I took an extra 5mm off the front. This was a nice cut.

 

Anyway, the DMD hole is done. Just have to work out how I'm going to hang it. I can't hang it like the picture as the cables won't allow it. I have VESA holes that I may use with the pine. I'll work out something functional and entirely ugly.

 

Heres todays efforts.

 

[DDH69]

I hung a 17" like this in my first cabinet.  I used two pieces of flat aluminium that I bent into an "L" shapes.  With two holes in one side I used the screen mounting holes, on the other side of the "L" one hole and a wood screw to stop it moving around.  By the looks of the mounting depth you might pick up one mounting hole on the screen.

 

Edit - Just checked if I had a photo, sadly no.  Who would believe of all the pictures I took during the build, not one of the DMD mounting!

Edited by DDH69, 02 November 2016 - 09:30 AM.

[blackvulcan3]

All good, thanks for checking. I have a metal VESA monitor mount and this monitor mounts high so I should get all four in pretty easily above the cut. I'll mount it to a block and done.

 

The speaker panel will hide all my sins...

[alandee]

Hi,

I've been lurking along with this thread ( who doesn't like a cab build thread ! )

 

Re/ DMD Do you have an old laptop kicking around ?

I grabbed a driver board off ebay for 30.00 and recycled the screen from an otherwise ancient 15" laptop for my DMD till I can afford a realdmd .. works great, and you can still fold the backbox down.

 

 File 3-11-2016, 2 06 28 PM_Crop.jpg   95.26KB   6 downloads

 

Cheers,

al.

Edited by alandee, 03 November 2016 - 03:41 AM.

[blackvulcan3]

Hey al, I have an old laptop bottom, no screen. Yours looks nice and the MM looks good too.

 

I would have preferred an option where I could fold the backbox but its not essential. I am very mindful of having to move and replace items over time so I don't want to make this thing a tomb, as in, once its closed it won't get reopened.

[blackvulcan3]

Quick update, had a little bit of time tonight so I cut out the supports for the playfield and they go alright fitted to the back.

 

I also cut out the speaker cover while I was at it, no holes yet, just a measure.

 

I am hoping I will get one side of cabinet covered with a decal this weekend. See how I go after golf, if I feel like I do now I may be just too darn tired.

 

[blackvulcan3]

A little bit of work this morning. Popped the decals on the backbox.

 

Did it dry, which I won't be doing for the cabinet sides but it turned out okay, pretty happy with the result. I will be prepping the sides of the cabinet some more though, what I thought was smooth and the minor imperfections I can see (minor, but I can see them) is noticeable to me.

 

I love the artwork though.

 

[nickbuol]

Looks good.  I am in the process of putting reproduction decals on my Theatre of Magic.  Backbox done, coindoor side is done, one of the cabinet sides is done, just one left.

 

I went back and forth so many times between wet and dry application, and opted for dry as well.  As long as you have an extra set of hands for the sides of the cabinet, you should be able to do them dry without any issues. 

[blackvulcan3]

Well I decided to push through on the front of the cab. Decal on and really happy with how it looks. Did it dry, not sure about the sides as I don't have the extra hands required.

 

Popped the lock down bar into place, as well as the coin door and the buttons for the front.

 

Its starting to look like a pinny.

 

[blackvulcan3]

What a day. I decided last night that I wanted to play pinball in the cabinet today. I started early and rock and rolled all day.

 

Started with the cabinet decals. Did the first side dry, went on easy. Started the second side dry, not so easy. Some cursing and gentle persuasion from the wife later I applied a bit of soapy water. Well, that was easy, why didn't I do that from the start. Decals on. I dried the one side as best I could, to be honest I didn't use a tonne of water, in fact I was quite judicious in the application so it wasn't moving, I tackled the legs.

 

I asked the missus to buy some adhesive felt from spotlight and I popped some on the legs. The legs went on simply enough proving that I can measure and drill holes sometimes.

 

I popped on some simple supports for the TV and stoppers and was happy enough with that (I will replace the split one).

 

Then I started the task of wiring up the buttons to a playable state (no lights yet). Im so glad I installed the magnasave buttons and also that I used leaf switches. More on that later.

 

I then popped the sound in, a lot of manoeuvring of the DMD monitor including removing the old stand arm. The 26 inch Samsung TV I was going to use as a cost saving measure would not accept any HDMI signals so I had to go back to the 23 inch monitor in the short term. I will buy a 27 or 28 inch monitor during the week.

 

The playfield was the last to go in. Every button worked first time (left flipper is loose but a crimp will fix it).

 

I decided for the first game in the cab I would play Dirty Harry on VPX. It was every bit as good as I hoped it would be. Leaf switches are so authentic feeling, love it. I am exhausted now. I even threw in an airport run to pick up my mother today. I really can't accurately reflect on how much time I spent totally on the machine today. Big ups to the wife for giving me time and space.

 

Heres some pics, remember yesterday morning this cabinet was bare. No a decal or a button or a wire in sight, now its playable. Awesome.

 

Edited by blackvulcan3, 06 November 2016 - 09:27 AM.

[nickbuol]

Too funny.  I had zero issues with the one side of my cabinet, but the 2nd side was a pain.  It was lined up fine, but it seemed like bubbles wanted to sprout up everywhere.  The decals are sticky, but really start to bond to the cabinet the longer they sit.  Nothing got messed up, and I was able to get all of the bubbles out while still going dry the entire time, but it is odd that we both struggled with the 2nd side.

 

I too wondered from the start about using either very lightly soaped water in a spray bottle, or even Windex (heard that it works as well as the soapy water, but evaporates faster, but then was told that there can be issues with the wet method if you try to handle it (or mount legs) and it isn't 100% dry underneath.  Hopefully you won't have any issues long term.  Even with the dry method, I bought some metal cabinet/leg protectors.  You temporarily mount them to the cabinet, grab a straight edge and cut about 2mm away from the metal protector, remove the protector, peal away the decal that would be under the protector, then put it back in place, screw it on, and then you will never have the legs screw up the cabinet decals.  I added my own felt pieces that I stuck to the metal leg protectors so that I don't scratch up my brass plated legs.

 

A few extra steps, but I am doing a restore of my Theatre of Magic, so I don't want anything to get messed up over time like the original cabinet decals did.

 

These are the metal cabinet/leg protectors:

 

[Nemo]

 

 

I even threw in an airport run to pick up my mother today.

 

You REALLY wanted to play some pin ! 

 

Nice result !

[blackvulcan3]

Its coming together alright.

 

Started messing about with PinballX tonight. The good thing, I did it all from my iMac to my PC by TeamViewer. What a cracking little program that is and the best part its free. So instead of having my neck at 90 degrees I could actually sit back and struggle with PinballX in relative comfort.

 

I've managed to load several tables through VPX, the DMD seems to get lost somewhere and I end up with the stupid PinballX DMD image. I'll fix that somehow.

 

I also can't get my backglasses to display during the selection process of tables in PinballX, except for the one FP table (Star Trek - the default table) has a backglass. All of the Hyperpin backglass images are under PinballX-Media-Backglass Images and they are all named as per everything else. Just get a black screen. More reading required I think.

 

Playing golf tomorrow after my 5 year olds birthday party so I won't get much time on the cabinet. I got my 27 inch monitor delivered today (Acer $204 brand new including free delivery) and that looks so much better. Heres a pic (its not installed properly yet and I had TOTAN on so its not a full backglass - T2 looks UNREAL) - EDIT The pic was taken before tampering with PinballX, now the DMD does not appear during gameplay.

 

Edited by blackvulcan3, 11 November 2016 - 11:34 AM.

[blackvulcan3]

Slow updates at present for two reasons, I'm too busy playing the beautiful beast and tinkering with software seems to take forever.

 

PinballX has been shelved at present until after I get back from holidays in mid January. 

 

I have been downloading and playing with tables. 10.2 was a misadventure as I put it in its own folder and my system just didn't like it so I updated from 10.1 to 10.2 beta. No issues now.

 

It is so much fun, I may have to invest in a cheap nudge solution, it is frustrating after a while to play without it. 

 

Although my sound is good, I think some knockers, contactors, whatever the kids are calling them nowadays, wouldn't go astray either.

[RustyCardores]

 

 

It is so much fun, I may have to invest in a cheap nudge solution, it is frustrating after a while to play without it. 

 

Although my sound is good, I think some knockers, contactors, whatever the kids are calling them nowadays, wouldn't go astray either.

 

One of the cheapest nudge solutions that a few people recommend, is to pull the board out of a MS Sidewinder Pro controller.

 

...and for feedback, 'Poor Man's DOF' is working really well for me. Less than $150 bucks for feedback that covers every sound the table makes! see: http://www.aussiearc...ctile-Feedback)  (read the entire thread... it evolved over time)

[blackvulcan3]

So having been away at the outlaws place over Christmas I am happy to be home and playing pinball again.

 

My Windows issues have been resolved and the boot is super speedy again. Trial and error but now great.

 

I can't seem to lose this stutter problem though and it is on some of my favourite tables, VP9 (variants) and also 10.2.

 

I have plenty of hardware but am wondering that with everything going on the 750GTXti on 1920 x 1080 may not be up to it. It doesn't seem to affect timing but I know the stutter is there. I've turned a lot of the processing down and its still doing it.

 

I am seriously considering a GTX1060 with 6GB of RAM. Yes it may be overkill at present but they can be had for around $350.

 

My main issue at the moment is that each time I open a saved table, the DMD has moved about two inches to the left and shows up partially at the bottom of the playfield. Why does my DMD move to the left from the DMD monitor????

[trapperjohn]

 

I am seriously considering a GTX1060 with 6GB of RAM. Yes it may be overkill at present but they can be had for around $350.

[...]

My main issue at the moment is that each time I open a saved table, the DMD has moved about two inches to the left and shows up partially at the bottom of the playfield. Why does my DMD move to the left from the DMD monitor????

 

a) Do you run Windows 7? Did you switch it back to its "classic" theme (which disables Aero stuff etc.). This did the trick for me (on a less powerful system).

b) Did you enable cabinet mode on the DMD? Right click DMD, show settings, enable cabinet mode. Now restart VP and align the DMD again.