Original Project Thread: /https://www.aussiearcade.com/topic/84069-space-invaders-bartop/
Another instance of checking an unfinished project off my list. I still have the pinball to go but this one is easy and that one is hard 😉 This one should be real quick.
I bought this ArcadeWorx cab off www.aussiearcade.com member namastepat back in February 2018. It’s surprisingly large, taking up a lot of space on my garage floor so time to get it working and sitting somewhere else.
Cabs is a little banged up with a few nicks but over all pretty good.
All black and I love the Space Invaders cut-outs in the marquee area.
So I thought I’d continue with the Space Invaders theme and keep the cab Black and Red. It didn’t hurt that I had a pack of both red and black buttons 😉 I’d also bought a power supply and jamma harness to match the Pandora 4S I bought back in April.
I installed the buttons and joysticks. Will need to check the controls for the Pandora to see if I need the other 3 holes. I’ll use what I need and try to find some of those caps to cover any not used. Also the top row holes are smaller than the player button holes 😞
The P1 and P2 buttons I used (STD size) will never come out again LOL!
Installed speakers inside the audio cut-outs.
The IEC socket I have is not round like the hole that had been cut out 😞
Traced around and then did a little free-styling with my jigsaw. The flange on the socket hides the shoddiness 😄
Wired mains socket, power supply and jamma harness power. I then fired it up to see if smoke would come out. Success!
Damn I love how fast these Pandora’s boot up unlike those shitty 60-1 jobs.
It was getting late so I’ll finish wiring in the joysticks and buttons next weekend. One last thing was to mount the fan cover into the top. The Alien one I had suits the theme.
Now an idea I’d had was to install an LED chaser light coloured red behind the cut-outs in the marquee area so they’d light up and travel across just like in the game. My circuitry skills are not even close to being capable but another www.aussiearcade.com member VERY generously stepped up, designed it, built it AND personally delivered it to me! thanks Kaizen!
The circuit design
Whats even better is that Kaizen modified it so that I could adjust the speed!
Whilst I awaited the completion of that component I went ahead and finished off the rest.
Finished connecting up the jamma harness to all of the player controls. I then mounted the monitor. I created a bottom rail and attached a piece of angle the hold the monitor in place. I then used some metal strapping to hold the top in place. Easily removed with a screw in each corner.
I then fixed the PSU and Pandora into the base, tidied the harness with cable ties and used brackets to attach to side. Actually took this photo before tidying and mounting harness
Here is is all fired up. The Pandora has a couple of annoyances though. The games list are not sorted alphabetically and you have sequels pages before original etc. Also they included Ms Pacman but it scaled to the widescreen and plays super fast. No doubt there are others so I disabled that game. A bit of reading and it seems it may be an SD card running xmame so I might take it apart, image it and see if I can tweak it somewhat. Others games that I’ve looked at run really well.
I definitely would not put a 60-1 or one of these in a full cab. PC all the way imo. They’re just handy for small spaces.
Attached the back door, barrel lock to come.
Kaizen dropped his circuit off to me at least a month ago along with a strip of opaque red perspex. Thanks again mate, truly appreciated!
As the perspex was see through I needed to block it out so that the lights and wires were not visible when lit up. I looked at a few things and ended testing AND going with some heavy duty tracing paper/plastic. An off-cut from a large sheet another member Illawarra Steelers sent me for my EM restore. I affixed it and did a little test and it worked perfectly!
I then lengthened a few of the wires in the circuit and screwed each of the 4 light arrays onto a piece of 3 ply. So the perspex is hard up against the space invaders cut-outs and the light mounted ply is horizontal behind it. I have angled it up somewhat using a scrap piece of timber so that the lights are brighter without individual LEDs strobing though the perspex. I think it looks excellent! I will need to trim some of the tape I used to fix the paper as it’s slightly encroaching on the bottom.