Extra Medium - The Life and Times of Spenzalii Func

Forced Upgrades (or Why I Left WebOS for the Overlords at Google)-Part 3

2012-02-08T01:46:00.000-05:00

The second major issue with Palm was one they never, ever came close to figuring out: hardware. Let's start with aesthetics. As many reasons as I have for not wanting an iPhone, the physical phone itself isn't one of them. Apple has always has a very clean, very modern, minimalist design in their products, and the iPhone doesn't disappoint. HTC has been putting in work for years, combining soft touch plastics, brushed aluminum, and various flourishes to make highly attractive phones no matter what carrier or OS. Samsung has done big things with its Galaxy lineup. What did Palm do? They went with a small, plastic, pebble shaped phone. It had the minimalist thing going for it, true. But with the hard, glossy plastic it never felt substantial, premium, when you held it. It would never win many votes in a beauty pagent.

Pretty easy choice for millions of people...

But it was more than the looks. The hardware specs were also an issue. The processor and screen size were fine in January 2009 at CES. By the time it dropped in the summer, other phones were surpassing those specs offering bigger screens, more memory, and faster processors. This wouldn't have been a problem if the hardware was upgraded, as most every other company does. HTC seems to have a new or remixed phone every 3 weeks, with specs that either keep up with the latest trends in technology or push them farther (like they did with the EVO 4G). Apple upgrades their phone on a yearly basis, with a huge event to mark the occasion. Motorola, which rode the RAZR popularity entirely too long and nearly took themselves out of the smartphone game, had cranked out some quality pieces of hardware.

And to think, this is the same company that makes Nextel phones...

Heck, even RIM has managed to tweak their crackberry to keep business and social types happy. What did Palm do? Well, depends on your carrier. If you were on Verizon or AT&T, you got a crack at the Pre Plus. The big changes between it and the original Pre on Sprint? More internal RAM and the removal of the physical button in the gesture area. That's all. No screen size or resolution increases, no processor bump, no change of form factor, not even a special edition color. In February 2011 Verizon did release the oft delayed Pre 2, which finally brought a faster 1mhz processor and WebOS 2.0, which brought out some enhancements, but no other changes to speak of. Now, for die hard Palm fans or lovers of WebOS, the change was notable, even if the hardware changes were nowhere near the upgrade they had rallied for. But for the average person coming into Verizon for a phone, the Pre2 never stood a chance.

It's all new! Really, it is! What, it doesn't look new?

First off, Verizon store employees did a horrible job in promoting the phone in store. When the Plus dropped, there were stories of some stores steering people away from the Pre to one of their Android offerings. Verizon had decided that, without the all conquering iPhone, it stood a better chance getting customers by pushing their 'Droid' lineup of phones by Motorola and HTC. At that point, WebOS was still a more polished offering than whichever of the multiple flavors of Android that were out. But on the same looking, same spec hardware, and with employees that weren't exactly encouraged to push it, the Pre Plus was barely noticed. By time the Pre2 hit, Big Red was offering a glut of 4 inch, super fast Android phones and a little thing called the iPhone 4, which finally came to the network. There was no way a phone that had physically changed very little in 2 years would stand a chance getting noticed, even if Verizon gave them away for free.

But what about Sprint? Their customers (like myself) were the first to buy into Palm's new OS, and often were the most vocal and loyal bunch of WebOS users. Surely they would have enjoyed some new hardware. Nope. Sprint, feeling it got burned by Palm when the Pre failed to meet sales expectation, decided not to carry any further iteration of the Pre. Sprint users were never offered the Pre Plus, instead having to deal with the annoying 'too many cards' memory leak.

There was PLENTY of this to go around for Sprint customers...

The Pre2? Not a chance. The thing is, WebOS users, like myself, would have snapped them up without thinking if Sprint offered them, even with the plethora of Android offerings, simply because the OS was great. To make matters worse, the aforementioned WebOS 2.0, which was promised to all Palm Pre owners, never made it to owners of the Sprint Palm Pre. Lack of memory and processor speed meant the OS would not run properly, further insulating those loyal customers.

I would be remiss if I didn't mention the other offering Palm had: the Pixi. In an effort to win back the few hundred people still holding on to their Centros, Palm released what was essentially a smaller Pre with a slower processor and, depending on your carrier, lack of WiFi.

Somebody had to think this would sell. Not sure who...

True, WebOS was coded in a way that the vast majority of programs written for it would scale down to work on the lesser hardware with no problem showing the versatility of the software. But most people didn't want a smaller, slower phone than what they had. Why Palm gave Pre users, especially those on Sprint, a way to downgrade, but absolutely no way to upgrade is beyond me. And the name. Pixi. What grown person is going to buy any product with a name like Pixi?

Now, many thought the issue with the lack of new hardware was Palm's relative lack of funding. And to a point, that could be argued. They simply didn't have the funds to R&D new product like any of the larger manufacturers. So when it was announced that HP was buying them for a few billion, many thought it could work. I mean, this is HP. They have TONS of cash from pushing desktops, laptops, and printers for years.

Every office known to man had to fight with one of these....

Money should have been no problem. All the planned product that had been hinted at and whispered about could now be put out to the public, and WebOS could be seen for the great OS it is. Right?

Wrong. So very, very wrong.

While the HP and Palm guys promised a slew of new products in the coming months, only 3 were confirmed: a tablet, which thanks to the iPad was all the rage, and 2 new phones.

Yes, those are two BRAND NEW phones. We've gone over this before...

First was the Veer (the one on the left), a 2.6 inch slider phone that was SMALLER than even the Pixi and sporting WebOS 2.0. HP tryed to hype the phone the best it could. Palm guru John Rubenstein actually started using it as his main phone (although I'm not sure how many other business execs would be squinting at that tiny screen or trying to tap out e-mails in the boardroom with that). AT&T released the phone in May 2011. Nobody cared. It seems that nobody was really that interested in a slider phone the size of an egg (and looked like an egg if you ordered the Veer in white). Considering most every other phone in the market were going for BIGGER screens, and most Palm fans had been begging for a bigger, better phone, not releasing the Pre 3 had to be one of the dumbest decisions HP could have made.

But...but.. iCarley thinks its sooooooooo cute!

So after crapping the bed with that phone decision, HP decided to put their full might on the HP Touchpad. With the iPad setting the stage, everybody was trying to get a piece of the tablet pie, fielding tablets to compete against the all conquering Apple slab. This time, HP figured they had a shot. With WebOS 3.0 running on some decent hardware (1.2 Ghz Snapdragon with 1Gb RAM), it had the muscle to fight with the Galaxy Tab and iPad 2. WebOs was still a slicker, more refined interface than Honeycomb (which was almost a stop-gap OS designed for tablets but never really got traction) and was ready to show the world just what was possible on more capable hardware. A big ad campain was run, dedicated space was set up in Best Buy and Staples to set it apart from the other tablets and special training was given to salespeople so they know the benefits of the Touchpad and why someone would want one over that pesky iPad. So how did it fare?

Put it like this: Harry couldn't even save them...

Bad. Very, very bad. First, the reviews weren't exactly kind to it. Where most tablets in it's price range went with some sort of soft touch or aluminum casing, the Touchpad looked...like a supersized Pre. Same hard touch, shiny plastic, same rounded pebble look. It's one thing to keep the family resemblence going, but when nobody is really impressed by it, it's going to be hard to get people to give you much of a look. Once you got past the looks, there was the performance. Even with a competetive processor, the tablet often felt sluggish when doing web browsing and other tasks. This was fixed by subsequent OTA updates (one of which went out not long after the Touchpad hit the shelves), but it would seem that for a product that had been in development for so long, these issues should have been sorted out. Couple that with the dirth of apps (which I'll get to in anothe entry) and the fact that it sold for the same price as the Tab and iPad, and it was a very, VERY hard sell for a company that simply had to make this work if WebOS had any chance of survival in a world where Apple was still king in mind share and Android was taking the lead in market share. In August, less than 2 months after the Touchpad went on sale, HP announced it that it would discontinue all current hardware devices running WebOS. The remaining stock of Touchpads would be sold off at ridiculous discount. How ridiculous? At launch, a 16GB Touchpad went for $499. During the fire sale that followed HP's discontinuation, you could have that same touchpad for the low low price of $99. The Touchpads then sold like hotcakes. In a bit of irony, HP now had the second most popular tablet on the market, and they weren't even making them anymore.

Who wants orphaned tech? WE DO!!!

With the death of all WebOS hardware, the Pre3 was dead before it even had a chance. Any hope of a competetive (or any, at this point) phone running an OS other than Android or iOS with true multitasking was over. Just to add salt in the wound of the Palm faithful, a few websites managed to get a hold of one of the few Pre3 phones that actually made it out into the wild. The reviews were pretty much what most people thought: The best Palm phone yet, but looks too similar to every other Pre and just not enough there to sway most people to buy it over a similar Android or Apple product, even if the OS rocks. Sprint could easily have sold them to every Pre owner they still had with no problem. But that would never happen now.

As depressing as this was, there was still one more reason the Pre and WebOS failed.

So much to do, so little time

2012-01-22T11:52:00.000-05:00

This really is pathetic. I've got so many half done posts or barely started posts it's not even funny. That's going to change. The plan is to post something, ANYTHING, every Saturday at the latest from here on out. My NBA story is a season and a half late, my International Slumber worklog is a year behind, and I haven't even started El Guapo and El Jeffe yet. But I will. By hook or by crook, I will.

And who knows. You may even see some grilling stories here.

Stay classy DMV

Spenzalii

Forced Upgrades (or Why I Left WebOS for the Overlords at Google)-Part 2

2011-09-23T00:25:00.000-04:00

So, Palm has a new phone, new OS, healthy buzz, and a carrier in Sprint that would feature the Pre as their exclusive premier phone, much like AT&T was doing with the iPhone. In the first month, the uptake on it was record breaking for Sprint. How could they go wrong?

First off: terrible marketing. You could have the best product in the world, something that stands thoroughly and unequivocally above anything else in it's class. If nobody knows about it, it's not going to sell. Multitasking and notifications worked better than anything Apple or Android could offer, and the swiping interface was well thought out and implemented. You would think focusing on some of these things would be a good idea in your marketing blitz, right? Apparently, the marketing heads at Palm thought otherwise.

What we have here is a lady that looks like the cross between the Pre-Cogs in Minority Report and the Borg Queen's cousin doing some nonsensical drivel about.... Reincarnation. Huh? This one was even worse:

Now we have a mind reading phone. And we can barely see what she's doing with said clairvoyant technology. What gives? People had no idea the commercials was even about a phone, let alone why they would want to leave their Android, Blackberry or beloved iPhone for a Pre. When the phone finally made its way to Verizon, the marketing wasn't much better.

Smart enough to keep up with MOM?. For reference, my mother rocks a purple crackberry. Definitely NOT the phone I want to be seen with. So if mom rolls up with a Pre....It did slightly better at showing what the phone could do, but considering previous efforts, that wasn't saying much. Verizon really could care less, as they were full steam behind their Droid line of phones (more on this later). By the time AT&T started carrying the phone, they didn't even bother with marketing. It just sort of showed up, overshadowed by the iPhone. Just before Palm got bought by HP they actually put out the kind of commercials they should have started with all along, actually showing what you could do with WebOS.

But at this point, it was too little, too late.

Forced Upgrades (or Why I Left WebOS for the Overlords at Google)-Part 1

2011-08-03T15:11:00.001-04:00

Options are great. When you have an option, you can choose what works for YOU, not what the masses say should work for you. You can proudly say you made your choice without giving in to the mob mentality, with the knowledge that your decision will fit your individual needs. Scan Different (c) Ecko. However, that doesn't work with everything, especially electronics. And it certainly didn't work with my phone...

First, some disclosure. I rarely ever change phones or carriers. I was with Nextel back with the OG i1000. I switched to the i90 (one of the greatest phones ever) when the hinge on the i1000 broke and could not be fixed.

Greatest. Nextel. EVER

The i90 gave way to the i580, only because I wanted to make my own .wav ringtones and have a color screen (a mistake, as the i90 was such a better phone). The i580 soldiered on long past its prime, as none of the crop of phones Sprint carried made me want to spend $300 to upgrade. Sure the Moguls and the Touch Diamonds were nice, but I wanted no parts of Windows Mobile.

No way was I going to deal with THIS...

I wasn't the right clientele for a Blackberry, so that was a no go. Android was at its infancy. And while many bought the kool-aide that was the Instinct, thinking that was an iPhone killer, I wasn't going to be duped.

I still laugh at everyone that bought this crap...

Then came CES 2009. Palm, who had been rapidly losing market share pushing Treos and Centros with craptacular Windows Mobile or woefully outdated PalmOS, showed off what it had been working on for the past few months. The Palm Pre.

Ooooooooohhhhhhhhhh (at the time, anyway)

It seemed to tick all the right boxes for what I wanted in a new phone: capacitive touch screen, wi-fi, bluetooth, physical keyboard, not Windows based. WebOS was new and exiting, and seemed different enough from iOS, Android, whatever version of Windows Mobile was out, etc. The preview of the OS was intriguing, with multitouch input (something Apple seemed to hold the monopoly on at the time) and all forms of on screen swipes (something slightly different). The launch, unfortunately for many, wouldn't happen until early summer. This worked out perfectly for me. My contract would be up for renewal about the same time my job issued their summer bonuses, meaning I would have the funds to actually buy a new phone the same time it was available after launch. I took a lunch break, hopped on the train to the nearest Sprint store and had brand spanking new Palm Pre up and running in less than 15 minutes.

Now, coming from an ancient Nextel to the realm of a smartphone, anything would have been a revelation. But WebOS? It really was something special. The Synergy feature made it extremely easy to get my att.net and gmail accounts synced up with minimum fuss. Facebook and Photobucket were also as easy to get rolling on the phone. After a quick tutorial, the whole 'gesture' language mad complete sense. Being able to 'swipe' forward and backward to open files, close programs, delete e-mails, move around web pages was amazing. Being able to have multiple applications running at the same time (web browser, e-mail, Facebook and Pandora, for instance) was fantastic, and being able to swipe between any program and keep the others up and running was absolutely unheard of, but wonderful. From a software development outlook, Palm walked a line between Android and Apple. Since the OS wasn’t licensed to other phone manufactures, the specs for what hardware you were developing a program for were pretty much set, a la the iPhone (at least until the Pixi came along). However, unlike Apple, Palm left the OS pretty open, allowing those with Linux experience and a bit of moxie to develop their own programs and tweaks to the OS, like Android. With PreWare (one of the many programs written by the WebOS Internals crew) any number of tweaks and apps were available to add whatever functionality Palm didn’t have (and often Palm would add to their OTA updates). It felt like a small community banded together to fight the good fight against the 800 pound gorilla that is he iPhone. At one point, they even had an iTunes spoof that made the Pre look like an iPod when iTunes was running (Apple was far from pleased, and subsequent updates eliminated it). This was the phone for me.

Now, it's not to say the phone was perfect. Some early phones had the serious 'oreo' effect going wherein the slider would twist like a cookie. Not very good. The USB cover was just waiting to disappear into nothingness after it broke a few of your fingernails trying to open it the first few times. The physical button in the gesture area was a bit redundant (a fact made clear when the Pre Plus got rid of it all together). Battery life, as with many smartphones, was less than impressive. And while some liked the 'pebble' aesthetic, compared to other phones it may have looked and felt cheap. The biggest problems with Sprint's Pre were the underclocked processor (supposedly to keep things stable and keep the battery from wasting away too quickly) and the lack of memory. 8GB of storage (no SD slot, natch) was livable, but only 256mb of RAM was a huge problem. Various memory leaks from programs that were running would use up what RAM was available, making it impossible to open another program or card without closing some of what you were working on. This could happen even if you didn't have any cards on the screen! The Pre Plus doubled the RAM to 512mb, pretty much eliminating it. At least if you were on Big Red or AT&T anyway. (more on that in a bit.) Even with these issues, Palm had a winner on it's hands. The OS was fresh, user friendly, and just flat out worked. It really could have taken off to compete with RIM and Android (nobody is taking iOS out any time soon; that's just the reality). Sadly, this was not to be…

Project: International Slumber – Part 3: Get In Where You Fit In

2011-06-17T16:54:00.001-04:00

It was now time to figure out the best way to get all the PCBs in the case. As shown in Art’s Tek-Case video, there are 2 plexiglass pieces that the PCBs can mount to: one with holes drilled to fit a MCC and the other designed to zip tie a PCB to. With the case assembled, there’s just enough space to mount a PCB above and below the mount, provided you’re creative with your wire connections. The PCB mounts that attach to the support case are offset from the center line, meaning there is more space for the PCB and it’s wiring than the other side, which comes closer to the top panel of the case. Since the MCC and the Sparky Jr. would end up with the majority of the wiring, I decided to place them where they had the most room on the PCB holder. The Master$trike would only have a few wires attaching to it, so placing that one on the bottom seemed reasonable. The MadCatz Fightpad PCB, while wide, is pretty flat since it doesn’t have any analog pots to worry about. It would go on the bottom of one of the PCB holders, but I would have to figure out how to mount it to the plexiglass holder. After some mental gymnastics to figure out what would work best where, I decided to go, from left to right, top to bottom: MCC, Sparky Jr, Master$trike, Madcatz PCB.

After figuring out where to place them it was time to figure out how to mount them. While one of the PCB holders has holes drilled for the MCC, you still need to provide your own post and screws to attach the PCB to the holder. I headed down to Lowes and picked up a pack of ½” and ¾” 4-40 screws and a variety of plastic screw posts that I thought would be long enough to keep the PCB from directly touching the plexiglass holder and allow enough thread for the nut to screw on the other side. For the other PCBs, I’d need to get a bit creative. With the MCC mounted to its holder, I placed the Master$trike on the other side of the PCB holder and traces the outline of the board and it’s screw holes. Then, I removed the MCC and drilled and countersunk the holes under the MCC. That way, I could insert the screws for the Master$trike under the MCC and not worry about the screw toughing or shorting any of the MCC’s connections. I used 2 nuts on the screws: one to secure the screw to the PCB to make sure it wouldn’t get loose and as a spacer to keep the Master$trike off the plexiglass holder, and another nut to secure the Master$trike to the screw post. That setup gave me just enough clearance to attach the assembly to the top and bottom case support brackets.

The other 2 PCBs were a little trickier. Since the other PCB holder had no holes drilled at all, I would need to drill all the holes needed. I started with the Sparky Jr., tracing the board, marking the screwholes, then drilling and countersinking the holes on the opposite side of the PCB holder. The screws were mounted the same way I did for the Master$trike. The Madcatz PCB would need to have some holes drilled in the PCB, since the holes that were present weren’t spaced in a way I could use them with the plexiglass mount. I measured the width of the mount, then calculated how far apart the holes needed t be drilled on the PCB. Fortunately there is enough space on the PCB where there are no electrical traces running through it that making the holes wasn’t a huge issue. I then drilled and countersunk the holes in the plexiglass holder as I did with the other PCBs.

With the boards mounted and dry-fitted in the case, it was time to work on the buttons. To get the arc eyes to fit in the Seimitsu buttons, I whipped out the trusty dremel and ground out notches in the button casing to allow room to fit the pin headers that would be soldered to the arc eyes. Once that was done, I took the dremel to the sides of the switch where the pin headers would be. That way, once assembled, the headers could protrude from under the button and allow the wiring harness to plug in. I probably could have just drilled holes in the button casing and ran wires from the arc eyes and hardwired everything. But I like to be able to unplug things in case anything goes wrong, so the extra work making the pin headers fit was worth it.

Once the buttons were modified I placed them back in the case to start the arduous task of wiring everything.

Project: International Slumber – Part 2: Some Assembly Required

2011-01-26T19:49:00.001-05:00

One of the first things to arrive was the Tek-Case. Art has the case unassembled and flat packed to save on shipping. The plexiglass parts were all wrapped in plastic and packed between cardboard and bubble wrap, ensuring that all the pieces arrived undamaged. The 6/32” and 8/32” screws were bagged and labeled as well. While there were no written instructions in the box, the YouTube video covers everything better than printed instructions could.

Flat packed for freshness!

One of the nice things about the Tek-Case are the number of customization options available. Since the case is plexiglass, there are a variety of different colors you can choose from for each panel. Want a clear top panel and a smoke bottom panel? You can do that. Mirror side panels? Doable. Clear top panel, blue support panels, red name plate, and the ability to have artwork on the bottom panel? Why not. Want an etched image on the top or bottom panel? You know it. The whole case in Florescent Green and Orange? Questionable taste, but it’s your money…

Are we clear? Crystal...

Blue ice. Looks like Tron...

Yellow border? I can see that

Perfect for BlazBlue

In addition to the color options, you can also specify a number of 6 or 8 button layouts, from a Viewlix layout, Sega Astro City layout, even a straight Capcom 6 button layout or a Mortal Combat style layout. The possibilities are only limited by your imagination and wallet. D3v went with a fairly simple setup: clear case, mirror nameplate, option for artwork on the top and bottom. One of the plexiglass panels between the support layer, the artwork and the top panel had Morrigan’s image etched to it, allowing it to be overlaid on a different piece of art should d3v decide to change the artwork down the road.

Nice etching

Very nice indeed...

D3v also ordered the optional weight slots with mirror plexiglass, which would allow him to add some ballsat (such as BB pellets) inside the case for more weight.

The piece that makes everything work is the diamond joint. The joints allow the perpendicular panels to screw together with the 6/32” screws and nuts that fit into slots cut into the joints. The top of the joint is threaded for a 8/32” screw, which allows the top panels and support layers to bolt to the ‘frame’ made by the side panels. The entire setup is as simple as it is ingenious.

After a few days, my order from LizardLick came in:

That's just the first wave of parts

Even though I was still waiting for some of the electronics to come in, I decided I’d put the buttons and joystick in the case to get an idea of what the finished product would look like and how much room I would have for the PCBs. Turns out, it looked quite nice:

So fresh. So clean..

d3v should submit the art to the editor of Big 'Uns....

Like a nameplate belt buckle. But much cooler

Button inserts FTW. Balltop just a stand in for now

Looks like a lot of room in there. That's going to change

As nice as it looked, there was still a lot of work to do. 6 Arc Eyes and 4 PCBs had to be wired up. Time to get busy…

Project: International Slumber – Part 1: The Set Up

2011-01-26T19:32:00.000-05:00

The plan for Project: International Slumber, or P:IS, was to have all the parts shipped to me for assembly and testing then to ship the finished product over to d3v. The spec sheet for this project would be rather full: Sanwa JLF stick, clear Seimitsu buttons, a set of Arc-Eyes for lights, a MC Cthulhu dual modded with a 360 PCB for multi console support, and a RJ45 hookup with compatible USB and Gamecube cables. The one thing he wasn’t sure of initially was which case to get. 2 cases were in the running. Voltech’s VAS-HG cases are beautifully crafted, extremely sturdy works of art. While not exactly cheap, they are worth every penny. I’d know, considering how El Guapo turned out. The other choice had been teased for a few months and were finally ready to start production. Art over at Tek-Innovationshas made plexiglass covers and replacement panels for TEs and HRAPs for a while. His most recent project is much more ambitious: a plexiglass case, complete with options for colors, etchings and button placement. All of the parts fit together with standard screws. If you can put together a Lego kit, you can probably put this together as well.

D3v decided to go with the plexiglass case, which he optioned out to his needs and prepared the artwork, based on Darkstalkers fan favorite Morrigan, to be printed. The rest of the parts I ordered myself. I hit LizardLick up for the JLF and clear 24mm (just released) and 30mm Seimitsu buttons, the MC Cthulhu, and the Neutrick RJ45 pass through jack. I ordered the least expensive MadCatz 360 fightpad from Amazon, since I didn’t care what character I got (all I wanted was the PCB). For the lighting, I had to hit up my Canadian Connection. Purplearms was able to supply me with the Arc-Eyes for the button lights as well as a Masterstrike, which would take care of switching between 3 colors, powering the MC Cthulhu and 360 PCB, and handle USB switching.

Right around the same time 32Teeth, another crazy Canuck, came out with his custom PCB, Sparky Jr. Through the power of multiplexing, this PCB would allow you to assign one of 8 colors to any of your buttons, and would even assign colors depending on how many buttons you pressed (for instance, a color for an EX move, or focus attack). This would be a perfect opportunity to try it out. So, much like the Leo in the Berserker Barrage project, d3v would get a board that I don’t have in one of my personal projects. This means that somewhere down the line I’ll have to make one with a Sparky Jr. myself, but that’s down the road.

With the major parts lined up it was time to sort out the random odds and ends. I hit up Gummowned for a Gamecube /RJ45 cable, since I didn’t want to find one at my local Gamestop. I ordered some 10 color 28 gauge ribbon wire and a 15 foot USB cable from an electronics supply shop online. Since most of my other projects have been wireless (go figure), I had no need for an RJ45 crimping tool. So a trip to the local Home Depot netted one of those, along with a 1 foot CAT5 cable which I would wire to the MC Cthulhu (MCC from here on out, as I can never spell it correctly!). With the parts en route all I could do is wait for everything to come in and see what happens. Turns out, quite a bit…

Project: International Slumber - Prologue

2011-01-26T19:09:00.000-05:00

Author’s Note: I had intended to do all the build worklogs in order. However, this one is a special project that needs to get done in less than the year it will take me to catch up with the other worklogs. Just consider this a flash forward deal, and any references to past projects and events will be explained in due time. Like reading the script for ‘Lost’, only less confusing…

At this point I had 4 customs under my belt: My OG El Kabong²stick, the Berserker Barrage MvC2 stick for Nick, the Guile Generations mashup for Germaine, and my lovely El Guapo. Out of the 4 projects, I’ve worked with d3v on the artwork for 3 of them, and tried to ship some people his way for some commissioned art as well. One day I got an e-mail from him about a project he wanted me to work on with him. After doing a number of custom jobs and seeing some of the amazing custom cases available, he decided it was time to get one of his own. This one would have all the bells and whistles on it, and he wanted me to do the wiring for him. I was honored and intimidated at the same time. This would be the first time doing a custom job for someone outside my immediate circle (I had installed a Chimp in someone else’s stick a while ago, but that was small change compared to this). I had to make sure everything was as neat as possible and that everything worked the first time and every time. Complicating matters was the fact that d3v isn’t exactly local. I’m near Washington DC in the US, d3v is in the Philippines. Any technical support would be nearly impossible. So any stick would need to be practically bulletproof to survive the trip overseas. It would be a challenge, but one I was up for. Thus, International Slumber was born.

It's Been A Long Time... (c) Rakim

2010-09-30T15:41:00.000-04:00

OK, the last 2 months have not been fun guys. I'm 2 completed fightstick projects back, have 3 more on deck, still have to finish my NBA story and have a few other things kicking around I need to get posting up. I haven't even had the chance to post up a funny video. My bad.I'm hoping to get back on track in the next week or two with some of the bigger projects. Hopefully, I'll get a jump on some stuff this weekend.

Keep Hope Alive!

Spen

Berserker Barrage: The Marvel Vs. Capcom Stick Saga - Epilogue

2010-07-27T21:50:00.000-04:00

The project is finally finished. My goal was to go use this as inspiration

And build a stick with Happ/iL based parts with the same theme:

I say: Mission Accomplished! Then again, I did put it together, so I may be a little bit biased. I definitely learned a few things with this build. First, a wireless dual mod is not for the faint of heart. While it's not the most complicated thing in the world, it does involve a lot of wire, a lot of soldernig, a lot of planning and a lot of time. If you want lights, you're looking at even more soldering and more time. You want it to look neat? Add to the time. Will it take as long as my project took? Probably not. Being a family man, I wasn't able to devote hours at a time to cutting, crimping, soldering, and sheething that would be needed to finish faster. That said, unless you work with electronics as a job, or have done a lot of soldering work in the past, don't expect to knock something like this out in 2 hours.

That's to say nothing of the work I had to do on the case. I'll admit, if I wasn't as dumb I probably could have shaved at least a month off the paint and prep time getting the case to look like I wanted. Not paying attention to whether I was using enamel or lacquer paint, and not ordering the vinyl dye sooner, really slowed things down. The wet sanding, while providing a fantastic finish, is very tedious and time consuming no matter how you look at it. Modifying the case itseld to accept the switches and larger buttons was childs play in comparison. I did have to order some different parts than I planned, but the end result was worth it.

If I had to give some advice to anyone trying a similar project, I'd tell them 3 things. First, Don't be afraid to screw up. Most likely, something is going to go wrong with a custom project like this. Sometimes it's a small thing, like soldering a lead tothe wrong spot. Sometimes it can be major, like inadvertantly frying your PCB. Whatever, it can usually be fixed or replaced. Second, don't be afraid to ask for suggestions or help. Since I still don't have access to the tools needed to make my own case, I had to outsource that. I had to ask a myriad of questions to make sure I was wiring everything correctly. Some questions were intelligent, others, not so much. And there is no way the art would have come out like it did if I didn't ask. Third, get your Bo Jackson on and Just Do It. Roll up your sleeves, heat up the soldering iron, and get to work. It may take a while, and it may not look like other projects you've seen that other more skilled people have done, but with some determination and effort, you can do this. As I said with my first build, nothing quite feels like using a stick you put together yourself.

I must give a shout out to a few people that helped get this project done. I need to thank Physh for building ans shipping the case. The design was wide and tall enough for everything to fit, and the design gave it some flair, making the color choice really work. A huge shout and thanks goes to Gummowmed for designing the leo board in the first place and answering the many questions I had during the course of the build. I actually got a chance to meet him at a tournament in Ashburn, VA and I brought the stick, I should have had him autograph it! And a big, BIG shout to d3v for all the help with the artwork. Everyone that's seen the stick online and in person has been extremely impressed. While I can take the credit for the paint finish, without that custom art it would not have been complete. In fact, d3v and I have collaborated on two other sticks, which I'll probably get around to posting in a year from now, knowing my schedule...

Berserker Barrage: The Marvel Vs. Capcom Stick Saga Part 11 – All Together Now

2010-07-27T18:52:00.000-04:00

Now that the artwork was done all that was left to do was put Humpty Dumpty back together again and present the stick to Nick. There were a few small modifications I wanted to make to the case before wiring everything up. In an effort to hedge my bets against that JLW, I wanted to drill holes in the control panel to fit a Happ joystick. That way if the JLW just didn’t feel right, I could swap it out for a Competition joystick. I removed the mounting plate from the JLW and screwed it on the top of the control panel. Next, I marked the holes that lined up with the Happ joystick and drilled and countersunk the holes so the screw heads would be flush.

Just in case...

I installed the Happ Competition (yellow, or course) along with the case bottom panel to make sure the joystick shaft didn’t bottom out or scrape the panel. No problems there. I then had to work on the bottom panel itself. I had bought and cut a piece of plexiglass to replace the particleboard that the case came with. I needed to cut a notch in the plexiglass so I could access the switch to turn the LEDs on and off. I taped the switch in the approximate spot I would mount it during assembly and placed the plexiglass on top, marking he space I would need for the switch and the holes I’d need to drill for the feet. Using a combination of the dremel and a hand file, I cut and shaped the notch for the switch, then drilled the screw holes for the feet. Instead of just having clear plexiglass, I used some automotive window tint I still had around the house and covered the inside of the plexiglass, for a 20% smoke tint look.

Modifications out of the way, it was time for reassembly. I laid the artwork in the case and put the plexiglass top over it so I could cut the holes for the joystick and buttons. Once I finished that, I removed the plexiglass and artwork so I could access the screws for the joystick. Having reattached the mounting plate back on the JLW, I mounted the joystick to the bottom of the case and tightened the screws. I then replaced the art and plexiglass, and installed the buttons, making sure they were all lined up the proper way before tightening down the mounting nuts. I installed the LED boards and the microswitches, then attached the wiring harness for the ground chain, signal lines and LEDs. I used zip ties and zip tie anchors to hold the sixaxis and 360 PCBs in place, and ran the signal leads from the leo to the junction block. After connecting the button leads to the junction block, I made sure all the data lines and power lines were wired to the correct switches on the back of the case. I used some construction adhesive to mount the LED power switch to the side of the case, then wired up all the ground leads and power leads to the small junction block on the left side of the case. Finally, I attached the battery to the junction block, and attached it to the case with a piece of Velcro. At long last, the project was finished. I gave the stick a quick polish with a microfiver cloth and took the completed stick outside to take some pictures of all the hard work.

All Done! Ruy doing his Vanna White impression...

Wider angle shot

It took almost a month, but it was worth it...

This shot was with the yellow bubbletop, in case Nick wanted a balltop

Doesn't exactly match the buttons, but it works

Rear shot showing painted switches, start, home (clear yellow) and select, and USB connector

Bottom plexiglass panel with tint. Ryu scaring away ants...

All the soldering, crimping, and sheething, in it's naked glory

All the signal lines and LED lines. The power junction block is on the left

The signal line junction block, leo board and 360 PCB

Closeup on the buttons with the labels

d3v's logo. First time on a custom. Huzzah!

Yellow paint. Polished to a mirror shine. Took long enough...

THIS is what happens when you take the time to wet sand. Looks better in person

All that left to do no was deliver the goods. I gave Nick a call to tell him his stick was finally ready. He showed up around 8:30 with his Xbox ready to go. After showing off Mass Effect 2 for an hour, he finally opened the box and had a look at the finished product. After admiring the art and craftsmanship, I had him fire up the PS3, which worked with no problem. At this point he didn't realize the buttons lit up. After a few rounds of MvC2, I had him flip the switch to turn the lights on. Needless to say, he was impressed. We then hooked the 360 up to take a quick video of everything in action:

Nick decided he liked the feel of the bubble top more than the bat top, so I made the switch for him. After all it took to get that bat yellow in the first place! I tell you.... But it's his stick so I'm not complaining. We played Mvc and SFIV until our fingers cramped and called it a night.

Berserker Barrage: The Marvel Vs. Capcom Stick Saga Part 10 – Pretty Pictures

2010-07-26T00:51:00.002-04:00

One of the more troubling aspects of this build was getting the artwork right for the control panel. The artwork on the MadCatz stick was quite impressive, and really worked with the buttons and bezel they used. For my MvC stick to stand out, I needed some good art. The hard part would be making sure the artwork went along with the color scheme and the button layout. Turns out, finding the art wasn’t easy either.

When I purchased the case from Physh, he was able to print out 3 pieces of art for me to use on the control panel. The catch is, I’d have to figure out how to label the buttons myself. The first piece of art was created by Joe Vriens from Udon for the official release of MvC2 on XBLA and PSN:

Logan is gonna cut somebody...

This one looked very nice, and featured Wolverine quite prominently among the vast cast of characters. However, I didn’t want to use it for three reasons. First, the colors in the artwork didn’t exactly blend very well with the blue and yellow on the case. Second, too many characters would be obscured by either the buttons or the joystick. Wolverine, in particular, would have been cut off by both considering where he is positioned on the art. Third, I’d seen a few sticks that used the same piece before, and I wanted something more original. So, that one sat out.

Looks good for a bottom picture, but not for the control panel on this one

The second piece I had printed was a little more interesting. It was another work by Joe Vriens used as a promotional poster for MvC2. Someone had taken 2 copies of the same image and combined them, giving it an interesting mirror wall effect:

From this...

To this. Cool, huh?

This one worked a little better with the case, given that the artwork is quite dark. While a lot of the characters are still covered by the buttons, since the artwork is mirrored on the left, you still get to see a good bit of them. Wolverine wasn’t as covered, but Ryu got the short end of the stick on either the left or the right, where he was either totally obscured by the buttons or beheaded by the joystick and its dust cover. If I could figure out how to label the buttons, this one could work. But it would be settling for something instead of being what I truly wanted.

The third piece I knew I wasn’t going to use, but I liked the wallpaper so much I decided to have it printed just for kicks:

Didn't have a chance, but it's a great wallpaper

This one took me back to the arcade for a minute, as I can still hear Spidey’s ‘Web Swing!’ and Strider’s swords slicing and ‘schwing!’ing away while waiting in line for my crack at Street Fighter Alpha 3 (or whatever SFII variant was available). While I really loved the clean look of the art, this one was never seriously in contention. Nick doesn’t use Spiderman or Strider, and the buttons cover up Strider’s entire top half of his body. Still, the picture was cool enough that I sent it to his Xbox and made it his wallpaper, just because…

I decided to give the mirror image art a shot. Placing the art on the case and cutting the holes for the buttons and joystick was pretty easy, and besides a number of characters being hidden, it didn’t look too bad. The main issue was figuring out the button labels. The ideal thing to do would be to make a template in Photoshop showing where the buttons and joystick were, positioning the button labels on the template, and printing them on a transparent sheet. The sheet would lay on top of whatever artwork I ended up using, and could be reused if I chose to swap the art at some point. The only problem with that was there wasn’t any legal size transparent paper readily available at any stores in my area. I then considered making the Photoshop template, importing the artwork, making the labels and printing it myself. The problem with that was the case was a non-standard size. The artwork needed to be a little less than 13 7/8” (not a problem) and slightly bigger than 8 ½” (a much bigger problem). I could have gone to Kinko’s and had it printed, but that would be a lot of time and money for some trial and error printing. I thought about simply printing the button labels in reverse on regular clear labels, cutting them out by hand, and sticking them on the inside of the plexiglass so they wouldn’t peel off, but making the cuts perfectly even and lining the labels up evenly didn’t work very well. It was becoming apparent I’d have to outsource the art. The big question was who I could get to do it. My buddy Laz had helped out with El Kabong2, but our schedules were conflicting and I wanted to come up with something better than our first attempt (although I would miss out on the gin and tonics).

So, back to the SRK forums I went. Finding someone good at making control panel art wouldn’t be too hard.. The forums have threads dedicated to the Madcatz TE and SE sticks and to Hori’s HRAP line of sticks that have more art than you can shake a stick at. At the time of this writing, the Madcatz template thread is over 561 pages long! However, while template and assistance are readily available for those mass produced sticks, finding someone to do a custom template would be a bit trickier. Often, those requests are directed to the ‘Image Mishmash’ thread. However, as with any online forum, some threads are more receptive than others. After about a week with no response, I decided to take a chance and go the direct route.

D3v4st4t0r, or d3v for short, is known on a few boards such as SRK and Capcom-Unity as one of the most prolific designers of TE templates around. He has done numerous character specific art for almost every SFIV character in the roster. One of the things I admired about his work was that it was more than just resizing some wallpaper and adding some lens flare. The templates had a fine balance of size, color and weight. All of the elements fit together, and obstruction by the buttons and stick were minimized. He’s even gone thru the process of recreating a number of old school and new school Sega arcade control panels, customizing them to fit the character and button color combination at hand.

On the scene!

Cammy's nice...assets....

One of the funnier pictures I'd seen

The thing was, most of the templates I saw him work on were for either the TE, SE or a Hori stick. I hadn’t seen any ‘custom’ work. Well, the only thing I could do was ask. So, I sent him a PM on the SRK site, explaining my situation, asking for his assistance and offering to compensate him for his work. If he told me to piss off, so be it. A day later, I got his reply - ‘Let me see what I can do’. We sent a few more messages back and forth to square up a few things. He wanted to make sure the colors matched, so I sent his some pics of the case and the Duplicolor and Rustoleum websites with the links to the paint I used in case the pictures didn’t come out very well. After a few more days, d3v sent me a test picture. I was a bit nervous before i opened the link. I pretty much gave him carte blanche on creating the template, only giving him the colors and Wolverine to work with. Would it look generic? Overwrought? Totally off base for what I was looking for (even though I didn’t know what I was specifically looking for)? Well, that worry was unfounded...

Yeah, a masterpiece...

I was literally blown away by the art, which was much better than anything I had seen so far and that I could have created. Wolverine was front and center with the yellow and blue outfit, without any of the buttons cutting him off. The yellow background used the same MvC2 poster I toyed around with, but with a much better effect. Ryu and Wolverine could still be made out even with the buttons and joystick in the way. I couldn’t have asked for more. Before going to print, we made a few tweaks. I asked d3v to change the color on the MvC2 logo from yellow to white, as it felt like there would be a bit too much yellow once the buttons were added. He changed the yellow tint on the background ever so slightly as well. I added button labels pulling some of the colors that were on the template and added one of Nick’s sayings to the template. d3v also incorporated his logo as an added touch :

THIS is how to personalize a MvC stick...

With the art finalized I had to get it printed. This turned out to be a little more challenging than I thought. I went to Kinko’s, since I knew I would have to print the art on 11”x17” paper. Since the art was close to 9” wide, I wouldn’t have to worry about anything getting cutoff. The problem is, Kinko’s policy does not allow them to print any copywrited images. With a big picture of Wolverine and the MvC logo, I couldn’t even fight that. Fortunately, it was 2 young guys that were manning the shop that day. I explained what I was doing, showed some of the pictures of the build I had in the phone, and assured him this was for personal use and not for sale (I’m actually losing money on this…). The clerk said they still couldn’t do it… but if I were to use one of the self service computer terminals and printed it out they couldn’t really say anything. So I asked him to put some cardstock in the printer and help someone else while I did my thing. A few minutes and few dollars later I had the print done. I used their trimmer, cut the art down to size, thanked the clerks and drove home for final assembly.

I found out later that while d3v had done a number of templates for people, I was the first custom project he took on. I’m honored. Really, I can’t thank him enough, as his artwork would really take the project over the top. He’s since started his own blog where he has posted some of his work and details how it was done. If you want to know what he did to put the art together, look here. If you want to see some amazing templates or commission a template for him, visit his site: http://www.d3vlicious.com/. Tell him I sent you…

No (NBA) Country For Old Men: - My Life Without A Team To Call My Own - Part 1: The Georgetown Hoyas

2010-07-12T22:04:00.001-04:00

This is the genesis of any and everything basketball related for me. This is the underlying thread on which players I root for and which teams I like. This is the ONLY team in ANY sport which I will root for without exception or reservation. They can go 33-0 or go 0-everything and I will still be a fan, year in and year out. The only thing I ever ask year in and year out is they make the Sweet 16. If they do, I’m satisfied; if they don’t, there’s always next year. I’ve stuck with them in good times (’84 Championships) and bad times (Victor Paige, anyone?). I was still a fan when Craig Esherick was named the Coach (and honestly, he never had a chance). Until it’s proven that Georgetown is funded by the KKK, I will proudly scream ‘Hoya Saxa!’ come gametime.

You know what time it is....

The first basketball game I ever went to was a Georgetown game. Back in ’82 or ’83 (honestly I can’t remember which year), a friend of the family Alan Craig Sr. (RIP) took me and a few other young boys to the Capital Center to watch the Hoyas play against Villanova. This was the first time I would see Big John patrolling the sidelines with his signature white towel on his shoulder and 7 foot tall, lanky Patrick Ewing in the paint. The Hoyas won, Villanova lost. So, as a young boy, Georgetown was the team I was supposed to root for, and Villanova was the enemy. I remember in ’84 when they went to the NCAA title game. My father, who is not a sports guy at all, came upstairs to our room. We had to be in bed by 8:00 but the game was on at 9. He pulled up a chair, cut our TV on, and we watched the game. Why he didn’t watch in the living room, I’m not sure. But I got to see ‘my team’ win the championship. I was happy for Thompson and happy for Ewing. My dad would do the same thing in ’85 when they lost to Villanova (yet another reason they are the enemy).

This would begin to shape my view of basketball...

When I was old enough to drive, my crew and I went to a few games at the Capital Center ourselves, notably the game they played against Maryland after the Terps came off restrictions. I was so pissed leaving the game, not because they lost, but because there were more Maryland fans there than Georgetown fans!.

Good times were had here...

John Thompson is a legend in DC and in the NCAA. Not only does he have the record for the most Big East championships, his graduation rate of his players is impressive as well. His protest and walk off the court in opposition to Proposition 48 is well documented. Off the court, there’s still the infamous meeting he had with drug lord Rayful Edmond (and the beating Alonzo Mourning took for hanging with him in the first place). A number of players he coached became unquestionable stars in the NBA – Ewing, Mutombo, Mourning, Iverson. No, he didn’t have the record of, say, Dean Smith (who he went against in the championship of ’82), or as many notable players as North Carolina. But his teams and the players that came out of it (mostly) had a physical, knock down, drag out, defense brings offense mindset and style of play that was typical of Big East basketball in the 80’s and mid 90’s. It wasn’t always pretty, or high scoring, and there was the threat of a fight breaking out more often than not. And I loved every minute of it.

This is what he looks like when he's HAPPY...

That’s not to say all was rosy. While the Georgetown teams I watched were defensive minded squads, often anchored by a big center (or not so big, in the case of Othella Harrington, or Jahadi White), they weren’t pretty to look at. You weren’t going to find many spot up shooters to help spread the opponent’s defense. Clog the middle, get the center in trouble, and the Hoyas had problems. Team personnel on the team warranted changes in style of play, for better or worse. Many people still think Allen Iverson stunted the growth of Othella Harrington when he came to Georgetown. In some ways, it’s true, as the offense no longer ran thru Harrington. That said, Othella was undersized for a center (6’9, no matter what his press release said) and a bit soft to play power forward. And when you have someone like Iverson on your team, well, what can you do? The Esherick era was particularly rough, with the team only making it to the big dance once during his tenure and not winning the NIT. Blame his coaching (which wasn’t THAT much different that Thompson’s). Blame lack of recruiting power. Blame Victor Paige, who really wanted to be Iverson but was nowhere close. Bottom line, it was not a fun time to be a Hoya fan. And yet, I stuck with them.

Still Standing...

Times are much better now. JTIII, while being in his father’s shadow, figuratively and literally (Big John often watched the home games from his private box, far enough for his son to do his thing but close enough to keep an eye on the program he built)) has been able to make a name for himself, building off the defensive mentality his father instilled in the program and bringing along the Princeton style offense that makes the team a scoring threat. It was nice to see that the sons of two of the biggest figures for the Georgetown basketball progtam, JTIII and Patrick Ewing, Jr., would end up at the same school that their fathers made famous, regardless of the pressure to live up to such a legacy. For me, the defining moment in JTIII’s career here (so far) was the first meeting with then #1 ranked Duke at the Verizon center. At one point they Hoyas had a double digit lead, and eventually won the game. I watched at my parent’s house as fans stormed the court, and I wished I was there. As it was, I screamed and ran around the house like they just won the championship.

It's a party, and EVERYBODY is invited

I still live and die by the Hoyas. When they played North Carolina for a chance to go to the Final Four, I thought for sure my neighbors were going to call management for all the screaming and shouting I was doing once Hibbert blocked Psycho T and Summers went for the jam to seal the win. I was hoarse the next day. When they lost to Ohio in the tournament this year, I couldn’t watch anything basketball related for the next 24 hours. I think Greg Monroe leaving was a HUGE mistake, but I’ll cheer for him, while hoping the Hoyas can at least make some noise in the Big East tournament. Every year around tournament time I bring my Georgetown shirt and hang it on my office door or cubicle until they lose. My son has his first Georgetown Hoya shirt and I bought my daughter a Georgetown onesie before she was born. I will teach both my children from youth to respect and cheer for the Hoyas, lest they be disowned come basketball season.

But we won't be wearing this....

Or these...

.
This also explains what teams I root for in the NBA. If you came from Georgetown, you get my seal of approval and I will root for your team. Actually, let me check that a bit: if you were a STAR at Georgetown, you get my seal of approval and I will root for your team. If you were a player, I’ll still root for you, but your team? Maybe not. Jahidi White played for the Bullets, but I wasn’t about to buy season tickets. Othella Harrington AND Mike Sweetney ended up with the Knicks, but I still have a longstanding grudge against them (which will be explained). Roy Hibbert is trying to make a name for himself in Indiana, but the ghost of Reggie Miller won’t allow me to root for the Pacers. Jeff Green was a hero of the most recent Final Four squad, but I have never watched an Oklahoma City game (partially because they don’t really show that many Oklahoma City games during the regular season because, while they have Green, Witherspoon and Kevin Durant, they still play in OKLAHOMA CITY).

Roy, you my man and all, by I can't root for Indiana. Sorry...

Using that formula, you can probably figure out which teams I rooted for back in the day. I’ll now go thru each player and his team(s), breaking down some of my memorable highs and lows. That said, the first team doesn’t follow this baseline at all….

No (NBA) Country For Old Men: My Life Without A Team To Call My Own - Prologue

2010-07-12T02:41:00.001-04:00

Finally, LeBronapaloosa is over. After weeks of speculation, reports, Twitter blurbs, hand wringing, and a shameful 1 hour special, Mr. James is going to Miami to play with D. Wade and Chris Bosh. Good for him. Now we can let ESPN swing from Bret Favre’s nuts while he decided whether to play or not. But that’s another blog for someone else to write… Shortly after the announcement my brother shot me a text:

“So you gonna root for Miami again?”

The quick answer was ‘Not because of James, no’. But it did get me to thinking. At some point I was a pretty big Heat fan, and a lot of my people knew it. I could go back to rooting for the Heat, but that would look a lot like front running, which I can’t stand. Trying to go back to a team I stopped caring about (as much) would be hard to do. The problem is, I haven’t had a team to call my own in a while. This really got me thinking about the teams I rooted for in the past, why I stopped rooting for them, and where I could possibly go from here.

The sad truth is, I seem to be a fan that roots more for a particular player than for a particular team, with one exception that ties everything together (except one team, anyway). Once said player went to his team I pretty much was a staunch supporter of said team. But, when that run was over, so was my fandom. While I still check for them in the standings and hope they do well (mostly), I can’t in good faith call myself a fan anymore. So I decided to have a good long look at the players and teams I was once a fan of, starting in chronological order. Looking back, there were some fantastic times and some painful memories that make me want to kick my monitor thru the wall. This should be fun…

Now, before die hard sports fans start calling me out, please understand: the ‘home team’ for me is the Washington Bullets / Wizards. With all due respect to my man Chris Whitney (holla at me man!), there hasn’t been anything to really cheer about for the last 35 years. Blah blah blah Chris Webber, Juwan Howard, blah blah blah, Jordan, blah blah blah Gilbert, Jamison, Buther, blah blah blah. The truth of the matter is as long as I have been alive they have been LA Clipper level bad at worst, overachievers at best, and pretty much a non factor in the grand scheme of the NBA at the core. Other than saying they’re from my hometown there’s absolutely no reason for me to ever root or care about them. I will make no apologies for this. Even if they do get good I still don’t see me converting and rooting for them (though I wish them and John Wall the best). In the end, if they make it to the second round of the playoffs, that’s as good as they will ever be until something drastic happens to the Eastern Conference. End of story.

Berserker Barrage: The Marvel Vs. Capcom Stick Saga Part 9 – Wire, Wire, Pants On Fire

2010-07-01T01:48:00.002-04:00

So, we have the 360 PCB padhacked, the leo wired up, the LEDs working, and all the buttons and joystick inputs wired to the appropriate places on the junction block. It was now time to tackle the data and power lines for both PCBs and wire up the battery. One of the earlier wiring schematics Gummowned worked up had the d+ and d- USB lines from both PCBs going to one of the dpdt switches, and the +5v USB line and a line from the positive battery terminal from both PCBs going to the other switch. More recent schematics use a 3pdt switch, and have the +5v USB lines chained together (360 PCB, Sixaxis PCB and USB adapter). This is probably the optimal setup, but I went on with the original schematic, for a few reasons. First, while I had managed to solder leads to the USB solder points on the 360 PCB, the solder points on the sixaxis PCB were much closer together, and I wasn’t confident I could cleanly solder wires on the points. Second, I didn’t want to run a chain of wires from all the +5v points, partly for aesthetic reasons, partly because I was beyond tired of soldering at this point.

These are some TINY solder points....

The plan was to cut one of my unused USB cables, using the mini-b end to plug into the sixaxis PCB, eliminating the need to solder anything for the USB lines. The other end of the USB cable would be wired to the appropriate switch terminals and ground chain using .110” QDs, then plugged into the USB adapter attached to the case. The leads that I had soldered to the USB points on the 360 PCB and the leads from the USB cable attached to the sixaxis PCB would also be connected to the appropriate switch terminals with .110” QDs. Once I had all those wires stripped, crimped and connected, I tackled the power lines. I soldered leads to the sixaxis PCD’s battery terminals and ran them to another piece of junction block, along with the battery terminal leads I already soldered to the 360 PCB. Since I still had the LEDs wired up from my previous test, I connected them to the junction block as well. The only thing left to do now was test and see if it actually worked.

Before going out of town for the week, my buddy Nick dropped off his Xbox for safe keeping. I told him I’d need it to test out the stick anyway, since I still don’t have one myself. I took a few minutes to hook the Xbox up to the plasma TV, then connected the battery pack from the sixaxis to the junction block. Moment of truth time. With the switches in the down position, I pressed the guide button on the stick. As it did before, the PS3 whirred to life. Great. Shut that system off. Now for the Xbox. The joypad that the PCB was taken out of had already been synced to his Xbox, so there shouldn’t be a problem there. Flip the switches in the upright position. Press the guide button and…… the green light on the Xbox came to life. SUCCESS!!! The buttons on the stick lit when pressed twice, then…..nothing. Apparently the battery needed to be charged. No matter. It’s nearly 2am and I need sleep. I’ll just plug it up to the USB cable and recharge the battery overnight. So, I flip the switched back down for the PS3, plug in the USB cable from the charger and…nothing. No blinking lights on the sixaxis PCB. That’s not good. Tried another USB cable. No dice. Disconnected the battery from the junction block and plugged it into the sixaxis. Still nothing. Plugged the charging cable into the sixaxis and...charge lights start blinking as they should. Odd. Wired the battery back to the junction block and plugged the charge cable to the sixaxis. Blinking charge lights again. Obviously, something is off with my wiring somewhere. But it’s now after 2am, and I need to wake up in 4 hours, unless my daughter wakes me up before that to have her diaper changed. So, I disconnected the charging cable, pulled the battery and charged it on my R/C lipo charger and went to bed.

Groggy and bleary eyed at work, I tried to figure out what could be the problem with the PS3 PCB not charging. Obviously something had to be off with the USB connection. So, it was onto the SRK forums to see what I could have done wrong. While I was typing out my problem, it occurred to me what the problem could be. Since I was using the USB cable, instead of leads from the USB terminals on the PCB, the cable would need to be grounded. When I attached the connectors and wired everything up the night before, I didn’t even consider the ground for the USB cable. If I had used the leads soldered to the USB points, I probably would have been OK, since the PCB itself was grounded. But with the separate cable, I would need to ground that as well. Now all I needed to do was make it through the next 6 hours at work to see if my theory was correct.

Once I made it home, I stripped some more of the USB cable to expose the ground wire. I tapped into the ground chain by desoldering the one of the QDs I was using on the ground chain, then adding another lead and soldering the QD to both. I then added a female QD to the USB ground wire and a male to the exposed lead on the ground chain. With the battery pack now fully charged I connected it back to the junction block. This time, the Xbox fired up and the stick stayed on. I played a few rounds of MvC2 on my buddy’s system, looked thru some of his videos, and changed his background, just because I could. This time when I switched to the PS3 and plugged in the USB cable the charge lights started to blink. Time to start doing my happy dance!

Now I was 85% finished with my little project. I needed to tighten up the wiring a little bit with some more wire sheathing and attach and wire a switch to turn the LEDs on and off. My original plan to run all the individual anodes to spots on the junction block didn’t look very clean, so I made one more wire chain, cutting the anodes short, attaching QDs and making a chain just like the one I made for the ground wires. It took another 2 hours, but it looks much neater. The only major thing left to tackle was the art for the control panel. Time to call in some more help…

Berserker Barrage: The Marvel Vs. Capcom Stick Saga Part 8 – And Still I Solder

2010-06-03T10:27:00.000-04:00

With the case FINALLY finished I needed to get back to soldering. The first task I tackled was soldering the wires from the 360 PCB to the leo. I started with the x/y/a/b button leads. I stripped and tinned the wire for each lead, then carefully soldered the individual leads to the appropriate spot labeled on the outer row of the leo board. I used the ‘third hand’ on the soldering iron holder to hold the leo in place while I added some flux on the solder point of the leo board. Then I inserted the lead into the solder point. A few moments with the soldering iron and the first of 16 wire leads was complete. I then repeated the process for the remainder of the button leads, the joystick leads, the bump and trigger leads, the trigger common line, and the home/back/guide leads. After what felt like an eternity, the board looked like this:

About 30+ points all on one board. Get comfy with your iron...

A smaller tip iron would have made this MUCH easier

The next task was to solder leads from the leo to the buttons and joystick. I pulled 2 sections of wire from my IDE cable – one 12 wire section for the button and joystick row and a 3 wire section for the home/start/select row. Since I didn’t wan to take a chance on any of the wires touching or accidentally desoldering one of the 360 leads, I soldered the button leads from the bottom of the leo board. Before I started, I wrote down the order of the holes for the leo board on a sheet of paper, then wrote down which wire from the IDE cable section went with each one, starting with the #1 wire (marked with a red line). Then, I soldered the 15 leads just as before. I trimmed the button and joystick leads to length to fit a bit neater on the backside of the leo board (something I failed to do for the 360 leads, but I was learning as I went along, so sue me…)

Much neater, but took much more time to do it

The whole enchilada soldered together.

Instead of running the leads directly to the button and joystick switches, I decided to run them to a junction block. This would ease installation as I could vary the length of the leads I needed from the switches and make swapping out parts easier in the event anything needed to be replaced. The junction block would be secured to the right side of the case with 2 screws. But before I could worry about that, I had a few more wiring harness to make.

The first harness I decided to tackle would be for the joystick switches. I cut 4 pieces of wire, soldered on the QDs and snaked them through some cable sleeving. The harness would wrap around the base of the JLW and the exposed leads would go to the appropriate place on the junction block. Next up was the harness for the start/home/select buttons on the front of the case, which I did the same way as the joystick harness. After that, I had to make one long ground harness to tie the joystick, start/select/home buttons and the USB cable grounds together and run them to the power junction block on the other side of the case. By time I was finished that harness I didn’t want to solder anything for a while. Before calling it quits for the day, I wanted to see whether my soldering job on the leo worked. So I connected the harnesses to all the buttons and the joystick and ran them to the junction block, and connected the corresponding wires from the leo board to the junction block. I was smart enough to write down the order of the wires from the button harness so I didn't make a mistake and connect the jab button with the 3rd kick lead on the leo...

The wiring can't stop, won't stop...

Even though I didn’t have everything fully wired, I could still plug the battery to the sixaxis PCB and see if the buttons and stick connections were correct. Sure enough, the PS3 fired right up just it was supposed to. I did realize I had misread the labels on the leo board, so my up and down inputs were reversed. Since the iron was still plugged up, I made a quick swap of the wires on the leo board and called it a night.

Berserker Barrage: the Marvel Vs. Capcom Stick Saga Part 7 – Case Conundrums (And Why Reading Is Fundamental)

2010-03-26T15:38:00.000-04:00

While I was enduring my massive helping of FAIL with the bat top, I started work on getting the case painted. The first step was to cut the hole for the USB adaptor (which I forgot to do before I painted the first case, if you remember). The edge of the adaptor was much straighter and flatter than the last adaptor I used, so I wouldn’t have to work so hard on shaping the hole to make it fit.

Why is it so hard to find these things?

Once I figured out where I could put the adaptor inside the case where is wouldn’t interfere with anything, I traced the outline on the outside of the case. I then had a few options on how to proceed. I could have drilled a number of holes in the space I drew and used the chisel to clean away the rest of the waste, slowly shaping the hole to the correct size. Or, I could have whipped out the dremel, screwed on the cutting attachment and gone to town.

I have to justify buying this Dremel in the first place, so....

I put the case back in my project vice and set up the dremel. The multicutting bit made relatively quick work of cutting through the material. The only thing is, you really need a steady hand with this thing, which I didn’t have. The lines I cut were nowhere near straight. Had I clamped a straight edge guide to the case beforehand I probably would have fared a little better. No matter. A few more minutes with the wood file and the USB adaptor fit nice and snug. I made sure the adaptor was flush with the case then used some wood putty to make sure the edges were smooth and to fill in the little gaps I saw. Once the putty was dried, I taped up the adaptor plug and sanded it smooth, making sure to feather the edges and make the putty areas as level as possible. Once that was done I set up my paint area in the garage and sprayed on the primer. Once I had enough coats done, I sanded with 200 and 400 grit sandpaper, and wet sanded with 600 and 1000 grit sandpaper to make the primer nice and smooth. So far so good.

With the primer out of the way, it was time to mask off the case for painting. The front and back of the case were going to be painted metallic blue, while the sides were going to be painted yellow. In addition to the Rustoleom yellow that I was using (and failing) with the bat top, I had picked up a can of Duplicolor Metal Flake spray paint.

I used some 3M blue painter’s tape and masked the sides of the case and the edges that would be painted yellow.

Painter's tape is your friend. Believe it...

Very important to get the corners right. A Xacto knife helps

Afterward I wiped everything down with mineral spirits, set up the paint area in the garage and sprayed on about 4 coats of the metal flake, making sure to wear my respirator so as not to breathe in too many noxious chemicals. As the name suggests, the finish had a nice metallic look to it, without looking like someone tossed some glitter into a can of blue paint. Once the paint dried, I sanded it down with 200 and 400 grit sandpaper, cleaned it with the mineral spirits, and sprayed 4 more coats of paint. Once that was dry I repeated the sanding, but this time followed up by wet sanding the paint with 600, 1000, and 1500 grit sandpaper. I started to worry a bit when I noticed the blue was getting duller and duller. However, when I cleaned the paint off with mineral spirits, I noticed that the blue was nice and shiny before the spirits evaporated. So, I was pretty confident that once the clearcoat was applied that all would be alright. Once that was done, I let the case sit for a few days to make sure the paint was fully dry before proceeding.

Sparkly!

See why the tape was necessary?

Once I felt the paint was dry I removed the tape from the sides and applied it to the front and back of the case that had been painted. After I cleaned the sides with mineral spirits to make sure there was no paint residue, I sprayed on a few coats of the yellow paint and let it dry overnight. The next day, I sanded it down with 200 and 400 grit sandpaper, just as I did with the metallic flake. After giving it another mineral spirit wipe, I sprayed on another two light coats. When I went back to apply the next few light coats, to my bemusement the paint had started to wrinkle, just as it had with the bat top. This was becoming insane. So, once that paint dried, I sanded all the wrinkled paint off (which stated to come off in little balls of paint), and sanded the underlying finish smooth again. At this point I had just about run out of the Rustoleum, and really didn’t feel like getting another can, since it appeared I could only get one layer of paint on any given surface before wrinkling started to occur. So, against all recommendations and common sense, I grabbed the can of Krylon Fusion and sprayed that on top of the Rustoleum layer I managed to save (it’s usually suggested not to mix brands of paint, as they may react differently with each other). Less than 10 minutes later, I had a runny, wrinkled and ugly mess. So much FAIL, so little time…

I decided to leave the whole spray paint thing alone and go down another path. The weather was colder, the paint smell hung around in the garage longer than I wanted, I still had overspray I had to clean off my wife’s car, and so far the majority of my attempts at using spray paint had ended in failure. So, I started to look for a pint of yellow paint to brush on the case. I figured since I was going to wet sand the paint anyway, I wouldn’t really have to worry about brush marks showing up in the paint finish. Besides, I would be using a foam roller to minimize any applicator marks. Before I went to the store I went online to try to figure out what was going wrong with the spray paint. It worked fine when I sprayed the lacquer for my first case. This time, not so much. In the FAQ section on the Duplicolor site I came across this little nugget:

Q. What is a re-coat window?

A. Re-coat windows apply to enamel paints and refers to the time period during which a second coat maybe applied. After spraying the first coat of an enamel, a second coat must be applied with in 1 – 2 hours or wait 5 days for the coating to cure. The paint may wrinkle or lift when resprayed during this curing period. Lacquers do not have a “re-coat window.” Subsequent coats of Lacquer can be applied over a Lacquer finish without wrinkling or lifting due to a “re-coat window”.

This sounded vaguely familiar. Could it be because I used the same information when I wrote my mirror finish paint guide on my first build?

One of the advantages of lacquer paint is that it dries more quickly than enamel and does not have a re-coat window (a time when a subsequent coat must be reapplied). With lacquer, you can spray the next coat once it is dry. With an enamel, you generally have a 1-2 hour time period in which you must spray the next coat, or you will need to wait for the paint to cure, which can take 3-5 days, depending on your brand of paint. Check the instructions on your paint can and be sure to follow those.

I could have worn this around for a week...

This is what I get for not following what I wrote. All that fail could have been avoided. I wasted about a month trying to get the bat top painted, at least a week on the case, all because I didn’t read. Sometimes, I’m not so bright, I tell you…

In any event, the case had to get finished, and I was determined to get it right, come hell or high water. So, back to Lowes I went. This time I picked up a pint of Rustoleum Safety Yellow enamel paint, a foam touch up roller kit (no need for a 4 inch roller on such a small case), a can of paint thinner and some 3M stripping pads. When I got home, I poured a little paint thinner on the stripping pad and started sanding down the yellow paint. My goal was to remove as much of the yellow enamel spray paint as I could, then use some more primer as a base for the new can of paint. With a bit of elbow grease, I was actually able to sand down to the original coat of primer, which looked just fine. I went over the primer with some 400 grit sandpaper to remove any possible residue and wiped it down with mineral spirits. Then, I cracked open the can of paint. The instructions said the paint would be dry to the touch within 3-4 hours, could be handled in 9 hours, and could be recoated in 24 hours. I poured some paint in the roller tray then rolled the paint on the case, making sure to get a nice even layer of paint down. There were a few small air bubbles on the surface, which I went back over after about 15 minutes, but I knew when the paint dried they would go away. Sure enough, the next day had a nice, smooth glossy finish. I sanded the paint down with the 220 and 400 grit paper, cleaned with the mineral spirits, and put rolled on a second of paint. Same results the next day – a nice glossy finish with NO WRINKLES!!! Amazing what happens when you read. Over the next 2 days I put 2 more coats of paint on to make sure I had a nice layer of paint. After the 4th coat, I sanded with 220 and 400 grit paper, then wet sanded with 600, 1000 and 1500 grit sandpaper.

That took soooooo much longer than it should have

I now had to make a decision on the clearcoat for the case. Since my results with spray anything had been less than stellar, to put it mildly, I did not want to use the clear enamel I had originally bought. Instead, I opted to buy a can of Minwax Polycrylic, which is a water based polyurethane top coat. Poly is often used as a protective clearcoat on wood, giving the finish a nice shine. Since the polycrylic is water based, there would be less chance of it reacting with the painted case, and easier cleanup.Of course, nothing had gone according to plan on painting the case, and this would be no exception. The first coat of poly I put on the yellow paint caused the same wrinkling that had occurred with everything else. Sadly, part of me wasn't even surprised. I had actually come to expect it by now. This time, I couldn’t quite understand why. Being water based, it shouldn’t have reacted as badly with the finish (the poly over the blue sparkle paint would have no problem). Plus, the can of Rustoleum said you could recoat within 24 hours. Apparently, that didn’t apply to top coating with another product. After all, I was still was an enamel paint, which requires a cure time. I was determined to lick this once and for all. So, I wiped off the poly as best I could before it completely dried, sanded out the wrinkles once again and painted the yellow sides one last time. Once it dried, I sanded everything up to 1500 grit again and set the box aside for a week. I wanted to make sure the paint had enough time to cure before I attempted to do anything else.

After 7 days it was time to get back to work. Using a natural bristle brush, I went back over the case with the polycrylic. This time it went on with no problems at all. The poly looks like thin milk when brushed on, but once it sets up it dries crystal clear in about 2 hours. After it was dry, I sanded the poly down with 220 grit sandpaper, wiped it clean with mineral spirits, and recoat. It’s recommended to put on at least 3 coats of polycrylic to your project. I decided to go with 6. Since I was going to wet sand the poly to a mirror shine, I wanted to make sure I had enough layers down to make sure I didn’t sand all the way down to the paint by accident.

Glossy!

Just wait 'till the hard work is done...

After all the coats of poly were applied, I went thru my sanding and wet sanding routine all the way up to 2000 grit sandpaper. With each successive grit of paper the surface got smoother and smoother, while the finish looked duller and duller. After the rubbing compound went on, all was right with the world, as both the blue sparkle paint and the yellow paint had that nice, glassy mirror finish. I followed up with the polishing compound and a coat of glaze for that extra bit of shine. After weeks of failure, finally I had the sweet taste of victory. But my celebration couldn’t last too long, as I had to get back to soldering. And there was a WHOLE lot of soldering to be done. Time to get to it…

Berserker Barrage: the Marvel Vs. Capcom Stick Saga Part 6 – Let There Be Light! And More Solder…

2010-03-13T15:57:00.000-05:00

The line between success and failure in any project is planning. Any idea can look good on paper, but unless you have a good plan and are willing to roll up your sleeves and make it work, you’ll end up with a large helping of FAIL. With that in mind, I needed to figure out how to get my pièce de résistance from a good idea to reality.

LEDs (Light Emitting Diodes if you didn’t know) are wonderful things. They’re small, light, long lasting, use very little power, and can be bright as the sun (ever looked into a LED flashlight? Don’t…). People have been using LEDs on projects for years, ranging from useful, to quirky, to head-scratchingly strange to extremely nerdy. Don’t believe me? Just check this link and get back to me: 10 Stuningly Nerdy LED Projects That Are Real... Anyway, the inherent geekiness of building your own fightstick made it inevitable for people to figure out ways to cram LEDs into their custom projects. These can range from simple, such as having the lights on all the time, to slightly more involved, like having the buttons light up when you press them, to even more involved, like having 2 different colored LEDs in each button, to something much more extreme, such as designing your own custom LED board and controller to program colors, button flashes, and more. Then you have people that make dual mod, LED encrusted, robotic coffee tables like this:

Needless to say, my mod was going to be much less involved than that. That said, there was still a good amount of work that needed to be done to get this to work. First of all, you need to buy the buttons. Both Happ and Seimitsu carry translucent buttons in a variety of colors to suit your artistic need. You can even mix and match the plungers and bezels if you like for a more custom look. Next you need the LEDs. You can find these in a variety of colors, wattages and levels of brightness. You also need to purchase the correct resistors to ensure the lights don’t burn out or draw too much current from your power source. Next you have to figure out how to attach the LEDs to the buttons. Some people have run the leads for the LED in between the slot where the plunger and the bezel meet. It works, but that runs the risk of pinching the lead in between the two pieces and shorting it out. Others have taken a tiny finger drill and made holes in the bottom of the bezel, and run the wires through there, like so:

That takes patience and a steady hand

After all of that, you still need to figure out how to wire the LEDs to come on, which I’ll get to in a bit. As far as all that other craziness, I decided to take a slightly different path. Astute readers may remember I picked up the buttons from Groovy Game Gear. These buttons are designed to be used in MAME (Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator) setups (for a peek down that rabbit hole, start here). The nice thing about these buttons is that the LEDs come soldered to their own little electronic board with the appropriate resistor. The board then fits between the button and the cherry microswitch, and the LED fits into the predrilled hole at the bottom of the button. They also have nice, long leads soldered to the board to assist in wiring everything up.

Averything in one neat package

Doesn't take up more room than the button itself

The LEDs are set up to take 5 volts of current (the amount coming from the USB terminal). However, since I’m doing a wireless stick, my available voltage will be limited to what the lipo battery puts out: 3.7 volts. On the one hand, this will make the LEDs slightly dimmer than they could be. On the other hand, I wouldn’t have to worry about burning them out by supplying too much power to them. So, I took one of the assembled buttons and ran the anode and cathode (positive and negative) leads from the LED board straight to the battery to see how it would look:

Pretty lights.....

The light was bright enough to be noticeable, but not too bright to be a distraction while playing. Considering the battery was only partially charged, I felt pretty confident the lighting would work well for this project.

With that out of the way it was time to figure out how to wire everything to make it work. Reading over the boards on SRK I came across a couple of methods to making the lights work. The easiest way by far was discovered by beneco74 (another electrical genius without whom I would never have finished this), which you can read in detail here. The wiring diagram looks something like this:

In case both of those are still Greek to you, I’ll try to put this in layman’s terms. For this project, the positive lead (anode) of the LEDs all get daisy chained together and wired to the positive side of the battery (or the 5v from the USB, if you were doing a wired setup). Each negative lead (cathode) of the LEDs are wired to their corresponding button signal wire (there would be two wires connected to the button terminal – one for the LED anode and one for the wire from the PCB). The ground wires for the buttons would then be daisy chained as normal. What ends up happening is the LEDs are wired in series along with the buttons, When the button is pressed, no only does it complete the circuit with the PCB, but it also completes the circuit with the LED, switching the power on and off when the buttons are pressed. If all that still doesn’t make sense, just trust me, it works!
With the theory out of the way, I now had to actually get everything wired up. I installed all of the buttons with the LED boards and switches in place so I could figure out which direction I needed to turn the buttons to make routing the wires easier. One concern I had was how this would work if I ever needed to replace any of the components (LED board, bad switch, buttons, etc). Instead of soldering the cathodes directly to the switch or directly to the wiring harness, I decided to use female quick disconnects on all the LED cathodes. I could then connect 2 wires to each quick disconnect for the signal harness: one that would run from the button to the leo PCB, and a shorter wire with a male quick disconnect to connect to the female quick disconnect on the LED cathode. Initially, I decided to run all of the anodes to a junction block, wiring 4 to each terminal and using a jumper wire to connect all 8 together, then using another jumper wire to connect them to the battery. All I would need then would be to make a ground chain for the switches and the lights should work.

Setting up the cathodes was pretty simple. I cut each of the cathode leads on the LED boards down to about an inch and soldered a female .187” connector to it. Quick disconnects are made so you can simply crimp the ends to the wire, eliminating the need to solder them. But, I wanted to make sure the connection wouldn’t come loose after I delivered the finished product. After that, I decided to tackle the ground chain. I took a piece of the leftover wire from the cathode lead and soldered on a female .187” connector. I slid the other end through a thin piece of cable sleeving I had, then connected it to the ground on the switch. Next I stretched the sleeved cable over to the next switch to figure out how long the wire needed to be in the chain. Once I determined the length needed, I pulled the wire thru the sleeving and trimmed it close to the switch. Next I took another piece of wire, slid one end back thru the cable sleeving and twisted the other end together with the first piece of wire. Then I soldered the connector on the two wired and connected it to the ground of the switch. I then repeated the tedious process for the next 6 buttons. The last wire in the chain I left free, since that would be connected with the battery ground. With that finished, it was time to work on the signal harness. First, I pulled off one long strand of wire from the IDE cable and cut it into 8 pieces, each about 1 ½ inches long, and soldered a male .187” connector to each. Next, I grabbed some more IDE cable and pulled off a long 8 wire section. I split one end of the cable about ¼ of the way down the middle, with 4 wires on each side. Starting with the 2 buttons closest to the edge of the case, I pulled one wire free from each side of the IDE cable and stripped the ends. I twisted one of the wires with the male connector on each end of the wires from the IDE ribbon. Then I soldered on a female connector to each. Now I could connect the harness to the signal tab on the switch and connect the male and female connectors of the cathodes together. Once I finished those 2 buttons, I pulled off 2 more strands from the IDE cable and trimmed them close to the set of buttons and repeated the process until all 8 buttons were wired. To make sure that all my connectors were soldered properly, I connected the anodes to a junction block as I described earlier, and connected the ground chain to another spot on the junction block. I then ran 2 wires from the junction block to the battery.

That is a LOT of wire. And I'm just getting started...

To my surprise and glee, the buttons worked as promised, lighting up nicely whenever the button was pressed, even if more than one button was pressed at a time. Since the wires looked a bit ungainly I ran the anode leads through another piece of cable sleeving, allowing me to route the leads closer to the buttons and making everything look neater. The whole process took much longer than I anticipated, but it was nice to know that my plan would actually work. That said, there was still an enormous amount of soldering and wiring that I had to do before I was any where close to being done. I still had to solder the 360 PCB to the leo, solder the signal wire harness from the buttons to the leo, solder and wire signal harnesses and ground chains for both the joystick and the start/select/home buttons, solder wires from the USB points from both the 360 PCB and the PS3 PCB to the switches, and wire up a USB cable from the switches to the USB adaptor, which still hadn’t come in the mail. Daunting, to say the least. However, the Vikings/Cowboys game was on, and my red plastic cup was in need of an adult beverage. So I called it a day and watched Favre do his rendition of ‘Pants On The Ground’ …

Berserker Barrage: the Marvel Vs. Capcom Stick Saga Part 5 – Paint Woes

2010-03-09T16:37:00.000-05:00

I decided to take a break from the soldering for a while and focus on painting. Since the weather getting even colder, I figured that it would be a good idea to get the paint finished, making sure it would dry and that I wouldn’t be spending too many nights in a chilly garage. Since I thought I had learned from my mistakes from the first case, painting this one should be pretty simple. Little did I know how many ‘L’s I would be taking…

As mentioned, the MadCatz MvC stick has a yellow and white button scheme, with a yellow ball top. Since I was putting my own spin on it, I too was going with yellow and white (clear) happ parts with a bat top, just like the American style arcade cabinets. While the JLW joystick does come with a bat top handle, they only come in black, white, blue and red. No problem, I say to myself, I can just paint one. I could even give it a nice shiny finish just like the balltop with a little work (although in retrospect that would probably be super slippery). My only concern was I would be painting plastic, which can be finicky as far as paint adhesion if you don’t do it right. The last thing I wanted would be is the paint would flake off or stain your hands over time. My first choice for paint would be the new Rustoleum Universal paint, which is supposed to adhere to almost any surface.

The only problem is, it seemed no store in my area had it at the time. Home Depot, Lowes, AutoZone, Advance, Target, Walmart –all they had was black, white, silver, maybe a green. No yellow. However, I came across some Valspar Plastic paint, formulated specifically for plastic (duh), with no sanding required.

Not in red, of course...

So I figured I’d buy a can and give it a try. Once I got home I set up my paint area in the garage again. I had to figure out how to hold the bat top steady while painting it. I used a wooden dowel that was close to the diameter of the threads in the bat top, sanded it down slightly and screwed it in. I then drilled a hole in a scrap block of wood I had and placed the other end of the dowel there. Now I had a makeshift stand where I could spray the entire top at one time. I cracked the garage door for some air, applied 2 coats as suggested, and waited for it to dry. After a few hours, it was evident this wasn’t going to work. The paint had started to run and drip off the bat top, leaving the paint too thin on the top and pooling heavily on the bottom. If the weather was a bit warmer, the paint may have dried before it started to run, but this wouldn’t be the case for the middle of winter. So, one can of paint wasted, one ‘L’ for me. I soaked the bat top in some latex paint remover for a day and peeled and scraped the paint completely off. After washing it with cold water and wiping it down with mineral spirits, I let it dry while I figured out what to try next.

I decided I’d try to paint the bat top with a good coat of primer, followed by the yellow paint and some clearcoat for protection and shine. If the primer would stick to the bat top, the paint would bond to the primer and reduce the chance of flaking off. Plus, I could perfectly match the bat top with the color of the case, since I’d be using the same can of paint. So, I went back to the store for a can of Rustoleum.

To aid primer adhesion, I lightly scuffed the bat top with some sandpaper. Once I wiped the residue, I set the bat top on my stand and painted 3 coats of primer. Once it was dry, I wet sanded it with 400 and 600 grit sandpaper until the finish was smooth. Next, I sprayed on the yellow paint. After 5 coats, I had a nice even layer of paint built up and a garage full of fumes. I decided to quit for the day and let it dry overnight. When I got home from work the next evening I wet sanded the yellow paint with 400, 600 and 1000 grit sandpaper. The finish was now nice and smooth, with a rubbery, grippy feel to it. I let it dry overnight with the intent on spraying the clearcoat the next day after work. I was eager to see how this would turn out, since things seemed to be going well so far. So when I got home, I changed my work clothes and hit the garage with the can of clearcoat in my hand. However, not 5 minutes after I sprayed the first coat I knew something was wrong. The yellow paint started to wrinkle as if someone balled up a piece of Saran Wrap. I looked at the can I sprayed and confirmed my worst fear: I had picked up the lacquer clearcoat I had used on my first stick, not the enamel clearcoat I had bought for this project. As a result, he solvent in the lacquer was eating through the enamel paint. ‘L’ number 2 for me. Dejected, I tossed the ruined mess in a container with some paint thinner, determined to clean it off and try again in a few days.

Bat top painting, take 3. All goes just like before. Clean and scuff the bat top. Spray 3-4 coats of primer. Let dry overnight. Wet sand. Spray 5 or so coats of yellow paint. Let dry overnight. Wet sand. This time, I made sure the lacquer was faaaaaaaaar away from me and double checked the label to make sure I had the enamel clearcoat. The first coat of clear seemed to go on ok, but after I the second coat the yellow paint started to take on a textured look not unlike an orange. The paint wasn’t wrinkling as badly as it did with the lacquer, but it definitely wasn’t smooth, and sanding wasn’t going to help. To be honest, the texture looked pretty cool (almost like the texture and look the plastic on a happ joystick has), but it wasn’t uniform, so leaving it that way wasn’t an option. I once again soaked the bat top in a fresh batch of paint thinner as I accepted my third ‘L’ of the project, contemplating what went wrong this time. I thought the enamel wouldn’t react to itself like it would react to the lacquer, so I didn’t think that was a problem. I started to wonder whether or not the paint was fully dry from the wetsanding, and if not would that have been the cause of the wrinkling paint. So, after cleaning the paint off the third time I went through the entire process again. After I wetsanded, I decided to wait 3 days before trying the clearcoat. After the third day, I noticed I had sanded a few spots thinner than I liked, so I decided to spray on a few more coats of yellow. Guess what happened? Yep, wrinkling paint. This was staring to get old…

At this point I decided it was time to try something else. Since I couldn’t find the yellow Rustoleum Universal paint, I did some reading on Krylon Fusion paint, which is supposed to be somewhat similar to the Rustoleum. It’s claim to fame is that it bonds to plastic, dries to the touch in 15 minutes, requires no sanding or priming, and is workable within an hour. Others on the SRK forums have had decent success repainting their MadCatz SE cases, so I figured I would give it a try. I went down to Walmart and picked up a can.

This stuff should work, right?

To make a long story short, history repeated itself. The paint came out much like the Valspar paint for plastic, but runnier. That’s 5 tries and 5 ‘L’s. All for aesthetic purposes.

Now I’m at a loss. Every time I tried to paint this bat top has ended in failure for one reason or another. Not only has this wasted time and money, but the spray paint was starting to leave a dusty film on some things in the garage, like my wife’s car. Fortunately, a cloth and mineral spirits made for relatively easy cleanup. That and the fact she hadn’t washed her car in months made the yellow film unnoticeable to the untrained eye. While racking my brain on what to do next, I called my mother for advice. Her favorite color is purple, and she has been known to dye everything purple, from shoes to bags to cowboy hats (and I wish I was lying…). She mentioned she used spray dye that she found at the shoe repair shop. Unfortunately, they didn’t carry yellow. After a few other suggestions that I told her wouldn’t work, she suggested dyeing the piece with Rit. This sounded like a great idea. People had been dyeing their RC parts in Rit for years to get that custom color to make their car stand out. Why I hadn’t thought of that is beyond me. Then again, this wouldn’t be the first or last time I’d not think of something on this project.

So, back to the store I went. I picked up a box of golden yellow Rit dye. I also ordered a white bat top from LizardLick. I figured the white would take on the dye better than the black bat top I was working with. Don’t ask why I didn’t get a white one in the first place, because I have no clue. Once I had everything together I grabbed my crock pot I use to clean the exhaust pipes on my RC (another post for another time) and mixed the dye according to the directions. Using the dowel I had for painting, I placed the bat top in the pot of dye, checking it just as directed to make sure it didn’t get too dark. 30 seconds. 60 seconds. 90 seconds. Two minutes. Each time I checked, it seemed the dye barely did anything to the bat top. Once I rinsed as directed, what little tint was washed off completely. I tried leaving it in the dye for 10 minutes before pulling it and rinsing. Same effect. Next, I added more dye, figuring I may need a higher concentration of dye on this particular plastic. After 20 minutes, the dye had just barely started to have any effect. The only other thing I could thing of is that my crock pot wasn’t heating the dye up enough, even on high. As a last ditch effort, I took the ceramic bowl with the dye out of the heating element of the crock pot and took it upstairs to the kitchen. Making sure not to splash it anywhere, lest my wife kill me, I placed it on the stove and brought the dye to a rolling boil, then let it simmer for 2 hours after that. The result? You all know what happened, go on, you can say it…’L’. Is that number 6? I’m starting to lose count.

So, plastic paint wasn’t working. Enamel paint wasn’t working. Powdered dye wasn’t working. What else is left to try? Vinyl dye. The dye is formulated to seep into the vinyl or plastic and bond to the material, rather than sticking to the surface like paint. People often use the dye when restoring or customizing their cars, dying the dashboards or seats. This sounded like just the ticket to getting the bat top painted once and for all

Man, this had better work....

However, finding it locally was futile. AutoZone, Advance Auto Parts, even the great bastion of cheesy car customization, Pep Boys- nobody carried yellow vinyl dye. You would think somebody would need it to paint the seats and dash of their 1997 Honda Civic DX bright yellow to go along with the 3 foot wing and 4 inch fart pipe, but no. So I ordered a can online and had it shipped to the house. Two days and $20 later, the paint arrived. One afternoon when the weather got above 40 degrees I took the bat top and painting stand outside, along with the switches I would be using, and sprayed on the dye. Per the directions, I sprayed 3 light coats on the parts, followed by a few heavier coats, all about 10-15 minutes apart. After about 6 or 7 coats I had a nice even coverage of yellow on the top and the switches. Afterward I brought the parts in and let them sit for a week per the instructions. Once everything was good and dry I used a bit of 15oo grit sandpaper to smooth out the edges, and then used some rubbing compound and polishing compound to bring out a nice shine.

Finally, the bat top was finished. Who would have thought that something so small would have taken so freakin’ long to get right? If I had started with the vinyl dye in the first place, I would have saved myself so much time and money. But without the dye being available locally, trying something else proved an extreme exercise in futility. I couldn’t figure out what was going wrong with the regular paint, which bugged me to no end (and I would have my Bill Engvall moment later on once I figured it out). To be fair, many have had great success with the Krylon Fusion line, and had it been a little warmer things may have worked out on the bat top. But at least I got it done for the sake of the project.

Just to show how funny life can be, I went in AutoZone a while after that to get supplies for my oil change. Just for giggles I walked down the paint aisle. A bright yellow can of Rustoleum Universal paint sat on the shelf, mocking me. Apparently, AutoZone decided to start carrying it AFTER I took my repeated ‘L’s. I didn’t know whether to laugh, cry, or knock all the paint off the shelf. Ah well, live and learn. There' sno telling whether that would have worked any better than the Krylon, and I don't really care to find out either at this point. Hopefully, after the huge helpings of FAIL that I had working on the bat top, painting the case should be much easier. Right?

Video of The Day: Big Daddy. Carved With a Chainsaw?!???!!!

2010-02-28T19:23:00.000-05:00

This is one thing that needs to be seen to be believed...

Berserker Barrage: the Marvel Vs. Capcom Stick Saga Part 4 – Solder, Solder Everywhere…

2010-02-17T00:36:00.003-05:00

Most of the modifications I needed to make to the case were done. It was now time to turn my attention to the most challenging part of the build: soldering. Since there is no plug and play solution for a 360 stick, there’s really no alternative. For those uninitiated, soldering is the process of joining 2 or more metal objects together, usually by melting metal filler (in this case solder) into the joint. With the pieces of metal touching each other, solder is melted with a soldering iron, which then cools and joins the two pieces. There are a number of resources online you can read up on to learn more on soldering and techniques, such as this here. Likewise, there’s always YouTube…

I have a Black & Decker soldering iron I bought some years ago for my r/c batteries. The nice thing about the iron was it came with 2 movable clamps to act as a ‘third hand’. That way, the board and/or wires could be held in place while I maneuvered the iron and solder. But I did need to pick up a few items from Radio Shack. I purchased some rosin core solder of 2 different thicknesses and some flux paste (which was pretty invaluable and highly recommended for soldering work like this). I also picked up some desoldering braid, which I would need to remove the necessary parts from the 360 pad. The braid would soak up the melted solder from the joint like a sponge, thereby freeing the parts from the joint. Alternatively, I could have bought a desoldering bulb, which is like a vacuum that sucks up the melted solder, or desoldering iron, which has the bulb and iron together making the process a one handed affair, but the braid was sufficient (and cost effective!).

Once I got home I cracked open the 360 pad. I then carefully removed the pcb.

That's a lot of points to solder. Thanks Microsoft...

If you remember Gummowned’s walkthrough that I posted (and if you didn’t read my earlier post, you can find it here), there were 6 pieces that would need to be removed: the left and right triggers, the connectors for the rumble motors, and the positive and negative battery terminals. First, I plugged up the iron and let it get to the correct operating temperature. Using a brush, I dabbed a good amount of flux on the solder joint I needed to remove. Once the iron was hot, I placed the iron on one side of the joint, and the braid on the other side. After a few seconds, the flux smoked off and the solder melted, flowing into the braid. Once all of the solder was removed, the piece could be removed from the pcb. I made sure not to leave the iron on the joint for more than a few seconds. I started with the battery terminals, since the joint was not too small and there was less chance I’d screw it up. Once those came off and my confidence was up, I moved on to the connectors for the rumble motors. Those too came off with very little fuss. All that was left now were the analog triggers. The trigger pot was soldered to the pcb at 3 very small points. A few posts I had read mentioned that it was very easy to burn the contacts clean off the pcb if the iron was left on too long, damaging the board and rendering it almost useless. So I made sure to only hold the iron on the spot for 4-5 second max at a time. It slowed my progress a bit, but I was able to safely remove both of the pots and pull the trigger assemblies off with no fuss. All that was left was to use my Exacto knife and scratch off the black coating on the pads I needed to solder wires to.

All clear. But not for long

Now I was ready to solder the wires to the pcb. Since the contact points on the pcb were quite small, I wanted a small gauge wire to connect everything. The solid 22 gauge wire I used on the last stick looked like it would be too big for this application. Some stranded wire 26 gauge or smaller looked like it would do the trick, but the Radio Shack in the area didn't seem to have anything that small. Fortunately I did have some IDE cables from an old computer laying around. The wires were 28 gauge, and the flat ribbon made it easy to either keep the wires neatly together or pull individual strands and cut them to length. I broke the wiring up into sections. First, I pulled a 4 wire section from the IDE ribbon for the a/y/a/b buttons on the PCB. I stripped a bit of the wire, dipped them in the flux, then heated the soldering iron and tinned the ends of teh wires, so they had a nice coating of solder on them. Next, I liberally brushed flux on each of the contacts on the pcb. using the 'third hand' on the iron, I held the board with one clip while the other held the wire on the contact. I then heated up the contact and wire, adding a small dab of soler to ensure the joint stayed. Once it cooled, I tugged it slightly to make sure the wire would hold. Once done, I repeated the process with teh other 3 buttons. After they were all soldered, I placed wire labels on the other end of the wires so I would know which wire goes where when it was time to wire up the leo board. I repeated the whole process with the home/back/guide buttons and the directional pad. Since the contact points for the directional pads were so small, I placed a dab of shoe goo on each of the wires once the joint had set to make sure the wires didn't get pulled from the contacts. Using individual strands, I soldered and labeled the left and right bumps and the positive and negative battery terminals.

These contacts were easy...

...these, not so much. The contacts are tiny....

The triggers needed some special attention. In order to have them work properly, I needed to solder a 10k resistor to 2 contact points for each trigger. In addition to soldering the wire to the trigger contact point, I would need to solder an additional wire to the one of the contact points for the trigger common line (both triggers had a contact point for the common line; I just needed to tap into one). I bent the resistor into a horseshoe shape and ran the leads inside the contact points on the pcb. After they were soldered to the points, I trimmed the excess leads on the back of the pcb. With the resistors in place I then soldered the signal and common line wires to the pcb.

You can see the resistors and the USB connections here

The last bit that needed to be soldered to the pcb were the wires for the usb cable. Looking at the pinout guide, I determined where the 5v (power) , D+ and D- (data) lines were for the usb. There is also a ground line, but since I had tapped into the ground (negative battery terminal) for the pcb already, I wouldn't have to worry about that. Since those points already had solder on them, this was a (relatively) simple task of heating he existing solder while the new wire was touching it, allowing the solder to melt and cool with the new wire attached. Since the points were small and close together, I took my time and made sure there was no solder that may have run over to another point on the board. At long last, the 360 pcb was 'padhacked' and ready to be connected to the leo board. Much more soldering was yet to come.

If only this was all I had to solder. But no, there is MUCH more...

Berserker Barrage: the Marvel Vs. Capcom Stick Saga Part 3 - Mock Up Time

2010-01-29T00:12:00.000-05:00

Around the middle of December, the parts for the stick started to roll in. The biggest piece of the puzzle was the case. It had been partially primed, but it looked like the primer was either dripped on or applied with an old paint roller. No matter; I needed to prime and sand it before painting anyway. The bottom of the case was simple particleboard, with 4 rubber feet screwed to them, which in turn screwed to the mounting blocks inside the case. The bottom also had a cutout for any cables that needed to run from the case. The easy thing would be to just paint the bottom blue, yellow or even black. But since I like to show off, I planned on cutting some plexiglass down to size to replace the back, much like I did with El Kabong. Flipping the case over, I took a look at the plexiglass on the top. The plexiglass is actually a fraction longer than the control panel, extending slightly into slots that were milled the sides of the case. To install, I would slightly bend the plexiglass upward, place it over the control panel, then let the plexiglass straighten out and slide into the slots. This captures the plexiglass, making it more stable. Since I had the buttons and stick, I decided to see how everything fit. The case was originally set for a JLF stick, which has a slightly different mounting plate than a JLW. Fortunately, everything still managed to line up and drop into place.

Something's missing from those buttons....

The buttons for the start, select, and home were on the rear of the case. While it’s easier to hit them on the side of the case, like El Kabong’s setup, it does make more sense from a layout standpoint when you start wiring up the buttons and pcbs. Since you have to reach to the back of the case, it also makes sure that you only hit any of those buttons when you really mean to.

That primer makes the case look ashy...

The holes were drilled out for Sanwa or Semeitsu 24mm buttons (Happ/iL doesn’t make any that size). However, when I put one of them in the hole to see how it fit, I didn’t like it. There was too much wood exposed around the rim of the button, and the holes themselves seemed too deep for such a small button. So I rummaged thru my assortment of spare parts from my last project to see what I could use as an alternative. I had picked up a lighted Happ button designed to be used in video poker games and the like just to see how it felt and if it were feasible to use as buttons on another project. It dropped in the hole without too much fuss, and didn’t have as much exposed wood around the rim. However, the button protruded much farther into the case than the Sanwa button I had, which would complicate routing the wires once everything was installed. I then grabbed the 30mm Semeitsu button I never used to get an idea how that would look. It looked like the 30mm would have the least amount of exposed wood, if any. However, I would have to widen the holes to make the buttons fit.

Like Goldilocks and the 3 bears...

That's a pretty big difference

So, it was time to break out the tools. First, I put the case in my mini workbench/vise to hold the case steady. Next, I grabbed my round wood rasp, which is like an aggressive, heavy duty file. Rasps are great if you need to quickly remove or shape a piece of wood. Unlike a file, however, you only use the rasp in one direction, pushing it down or forward thru the material, instead of back and forth like a file, which would ruin the rasp. I made a few passes all the way around the hole, testing to see if it were wide enough every few passes (remember, you can take the material off, but you can’t put it back!). After about 15 minutes, I had the clearance I needed. The 30mm button filled the hole nicely and still remained below the surface of the case, making it harder to accidentally brush against it and hit the button.

Hand tools are great!

The bad thing, however, is now I had to figure out what color 30mm buttons I needed to buy. Oh well. Such is the nature of a custom stick. You could start out in one direction and end up with something completely different by time you are done.

After getting the buttons sorted out, it was time to figure out what I was going to do with the switches. At first glance, the slide switches looked like they would be easier to install. But the more I looked at the case, the less likely they would work the way I wanted. The simple solution would be to mount them on an edge of the case, with the switch just slightly protruding from the bottom. Somehow that didn’t really appeal to me that much, as I feared the wiring to the switches would be a bit messy and I didn’t want the switch to be accidentally moved while playing with the case in your lap. Mounting it to the back of the case along with the start button was an option, but there wasn’t a clear way to mount the switches anywhere near flush to the back of the case. So, I put those to the side and got the rocker switches. While much bigger than the slide switches, if I mounted them on the back of the case they would have a more integrated look, whereas the exposed slide switches would look like the back of an old Atari 2600. In order to have the switches recessed similar to the buttons, I would need to chisel out a portion of the case. So, I traced a template for the two switches in a stacked position and placed it on the case. Next, I took my chisel and cut out the space. Since I’m no carpenter, you can watch this video to see how to use a chisel (a useful tool to have, I must say…)

Since I was working with what appeared to be MDF and not poplar or maple, it wasn’t very hard to cut the space out. In fact, I didn’t really need a mallet or hammer on anything other than outlining the edges. After about 20 minutes, I had the rough cut done.

It will look much neater once primed and painted

Once I had the space deep enough to my liking, I put the case back in the vise and made the holes for the body of the switch to go inside the case. I used a combination of a drill bit, my dremel and the rasp to widen and shape the holes. Afterward, I dropped the switches in to see how they looked. Success…

I wonder if I can paint them yellow...

…at least until I flipped the case over, that is. Like the buttons, the switches have a locking nut that holds the switch to the case. While I had chiseled the space for the top of the switches to fit, the body of the switch didn’t protrude deep enough into the case for the locking nuts to screw on. No wonder I’ve seen the underside of other cases routed around the button holes, I thought. Ah well, more time with the chisel. Since I was working inside the case, I had limited room to position the chisel and cut out the space. But with some effort, I managed. It wasn’t as neat as the outside, but it wasn’t bad and nobody would see it anyway!

Not exactly even, but it gets the job done

In retrospect, I probably could have chiseled the front side of the case a little deeper, so that the switches were recessed more, which may have givin the needed clearance for the retaining nuts without having to work on the inside of the case. But, what's done is done. I still needed to cut the space for the USB adaptor, but at this point it hadn't come in the mail yet. Who's have thought it took so long to ship something that small from Hong Kong? No matter. The next stage of the project would take up more time than I ever expected.

Berserker Barrage: the Marvel Vs. Capcom Stick Saga Part 2 - The Set Up

2010-01-19T23:14:00.000-05:00

My buddy ‘Nick Nova’ comes over the house a few times a month. He was a big fan of MvC2 when it was in the arcade. So when it was finally released for home consoles, he was understandably exited. He came over after work the day I downloaded it and we played for a few hours. Since I had just finished EL Kabong2 I let him give it a spin. He loved it, and proceeded to try to beat me senseless with a combination of Wolverine, Cyclops and Akuma (Scratchy and Scott, I called him). Although I never got into MvC 2 in the arcade, I managed to hold my own with Guile and Juggernaut. Fun was had by all, but it did seem as if the person that was using the pad (mostly me) was at a disadvantage. Arcade game, arcade stick and so forth. Since Nick is like family, I figured I’d build him his own stick. But I didn’t want to do a carbon copy of El Kabong, for a number of reasons.

First, while I’m firmly in the PS3 camp, Nick is a Microsoft fanboy, even after his 360 Elite got the RRoD (I still laugh at him about that). If he were to take the stick home and play, I’d need to set his stick up as a dual mod, so he could play at both houses. I had also wanted to try out some Japanese parts just to see how they felt and if I could get used to them. The original plan was to build myself another box later on with Sanwa parts, but this project gave me the opportunity to try them sooner. Plus, if I didn’t like it, it wouldn’t me mine anyway! My first thought for his stick was to use the Cthulhu board, buy a MadCatz 360 pad and padhack it. I’d also have to buy him a long USB cable. While I was in the planning process, Gummowned actually finished the first run of Leo boards. This opened the possibility of doing a wireless dual mod setup. Since I had been in contact with Gummowned during his initial design process, he agreed to sell me one of the first run boards. I was going to use the Leo in my next stick, but again, the project for Nick was already on the table. So, Nick now becomes a guinea pig AND a beta tester with this one stick! Since he’s a MvC2 fan, I decided to put my own spin on the MadCatz MvC stick, going with yellow and white buttons, a yellow bat top, and a blue and yellow paint scheme ala the X-Men. With the general plan in mind, it was time to start ordering parts.

First up was figuring out what to do about a case. While I plan on making my own cases for a project or two, I’m not quite ready yet. I still need to gather more tools and find the time to do it. Besides, I’d end up doing a lot of work in my garage, and it’s not exactly warm this time of year. The plan was to have a case that could work with a Sanwa stick but still use Happ/iL buttons (Happanese? Japerican?), so a slim stick wouldn’t really work. After some searching, I came across these cases made by a cat named Physh in Canada:

How 'bout that wood grain...

The case looked like it had everything I was looking for: 8 button layout, precut plexiglass for the artwork, tall enough for Happ/iL buttons, and wide enough to have space for the 3 boards that would be needed for this to work. While the joystick holes were drilled for a Sanwa joystick, with a little modification, there would be enough room to install a Happ Competition joystick just in case the Sanwa experiment didn’t work out. The price of the case was pretty good, all things considered: $75 shipped to the US. Physh even agreed to print out the artwork and send it with the stick so I wouldn’t have to work on setting up a template in Photoshop (I would, however, need to figure out how to label the buttons, since all Physh would do is resize the art and print it on his color printer at work). I Paypaled the money and waited for Canadian Express to deliver it.

Next on the hitlist were the buttons and joystick. Sanwa makes two different joysticks: a JLF, which is used in arcade cabinets, the MadCatz stick and most custom sticks, and a JLW, which isn’t as popular but still has it’s supporters in the fightstick community. Slagcoin has a very detailed breakdown of the two sticks here. One of the biggest differences is the tension of the two sticks. The JLW is stiff and tight, compared to the looser feel of the JLF. If you’re used to the feel of American styled (Happ) sticks, it’s believed the JLW is as close as you can get with a Japanese style stick. Sanwa sticks generally come with a ball top, which gives you options of a solid colored ball , a transparent colored ball, or a meshtop ball , (which looks a bit like carbon fiber). But since I wanted it to be similar to the American arcade style, I needed to order a small adapter and the bat top. I also had to consider which restrictor gate to use for the JLW (for a detailed explanation, read this. Unlike the Happ Competition, which doesn’t use a gate at all and has a even, circular feel as you move the joystick around, the JLW comes stock with a square/rhombus gate, which you can feel the corners when you move the stick in a diagonal direction. If you grew up on Japanese sticks, you’re used to it. If you grew up on American sticks, you’ll have a learning curve ahead of you. Fortunately, Sanwa also offers a circular gate which mimics the feel of the Happ, so I picked that up as well. For the buttons, I wanted to stick with concave Happ buttons. I wanted a little more style than the Madcatz MvC stick, so I picked up set of 6 yellow buttons and 2 clear buttons from GroovyGameGear.com. The case was set up to use 24mm buttons for the start, select and home buttons, so I picked up 3 of those as well.

Last were the prerequisite odds and ends needed to complete the stick. I picked up a bunch of .187 quick disconnect terminals for the Happ buttons and some .110 female disconnects for the 24mm buttons. Since I still didn’t want to use a Neutrick connector for the USB connection, I found a Female USB a to Female USB b adaptor and ordered 2 of those for a future project (amazingly, you can only find these things online. No store in the area even knows what I’m talking about…). I went to Lowes and picked up some metallic blue spray paint, Sunburst Yellow paint and some clearcoat. Since the setup would require 2 dual pole dual throw switches, I went to Radio Shack and picked up a few slide switches and a few rocker switches. I still wasn’t sure where and how I was going to set them up, so I figured it would be good to have both kinds. Since I had to do a lot of soldering, I also picked up some soldering flux (essential for a soldering so many tiny places) and some 10k resistors for the Xbox stick. Now with everything either on hand or on order, I could read up on how involved it would be to actually pull this off and start getting some things put together in my head.

Berserker Barrage: the Marvel Vs. Capcom Stick Saga Part 1 - What Have I Got Myself Into?!?

2010-01-14T17:09:00.008-05:00

Much like a steering wheel or flight controller, fightsticks are pretty specialized tools. Their main purpose is to replicate the arcade setup for a given fighting game. Because of the parts involved, they tend to be pretty sizable, heavy, and not exactly cheap. But if you’re serious about your fighting games, at some point you’re going to have to get one. At least you only have to pay for it once. Unless, of course, you want to play on more than one system, that is. With the advent of XBL and PSN, you no longer have to have someone over your house to show off your fighting prowess. With a high speed internet connection, you can issue beat downs to your buddy down in Pennsylvania or in Prague. But what if one of your friends only has it on PS3, and another for the 360? Well, you could play one friend with your awesome fightstick and the other with your crappy (j/k) controller. Or, you could buy another fightstick, which, unless you have deep pockets, seems a bit frivolous. There is a third option, but it’s not for the faint at heart.

As explained in my last build, people have been ‘padhacking’ for years, taking the guts of a perfectly fine pad and soldering buttons to them. That basic concept has extended to a ‘dual mod’, whereby two different pcbs are wired together then wired to the buttons. When the appropriate plugs wired to the pcb, it’s possible to use one stick for, say, a Playstation 2 and a Xbox. Of course, it’s much more involved than it sounds. Over the years, people with much more electronic experience have made custom boards that make it easier (relatively, anyway) to use your fightstick with more than one console. One of the more popular boards is Toodle’s Cthulhu board (which you can read extensively about here). The board interfaces directly with a PS3 or a PC, allowing you to use your custom fightstick on either machine. It also has software coded in its chip to allow you to use the stick with a Playstation, Xbox, Gamecube, etc, provided you solder the appropriate machine’s controller cable to the board. Alternately, you could wire up a RJ45 jack and use RJ45 connectors for each system you wanted to use , like so:

(for more info, you can go here). In order to use the stick in conjunction with an Xbox 360, however, you still need to padhack an actual Xbox pad. Microsoft has seen fit to install some special coding that will not allow a third party controller to work without it (even though it still hooks up to an USB cable. So much for the universal part). Many people have used the Cthulhu board along with a pcb from a 360 pad (the MadCatz 4716 is pretty popular) for their custom projects, and there are also plenty of people that have modified their MadCatz TE and SE fightsticks to be used on both PS3 and 360. However, those solutions still involve running a USB cable to the console to use it. If you want a factory wireless fightstick, you’re choices are pretty slim (recently, Hori released a wireless stick to coincide with Tekken 6, but the stock parts are the Hori stuff, not the genuine arcade parts. Plus, the PS3 version needs a stupid dongle, and I really hate dongles….). Granted, most tournament players prefer using a stick connected via USB, to ensure there’s no chance of lag, interference, dead battery at the wrong time, etc. Still, having a wireless stick eliminates carrying around a 10-15 foot USB cable and negates the possibility of your little brother tripping over the cable and pulling your console off the shelf (remember those SNES days? I know I’m not the only one…). And, as I mentioned before, if I have a wireless pad, why not a wireless fightstick?

So, why haven’t there been many wireless dual mod setups? Mainly because of how the boards are wired. For a dual mod to work, both pcbs must be ‘common ground’, and all the ground lines of each board, along with the buttons, joystick, battery, etc, need to be wired together. While it is possible to find a common ground 360 pad, as discussed in the last build, the PS3 pcb is not common ground. To get a wireless dual mod setup to work, you would need some extraordinary soldering skills, a pretty good knowledge of electronics, a handful of transistors, resisters, inverters, breadboards, very thin gauge wire and the patience of a saint. If so, you could produce something that looked like this:

Told you, not for the faint of heart...

Needless to say, this isn’t something that lot of people would bother with. However, Gummowned, the same SRK member (or mad man, depending on your outlook) that created the above monstrosity decided there was a market for this sort of setup and set out to make it easier for others to do the same thing. After a few months, the Leo board was born:

All those parts were soldered BY HAND. Gummowned is the man!

The Leo, through electronic wizardry, converts the PS3 pcb into a common ground pcb, allowing the user to wire up a PS3 pcb and a wireless 360 pcb for dual system wireless goodness (along with another added benefit which we’ll get to soon enough). That said, there’s still a good deal of work that needs to be done to make it all work. Unlike the axisadaptor, there are no screw terminals, so everything will need to be soldered to the Leo board. In addition, the contacts the wires need to be soldered to on the 360 pcb are quite small, and some pieces need to be desoldered and connected to a resistor before it will work. For a detailed look at what needs to be done to modify the above mentioned Hori Tekken stick, have a look here. In short, I have my work cut out for me on this one. But the possibilities this opens up are too great to ignore. Plus, the building bug bit me not long after I finished El Kabong2 . So, with the winter chill getting ready to set in over the east coast, I started planning my next stick. Such a shame I’m not going to keep it!

Berserker Barrage: the Marvel Vs. Capcom Stick Saga - Prologue

2010-01-12T16:20:00.007-05:00

Ah MadCatz. I must give credit where credit is due. While there have been other arcade sticks before you from other companies (respect to the Sega Virtua Stick High Grade, the classic Namco Arcade Stick, and Hori’s countless Real Arcade Pro Sticks, etc), when you ‘came in the door (© Rakim)’ with the release of your Tournament Edition SFIV fightsticks, you set the bar quite high. Not only did you give the public genuine Sanwa arcade parts (not knockoff buttons), arcade layouts and a relatively easy way to buy them (a lot of earlier sticks were imports or you needed the hookup from your out of the way gaming store), but you also restored some much needed goodwill in your name (and you did pump out some craptacular accessories over the years, don’t lie). The Street Fighter tie in was pretty much a home run, since Capcom was out to jump start the fighting genre, which had been languishing for some time for a variety of reasons. Seeing how the original batch of TE fightsticks sold out, the many months you couldn’t find a decent fightstick ANYWHERE, custom, import or otherwise, and the ridiculous markup these sticks saw on eBay once the first run dried up, it’s safe to say job well done. Throughout the year, we’ve seen a few different ‘Collector’s Edition’ sticks come out: The Femme Fatal stick stick, the Comic-Con special, and recently the 'Round 2' SFIV sticks. But one in particular stood out for plenty of other fighting fans.

Marvel vs. Capcom 2 (MvC2, for those that are lazy) had a huge following during its arcade and console run. In fact, it’s one of the games that’s played at many official Street Fighter tournaments worldwide (along with SFIII: Third Strike and some form of Street Fighter II, most recently the HD Remix version). With the re-release of MvC2 on consoles, Madcatz decided to celebrate with a new special edition stick:

Looks like a comic book, doesn't it...

Available exclusively through GameStop or Madcatz online, it’s a very impressive looking stick, even if the mechanicals and electronics are the same as all the other TE sticks. However, some were slightly disappointed. While it definitely looks killer, it’s not anything an original TE owner couldn’t do with 6 yellow Sanwa buttons, a yellow balltop and some custom art. Plus, more than a few people were used to playing MvC2 on a Happ/iL setup because of the heavy button mashing done in game (well, heavy as opposed to the more skilled or nuanced movements from Street Fighter, anyway). Realistically, Madcatz wouldn’t have been able to make a Happ based stick without some serious development time and money, as Happ parts wouldn’t fit in the TE cases they already had. That, friendly readers, is where I come in…

Over the next few weeks (or months, seeing how I procrastinate and how COLD it is out here…) I’ll document the trials and tribulations in making my own custom Happ based MvC stick. Hopefully I would have learned a thing or two from my first custom build. Then again, I never once said I was smart. Let’s get to it!

Awesome Video Of The Day : Forza Drifting

2010-01-08T12:14:00.000-05:00

Now, I'm a diehard Gran Turismo fan, but this video is just too good to argue with. Enjoy!

El Kabong2 (or making my first arcade stick) - Epilogue

2010-01-04T23:33:00.001-05:00

The journey is over. I now am the owner of my first fightstick. It's been an interesting experience. I'm proud to say that I am the owner of a (semi) custom stick that I built myself. I love the fact it feels exactly like the arcade sticks I came up with, since it uses the same parts. I like the look on my friends faces when, after clowning me at the beginning, they click the buttons and move the bat top around for the first time and get that instant look of nostalgia in their eyes. I'm already working on another for a friend of mine and have 2 more planned for myself! Of course, that's not to say everything came up roses, mind you.

First, I can't say everything worked perfectly from day 1. After a few days 2 of my cherry switches on my stick failed. Now, I'm not sure if they were old switches, or if the fables lack of reliability with Happ styled parts was starting to creep up, but I replaced them both and haven't had a problem since. From time to time I seem to have problems inputting a down/diagonal command, but that may be chalked up to still getting acclimated to using a stick. The usb cable I was using in the case failed, causing the battery not to charge for a while. And until the paint fully 'cures', the inside of my case reeks of paint fumes if I have to take the bottom off to make an adjustment.

Then there's the matter of cost. Without even adding everything up, I can easily say I probably could have bought a TE AND a SE by time everything was factored in (parts, paint, tools, various incidentals, etc). With better planning, or if I had some of the materials already, I could have cut some of the costs down, but not all of them. Economies of scale being what they are it would be cheaper in the end to buy a mass produced product, that's been designed, tested, and built hundred times over. And if you're an instant gratification guy, you could pop down to your local Gamestop, plunk down your $150, get home and start playing that day rather than waiting for your paint to dry. Still, some like tinkering and building, so if you're in no rush time isn't really a factor. And there still is something priceless about a stick that you created, regardless on the end cost. At least there is to me...

In the end, I enjoyed the process of building my fightstick and would recommend it to anyone that has the time and wants to play a fighting game like it was meant to be played: with a joystick and real buttons. It took longer than I thought, but for me it was time well spent. There are so many options for design, parts, art, color, leds, etc that time, money and imagination are your only limits. Have at it!

Stick Update:

I decided to make a change to the art on my stick after a month or so. I always liked this abstract piece of fan art:

Who's kicking who?

So I managed to get a copy of Photoshop for my computer at home. Which, I may add, I STILL don't really know how to use. But with some tinkering, I managed to pull something together. I tried printing on semi-gloss paper and matte stock. I dind't want full gloss as it may have made a reflection under the plexiglass. The result:

This really makes the white on black stand out

Personally, I love it. And, as it turns out, I seem to have another fan of teh art and the stick in general. Either that or it's just something else for her to bite...

Teach them while they're young, I say...

The only problem I had with Sophia occurred when I was off to work. Apparently, Grandma let Sophia eat downstairs with daddy's toys. When I went to play a few rounds of SFIV, I had dried up crusty pieces of zwiebeck cookie all between the buttons and on the case. She's about to be in the same boat as Germaine in a minute!

El Kabong2 (or making my first arcade stick) Part 7 - End Game

2010-01-04T17:19:00.000-05:00

Paint is done. Buttons are done. Wiring is done. The last thing I needed was some art. And a graphic designer. Not only did I not have any version of Photoshop, but I am not artistically inclined AT ALL. So, I gave my buddy Laz a call. He does all the signage and graphics for my wife’s job, so this would be right in his wheelhouse. I had searched online for some nice high resolution art (a must, since it’s a good chance any art chosen will need to be resized for the dimensions of the particular control panel). After a gin and tonic or two, we set to work.

First thing we needed to do was get the template set up for where the buttons and stick would be. I traced the lexan panel onto a sheet of paper with all the button cutouts, then scanned them into the computer. Afterward, we opened the scanned image in Photoshop. Using the scanned image Laz then drew the panel and circles for the cutouts, allowing us to manipulate things a little better. That way, we could create the button lables, have them spaced the right distance from where the buttons would be, and lock those together so changing the artwork would be as easy as overlaying a new picture. My first idea was to use The World According to Street Fighter:

They weren't kidding about World Warriors...

However, once we resized it to the dimensions of the panel, it didn’t work so well. The image wound up being too small to read a lot of the names of the characters, and a lot would be covered up by the buttons. Since I wasn’t using clear buttons where the art could be places inside, it just didn’t seem worth it. My next idea was to use this layered over some diamond plate:

Not quite everyone, but you get the idea

Looks like a dirty truck mudflap right now...

Since the picture would be too big to fit the panel as is, my idea was to resize the picture to fit widthwise, then crop the picture lengthwise to leave a 1 ½” to 2” strip at the bottom of the diamond plate. I wasn’t really worried if the bodies got cut off; as long as the faces all showed and were scaled correctly, I could live with it. Unfortunately, we couldn’t get that layout to work right either. Either I wasn’t explaining myself correctly, or we had too many tonics at that point. So that idea was tossed as well (in retrospect, I think I know how we could have done it and got it to look right, so I might try it again later). Next up, we tried this one:

UDon for the win!

This time we actually managed to pull something together that looked semi-decent. Laz resized the image to fit below the buttons without having to cut anything off. He softened the border of the picture, then made a gradient for the background. He also created a nice gradient effect box around the buttons to make them stand out. Once done, we printed everything out on photo paper. After it was dry we laid the lexan on top of the picture and cut out the button holes. When I got home, I was able to put everything together at last:

Everything looks so much better now that it's all together, doesn't it?

White buttons, black rim, good choice...

The inconspicuous USB connector. I'm still most proud of that

The money shot. I must admit, the wire cabling looks nice...

After taking photos, waking up the misses to see the end product, doing a victory dance in the basement and having a victory drink, I hit the PS button on the stick, pulled up Street Fighter IV and was happily trounced in online play. Had it really been 15 years since using a stick? Felt like 20….

El Kabong2 (or making my first arcade stick) Part 6 - Seventh Inning Stretch

2009-12-31T14:19:00.001-05:00

The hardest part of the build was finally done, and while not 100% perfect, it was better and shinier than I imagined. It was time to start figuring out what the final layout would look like, although I still was unsure on what the artwork would look like. I started out with a button layout similar to the Madcatz TE stick:

Pay no attention to that purple flask over there...

It was clean, looked nice, but it just didn’t speak to me. Besides, I had ordered enough buttons at that point to mix and match plungers and rims, so that’s what I did. I bolted up the base of the joystick and dropped in the buttons to have a look. First up: black buttons, white rims, with the black joystick and white dust washer (I’m a fan of symmetry if you hadn’t guessed…)

Notice the reflection of the towel on the bottom of the case? Hard work pays off baby!

The clear PS button? Genius...

While I wasn’t much of a fan of this combination when the box was unpainted, I had to admit it looked really good with the painted box. The white rims made the black plungers look like they were floating above the case, and the black joystick really gave it the authentic arcade look and feel. However, it felt like there was way too much black going on. Even if I used a picture with a light background, I wasn’t sure it would work in the long run. So, I tossed in the reverse: White buttons, black rim, white joystick, black dust washer

I added the lexan top for added effect. It will look even better with art

The black on white buttons look pretty good on the side

The button setup was a winner for sure. I liked it with the unpainted box, and liked it even more with the shiny black case. The white stick looked, well, strange, as I never saw one in an arcade. But I had to admit with the button combination it worked. I tried to switch back to the black stick with that button combo, but it wasn’t working for me (besides the fact it threw the symmetry off!). So, that combination would be final.

Next I turned my attention to the wiring. After mulling a few options on how to keep the sixaxis pcb in one place, I settled on a combination of Velcro and Shoe-Goo. The battery for the sixaxis fits on the back of the board with two spacers that clip to the pcb and hold the battery in place. I used the Shoe-Goo to glue the spacers to the battery, then clipped it to the pcb. I placed a 1x3 inch rectangle of Velcro to the other side of the battery, and placed the other side of the Velcro inside the case. With this setup, the parts won’t move unless I pull them apart, so moving the case won’t cause the pcb to fall. I folded the ribbon cable over itself in order to mount the axisadaptor on top of the sixaxis pcb, and held it in place with servo tape (a strong double sided tape used for R/C radio electronics). Next I ran the usb cable from the pcb to the gender changers I bought earlier, then slid them into the slot I had shaped for it, making sure it was flush with the back of the case. Once positioned, I used some construction adhesive to make sure it never moved.

Aside from the polish I need to clean out, I'm quite proud of how that turned out

Next up was the wiring. I had bought some cable sleeves to try and organize and clean up the mass of wires that would be in the case. After fighting with the 3 ground wire chains I decided I didn't have the patience to do the same for the signal wires for all 11 buttons, no matter how neat it looked. If I had actually planned out the length all the wires needed to be ahead of time, I may have been able to run the wires thru a length of sleeving from the button back to the axisadapter. But it turned out as an exercise in futility. So I settled on neatly tucking the wires around the button lock nuts at the bottom of the case. I managed to get everything wired up and the plexiglass bottom buttoned up just as my good friend and fellow Stree Fighter of 19 years walked in. After a small glitch that caused some of the buttons not to function (I think a ground wire may have been lose; how embarrasing) I handed it over to my buddy, who absolutely hates the Playstation controllers (he's a Sega fanboy who's been anti-Sony since the original Playstation, so I take his criticism with a grain of salt). After firing up the PS3 from the fight stick (still very cool), we get into some SFIV. After a few warm up round, he's able to pull off Guile's ultra move, something he's never been able to do on anything other than an arcade setup. "You build good toys my friend" he said, laughing as Chul Li laid crumpled on the ground. Note to self: Germaine can no longer play with my toys....

El Kabong2 (or making my first arcade stick) Part 5 – Getting my Bob Ross On...

2009-12-31T13:00:00.000-05:00

At this point I’m feeling pretty good about myself. Either because I can see some actual progress being made or because I was high from paint fumes (really need to open that garage door more), I started to believe I’d be playing with my new toy in another day or two. Reality, on the other hand, has a funny sense of humor that will make you change your tune. I grabbed the black lacquer and sprayed down the case, excited on seeing how the finished case would look (since I already posted my painting how-to previously, I’m not going to rehash the gory details). Within an hour all my optimism flew south. The glossy paint showed that I STILL needed to sand down the areas with the joint compound. Instead of a flat smooth surface, some areas looked downright swollen and uneven. Dejected and pissed, I reached for that ol’ purple bag once again for some liquid solace. There was only one thing I could do: go back at the case with some sandpaper. This time I started with a much lower grit (100, I believe) to cut through the paint, primer and joint compound until I knew it was level, then went up each successive grit of sandpaper to smooth everything out. Once done, I went back over the affected areas with the primer. This would set me back a day or so, since I had to again wait for the primer to dry then sand that down before I could try again with the black paint.

After the repairs were made, I went at the case with the lacquer once more. This time, the results were acceptable. I laid down 6 total coats, let them dry, and sanded them with 220, 320, and 400 grit sandpaper. I had soaked the 600 grit paper overnight in preparation for wet sanding. If you’ve never wet sanded before, let me assure you: it is tedious and messy. You have to watch the speed and pressure of your sanding, lest you sand clean thru the paint layer down to the primer. You have to make sure the sandpaper stays wet so you’re constantly dipping or spraying the paper to keep it lubricated so the paint won’t clog the paper. You also have a nasty, drippy mess around your workspace (then again, you’d still have a mess with dry sanding, just a dusty, bad for your lungs mess, so pick your poison). You have to be extremely careful around corners and edges or you will sand straight down to the surface with a few swipes. Still, I wanted the paint to shine, so away I went. It wouldn’t have been so bad if I was only going to sand the sides of the case. But I also had the huge (well, huge relative to the task at hand) slab of top panel that had to slowly, methodically be sanded down as well. After about an hour and some change, I was done. The result? I thought it looked like crap. Some of the areas looked lightly sanded, some looked like I spilled wet powder on the surface, and some spots looked like they were barely touched. There simply had to be a better way, I thought as I cleaned up for the day.

At work the next day I took the time to do some research. Turns out I was indeed doing it right, and it was supposed to look milky, but uniform. I then stumbled upon steel wool. This is often used in polishing varnish or polyurethane coats on wood. The finest steel wool was comparable to 1000 grit sandpaper, which was next up for me to use. I decided to give that a shot. I picked up some 0000 grade steel wool from Home Depot (at this point I think the cashiers probably know me by name) and gave it a try. Within seconds I could tell the difference. The paint was now uniformly sanded, with no dusty residue and pretty easy clean-up with the turpentine rag.

Left side done with wool. Right side sandpaper. My son doing Vanna White...

Within 20 minutes I was able to finish the entire case. I cleaned the residue, let it dry for a few minutes, then went back over it again for good measure.
In the midst of the painting and sanding, a small design change popped in my head. Instead of having the case look like a black rounded monolith, I decided to break it up with some pinstriping for an extra touch. My practice R/C cars usually have an offset double pinstripe from the hood to the tail, so I figured it would work on the box as well. The only problem was I don’t have an airbrush and didn’t feel like going through the hassle of masking and painting the stripes, hoping the paint didn’t bleed through the mask, etc. So, I cheated. I went to Autozone and picked up 2 rolls of white pinstriping of different sizes. After eyeballing roughly where I wanted the stripes on the case, I measured spots on all 4 corners and carefully wrapped the pinstripes around the case, neatly trimming the joining edges. The clearcoat would cover and seal the pinstriping, so I wouldn’t have to worry about the stripes moving or getting damaged.

The clearcoat went on the same way as the paint. Since I had used black lacquer paint, I had bought a lacquer clearcoat as well. After 8 or so coats, the case was now a very glossy, if a bit uneven, color. The clearcoat nicely filled in the sanding marks left on the paint.

It looks like a retarded bowling ball or a Samsonite right now...

After everything dried, it was time to start the sanding process again. I dry sanded with the 400 and 600 grit paper, used the steel wool to even out those marks, then wet sanded with the 2000 grit sandpaper. Now the clearcoat looked like the paint did (milky powder), but was much more uniform. To bring the shine back, I grabbed two old standbys used for car finished: rubbing compound and polishing compound. With one application of the rubbing compound, my hard work was vindicated.

Buttons added for effect. Either that or I was pressed at this point!

After following up with the polishing compound, the box now has a nice, shiny, glossy, almost reflective shine to it. If the weather was good, I had a paint booth, and free time to actually work on the painting, it wouldn’t have taken weeks to finish. If I wanted to cut corners, I could have let it be after painting it black, no sanding or clearcoat. Or I could have just dry sanded the paint and polished it for some shine. Either would have been a far cry from the unfinished MDF I started with. But, they say hard work builds character, right?

The Fastest Yellow and Red

2009-12-19T09:46:00.000-05:00

This
Is
AWESOME!!!!!!!!

Just watch. Between the Matchbox cars, sound effects, stop motion work, you name it. This is definitely one of teh most awesome things you'll see today. Trust me...

David Axelrod - Holy Thurday

2009-12-13T13:08:00.000-05:00

This is one of the greatest songs EVER. Try this in the morning to get your mood right. You'll Love It

Mirror Finish Paint Guide

2009-12-11T10:00:00.000-05:00

Below is the painting guide I wrote up for the guys over at QCFGaming. After I posted some pics of my work, I guess they were happy with the results. They've tried to add this tot heir website, but it hasn't really worked that well. Since a few people have asked to see the guide, and I have to reference it on Part 5 of my building writeup and don't feel like rehashing anything, I just posted it here. Hope this helps somebody out there....

I’ve been asked to do a write up on my painting technique for QCFGaming. I feel so special! Before we begin, I need to touch on a few things. First, a lot of credit must go to Digital717 over on the SRK forums. His guide was what got me started on my paint job. You can find his info here: MDF Mirror Finish Worklog

Second, consider both write-ups as guides, not etched in stone rules. I am by no means a professional (as some of the pictures will attest!), and I’m sure if you ask different people you’ll get different answers and have similar results. However you chose to go, as long as you have patience, you will have results you can be proud of. Make sure to read the entire guide, look at the bonus points, and decide what will work best for the finish you’re looking for. Now, onto the show….

Congratulations! You just got your QCFGaming case. While waiting for it to get shipped, you no doubt had visions in your head on how the stick will look. You open up the USPS box, dig thru the paper, and are presented with….a rather brown box. How in the world are you going to get that to look like the other custom cases you’ve seen? Fear not, we’re here to help.

First off, you’ll need to get your materials together. Some you may have around the house, some you may need to head to the local hardware or automotive supply store. You will need:

• A filler (wood filler, joint compound, spackle, Bondo, etc)

• Sandpaper (100, 180, 220, 320, 400, for dry sanding, 600, 1000, 1500, 2000 grit for wetsanding)

• Steel wool (000 and 0000 Grade)

• Rubbing Compound

• Polishing Compound

• Wax (optional)

• Spray paint (enamel or lacquer, either seems to work)

• Spray clear gloss (again, either enamel or lacquer)

• Tack cloth

• Terry cloth rags

• Spray Bottle

• Turpentine, mineral spirits, or other paint safe cleaner

• Rubber/latex gloves

• Dust mast or respirator

As we go along, I’ll explain what we’re using everything for. Let’s get to it!

Step 1- Prep the box

Have a look at your box. See all the fuzzy, unfinished edges where the parts join together and where the routed edges are? Those are the enemy. First off, when you hit them with the spray paint, they will show every joint line. Second, the unfinished edges of the MDF act like sponges on paint. Definitely not what you want. That’s where the filler comes in. What you want to do is spread a nice layer of filler along all the edges and joints until they aren’t visible. You don’t need to use too much. Once that’s dry, it’s time to sand it smooth. Grab the lowest grit sandpaper and sand it as level as you can. Try not to sand into the MDF. Once it’s sufficiently level, move to a higher grit of sandpaper (180 or 220 should do the trick) to get everything nice and smooth. When you run your finger across the spot where you used the filler, you want it to feel smooth and level, with very little peaks or valleys. You should not be able to feel the edge where the MDF stops and the filler begins. If you don’t, it will stick out like a sore thumb when the paint is sprayed on. Once you’re done, wipe the dust off with the tack cloth and use a rag and mineral spirits to remove any fine dust and fingerprints. Use gloves to keep the stuff off your hands.

Bonus Point - Box Prep

Here’s a tip for anybody with a HAPP style box. Since the joystick mounts from the bottom, you have to drill holes in the top panel and drop the screws in for the joystick. Some people don’t mind the screw heads showing, or use countersunk screws to get the screw head flush with the panel. Personally, I don’t want to see any screws, whether I’ve got art or plexiglass covering it or not. So, I picked up a #12 countersink bit like this:

Mark your holes and use the countersink bit to drill into the MDF so the screw heads are below the surface, like this:

Grab some wood glue or contractors glue and shoot some in the hole. Drop the screws in and use your filler to cover the holes. Then sand and smooth as before. Now, you have a nice, bolt free top that will look like a solid block when you’re done!

Step 2 – Priming and Sanding

Using primer on your box is very important. Not only will it provide a better surface for your paint to adhere to, but it fills and smoothes any imperfections in the MDF. The color of the primer doesn’t really matter (although if you’re painting the box black, using black primer can help you cheat in case of any screw ups when you’re sanding, as we’ll see later). Make sure your paint area is CLEAN and well ventilated. When using spray paint, spraying a number of light coats is always better than one heavy coat. We’re not doing graffiti! Grab your mask (you really don’t want to inhale this stuff too much), hold the can 10-12 inches from the box and spray in a straight line from end to end. Start spraying before you hit the edge of the box and stop spraying after you are completely off the other side. 2 or 3 light coats about 2-5 minutes apart should do. Then put the can down and walk away. Most likely the box will not have a full coating of paint and the MDF will show thru. That is fine! You will cover it with the subsequent layers. Let the paint dry per the directions on the primer (generally 30 minutes to an hour), then repeat the steps. After you’ve done this 3-4 times, you should have a pretty uniform coverage of paint. Have a look at the parts that you used your filler on. If you sanded them down well, you should notice very few, if any, high spots in the paint. If you do see them, go back with your 180 or 220 grit and smooth it out, then respray that area. It may be a pain to do, but it will look so much better once the paint goes on. Once it’s done, let it sit for 24 hours to dry. If it’s cold or humid, you may need to wait a bit longer to dry.

Next up: sanding. We want to sand the primer relatively smooth so the paint has a nice even surface to stick to. Grab some 220 or 320 grit (and your mask!) and sand down the primer. You can use a sanding block or wrap the sandpaper around a small block of wood so you can put even pressure on the paint. Be very careful around the edges of the box! It is extremely easy to sand thru the paint or primer if you’re not careful. I like to use 3M flexible finish sandpaper, which is really good on any rounded edges. The primer also doesn’t seem to build up nearly as much. If you do sand thru the primer, spray the part with a few light coats, let it dry a few hours, then lightly resand and you should be fine. Finish up with a light sanding using 400 grit sandpaper. Once everything looks and feels nice and smooth, wipe with the tack cloth and use the mineral spirits to clean everything. You should look something like this:

Done! Now it’s time for some paint

Bonus Points - Primer

Some have asked whether or not brushable primer would work for this application. To be honest, I haven’t really tried it, although I have some from patching drywall around the house. My first thought would be maybe, but it may be more work than it’s worth. I wouldn’t attempt to use a brush to apply it, as sanding the brush strokes out would be a pain. A small, foam trim roller may well do the trick, but I’m not sure how the primer would set up once it dried. If you choose to go that route, just be sure to sand it smooth and clean it as mentioned above.

A Word on Enamel Paint vs. Lacquer Paint

You may or may not have noticed when you got your paint that you have the choice between enamel paint and lacquer paint. Either will ultimately do the job, but with slightly different handling directions. The biggest difference in the two are the solvent or "carrier" of the paint. Lacquer paint uses lacquer thinner and enamel paint uses paint thinner. One of the advantages of lacquer paint is that it dries more quickly than enamel and does not have a re-coat window (a time when a subsequent coat must be reapplied). With lacquer, you can spray the next coat once it is dry. With an enamel, you generally have a 1-2 hour time period in which you must spray the next coat, or you will need to wait for the paint to cure, which can take 3-5 days, depending on your brand of paint. Check the instructions on your paint can and be sure to follow those. An advantage of enamel over lacquer is that enamel can be used over either enamel or lacquer paint. The paint thinning solvent will not affect the dried layers of paint. Lacquer, on the other hand, can eat thru or wrinkle enamel paint because of the lacquer thinner it uses. It’s also smellier and a bit more toxic than enamel (not that you want to go sniffing either, mind you…). In short, enamel plays nice with anything, but let lacquer stick with lacquer.

Step 3 – Painting and Sanding

Here is where the rubber meets the road, as it were. This will require patience more than anything else. It may seem tedious, but if you get it right your finish will look fantastic. First off, grab your mask and the paint. Just like with the primer, you want 2-3 light coats, wait 2-5 minutes, then 2-3 more light coats. Afterward, put the can down and let it dry 45 minutes to an hour and repeat. How many coats? Hard to say. Once you have a nice, even coverage on the box, you should be good to go. However, I like to add a few more coats on just to give me some padding in case anything goes wrong with the sanding. Again, let it dry at least 24 hours before touching it. Before you turn in for the day, soak the wetsanding paper (the 600-2000 grit stuff) in a bucket of water with a few drops of dishwashing liquid for the same 24 hour period.

Once it’s dry, the sanding can begin. Get your mask and start with the 400 grit like you did with the primer. Careful on the edges, lest you cut thru the paint. Once that’s nice and smooth, clean it with the mineral spirits and let that dry. Now comes the fun part. Get the 600 grit paper out of the bucket and wrap it around your sanding block. Then, very carefully, and with very little pressure, start sanding the paint. Let the sandpaper do the work, making sure to spray down the sandpaper every 30-45 seconds to keep it wet. The soapy water solution keeps the sandpaper lubricated and rinses the paint off the sandpaper, keeping it from loading up. The sandpaper should glide smoothly across the surface of the paint without grabbing. If you start grabbing, stop, spray down the paper, and continue. Sand a small area at a time, making sure to wipe the area dry to check your progress and to keep standing water off the box. Again, be extremely careful around the edges, as one swipe will take the paint off. It may be easier to very lightly go over the edge with your hand, letting the paper do the work. However, if the edges look good, you may be able not to even bother with them too much. Once completed, wipe everything down with mineral spirits. Repeat the process with the 1000, 1500, and 2000 grit sandpaper. At this point, the paint should be even and look white and dull, as if somebody spilled milk or baby powder on it and didn’t quite clean it all up. This is absolutely what you are looking for. The next 2 steps will take care of it. Now, give yourself a break before we continue on.

Bonus Points – Sanding Alternatives

At this point I should point out a few differing opinions on sanding your finish. First off is the wet sanding / dry sanding debate. Some say you can achieve similar (or the same) results by dry sanding with the higher grit sandpaper. Some advantages to dry sanding are you don’t have messy water drips everywhere and it is easier to see what you’re doing and what needs to be sanded more. The disadvantages include the sandpaper loading up with paint, thus reducing it’s effectiveness and requiring the use of more sandpaper. Also, you end up trading a wet mess for a dry, dusty mess. With either technique, be sure to use light, even pressure and be careful around the corners!

Instead of wetsanding with 600 and 1000 paper, some have tried using steel wool. Steel wool is popular in polishing metal and wood. For our application, steel wool can work as well, up to a point . Steel wool is much more malleable than sandpaper, thus easier to go over rounded corners with. It also leaves a very nice, even finish on the paint. You could transition from 000 grade to 0000 grade steel wool, much like transitioning to a higher grit of sandpaper. 0000 grade steel wool is roughly as abrasive as 1000 grit sandpaper. Depending on the level of gloss you are looking for, stopping at either 1000 grit sandpaper or 0000 grade wool is fine. But if you’re looking for a super shiny, almost mirror finish, continue on with the 1500 and 2000 grit sandpaper.

Step 4 – Clearcoat

As Yogi Berra once said, the next step will feel like ‘déjà vu all over again’. Get your mask, grab the clear gloss paint and start spraying the box just like you sprayed the primer and paint before – 2-3 coats nice light, even coats, 2-5 minutes in between each. Let that dry 45 minutes to an hour, and repeat. Once the coats are on, let it dry for 24 hours. As you can see, the milky white finish now looks nice and shiny. Now, if the paint looks nice enough to you already, or you’re tired and ready to move on, have at it. If you want that super glossy, wet mirror finish, repeat the sanding process as above. Whether you wetsand or drysand, use sandpaper or steel wool, make sure to finish with the 2000 grit paper! Again, when you finish, the surface should have the even, dull dry look to it, like a slightly shinier version of the paint after you finished sanding it. The finish should also feel as smooth as glass if you run your fingers across it . Clean it with the mineral spirits and take a break. The last step will require some elbow grease.

Step 5 – Compound and Polish

Have you ever had to wash and wax your car before? If so, this last step should be a piece of cake. If not, just remember what Mr. Miogi told Daniel-san – ‘Wax on, Wax off’. Think of the compounds as liquid sandpaper: a very high grit abrasive that will sand and polish the paint like stones in a rock tumbler. Start with the rubbing compound and a terry cloth. Follow the directions on the bottle. Pour some of the rubbing compound on your rag and work it into the paint. As you do, you should see the color come back in with a pretty high shine. Wipe off the residue with a clean terry cloth per the directions. When you’re done, you should have a pretty deep, rich color, albeit with a bunch of swirl marks. That’s what the polishing compound is for. Follow the instructions on the package and do the same thing. Now you should have a very shiny, almost streak and swirl free finish that looks like it came from the factory. Hold it up to the light and admire your work. Pat yourself on the back, good man (or woman) for a job well done.

Bonus Tip – Polish and Wax

If you really want to go all out, or just like the whole wax on, wax off deal, you can add a coat of polish and wax. Polish is less abrasive than either the rubbing or polishing compounds, which are mainly used for finishing the paint finish. A polish or glaze will provide that extra sheen and smoothness. Your local auto parts store has a pretty good selection. I like Meguiars Deep Crystal System Polish or their Mirror Glaze line of products. Mothers and Eagle One also work well. Now, wax and polish are two different things for two different purposes. Polish adds shine, wax adds protection. So for that added layer of protection for your shiny new finish, you may want to add a wax. However, you need to wait 30 days for the paint to fully cure (curing is different from drying!) before waxing your paint. You may need to disassemble your pride and joy unless you want to get was residue off the buttons, but if you wish to go all out, that’s your choice. The added bonus: you now have products to shine your car to a finish as nice as your stick!

That’s it people. Hopefully this guide will help you achieve a finish you can be proud of while you show off your latest creation. Remember, these are just suggestions, not rules. As they say, your mileage may vary. Thanks goes to the guys at QCF (Lucky Day and Satek), Digital717 for the original worklog and the inspiration for this guide, Toodles, ShinJ, Purplearms, Beneco74, Gummouned, Lizard Lick, GamingNow, and everybody else on he SRK forums that pushed me to building my first stick in the first place. If you have any questions, comments, or things I should chance, feel free to contact me at spenzalii@att.net

Enjoy!

Spenzalii

El Kabong2 (or making my first arcade stick) Part 4 – Painting for Dummies 101

2009-12-08T15:42:00.004-05:00

It was now time for the most labor intensive part of the build: painting. A good paint job can make a piece of wood look like polished onyx. A bad paint job would look like your 5 year old got a hold of a spray can and some tempura paint. Since I wasn't making a piano for Steinway, I was shooting for something somewhere in between. I had read through a worklog on the SRK forums on how to get a mirror finish on mdf (Check it out here if you like). It looked like it would be more time consuming than anything. But, since I wasn't on any deadline, time wasn't going to be an issue. Doing it right the first time, however, would prove a little more difficult.

The first thing I did was seal up the edges of the case. I grabbed some joint compound that I had from a drywall repair project I did a while back and spread a thin later around the edges where the pieces of the mdf were joined and on some of the rougher edges where the case was rounded with a router. If the edges weren't sealed, the paint would just seep into the pores of the mdf like a sponge. Spackle would have done the trick as well (and if I had saw the spray-on spackle on one of my many trips to Home Depot I would have bought some), but I already had the joint compound. After it dried, I sanded the compound down with a foam sanding pad I had (probably around 300 grit) until it was smooth.. If only I had sanded until it was level...

Next I had to transform my garage into a makeshift paint booth. In a perfect worls, my garage would be nice and clean, with HEPA air filtration and temperature controlled to help the paint dry. In the real world, I had to make do with parking my car outside, setting up a makeshift stand out of my recycle bin, a slab of drywall, a tarp, newspaper and an old tin can. Ventilation came from opening the garage door. The temperature was controlled by however warm or cold it was that given late autumn day. Not exactly ideal, but it got the job done. After setting the box on the can so I can get all the edges and the bottom painted at the same time, I shook up the can of primer and got to work. spraying in long even strokes 10 to 12 inches from the case, I sprayed 3 light coats 5 minutes between each coat. I let it sit for 45 minutes, then repeated the process. With about 9 coates down, I quit for the evening to let it dry overnight, keeping the garage door cracked a bit to air out the garage lest my wife pass out when she goes to her car in her morning.

Once everything was dry the next day I started sanding the primer smooth. I started out with 2 general purpose foam sanding blocks I had around the house. One was 200 grit, he other was 320 grit. Once they were (what I thought was) smooth, I wiped everything down with mineral spirits to clean the surface of any paint dust. When I took a look at my handiwork, I realized the joint compound I put on the case wasn’t level at all. With the primer covering it, you could clearly see where the compound was applied and where it stopped. The edges weren’t feathered very well, and there were plenty of high spots. I started muttering to myself again, mad because I didn’t get it right the first time. While doing this, I realized an even bigger mistake I made: I never drilled the hole for the USB adapter. I was going to kick myself again, but thought, ‘Well, this makes the sanding issue easier…’. May as well take care of both issues at the same time. Hi-Ho, Hi-Ho, it’s off to Lowes I go…..

At the store I picked up a small wood file, some wood filler, and a few odds and ends I don’t even remember anymore. To make the space for the adapter, I traced the outline of the adapter on the case. I then drilled holes in the outline until I had a nice little space, using a screwdriver to help open up the space between the drilled holes. In retrospect, using a sharpened chisel might have been easier. Live and learn, right? Once the space was big enough I used the file to widen and shape the space until the adapter could fit. This took a LOT of elbow grease and cramped fingers, but it got the job done. Since the adapter had a slight taper on one end, when the connector was flush with the edge of the case, there was a gap. That’s where the wood filler came in. I placed a piece of plastic wrap on the end of the adapter and slid it in place from inside the case. Next, I filled both sides of the gap with the wood filler, making sure not to get ant filler on the plastic that was directly over the connector. Once it was half dry, I removed the adapter to make sure the filler didn’t accidentally seep thru and get the adapter stuck. When it was fully dry, I removed the plastic wrap from inside the case. After lightly sanding it down, I now had a nice, smoothed, shaped opening that looked like I used some real tools to pull off.

All that work for that little hole?!? Eh, it will be worth it...

After patting myself on the back for a half days work, I sanded down the places where the joint compound looked terrible. Look in that above picture. See how the left corner looks like someone smeared some old gum under a desk? Yeah, that just wasn’t going to cut it, and it would only look worse once the black lacquer paint was sprayed on. Another half day’s work and it looked ready for primetime

It looks like I dipped it in chalk now, but it's all part of the plan

At least, that’s what I thought when I went to bed that night…

El Kabong2 (or making my first arcade stick) Part 3 – It Lives!

2009-11-30T16:31:00.000-05:00

The next step in the build was one of the more tedious. It was time to start wiring everything together. There were 11 buttons and 4 contacts on the joystick to wire up, which meant I needed a total of 30 wires to cut, strip, and crimp connectors to. Joy of joys. I grabbed the black spool of 24 gauge wire I bought and cut 15 wires about 10 inches in length each. I would cut them down to size once I figured out exactly how they needed to be run. I did the same thing with the green spool of wire. Now I had a set of wires for the ground and a set for the signals. I went and crimped the connectors on the signal wires, since they would go from the switches on the buttons and joystick to their corresponding places on the axisadaptor. The ground wires would take a bit more planning, so I saved them for later.

Before I cut anything else I decided I'd better figure out the best place to mount the PCB from the Sixaxis and the axisadaptor.This took longer than I expected. I spent 30 minutes turning and twisting the sixaxis PCB and the axisadaptor trying to find the optimal position to allow easy access to the wires on the axisadapter and to have the USB cord attach to the connector of the sixaxis PCB. After much headscratching, I found the only way to make everything fit and get the bottom back on the case was to stack the axisadapter on top of the PCB, folding the short ribbon cable onto itself and sticking the adapter to the unused left analog stick with some double sided tape. This would give me enough clearance to mount the whole contraption against the edge of the case, with enough room for my USB cable to connect to the PCB without interfering with any of the buttons. I also made a mental note that the best place to drill the hole for other end of the USB connector would be the top left corner of the box. Too bad I didn't actually mark anything, as it would come back to bite me later...

With that out of the way I tackled the ground wiring. The PCB for the Sixaxis is not a 'common ground' board. Without getting into too many technical terms that I can't explain, I'll just say this: with a 'common ground' board, I would be able to daisy chain every ground from every switch to one common ground on the PCB. The design of the Sixaxis PCB wouldn't allow this. It turns out that there are 3 separate 'grounds', more or less, that correspond to 3 sets of buttons: the directional pad, L1 and L2 as one group, the circle, square, triangle, X, R1 and R2 as one group, and the select, start and PS button as one group. Instead of having one long chain of grounds, I would end up with 3 chains. Not the end of the world, but a little more involved. (For a much better explanation and small wiring diagram, look HERE). I marked which button was which on the underside of the box and started my chain. I began with my joystick, crimping one end of the wire with a connector, which I attached to the first switch in the chain. Next, I ran that wire to the next switch in the chain and trimmed the wire, making sure to leave a few mm extra for some cushion. I then grabbed another wire, placed both ends together and crimped both wires to one connector, which was then connected to the switch. This was repeated with each switch in the chain. For the last switch in the chain, I ran a length of wire to the axisadaptor's screw terminal.

This is a chain. Now to do 25 more...

I repeated the process for each of the 3 groups of switches, making sure not to cut the wires too short and making sure the crimped connectors were nice and tight. No good having a loose connection in the middle of a fight and losing all your kick buttons. I turned the buttons so that all the switch terminals faced the top of the case with the thought that the majority of the wiring would run clockwise from the switches to the PCB and adapter. After an hour or two of tediousness, I had everything wired up and ready to test for the first time.

Quite the rat's nest, isn't it...

I was a little nervous at this point. While plenty of people had made custom sticks before using the same parts, I still didn't know how this thing would work. Plus, the stick I got the PCB from was classified as defective. While I had synced and charged the Sixaxis when it came in the mail, would it really work for this application? I needn't have worried. I pressed the PS button on the side of the case and my PS3 sprang to life. I moved the stick around the XBM making sure that all directions worked, still marveling at the 'click' the cherry switches made that I hadn't heard or felt in almost 2 decades. I fired up Street Fighter IV and configured the buttons like the arcade, using the buttons on the end as my throw (eliminating the craptacular 2 button throw scheme) and my focus attack (even though in practice it's very easy to just hit strong/forward with one finger). After a few rounds against the computer, I was happy to report 2 things:

1. IT WORKED!!! There was no hangup from the stick in any direction, the buttons were nice and tactile and there was no input lag whatsoever. I was able to pull off Chun Li's super and ultra move with no problem at all, which I had found impossible to do over the many variations of Street Fighter and Street Fighter Alpha playing with a pad. With the exception of the curved layout, it was exactly like playing in Time-Out arcade 19 years ago.

2. I was WOEFULLY out of practice using a stick. Having used a pad for so long, I found it difficult to adjust to moving my whole left hand instead of just my thumb. Likewise, combos that I was used to tapping with my right thumb needed to be input with 3 fingers spaced over an unfamiliar layout. Also, with the 8 button setup instead of the classic 6, at times I found myself positioning my hand over the wrong button column.Trying to hit the fierce button and going for a throw will only get you punched in the face. While everything felt familiar, it was like coming out of a 15 year coma trying to ride a bike.

Now that I had 'proof of life', I was determined to make this contraption look good. n the end, this would entail a good week of noxious fumes, dust particles, a few trips back to Home Depot and Autozone and elbow greese. LOTS of elbow greese....

El Kabong2 (or making my first arcade stick) Part 2 – Time to Build

2009-11-25T23:37:00.002-05:00

So, I finally had everything to build my fight stick. More or less. Looking at the box, there were a few items that needed to be addressed. First, I wanted to put some art on the top of the stick, which meant I would need to buy some plexiglass and cut it to fit. While I was at it, I could get a piece for the bottom to show off the wiring, assuming it was neat enough. Next, I noticed there weren't any holes drilled for the joystick, which meant I needed drill bits and bolts to screw the stick down.

This is going to take some work...

So, it was back to one of my favorite stores as a homeowner, Home Depot. I picked up 4 1-¼” screws with nuts and lock washers, a slab of lexan for the top panel and a piece of plexiglass for the bottom, assuming I wanted the insides to show once I was finished (for the difference, check this link: ACRYLIC GLASS AND POLYCARBONATE). Since I never picked up paint, I grabbed can of Rustoleum primer, gloss black lacquer and clearcoat lacquer. I also needed to figure out a way to cut 9 holes in the lexan for the buttons and joystick. The holes needed to be 1-1/8”.

R to L: forstner bit, Hole saw, Spade bit

I could have used a hole saw, but I’ve seen and heard bad things about those and plastic. I could have gone with a spade bit, which would have got the job done well, but I decided to go with a forstner bit instead. It would give me a nice clean cut and if I ever decided to make a box from scratch, a forstner would be the way to go to cut holes in wood or mdf. Finally, I had been thinking of a way to hide the screw heads in the top panel. I decided a countersink would do the trick, but wasn’t sure of the size. I picked up a set of 4 and called it a day.

Never know if I'll need them again...

Now that I had everything (I thought) I could now start on assembly. I got home from work, flipped on MNF and set to work. Since the ‘Skins were playing the Eagles, I know I wasn’t going to miss anything while working. My first task was to get the cutting and drilling out of the way. Cutting the lexan wasn’t that hard. I measured the area of the case where the top lexan would sit and transferred the measurements to the lexan. Using a straightedge as a guide, I scored the lexan with a lexan cutter (which is basically a handle with a sharp edge; you could probably do the same with a box cutter or something similar). After about 10 passes, I placed the lexan on the table, with the scored line hanging just off the edge of the table. Holding down the piece on the table, I pressed down on the edge that was hanging off. SNAP! One nice smooth cut. I repeated the process for the width. After a few passes with some sandpaper to take the sharp edge off, I checked it against the case. Perfect fit.

Next, I turned my attention to mounting the stick. The Happ competition stick has a plastic mounting plate that bolts to the control panel. The switch mounting plate then screws onto that.

I unscrewed the two parts, placed the mounting plate on the case, and marked the holes where the screws would go. Afterward, I chucked a bit in the drill and fired 4 holes thru the case. I then put the screws I bought in the holes and tried mounting the reassembled stick. To my horror, only 2 of the screw holes matched up exactly. One of them would fit if I forced the stick on, and the other would only fit if I screwed it in at an angle. Since I was planning on hiding the screws, this just wasn’t going to work. After a few minutes of cursing, drinking, and watching the Redskins actually score a touchdown, I decided that 2 screws would have to do the trick. Fortunately, the screws that worked were diagonally apart from each other, so the stick would be somewhat level and evenly secured. To hide the screw holes, I grabbed the countersink bit. I found the size that fit the size of the screw head and drilled into the mdf until the screw heads were just below the surface.

Now you see them, soon you won't...

I then put some glue (construction adhesive I had around the house) in the hole to make sure the screw didn’t move, dropped the screws in, and snugged the nuts on the other side to make sure the bolts were set against the bottom of the hole. With some spackle over the holes, I would have a nice smooth surface and no one would know how the stick was mounted. Score one for the kid!

Now to get the holes drilled in the lexan. Since the case wasn’t originally designed for lexan on top, I had to figure out how to have the holes in the case and lexan aligned. Flipping the case upside down and drilling holes in the lexan from the bottom made the most sense. The holes in the case would act as a guide for my forstner bit, so I wouldn’t have to worry about the holes not lining up. But I had to make sure the lexan didn’t move while I was cutting it. I grabbed the tap and die set I had, made some measurements for where the screws should go, and drilled 3mm holes in the case and the lexan, which I then tapped threads in and used 3mm button head screws . Now, the lexan wouldn’t move, the screws wouldn’t back out, and once the art was in place the screws would make sure the lexan would not come loose (even though the lexan would be held in place by the buttons).

With the lexan firmly attached to the case, I was ready to cut the holes. Since I have no workbench to speak of, I had to improvise. I grabbed 2 blocks of wood I had laying around the house to use as support. I then placed a cloth on top of those to keep from scratching he lexan or the case, then placed the case upside down. The wood blocks were positioned with just enough space for the hole I was drilling to make sure the lexan would remain flat and tot vibrate or bend while I was cutting. With nice even pressure, the forstner bit cut thru the lexan, leaving a trail of plastic bits in its wake. After a minute or two, I had a perfect circle cut in the lexan.

2 down, 7 more to go....

Unfortunately, I only managed to get 3 holes finished before my drill died. Why I didn’t recharge all my tools I’ll never know. No matter. It was late and I was getting tired anyway. I put the battery on the charger and finished the next evening.

The day after..

Before quitting for the night I decided to dry fit the stick and the buttons just to see what it looked like and maybe get an idea of what button combination I might use. I tried a few different combinations based on the buttons that I had and the combinations I could make from them:

All white. Classic...

6 white, 2 black, a la Mad Catz TE stick

White punch, Black kicks. Ehh..

I really like the white on black...

Love the kick row. Punch row? Not so much...

After about 20 minutes of rearranging buttons and swapping plungers and rims, it occurred to me I really couldn’t settle on what color buttons would work best until I actually painted the stick and chose what artwork I was using. Trying to decide beforehand would be futile. Muttering to myself and taking another shot of Crown and Coke, I decided to just go with the white on white for not for simplicity’s sake. So I bolted the base of the joystick on, put in the white buttons and snugged down the mounting nuts. I then attached the switches to the bottom of the buttons to get an idea of which way the terminals needed to face for the wires to run cleanly.

Nice backshot....

When all was said and done, it looked like this:

I could have stopped here, but I spent too much on other stuff...

The buttons clicked just like I remembered, as did the stick. The layout felt a little funny, as it was the slanted, ‘Astro City’ layout that’s almost standard in many arcades in Japan, not the straight row of buttons used in US arcades. That said, my fingers did line up with the buttons juts right, so I figured it would be something I could get used to. Exited things were starting to look like an actual stick, I decided to call it a night.

El Kabong2 (or making my first arcade stick) Part 1 – Prep Work

2009-11-17T00:33:00.001-05:00

Now that I decided on making my own stick, I had to figure out how to do it. First up, I needed the buttons and stick. Since I was going for the old school American style arcade, happ parts were the only choice I had.

They're like Skittles with switches

The buttons themselves were pretty easy. Happ has a convex button and a concave button, but since I was going arcade style, concave was the only way to go. Finding the parts was no problem. Ebay, as usual, is your friend, and there are a number of online shops that specialize in arcade parts. The only choice I had was the color. Would I go red/white/blue like the arcade? Should I do a monochromatic scheme? How about translucent buttons? And what color stick? These and other stylistic choices plagued me for days. Since I hadn’t even begun to think about art for my control panel, I decided to keep it simple. I needed a total of 11 buttons square, triangle, circle, x, L1, L2, R1, R2, select, start and the PS button) so I placed my order with the good folks at Lizard Lick Amusements. I ordered 8 white buttons and 4 black buttons. This would give me a bit of flexibility on layouts, if I wanted all white buttons on the panel, a white row of punches and a black row of kicks, or to mix and match button parts (black plunger/white rim, white plunger/black rim). At $1.55 a piece, I couldn’t really go wrong.

Ol' Faithful...

I also picked up a white joystick and a black joystick, since I couldn’t figure out which would look better depending on the button scheme I went with. The black stick was $7.95, the white $9.95. Just for giggles I also bought a clear Seimitsu button to see if they felt like I thought. At $3.95, it’s twice as expensive as a happ button. For what I was looking for, it didn’t equal twice as good. I also bought a retaining nut wrench and a harder tension spring for the joystick. With shipping, I made it under $50.
Next up, I needed a case. I toyed for a while with the idea of making my own case. The only problem is, I have no tools. While I could have gone to my folks house and got a hacksaw, circular saw, and made a mess of my garage, I’m pretty sure that would have ended in a massive FAIL and cost more than buying a custom stick outright. I could have gone the route of some who have made sticks out of tupperware containers, suitcases, and shoeboxes, but that wasn’t something I was going to be overly proud of (although the plastic container deal would be funny in a pinch). So, I looked into a premade box. The majority of the boxes I saw had one of three problems. First, the majority of the cases were designed for Sanwa or Seimitsu parts, which don’t need the same mounting depth as happ parts. Second, many of the cases only had a 6 button layout on the control panel. While I could have got used to this, and it was more in line with the true sprit of a Street Fighter cabinet, having 8 buttons would make mapping some moves a bit easier. Third, the boxes were more than I wanted to pay for. $65 for a rather plain (or downright ugly) case, to $125 and up for a case made from maple, walnut, mahogany, zebrawood, etc. Don’t get me wrong, some of them looked like pieces of furniture, and a lot of work went into making them. But I wasn’t about to spend that much on just the case. Besides, they wouldn’t fit my parts anyway, so the temptation to get one just wasn’t there

Pretty Boxes.....

After a bit of research, on the SRK forums, I stumbled onto the guys over at QCFGaming. They were offering budget sticks made from MDF
starting at $19.99, with the holes already drilled for the buttons. They offered 6 or 8 button layouts, AND they had a box that would fit happ parts. SCORE! So for $25 plus shipping, I had the case. I figured a little bit of paint and the case would look fine. Little did I know how much work that was going to be…

With those two items out of the way, I needed to work on the brains of the box. Most of the fight sticks available were of the wired variety. That could have worked, but I didn’t want to have 15 feet of usb cable running on the carpet of the basement. Besides, my PS3 pads were wireless, so why couldn’t my fight stick be wireless too? Back to the SRK forums for the solution. For years people have been ‘padhacking’, the process of taking the guts from a working joypad, soldering wires to the pcb and connecting them to their pushbuttons. The process takes the right kind of pad and some soldering skills.

Yeah, I wasn't about to do that...

Unless, of course, you have a PS3, that is. It turns out that the design of the PS3 pad (and the PS2 pad) is such that soldering isn’t necessary. The membrane that has the connection points for the pad buttons is actually plugged into the main pcb. So, a few industrious and skilled electronic wizards cooked up this:

This is what makes it all run

The axisdapter plugs into the connector port for the membrane, allowing you to wire your buttons to the adapter without soldering a thing. The good folks at gamingnow.net will sell you one for $27 (although you may find it for $25 if Lizard Lick has them in stock). All I needed now was an old PS3 SixAxis controller. A search online found a spot selling defective pads for $9.95. The cause of the defect ranged from sticky buttons to broken analog pads. I took a gamble on one, figuring the only thing I wanted from the pad was the pcb board, which shouldn’t be affected by any of those defects. I probably could have found a used, working one for under $20.

Next up were assorted odds and ends. I needed some small gauge wire for the buttons, so it was off to Radioshack for a pack of 24 gauge wire. The 3 pack was less than $10 and I have enough to rewire my stereo if I needed to. I wasn't too sure on exactly how much room I'd need or have for running the wires, so I picked up a junction block for $4 to be safe

Comes in handy for cleaning up wiring

The trickiest thing to find were the quick disconnects for the buttons and switches. I figured they sell these things ar Radioshack, Lowes, Home Depot, Autozone, Advance, etc. There should be no problem finding them, right? WRONG. The smallest size most places had were 1/4" (.250), not 3/16" (.187). I was stunned Radioshack didn't have them. I mean, if you're going to start a nerdy wiring project like making your own fight stick, they would seem the natural place to get nerdy supplies. But no. I was about to give up hope and squeeze a bunch of 1/4" connectors to fit when I decided to check out the Ace Hardware close to my job. Wouldn't you know it? They actually carried them! $4 for a pack of 10, and I needed 30 to cover everything. I got 4 packs to be safe.

Who would think THIS would be the hardest thing to find?

Now, if I were a smarter man, I would have picked up a bunch of them when I ordered the buttons and the stick, where they would have gone for $0.10 a piece. Oh well, live and learn.

The last thing I needed to figure out was how to sync and charge the stick. Since I was using the pcb from the sixaxis, all I had to do was figure out how to make an extension from the usb purt on the pcb to somewhere on the body of the stick. Most people use an adapter like this:

Neutrik USB gender adapter

However, I wasn't sure I would have the room on my case. That, and just about every online shop was out of stock at the time. So, after some more head scratching, I went over to the guys at Monoprice. I picked up a USB A Male to Mini 5 pin (B5) Female Adapter and a USB A Female to A Female Coupler Adapter for less than $2.50

After about 2 weeks, everything was finally here. The fun part was about to begin...

El Kabong2 (or making my first arcade stick) - Prologue

2009-11-16T23:38:00.001-05:00

Over the next few days (or weeks, or whenever I get around to it..), I plan on documenting my trial and error build of my first arcade style joystick. There will be plenty of pictures, instructions, and tips along the way, but I figured some background on what I'm doing, why I'm doing it this way, and why in the world I'd name it 'El Kabong!' in the first place was necessary. If you don't wish to read my ramblings (and I probably wouldn't blame you), go on down to Part 1, assuming it's even posted. For those of you that want some insight (or if I haven't posted Part 1 yet), read on...

I've played some form of Street Fighter II for the last 19 years. My friends and I have spent so much money on that game in the arcade that we probably could have bought our own machine twice over. We would scour the county trying to find a machine that, not only wasn't packed with no technique, no honor having players (a entirely different post), but one where ALL the buttons worked, the stick didn't hang or get stuck in any direction, etc (which after a while became harder to do, since people had no pride in their machines, as my buddy would put it). When the game finally came out on the SNES, we got it first day.

Wow, that art was bad...

The thing is, even with 6 buttons on the SNES pad, it felt strange for a while. We were used to arcade controls - US arcade controls - and the pad just felt, well, WRONG. A bat joystick, 3 punch buttons in a row, 3 kick buttons in a row, all with that 'clicky' sound and feel to them - that was what we were used to, what we spent so much time and money honing our skills on. So we looked for an alternative.

Even when I was young I found out the importance of 'you get what you pay for'. Sometimes a name brand item will cost more, but in the end it's worth it. So we already know not to trust any knock off Mad Catz anything (this was the early 90s, after all and they're bad reputation was very well earned). When Capcom announced they were making their own stick, we figures 'what could go wrong?' I mean, it's a fighting stick made by the company that made the greatest fighting game to date. It should be perfect! Sadly, it was not to be. My brother saved up his cash and came home with this

I wonder what happened to that stick...

This was NOT what we had in mind. The stick was a ball, not a bat (which wasn't so bad) but was extra loose and nearly impossible to get used to for any moves. Not only were the buttons slanted at a weird angle, but they were convex instead of concave and felt like mush. There was no 'click' to them either. My brother dubbed the stick ‘El Kabong!', which to this day I don't quite understand. After a few games, it went in an unused drawer, never to be seen or used again. So, we stuck with the pad, which is what I've used for the past 16-18 years, from SNES, to PS1 to PS2, from all versions of SFII to the Alpha series (I just could not get into SFIII or the vs. series. Sue me). I'm still using it now. But that's about to change.

With the release of Street Fighter IV came the Mad Catz release of the SE and TE arcade sticks. The SE uses stock parts but can be upgradeable to real arcade parts. The TE comes standard with real Sanwa arcade parts right out the box. The only problem? These were Japanese style arcade parts, which are very different in feel than the American style sticks I was used to. This wasn’t going to work. I toyed with the idea of getting a custom built stick, but the wait times were too long for me to even bother with. When SFIV hit, turn around time for any custom stick was at least 8-10 weeks. So, it was back to playing with the DualShock3. After a few months, frustration set in. With the play mechanics in SFIV the way they are, some moves or button combinations were much more difficult that they needed to be. 2 button pressed for a throw or focus were a pain, True you could map either to a single button, but you would lose the 3xp or 3xk, which is needed for supers and ultras (and not easy to hit on a pad). And while quarter circle movements have been perfected with a pad (and why there are legions of dragon punching Ken players across the globe now), back/forward/back movements stymied me for years, limiting my use of some characters super moves unless I hold the pad in a totally retarded manner. So, it was back online for more research. After a while, I found out the difference between Sanwa, Seimitsu, and Happ/iL parts. I saw the different button layouts used in arcades by different region and on fight sticks. I took a look at a lot of custom sticks and how they were built. I read up on padhacking, case building, custom pcbs, artwork, LEDs, online shops…the works. Turns out there’s a robust cottage industry for fight sticks for those that don’t like the offerings from Mat Catz, Hori, and a bunch of other knockoff companies. After a while, my inner nerd and handyman kicked in. So, I set out to build El Kabong2.

Now, I’m pretty sure some of those terms were totally foreign to some of you. If I tried to explain all of them this post would never get finished, Plus, others have done a much better job. So, here are some links for you to look at for more info and inspiration (I'll post more as I find them):

www.slagcoin.com
Everything you wanted to know about building a joystick, but were afraid to ask. This site is like a joystick builder's bible. From button layouts, PCB diagrams, wiring diagrams, detailed descriptions of happ, Sanwa, and seimitsu buttons and joysticks, tools of the trade, and 3 detailed joystick builds, there's more to learn here than a lottle bit. Definitely the first place I would check.

http://forums.shoryuken.com
This message board is full of hardcore fighting fans. Any popular fighting game or specific character usually has their own writeup with strategies, move lists, combos, etc. The Tech Talk thread is an invaluable resourse for builders. A few helpful and constantly updated threads include:

http://forums.shoryuken.com/showthread.php?t=201537
"Check Out My Arcade Stick" Thread. A number of custom and semi custom sticks. From modded MadCatz sticks, modded Hori sticks, custom built sticks and art of all sorts, this is a great place to get inspiration on what is possible with a fight stick

http://forums.shoryuken.com/showthread.php?t=118289
The Sanwa and Seimitsu FAQ. All you could ask on Japanese style arcade parts

http://forums.shoryuken.com/showthread.php?t=141741&highlight=happ%2FiL
The happ/iL Information thread. Info on American style arcade parts

http://forums.shoryuken.com/showthread.php?t=170294
The Axisdapter thread. If you want a wireless PS3 stick, here's all you need to know...

http://forums.shoryuken.com/showthread.php?t=162026
The Cthulhu Board thread. Interested in a stick that can be used on yor PS3 and Xbox 360? There's a thread for that...

Alow Me To Introduce Myself...

2009-11-05T11:02:00.000-05:00

Hello World. Thank you all for dropping into my little corner of the world. Over the next few weeks and months, I'll be posting up various things that I've been getting into in the hopes that maybe someone else may learn something, like something, or just waste some time in their day. I'm not sure how often posts will be up, since after working on a computer at work all day the last thing I want to do is turn the computer on once I get home, but time will tell. Enjoy!

SLC