Concept

I love neon and illuminated signs, and for awhile have been thinking about making some sort of POW block sign inspired by the POW block floating above the  middle of the ground floor in Mario Bros:

I made a 3D mockup for inspiration before starting:

I discovered El Wire online, which is an electroluminescent wire that has the appearance of neon and comes in different colors and thicknesses. The wires need to be powered by a driver to work, and that driver can be powered by batteries or a power supply. Drivers come in different types, and you can also use sequencers to get some serious blinking action going. I opted to use a sound activated driver, which can pulse the wires on and off to whatever music or other noise is going on in the room.

Materials

1. Black 10″ x 10″ x 10″ acrylic ballot box, $46 ish on eBay

2. 20 feet of white 2.5mm high bright El Wire and an audio activated driver – $40 at CoolNeon.com.

3. 10 feet of blue 2.5mm high bright El Wire with attached harness – $20.50 at CoolNeon.com.

I made the mistake of buying 5mm El Wire first which looks awesome lit, but was too thick to hold a good bend:

4. (2) POW vinyl stickers – custom made by Brian Jones at GameStencils.com

I figured that the sign wouldn’t look so hot when turned off if the design was only made with the El Wire, so I wanted to have a background for the wire to sit on. I made a vector representation of the POW block using a screenshot from Mario Bros and sent it to Brian who made some awesome stickers (thanks). Here’s the file if you need it.

5. Power switch – I got this one at Ace Hardware for a few bucks:

6. Fishing Line – again, got it at Ace Hardware for a few bucks. I believe I got the 8 lb line if I remember correctly.

7. (2) rubber grommets:

8. Screw hooks to hang from ceiling:

Tools

1. Drill or something else that can be used to drill holes. I’m guessing a drill would be best.

2. Superglue (or Krazy Glue if you are feeling crazy)

3. Gorilla Tape

4. Small lengths of wire to wire switch. No pic for this one…you’ll have to imagine how wires look.

5. Masking tape

6. A file smaller than the opening for the switch

How to Build It

1. First thing I did was to stick the custom stickers to opposite sides of the ballot box. Here’s what they looked like with the mask on:

Here’s one side positioned with some masking tape:

and finally, stuck to the box:

Repeat on the opposite side.

2. Next, I drilled 1 hole for each rubber grommet. One on the left side of the box and one on the right. Each hole is about 3 inches down from the top edge. Be VERY careful drilling, as this stuff is fragile. If you drill too close to the edge it will crack just like mine did. I had to fix the piece that cracked with some superglue. After you drill the holes, work the grommets into them. The one on the left here is in:

I put these in to pass the fishing line through for hanging later, and figured they would releave some strain on the acrylic to prevent cracking and also to prevent wear on the fishing line.

3. Drill a hole slightly smaller than the switch wherever you would like to place it. I chose the bottom right corner of the box.

4. Use the file to gradually make the hole a rectangle. When you get close to the size you want, you can use some masking tape to mark off the exact edges of the desired hole so you don’t make it too big. Here it is about 80% done:

5. Once you get the hole the correct size, work the switch into it. This was a bit tricky, and I ended up hitting it (gently) with a rubber mallet:

6. You should now have plastic crud all over the place. Clean the box the best you can inside and out, but don’t go nuts as you will be doing more drilling shortly. Keep in mind acrylic should not be cleaned with Windex as it will leave marks. If you don’t have any Novus, water will probably work better.

7. Grab a drill bit that will be big enough to pass the El Wire through twice. You’ll be feeding in and then back out that same hole. I’d recommend practicing to get the size right on a scrap piece of wood.

8. Drill a hole in the upper right corner of the letter P. You can see that hole here:

9. Put the entire length of white El Wire inside the box, and feed the end that doesn’t have the connector on it through the hole. Pull out almost all of it, leaving enough of the wire inside to connect to the driver later. Secure it to the inside of the box with some Gorilla Tape.

10. This is the tricky part – work the wire around the outer perimieter of the letter P, bending it at the corners. When you get to a bend, before you continue to the next one lift the wire up and put a few drops of super glue under the wire. Use it sparingly, as when it dries it turns white and less will look better. Push the wire down on the glue, and hold for 15 seconds. When it dries, continue to the next bend, following along as you see in the pic above.

11. When you get to the hole, feed the wire back into it. Pull it all the way back inside the box.

12. Tape it inside again with Gorilla Tape to hold it tight

13. Drill a hole in the corner of the O, and repeat the whole process, in and out of the box as you go to each letter.

14. Repeat for the light blue line, using the blue El Wire. Here is one side done…click to zoom in and see how I ran the wire along the edges.

15. I haven’t done this part yet, but the plan is to repeat the process for the opposite side

16. You’ll need to take the battery pack for the driver, and cut one of the wires going to it. Splice in some short pieces of wire, and run them to the switch. You should be able to figure this part out if you are an arcade geek. The driver has it’s own switch. I just left it on, and then use the switch I wired to turn the battery pack on and off.

17. Locate a ceiling joist using a stud finder, being careful to not get a false positive should the stud finder get too close to your manly self.

18. Screw the hooks in, 10″ apart making sure you catch the joist

19. Feed some fishing line through the grommets. I started on the right side, fed it through the inside of the box, and back out the left side.

20. Tie some loops in the line, one on each side

21. Hang it!

That’s about it. View my last post prior to this one to see a video of it. I’m sure I probably left something out. If you have any questions, post a comment and I’d be glad to help.

I’m sure this info has been posted elsewhere, but I couldn’t find it so here’s a tutorial on the subject. This tutorial is for rebuilding a 3″ “midi” style trackball but should work fine for a 2 1/4 “mini” trackball as well.

The trackball (Trak-Ball ^tm) in my Crystal Castles was pretty worn out. The ball barely moved, and it was dull and loaded with scratches. At first I figured maybe I would replace the whole unit, but that was going to cost me around $75 + shipping. A trackball rebuild kit and a new ball is about half the price and will make it work like new.

Parts & Tools needed

• Old crappy trackball
• Trackball repair kit ($25 at TheRealBobRoberts.net)
  

• Shiny new trackball ($15 at TheRealBobRoberts.net)
  The price will vary on this based on the color and size. The old one is on the left, and the new one is on the right.
  
• Philips head screwdriver (not actual size)
  
• 3/32″ allen wrench
  
• 3/8″ wrench or ratchet and 3/8″ socket
  
• Your wife’s tooth brush
  
• Pine-Sol (don’t drink this YET)
  

Instructions

1. Reach into your coin door and unlatch your control panel, exposing the crappy goodness that is your worn out trackball:
   
2. Remove the wiring harness connectors, paying attention to how they are currently connected
3. Remove the 4 nuts holding the trackball to the control panel
   
4. Remove the track ball
   
5. Remove the (6) phillips head screws holding the top part of the housing to the bottom, and remove the top.
   
6. Remove the ball and throw it in a dumpster somewhere.
7. Remove all the innards of the trackball, paying close attention to how they were installed.
8. If your trackball is illuminated you’ll have a lamp on the bottom housing:
   

   remove it.

   Steps 9 through 12 are optional, but recommended. I think it’s a good idea to clean the housings so you aren’t using new parts in a dirty case. That sludge may get on your new parts which certainly wouldn’t be cool. If you are a lazy bastard and don’t care if you have old crud inside your trackball, skip to step 14.

9. Fill your sink with hot water, and add some Pine-Sol
10. Throw the top and bottom housing pieces into the sink, and let them sit for a few hours
11. Pull them out. The grime and sludge and dried up Dr. Pepper should now be loose. If you see any still stuck to the housing, scrub it off using your wife’s toothbrush.
12. Rinse off the toothbrush and quickly put it back where you found it.
13. Dry off the housing pieces with something that isn’t as wet as they are now.
14. Put 2 new bearings from the kit onto the shortest roller in the kit, and pop the roller/bearing assembly into it’s spot in the bottom housing.
15. With the allen wrench, remove the bolt holding the encoder wheel onto the other 2 old rollers.
    
16. Put the remaining new bearings on the new rollers, and attach the encoding wheels.
17. Pop both of those rollers back in the casing. Make sure they are seated well.
    
18. Put the new ball on top of the rollers and make sure it spins OK.
19. Put the 2 coupler PCBs back the way they came out. Seat them into the bottom slots on the bottom part of the housing, making sure the encoder wheels fit between the opening in the black emitter/detector thingy on the PCBs.
20. Put the top housing on, making sure the PCBs fit into the corresponding slots.
21. Put (2) screws back in
22. Roll the ball in both directions, and watch the encoder wheels carefully. Make sure they spin freely and aren’t hung up on anything. One of mine was touching the black emitter/detector and wouldn’t spin when the ball was moved slowly. I fixed it by moving the large washer from one side of the encoder wheel:
    
    I moved it to the opposite side of the wheel, making it stick out just a hair more than it was previously:
    
23. If everything spins freely, put the rest of the screws in, hook it back up, and start rolling.

Here’s a pic of mine all lit up and shiny:

That nasty control panel overlay is next on my list of things to replace on this game. Here’s a boring video of me trying to play it with one hand watching the screen on my digital camera instead of the monitor:

You can see in the video that Bentley the Bear is moving normally now. Before, he was staggering around like someone shot him with a tranquilizer dart.

I’ve been slowly getting better at Mario Bros. I got my highest score to date the other day – 193,220. I’ve been trying to beat it, and have been getting annoyed by the fact that my joystick keeps sticking to one side and won’t return to center like it should 100% of the time. This causes mario to keep on running right into things when I want him to stop.

I’ve been wanting to pick up 2 repro joysticks from MikesArcade.com. They are great from what I hear, but I don’t have the cash right now to buy them. I decided to try and grease the old joysticks I have, and it worked great! They now center fine, and move much more easily. Here’s how I did it. If you have better suggestions let me know.

Here’s how they look from up top:

I used white lithium grease that I picked up awhile back at Ace Hardware:

I think the key here is to know where to put the grease. I think I figured that out by playing with the joystick while watching it from underneath. This should explain it:

I didn’t have to remove them to do this. I put the grease on a q-tip, held the joystick to one side, and put the grease right under the metal washer type thingy that the spring sits on. I only put it on one side. Then, I let the joystick go to center, and turned the joystick around a few times to spread it evenly. After doing that, I just moved it back and forth a few times, and repeated the whole process 3 or 4 times. It made a huge difference for me. I’m guessing this may or may not help depending on how worn out the pieces are that are inside that area.

Maybe now I can break 200k.

I’ve written a new tutorial for you:

I still consider myself a newbie when it comes to electronics. I’ve picked up things here and there but have a lot to learn. I read on PinRepair.com that the 40 pin video processor chip in U16 of Baby Pac-Man’s Vidiot board is prone to failure because it gets ridiculously hot, and that a heat sink should be installed on top of it. The chips are expensive and hard to come by, so now that my Vidiot board is working I wanted to make sure to take this advice. I wasn’t exactly sure how to best go about this, so I figured I would write a tutorial on it. This might be moronically simple for some, but maybe someone will find it useful.

Materials Needed

1. Arctic Alumina Thermal Adhesive & mixing thingy (the first three items above from left to right)

$5.95 on eBay

2. 40 pin glue-on alluminum heat sink

$1.50 at DigiKey.com – part #HS274-ND (thanks PinRepair.com!)

3. Any IC chip that needs a heatsink

4. CD that you don’t care about

$.01 on eBay

5. One rubber band

$1.48 for 1/4 lb bag at Staples (shoot the extras at unsuspecting passerby)

General Ramblings

I headed to Radio Crap to see if they had some sort of adhesive for heat sinks. They didn’t, so don’t bother going. They have heat sink grease, which is NOT adhesive and will not work for this. They do have loads of batteries, crappy remote controlled toys, and cellphones. Are you interested in any batteries? Me neither.

Instructions

1. Get out the outdated CD. If you need to play it once for old times sake before wrecking it, go for it. I’ll wait. All set? Let’s continue.

2. The CD is going to be used to mix the adhesive on because that’s all its good for anymore. This adhesive is magical in that it supposedly transfers heat from the chip to the heat sink. Instructions for using this stuff can be found here. Apparently it’s highly toxic and you aren’t supposed to eat it.

Squirt out equal parts of the two compounds onto a clean area of your Michael Bolton CD.

3. Mix it up with the spatula like you are making some sort of homemade tooth paste, but DON’T brush your teeth with it (yet).

4. Spread a thin layer on the top of the chip…just enough to cover it. Try not to get it all over the pins.

5. Put the heat sink on top…press it down a bit but don’t go all “hog wild” on it. Wipe or lick off the excess.

6. Double up the rubber band and carefully put it around the heat sink/chip sandwich without bending the pins. This was a little tricky.

7. Wait a few hours and remove the rubber band. If you did your’s right it will look like the one above but without a rubber band on it. If it looks completely different it’s time to get a new hobby.

Epilogue

I did something pretty stupid when I did mine. The heat sink is EXACTLY the same length as the chip. After gluing it on, I couldn’t see the notch in the chip that shows you how to orient it when inserting it in it’s socket! Luckily I had another identical chip. I used my meter set to continuity to find 2 pins on one side of the “non heat-sinked” chip that were connected. Then, I found the same pins on the “heat-sinked” one which let me match up the direction properly. After that, I marked where the notch would be on the very end of the chip, and wrote on the underside of it (with a paint pen).

Don’t be a dummy like me…mark your chip first.

The 4 small bags in the upper left that are the same size are sets to make monitor connectors. They contain (1) 3 pin .156 housing, and (1) 6 pin .156 housing. Below those on the left are .100 headers that can be snapped to get the size needed. Below that are 24 pin .156 headers that are also “snappable”. The right side shows (4) 12 pin .156 housings, and (4) 2 pin .156 housings. That’s what I’m using for this tutorial.

OK…I needed an easy way to hook up alligator test leads like this (from Rat Shack)…

…to header connectors on my Vidiot board like this:

That image shows a 5 pin header. The Vidiot board has 12 pin and 2 pin headers, but you get the idea. I can’t just hook alligator leads to these because they could touch each other. It would also be difficult to put 2 clips right next to each other in that small footprint. I decided to make some test connectors that I can reuse…there may be a better way to do this, but this is how I made mine.

First, I took some .093 molex socket connectors that I got from Bob Roberts and opened them up by forcing a small screwdriver in the end and wiggling it around. This pic shows one of those pins, before and after.

I crimped the end on an 18 AWG wire. Then, I took some shrink wrap tubing, and cut it so it would be a little bigger than the connector.

Next, I slid the shrink wrap tubing over the end, making sure it was sticking past a little bit. After heating it with a lighter, here’s what it looked like:

The idea with this is to have a connector I can easily clip a lead to while still being insulated, like so:

The 2 pics above show the first connector I made for this. The end of the shrink wrap tubing didn’t shrink tight enough around the wire end. For the rest of these, I put a small piece of narrower shrink wrap tubing on that area to build it up a little thicker before putting the wider tubing over it.

Here are 2 finished test connectors ready to go. I alternated the length of the wires so adjacent connectors won’t have any chance of touching.

This would have been a lot easier with 2 people! I had to hold the playfield up on it’s side the whole time I did this. Too bad my wife wasn’t home yet.

Tools/stuff needed:

• Phillips head screwdriver
  
• Needle nose pliers
  
• 1/4″ nut driver
  
• Fingers – get as many as you can. I have a whole jar of ‘em for emergencies.
  
• Bandaids for above
  
• 5 New drop targets from PBResource.com – $4/each.
  

Instructions

1. Turn playfield on it’s side (duh)

2. Here’s the drop target bank:

The bottom of that picture is actually the back end of the playfield (opposite flippers). Remove the two screws that I circled.

3. Here’s the other side:

Remove the 6 circled screws – 2 of them are phillips, and the rest are hex heads.

4. Remove the two metal plates and it will give you access to the inside.

5. Start with the drop target on the end. Knock it down if it isn’t already, then push all the others up to get them out of your way. Remove the spring for one target from the metal rod so it’s still attached to the target.

6. Pull the drop target down a little so you can work on it.

7. Remove the lock washer at the end with pliers.

8. On some of mine, the post holding the drop target fell right out. On others I had to push on the end to take it out. Here’s one of them:

9. Remove the drop target from the metal arm thingy:

10. The target is now free…pull it out.

11. Put the new target in the same way the old one came out, but be careful not to grab the top. By now your hands are going to be pretty greasy.

12. When you have all the targets back in, put the metal bottom pieces back on, lining up all the guide arms (or whatever they are called). This part was a bit tricky by myself.

Here they are on mine after I finished.

I’m very close to being done with this…the only thing I have left to do is to replace the bulbs on the underside. Here’s a couple of shots of the top done:

I had it up on the wall since then, and figured I could make it look a bit better by turning it into a neon sign. Here’s how I did it….

1. Get a license plate that will look cool in your game room.

2. Head to an auto parts store and get a neon frame. I got mine at Autozone for $24.99:

3. Get a 12VDC power adapter. I have loads of these in my cellar, but couldn’t find a 12V. I had to get one at Rat Shack for $22.

This one is 1500mA. I’m not sure how many amps that light draws but I’m sure it’s nowhere near 1.5 A.

4. The frame I got came with instructions. It has a small transformer box that you have to wire to the wires coming off the frame. After that, you wire the 3 wires (red, white, and black) coming from the other side of the transformer to your adapter. There are 3 different modes this light supports. The first is to trigger it with brake lights. I don’t have brakes on my house, so that option is out. The 2nd option fades it in and out:

Connect the red wire to positive, and the black and white wires to negative ground.

The 3rd option keeps it lit all the time:

Connect the red and white wires to positive, and the black wire to negative ground.

I opted for #2:

Here it is lit up:

And finally, a video of it in action:

I just won this Pac-Man plate on eBay, and plan on pimping it like it’s Dig Dug brother.

I went out today to a few stores, trying unsuccessfully to find a mirror that I could clip on the front of a game and position it so I could easily adjust the monitor from around back. I saw a post somewhere (KLOV.com?) with a picture of one that someone rigged. I don’t remember what post it was in…it was quite a while ago when I saw it. Thanks to whomever posted that as it got me started with this.

Everything I got for this came from Walmart. I know Walmart sucks, and they have that whole slave labor thing going, but I’m cheap and I bet you are too. Here is a parts list:

1 Mirror – $4.37
SKU: 36826-00092

This hand held mirror was in the aisle with hair accessories…elastics, brushes, stuff like that. There were 2 that were similiar, this being the larger of those 2. It’s a rounded rectangle, with a handle that has a whole in the end. Scroll down further to see a pic.

1 Clip on Desk Lamp – $7.97
SKU: Too lazy to move from my chair to look

This was in the aisle with regular lamps, and looks like this:

Assemby Instructions:

1. First you need to ruin this lamp. Remove the nut around the switch with some pliers:

2. After you do that, the socket for the bulb will have some slack and hang down a bit inside the reflector. Cut the two wires and pull the bulb holder out. You’ll see the wires sticking through on the inside, tied in a knot.

3. Untie the knot, and pull the cord out through the other end of the tube.

4. You have to get that nut off that’s holding the reflector shade on. I ended up using visegrips to grab hold of it on the inside, and then I turned it and the shade until it was lose enough to remove by hand.

Now, you should have a bare end like this:

I thought I was going to need that nut later, but didn’t end up using it.

5. This is the cool part. Take the mirror, and put the threaded end of the rod through the hole in the handle. If you push on it a bit, it will go about half way in. Then just spin the mirror to the right and it will self thread onto the end. It worked great for me, and ended up very tight. Be careful though…if you go all hogwild on it, you may strip it.

It should now look like this, minus the dirty rug:

Here it is in action:

The clamp has a little bit of foam on the inside of the jaws to protect whatever you clamp it to. It’s working fine now, but the foam seems a bit thin. It may be a good idea to buy some thicker foam to stick in there at some point.

Do not show this to your wife. She will probably steal it from you. If she does spot it, tell her you need it to put your face on in the morning.

In case you didn’t read the older posts in the Moon Patrol section, the Moon Patrol I’m restoring had water damage on the bottom of the cabinet. I cut away the damaged wood and added new pieces to replace it. The old wood looked like it was rounded off at the corners intentionally, so I rounded the new wood to match, and was pretty happy with the result.

A cruel individual who shall remain nameless (Wade Lanham) decided to comment on those rounded corners and informed me that they weren’t originally rounded. At that point, I had 3 corners rounded off, and was going to get to the 4th soon. I was thinking of just leaving them as is, but it was bothering me. I’m spending so much time trying to make this right, that it would suck big time to have those corners rounded when it’s complete. I decided to fix them. This method would work regardless of whether you screwed up a corner on purpose like myself, or if you had one that was broken off.

Materials and tools you will need:

• Bondo
  
• Putty Knife
  
• Sanding block and paper (80, 120)
  
• Orbital sander (optional, but better than spinning your sanding block around real fast)
  
• Hammer
  
• Finish nails – 1″ or so is probably fine
• Light Block (for mounting lights on vinyl siding)
  
• Ruler
  
• Hacksaw
  
• Jigsaw (optional…watch your fingers!)
  
• Drill and bits
  
• Motivation
  

OK…here goes. The light block is in two pieces that snap together. Separate the pieces. You’ll need the piece that looks like this:

OK…take a beer break….ready?….let’s continue….

The side shown in the pic is the side that goes against the siding, and we are going to use it as a mold for the bondo. Bondo will stick to just about everything, except plastic. You basically need to cut this in half so you have 2 corners. The best way is probably corner to corner. I did it a little different but would probably do it diagonally if I had to do it again. I started cutting with a jigsaw which was fast. The only problem is it will heat up the plastic and melt it, and it quickly bonds back together. I then had to score it with a utility knife to get it separated. After I cut mine, the two pieces looked like the one on the left here:

Ignore that clamp…I didn’t end up needing it.

There is no easy way to explain this part…you need to measure and cut more of the plastic corner so it will fit underneath the corner, as shown in this pic:

Once you get this cut so it fits well, you’ll need to secure it. I did this by drilling a small pilot hole in a few spots, and banging in a finish nail just enough to hold the corner tight. You can see some of the nails better here:

Read the directions on the can of Bondo until you have them memorized. Mix the bondo on something flat that you can throw out later (like that girl you met at the sports bar last night?). When you have the bondo mixed, spread it into the mold like you are making a cake. Be sure to push down enough so that it forces the bondo down to the bottom of the mold, and leave the bondo higher than the repair so you can sand it later.

If you mixed the bondo right, it should harden in about 30 mins. If you crush a viagra and mix it in, it usually hardens a bit quicker. Feel the bondo to make sure it’s solid, pull the nails out and the mold should come right off.

Now, hit the side with the orbital sander using 80 grit paper until it’s smooth. For the edges, you can either use the sanding block, or the orbital sander. If you use the orbital sander you can easily make it crooked if you aren’t careful. Count the number of beers you have left, and make your decision. Here is the finished result on my Moon Patrol.