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#323924 MFME Cabinet - Building an Idea

Posted by WibbleWobble on 10 February 2019 - 10:04 AM in Cabinet Building

Hi abispac,

 

My pacdrives do have outputs off and I also had to get one of them recoded by Andy at Ultimarc so that they were able to run in the same machine (the two I bought both had ID 1. I imagine that you might have an issue without the special using a hopper as until MFME takes the signal and starts to control the pacdrive the output will be on and will therefore attempt to pay coins. I'm sure some more knowledgeable in such matters like Wizard will be along shortly and will point you in the right direction.

 

Pete




#323920 MFME Cabinet - Building an Idea

Posted by WibbleWobble on 09 February 2019 - 09:38 PM in Cabinet Building

Hi Folks,

 

Managed to get routing of coins setup, I have used 40mm Black waste pipe to get the coins from the CF126 into the hoppers and a cashbox. There is also the coins which I am either not allowing (5p) or are rejected which need to be returned to the player via the payout chute. I have come up with:

 

20190202_175550.jpg

 

20190202_175603.jpg

 

20190202_175924.jpg

 

And then with the bottom cover with the payout tray in place:

 

20190209_212632.jpg

 

I have now turned my attention to marking the buttons that I am to use on the layouts, I have copied the approach taken by @uptown47 where a number i placed next to the image of the physical button on the layout:

 

so this:

 

Monty Python.jpg

 

becomes this:

 

Monty Python edited.jpg

 

and when run inside the emulator:

 

monty.PNG

 

Just got to do these edits on any layout I want to run inside the cabinet.

 

Pete

 




#323832 MFME Cabinet - Building an Idea

Posted by WibbleWobble on 06 February 2019 - 07:46 PM in Cabinet Building

Hi Folks,

 

Managed to get some more time in the workshop and so turned my attention to my next task which was to get the coin inputs working. however I have actually ended up getting the Hopper's working.

 

I had purchased a pair of hoppers from eBay, however due to my not checking they turned out to be Serial. I thus started looking again and managed to find a pair of Azkoyen hoppers in Germany and the buyer was happy to ship to the UK.

 

The previous hoppers did however have the original mounting base with the correct quick release mountings, so I proceeded to use this and mount this on a shelf which I had added just above the PC.

 

20190202_165406.jpg

 

I then proceeded to test the coin output and found that the hoppers were  spraying coins in all directions.

 

Then whilst contemplating the issue and trying to work out how to solve this I had a browse on eBay and noticed that somebody was selling an Payout tray from a Barcrest Horizon cabinet. Having accidentally won a water damaged Barcrest Horizon based machine on eBay (I placed a bid and discussed sizes with the buyer, then the machine sold to somebody else) I then got a message asking if I wanted the cabinet as the buyer had only wanted the MPU cartridge, so I got and entire cabinet for nothing (albeit badly water damaged) 

 

20180826_125036.jpg

 

I proceeded to work out how to remove the Payout tray and cut a hole in my front door so I could add the payout tray

 

20190205_200832.jpg

 

20190205_200839.jpg

 

20190202_165748.jpg

 

I then proceeded to use a length of 40mm Black waste pipe (which I'm going to use for the coin routing from the coin mech to the hoppers) to make a system to catch the coins and direct them into the payout tray, via a 90 degree elbow

 

20190202_165418 (1).jpg

 

20190202_165757.jpg

 

20190202_165757 (1).jpg

 

After testing this, the coins in the hoppers (£1 and 10p) all payout and end up in the payout tray, following the excellent advice from Wizard in my post above, an issue I hadn't actually thought about, but why limit myself to only paying out in multiples of 20p.

 

Next task is to get the coins routed successfully from the Coin mech to the hoppers and coinbox, and also any that are rejected back to the payout tray.

 

Pete

 

 

 




#323753 MFME Cabinet - Building an Idea

Posted by WibbleWobble on 02 February 2019 - 02:24 PM in Cabinet Building

Hello Again Folks,

 

Apologies for the long delay in an update to this project, however following on from a busy Christmas and a nice does of Flu like symptoms, I then got assigned work projects miles and miles from home resulting in an enforced break from the building of the cabinet, today I have managed to get back into the workshop and make some further progress.

 

First order of business was to make all the connections for the lamps and wire these back to the iPac boards, one of which had to go away to be re-programmed by Ultimarc. I cannot recommend highly enough the service that I got from Andy, who re-programmed my board for me even though I bought it from a re-seller In future I will be going straight to Andy for any boards I need.

 

The wiring of the lamps followed a similar colour as the former, with white wires being data/signal and red being the 12v supply. 

 

20190113_110606.jpg

 

These were then all fed back to the iPac which resides in the bottom of the cabinet next to the PC.

 

20190113_113329.jpg

 

I then decided that I would test the machine and just see if I could get the buttons to behave as they had on the test board, so after a period of continuity testing for peace of mind I fired up an old favourite or mine and programmed the lamps in MFME, and to my utter surprise everything worked first time. It was great to see the buttons lighting up and really adds to the immersion and feel of playing a 'real fruitmachine' 

 

20190113_114130 (1).jpg

 

Next I hope to get the coin inputs working so that credits can be applied via the coin mech, then I will turn my attention to the hoppers for getting payout. I am hoping to get 2 hoppers to work, one for £1 coins and one for 20p coins.

 

Pete

 

 




#322899 MFME Cabinet - Building an Idea

Posted by WibbleWobble on 14 December 2018 - 08:46 PM in Cabinet Building

Thanks folks, 

 

The Dyson does indeed need to be emptied, I was using it to try and clean up the workshop a bit  :twitcy:

 

If you saw the rest of the workshop, you'd see that ironically although I like the wiring and things neat I have a nasty habit of using something and then moving onto the next thing, meaning that I end up with piles of tools etc. allover the workbench.

 

Pete




#322878 MFME Cabinet - Building an Idea

Posted by WibbleWobble on 13 December 2018 - 08:20 PM in Cabinet Building

Hi Folks,

 

Managed to get a little bit more done on the cabinet, have managed to get all the buttons wired back to the Earth link and then all the data connections back to the iPac which means that all the buttons can now be tested.

 

20181128_205333.jpg

 

As you can see I was getting confused as to which button was which so I ended up labeling them as when I started to configure the iPac I kept getting the buttons all mixed up ending up with some real weird results....

 

20181128_205344.jpg

 

20181128_205338.jpg

 

Once all the ends were terminated at the iPac I was left with :

 

20181128_205413.jpg

 

I was then able to test that each button gave the  the desired keystroke when pressed. 

 

I have even been able run a test layout and play using the buttons which was great, as I can see some real progress.

 

I have decided to use the following wire colours Black for Ground, White for Data and Red for Live voltage. 

 

Hope everyone is well and looking forward to the festive period, when hopefully I will get a chance to do some more work on the cabinet.

 

Pete

 

 




#322657 MFME Cabinet - Building an Idea

Posted by WibbleWobble on 02 December 2018 - 05:25 PM in Cabinet Building

Hello Again Folks,

 

I have finally managed to make some more progress on the build, and have given the cabinet a couple of coats of paint and can now start to see it coming together which is great.

 

20181125_165955.jpg

 

20181125_170021.jpg

 

Hopefully a couple of weeks at home will allow me to make some further progress on this, as being away with work has really impacted progress.

 

I have also wired up my Pac-Drives and iPAC onto a board (inspired by the fabulous job Uptown47 made of his) 

 

20181126_201400.jpg

 

I have tested these and discovered that the seller has unfortunately sent me 2 x ID1 boards, so I am having to send one back for an exchange, which is a bit of a pain but not the end of the world.

 

I have also managed to make a start on the wiring of the buttons but have now run out of time for this weekend.

 

20181125_170058.jpg

 

Hopefully further progress to report soon.

 

Pete




#322518 Arduino as pac-drive alternative?

Posted by WibbleWobble on 22 November 2018 - 03:43 PM in Cabinet Building

I understand, I would appreciate if you could contact him and see if he would be willing to look at international postage.

 

I can see it might be too much for him, I do not know how expensive postal in Poland is but in UK it would be more than the hopper price.

 

Pete




#322514 Arduino as pac-drive alternative?

Posted by WibbleWobble on 22 November 2018 - 12:33 PM in Cabinet Building

Fantastic work Majoris, I am looking to incorporate hopper into my cabinet, could you supply the link for the Cube hopper you mentioned?

 

Pete




#322159 MFME Cabinet - Building an Idea

Posted by WibbleWobble on 04 November 2018 - 07:17 PM in Cabinet Building

Hi,

 

I made the image myself, it is just a series of layers, for the background and the text, if you are interested I can send you the PDF I used for printing them.

 

Pete




#322153 MFME Cabinet - Building an Idea

Posted by WibbleWobble on 04 November 2018 - 04:11 PM in Cabinet Building

Hi All,

 

Apologies for the lack of updates, a last minute urgent business trip to the Czech Republic has kind of got in the way of progress. However I have managed to make myself some inserts for the various buttons. I wanted something that was common across all the buttons. I found a very useful guide over on DAD's for adding multiple strokes within Photoshop and with a bit of playing I came up with the below:

 

Buttons Layout new.jpg

 

Which when fitted to the buttons look like:

 

20181019_185231.jpg

 

20181019_185240.jpg

 

Overall I think i'm pretty pleased with the look that they give. Hopefully will get some more time this week to work on the build.

 

Pete

 

 




#321796 MFME Cabinet - Building an Idea

Posted by WibbleWobble on 17 October 2018 - 08:36 PM in Cabinet Building

Hello Again,

 

I have had a bit of an issue with fitting the coinmech due to a bit of a measuring oversight, but fortunately I think that I have managed to get away with it and progress on the cabinet can now continue with the wiring and connections of the buttons.

 

I fitted the coinmech into the back of the cabinet and checked it for position, 

 

Coinmech with Monitor.jpg

 

fortunately it cleared the monitor (just)

 

Coin exit closeup.jpg

 

with this in place I created a test piece to make sure that I could get the coin bezel to fit onto the monitor panel.

 

Coin Entry test piece.jpg

 

Once that I had this, I was able to use it to create the holes in the monitor panel and mount the coin bezel on the machine.

 

Coin Bezel Front.jpg

 

It was all seeming to go well, so then fitted the coinmech into the coinmech holder which I'd fitted back into the machine, when I fitted this back into the machine and tried to feed a coin in, the bezel and the coinmech didn't line up, I was slightly stumped, so I removed the monitor panel and re-fitted the test piece, which lined up perfectly, this was when I realised that I had clamped the test piece onto the outside of the cabinet and lined up the outside edges. thus meaning that the Coin Bezel was too far to the left looking from the front of the cabinet.

 

CoinMech (off back centre).jpg

 

So after a little bit of contemplating and measuring I realised that a piece of the Cabinet MDF fitted behind the coinmech holder would bring everything back in line, however this will mean that the bottom of the coinmech sorter will hit the monitor panel, so I would need to remove a piece from the side of the back of the monitor holder, shown below by the red rectangle.

 

Screen Mount with Cutout plan.jpg

 

So I cut a piece of MDF and mounted it behind the coinmech holder, thus moving the coinmech the required 18mm and allowing everything to line up.

 

 Coinmech holder 18mm MDF.jpg

 

with this piece of MDF in place and the coinmech mounted everything lined up as can be seen below:

 

CoinMech (correct position).jpg

 

And the piece that I had cut out of the back of the monitor holder was large enough to allow the coin sorter to clear then monitor.

 

 Coin exit closeup New.jpg

 

 

Hope the post isn't to boring for folks.

 

 

Next I plan to move onto the wiring and position of the computer, I plan to mount the ipac and pac-drives on a board that will be able to be removed if needed.

 

Pete  

 

 

 

 

 

 




#321712 MFME Cabinet - Building an Idea

Posted by WibbleWobble on 14 October 2018 - 08:37 PM in Cabinet Building

Hi Reg,

Hoping to go the whole hog and have coin mech, and hoppers. Having a slight issue with the hoppers at the minute that it over pays due to a random coin out signal being sent when the motor starts. I'll get that sorted though, might need to buy new hoppers, I've currently got Money Controls compact hoppers.


Hoping to fit the coinmech tomorrow.

Will post a further update once done, hope I don't bore folks to death with my updates.

Pete



#321703 MFME Cabinet - Building an Idea

Posted by WibbleWobble on 14 October 2018 - 06:32 PM in Cabinet Building

Hello Again,

 

Managed to make some further progress on the build today.

 

The monitor now has been mounted onto it's panel and the blocks for this to mount on have been put on the back of the front panel.

 

Screen Mount.jpg

 

 

Below is the main panel fitted into the cabinet with the buttons in place. I think that it is going to work quite well and the height and layout feels good.

 

Monitor Surround with Buttons.jpg

 

When the monitor was screwed in place to test I was really pleased with the fit and the space around the sides for access to the buttons for wiring etc.

 

Monitor in Place.jpg

 

Screen from Back.jpg

 

Next was to look at creating the main button panel for below the monitor, I have added the following fixed buttons on this panel

 

Cancel, Hold, Hold/Hi, Hold/Lo, Hold (for Club machines), Collect, Exchange, Special (Let's play Barcrest etc) and Start

 

Button Panel.jpg

 

And when the control panel is fitted to the cabinet and with buttons in the holes:

 

All Buttons in Place.jpg

 

Really starting to get a feel for how it will look, and I have to say I'm really pleased thus far.

 

Pete

 

 

 

 

 

 




#321617 MFME Cabinet - Building an Idea

Posted by WibbleWobble on 11 October 2018 - 09:02 PM in Cabinet Building

Hi Folks,
 
This evening I have been trying to create/refine the main panel which will hold the monitor and some of the buttons.
 
I have decided to go for 5 round buttons down either side of the screen and a row of 5 square buttons beneath the monitor. I think that this should give me plenty of options.
 
Panel Test.jpg
 
The monitor itself will be an HP z24i which i picked up on eBay for £22. It had some minor scratching on the screen but following some polishing out and once the emulator is running they cannot be seen.
 
Unfortunately the monitor didn't come with a stand so I am planning to use the VESA mounting points and a board which will screw to block mounted on the back of the panel.
 
Taking on board what both Reg and No1Stoney have said has meant that I have had to slightly rethink the position of the mounting blocks as they were going to impede access to some of the lamp positions. Thanks gents.
 
Thanks for the comments thus far
 
Pete



#321599 Scorpion 2 fixed for v5

Posted by WibbleWobble on 11 October 2018 - 09:08 AM in New Releases

Thanks very much for these.



#321512 MFME Cabinet - Building an Idea

Posted by WibbleWobble on 09 October 2018 - 08:30 PM in Cabinet Building

Hi All,

 

As you may have seen from some of my previous threads I have been collecting the bits to try and build a freestanding MFME cabinet. I have been inspired in this by Uptown and Reg and No1Stoney all of who seem to have made absolutely amazing cabinets. I just hope that my attempt will be playable once it is finished.

 

This weekend I managed to get some time and cut the sides of the machine, and when glued together they look like:

 

Cabinet Sides.jpg

 

The reason that they are glued and not a single piece is that I do not have the space to handle a single sheet of MDF, so after some testing I have found that I can edge glue them and the result once cured is nigh on impossible to break at the join.

 

Once these were fully cured (next day) I then started to assemble the cabinet using join blocks so that the various panels can be removed to allow access to the innards.

 

Side and Back.jpg

 

And once the other side and a base frame were added we have a self supporting basis of a skeleton.

 

Sides and Back.jpg

 

This evening, I have been trying to create a screen mount and get the positioning of the buttons round the screen to a position that I am happy with.

 

Pete

 

 

 

 

 

 

 




#321026 Birthday in the House

Posted by WibbleWobble on 30 September 2018 - 02:15 PM in Any Topic Chat

Happy Birthday, hope you have a good un.




#320747 Money Control compact hopper

Posted by WibbleWobble on 18 September 2018 - 03:30 PM in Cabinet Building

I suspect that I have rectified the issue with the hopper, as a good clean of the Optical sensor seems to have got this machine working, however MPU5 technology machines will activate the hopper but they do not seem to coin count and I am getting sporadic over payments.

 

Is there a setting anybody has seen that controls this count?

 

Pete




#320730 Money Control compact hopper

Posted by WibbleWobble on 17 September 2018 - 07:26 PM in Cabinet Building

Hi Folks,

 

Finally got some time to have a bit more of a go with the items that I have ordered and I have a strange issue.

 

I am testing things using the Hulk £25 DX on Scorpion 5 tech as a test bench. I can get the hopper to be recognised and it will pay out, however on multiplier 1 the relay just click and the motor runs for a fraction and then stops. on multiplier 2 I get 3 coins for every 2 that should be paid out. Anybody any idea what I might be doing wrong?

 

Pete




#320624 Rob Da Bank Wdx

Posted by WibbleWobble on 13 September 2018 - 08:14 AM in WIP for MFME5

That is looking great TommyC, I for one wouldn't have the first clue where to start, and I am appreciative of all the talented folks like you, Vec etc (apologies to all who didn't get a mention) who make these amazing DX and classic layouts for us to enjoy.

 

And lets be honest, you can spend more than a years gold membership on fancy coffee for 3 or 4 people these days!! and people think nothing of that but won't put their hand in their pocket to support the scene.

 

Pete




#320447 Star Wars a New Hope - No Game Cart/Board

Posted by WibbleWobble on 06 September 2018 - 01:35 PM in Real Fruit Machine help and technical support

That was what I thought, Ah well, just have to keep a look out for an RTC TR09 security chip as that is what the Star Wars Game Cards use. Does anybody know if/where these chips can be purchased separately? 




#320402 Star Wars a New Hope - No Game Cart/Board

Posted by WibbleWobble on 04 September 2018 - 07:24 PM in Real Fruit Machine help and technical support

Hi Folks,

 

Have got the new board sorted, just need to understand how to upload the BIN files, I understand that the MPU 5 uses a Compact flash card to load the software, does anybody know how this is achieved and if there is a way to use a different security chip to the one the Game is expecting?

 

Pete




#320351 Star Wars a New Hope - No Game Cart/Board

Posted by WibbleWobble on 01 September 2018 - 07:21 PM in Real Fruit Machine help and technical support

Hi,

 

I don't even know if what i'm trying to do is possible, I have picked up a Star Wars a New Hope £70 JP machine for essentially free, which has suffered water damage, I would like if possible to resurrect it (as cheaply as possible as the glass is in pretty shoddy shape) I know I can buy a Game Card from eBay and then get the software uploaded onto it. Does anybody know if it is possible to use any security chip? or must it be the one that A New Hope is expecting?

 

If it is a non starter, I will probably just strip the cab for spares, as I am trying to build an emulator cabinet at the same time.

 

I've also posted this over on MPU Mecca

 

 

Thanks in advance

 

Pete




#320333 {MPU5}Layout Release Club Caribbean Dx

Posted by WibbleWobble on 01 September 2018 - 08:59 AM in MPU5

Thank You for this release