The radio is definitely one of the things I have in mind - the clock is another awkward one as that also grounds through the case and is polarity sensitive.
We've had my mother in law visiting for the last week or so which is why I've been quiet as that's eaten up quite a bit of time.
Spent half an hour or so this evening working on the pinball table.
The coin door lights you may have noted while working were dimmer than expected. Yes, that would be because I had them hooked up to 5V rather than 12V because I was rushing. They look rather happier wired up properly.
A "quick and easy" job I figured was installing the intake fans. I thought this would be a ten minute job as it was just a case of grabbing the 120mm hole saw, cutting two holes, screwing the fans in place and hooking them up to our 12V line (using the feed to the coin door lamps as it's convenient).
Ignore the mess of wiring at the moment - this is deliberately all being done loosely at the moment as a whole job is neatly routing and looming the wiring at a later date. I'm expecting to have to alter things a bunch though so there's little point worrying about that at this stage.
"It'll be easy to cut the holes, the cabinet base is pretty thin ply."
Yes it is. Except for one small area - right below where the cash box sits - where there's a fairly thick metal plate. Two guesses where I decided to put the fans.
My hole saw did NOT enjoy cutting that. However I'd already cut through the ply when I discovered the plate so I was committed to it by then so just pushed through it. I'll obviously need to protect the edges of that as they're quite sharp. Will probably just move the intake grills to the outside.
The location was chosen specifically to try to force some airflow through the area where the display sits as well as through the cabinet itself. I've established that the cabinet actually breathes surprisingly well just due to convection, but we're now also pulling in a good amount of fresh air at the lowest point. We'll need to do some soak testing and monitoring to ensure that everything stays at a sensible temperature once we've got the glass in place on both the main and backglass displays.
The smaller hole you can see right towards the right of the frame is where the factory power switch was originally fitted - that's where the power button which wakes up the whole unit will be fitted once that arrives. I've got a big 40mm button on the way for that.
We do need to add a few more buttons to the machine. We need...
[] Left/right flippers. Originals re-used.
[] Start game. Original location used.
[] Add credit. Coin reject location used. That's where we currently are. We still need...
[] Exit game/menu back.
[] Left/right magnasave.
[] Launch ball.
The Magnasave ones are easy enough - those will just be added using the same style of buttons as the flippers, exactly as they were on most machines which had this functionality. They were usually fitted horizontally behind the flipper buttons, but that's not really practical without modifying the side rails. We'd also run into a conflict with space for the display.
So I'll be fitting them immediately below the flipper buttons.
It's not needed on all that many machines (Black Knight is the only one I can immediately think of off the top of my head), but we don't really want to half do this - and they're also used for configuration page scrolling and skipping whole letters/category in the table select software. I've already got the necessary buttons on the way for this, I just need to be careful to get them fitted straight.
Quite a few of the later games (Medieval Madness, Attack from Mars, Jurassic Park, Terminator 2 I can immediately think of off the top of my head) don't have a conventional plunger, instead using button and launching the ball using a solenoid. Crop of a photo of a random Medieval Madness table to demonstrate.
A pretty "standard" way to handle this on virtual machines is to install a launch ball button right below the plunger. That doesn't look too bad on a modern looking cabinet, but I think with is trying to maintain the more period look of this one will look a bit odd. The software should actually be clever enough to allow the plunger to do this by interpreting the plunger being pushed beyond it's home position by pressing against the spring as the same as a ball launch button being pressed. If that behaves consistently I'm inclined to stick with that.
Final one we need is a way to exit a table when we're done playing it or to open the menu in the table selection software. I'm inclined to use a button the same as the ones used for the start/add credit buttons. Though need to decide where to put it. I'm leaning towards symmetrically opposite where the plunger is as symmetry just makes sense to me. Open to suggestions on that though.
Can't wait to see it for real and try playing it!
Yum 
