Egret 3 Candy Cab

Myrddin

Steve SI wrote: »

Another update.

Ronnie says I need a new monitor if I want to have the geometry perfect on it.

Is it really this hard to get a monitor/chassis that can draw straight lines :mad:

I wonder how much this is gonna cost me now?

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To be honest Steve, you've already paid for it. It shouldn't be costing you anything. Unless you were advised of the fault, you were either misled or Ronnie was negligent. Your a more patient man than me I'll give you that, I'd have his paypal account tied up in knots at this point

o1s1n

Jesus Steve, that's pretty crazy stuff.

Is the geometry really that far off in the replacement one he sent you the picture of? I can see a slight pincushion bend on the right like you get on CRTs via RGB (which should be possible to adjust out?) but that looks about it. Or is there something else I'm missing?

Andrew76

o1s1n wrote: »

Jesus Steve, that's pretty crazy stuff.

Is the geometry really that far off in the replacement one he sent you the picture of? I can see a slight pincushion bend on the right like you get on CRTs via RGB (which should be possible to adjust out?) but that looks about it. Or is there something else I'm missing?

Agreed it looks an awful lot better than the current monitor. Would you even notice that when playing games and not looking at a test grid I wonder?

This is probably beside the point but when you get your HS pc running in the cab you'll find you won't get perfect pictures for every game without having to manually fiddle with the monitor adjustment dials. As in you'll have the correct resolutions for each game setup in mame, but they weren't originally designed to run on the 29" tri-sync monitor - I had to reduce the v-size for Raiden for example which impacts everything else. Or when I had the MVS hooked up I had to adjust vertical and horizontal settings to get it perfect - soon as I went back to HS pc I had to adjust them back. You don't notice these things when testing on a pc monitor for example.

I guess what I'm getting at is you'll have to live with a comprise with the picture when running all these different games. Ofc this is separate to an inherent geometry problem with the screen itself.

Myrddin

o1s1n wrote: »

Jesus Steve, that's pretty crazy stuff.

Is the geometry really that far off in the replacement one he sent you the picture of? I can see a slight pincushion bend on the right like you get on CRTs via RGB (which should be possible to adjust out?) but that looks about it. Or is there something else I'm missing?

For some reason the pic of the new monitor never showed up as a new post, so only seeing that now. Looks a lot better, I'd say it falls within acceptable levels for a used cab?

Steve X2

So should I accept the replacement monitor then?

I really dont want to spend a load of cash on the new monitor. I know I can be a fussy git some times with these things.

o1s1n

Well I don't want to be deciding for you (!) as I'm not exactly a monitor expert, but if I had the option of taking that and putting it in my broken cab I would.

Maybe show Purplec or Mitch the photo and see what they think?

Myrddin

Steve SI wrote: »

So should I accept the replacement monitor then?

I really dont want to spend a load of cash on the new monitor. I know I can be a fussy git some times with these things.

You should be careful here, arcade monitors are a damned hard thing to take a photo of properly. Perfect geometry on ronnies end, may not look so on a picture...& vice versa. Plus, if you decide to tell Ronnie you'll accept this one, you'll have much much less comeback especially given he's sent you a photo of it.

To my eye it looks ok in the photo, but I've taken quite a few snaps of cab screens & I've found the camera/standing position, room lighting etc all affects the photo of the geometry in weird ways.

Bit of a nightmare call to make really. But take it down to a nuts and bolts level to help you:

On deciding to buy a cabinet from Ronnie, were you expecting minor issues/flaws that can be corrected over time?

Or were you expecting perfection, possibly reflected in the price? (ie if you paid more than the average, you probably figured the machine would be pristine?)

If its the first one, based off that one pic & without knowing the value of the cab, I'd say yeah it looks ok

If its the second one, & you paid strong money for the cab...I think you've a bit of negotiating with Ronnie to do.

Steve X2

EnterNow wrote: »

You should be careful here, arcade monitors are a damned hard thing to take a photo of properly. Perfect geometry on ronnies end, may not look so on a picture...& vice versa. Plus, if you decide to tell Ronnie you'll accept this one, you'll have much much less comeback especially given he's sent you a photo of it.

To my eye it looks ok in the photo, but I've taken quite a few snaps of cab screens & I've found the camera/standing position, room lighting etc all affects the photo of the geometry in weird ways.

Bit of a nightmare call to make really. But take it down to a nuts and bolts level to help you:

On deciding to buy a cabinet from Ronnie, were you expecting minor issues/flaws that can be corrected over time?

Or were you expecting perfection, possibly reflected in the price? (ie if you paid more than the average, you probably figured the machine would be pristine?)

If its the first one, based off that one pic & without knowing the value of the cab, I'd say yeah it looks ok

If its the second one, & you paid strong money for the cab...I think you've a bit of negotiating with Ronnie to do.

I paid a reasonable price for it so was expecting a bit of restoration work on the case and innards of the cab and was ok with that. I did mention that the monitor had to be in perfect condition as that was something I could not fix or restore myself with buying a new one.

You know, it might be helpful to show exactly how the price was broken down on the cab. I don't mind showing it so here it is:

Taito Egret 3 : 595 euro
Stepdown converter 220-110 : 45 euro
2 player panel : 75 euro
New buttons/balltops : 35 euro
New monitor chassis: 195 euro
Shipping to Dublin,Ireland : 240 euro

Total: 1185 euro.

Now you can see the price was not bad for the base cab. The thing that annoys me is i stressed many many times that the monitor had to be perfect and I was willing to pay extra to ensure that(hence the new monitor chassis for 195 euro)

Edit:
And not forgetting that the control panel was the wrong one as well (4 button instead of 6 as requested)

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Myrddin

Ok thats a fair aul whack for something that isn't as promised/requested. I don't know Steve, the other lads here may see it differently than me but thats a good chunk of money, & Ronnie is putting the onus on you to make a call on this new monitor which doesn't seem fair.

All I can say to you is if I were in your shoes, I'd be bouncing the onus right back onto the chap providing the service (Ronnie in this case). Again, to simplify it, you requested a Candy Cab, specced it accordingly & requested a perfect monitor setup. I don't think thats unreasonable given the price you paid...its not however what you got. I'd be saying to Ronnie "if you think that monitor is perfectly set up, send it on. If you don't, there's no point". Again I don't think its fair to put the onus on the customer in this case.

This is all of course taking into account its a Candy Cab thats a few years old, all the dings n dents are expected...but if you personally requested good/perfect/acceptable monitor geometry & were assured you'd get it...then thats your card. I don't envy you man Its a blurred line when it comes to acceptability & value for money when it comes to cabs, but your the paying customer here...not a monitor technician.

Andrew76

Hey Steve, thought this thread might be more appropriate for those cp lock pictures.

Open position:


Closed position:


The metal plate slots into the gold coloured part when the cp is down ofc:


Lock mech parts below. My cab already had the lock mech parts including the plate but I didn't have the keys, so just got new mechs from arcadeshop.de and re-used them with the plate:


This is the fellow I use for the pc power on button but he's just too big to fit through the lock hole, might be smaller ones that do though.

Steve X2

Andrew76 wrote: »

Hey Steve, thought this thread might be more appropriate for those cp lock pictures.

Open position:


Closed position:


The metal plate slots into the gold coloured part when the cp is down ofc:


Lock mech parts below. My cab already had the lock mech parts including the plate but I didn't have the keys, so just got new mechs from arcadeshop.de and re-used them with the plate:


This is the fellow I use for the pc power on button but he's just too big to fit through the lock hole, might be smaller ones that do though.

Cheers for that. I have the part the it locks into but not the bottom lock part, if you know what I mean.

I got one of these buttons today

http://www.arcadeshop.de/Special-Mini-Miniature-Button-red_258.html



It screws nicely into the hole that the lock assembly goes into and only takes up a few mm of space inside the control panel. I'll order another one to go on the other side as well.

Will set it as the "Escape" key in hyperspin and set the left one as some other useful key(would also work well in "Future Pinball" I think)

That 20 cent coin mech I got today works a charm by the way.

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Andrew76

Steve SI wrote: »

Cheers for that. I have the part the it locks into but not the bottom lock part, if you know what I mean.

I got one of these buttons today

http://www.arcadeshop.de/Special-Mini-Miniature-Button-red_258.html



It screws nicely into the hole that the lock assembly goes into and only takes up a few mm of space inside the control panel. I'll order another one to go on the other side as well.

Will set it as the "Escape" key in hyperspin and set the left one as some other useful key(would also work well in "Future Pinball" I think)

That 20 cent coin mech I got today works a charm by the way.

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Ooh excellent if that one fits inside the lock hole, will have to get one of the white ones myself so. Had to Google that Future Pinball, that's some mad stuff, pretty impressive.
Cool beans on the coin mech, they look pretty solid. I debated getting one of those but went with a 100yen mech that I was going to adjust to accept 50yen in an attempt to keep things authentic. Just stuck with the 100 in the end but don't really use it much now, coin up using a button combo. It's still nice to have a working mech though and hear the coin clink it's way down to the box.

Myrddin

Pressing P1 Start & P2 Start simultaneously, is the default for 'escape' if your gonna be using a jpac/ipac product

Andrew76

EnterNow wrote: »

Pressing P1 Start & P2 Start simultaneously, is the default for 'escape' if your gonna be using a jpac/ipac product

Yeah that's how mine works. To coin up I'm using P1 B3 + P1 Start and P2 B1 + P2 Start, basically the closest normal button + start for each player. Used to it now.

Have a video amp in the post from ultimarc, going to hack up a vga cable to connect to it and then to the cab vga cable to see if I can improve that brightness issue I'm having. :rolleyes:

Myrddin

Andrew76 wrote: »

Yeah that's how mine works. To coin up I'm using P1 B3 + P1 Start and P2 B1 + P2 Start, basically the closest normal button + start for each player. Used to it now.

Have a video amp in the post from ultimarc, going to hack up a vga cable to connect to it and then to the cab vga cable to see if I can improve that brightness issue I'm having. :rolleyes:

You can change the hotkeys toany config you want too, there's a little programme that comes on the cd you get from Ultimarc.

I just use P1 Start + B1 for a coin, P2 Start + B1 for P2 coin.

There's a video amp already on the JPAc Andrew, which boosts the broghtness. Is this the same issue we spoke about before?

Steve X2

EnterNow wrote: »

Pressing P1 Start & P2 Start simultaneously, is the default for 'escape' if your gonna be using a jpac/ipac product

Yeah, but I prefer a dedicated exit button for hyperspin.
Plus it's a cool little button

Andrew76

EnterNow wrote: »

There's a video amp already on the JPAc Andrew, which boosts the broghtness. Is this the same issue we spoke about before?

Yep same issue, but you can't use the vga on the JPac with tri-sync monitors unfortunately (according to Andy). It creates that double picture, pretty sure because both 15 and 31 jumpers are enabled.
So without using the jpac vga the picture is quite dim so I have to lash up the brightness, it's not bad at all just prefer if I didn't have to. The same happens when the 360 is hooked up, needs the extra brightness. Ah I'll get to the bottom of it someday. :rolleyes:

Andrew76

Steve SI wrote: »

Yeah, but I prefer a dedicated exit button for hyperspin.
Plus it's a cool little button

Will you just connect that up to a spare slot on the JPac or how would you get that working? And how are you going to turn on the pc? It's interesting to hear how other folk have things setup.

Steve X2

Andrew76 wrote: »

Yep same issue, but you can't use the vga on the JPac with tri-sync monitors unfortunately (according to Andy). It creates that double picture, pretty sure because both 15 and 31 jumpers are enabled.
So without using the jpac vga the picture is quite dim so I have to lash up the brightness, it's not bad at all just prefer if I didn't have to. The same happens when the 360 is hooked up, needs the extra brightness. Ah I'll get to the bottom of it someday. :rolleyes:

Is it anything to do with the 1 ohm/75 ohm switch on the monitor chassis?

I have that on a little board in the control panel with the contrast/brightness pots.

When I switch it to 1 ohm its very dim on 15khz and 31khz but if it set it to 75 it looks fine on both frequencies.

I think if you are playing in 15khz it is supposed to be 1 ohm and then 75 for 31khz. But its much to dim on both for me when set to 1 ohm, 75 is fine.

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Steve X2

Andrew76 wrote: »

Will you just connect that up to a spare slot on the JPac or how would you get that working? And how are you going to turn on the pc? It's interesting to hear how other folk have things setup.

Yeah, I'll probably just hook up the extra buttons as player 1 button 8 and player 2 button 8 or something like that and use that little ultimarc utility to map them to escape and maybe pause.

As for powering up the pc, I haven't decided yet.
Maybe some fancy remote power on gadget or just another tiny hidden button wired directly to the PC. You can get some really tiny buttons online.


How do you power up your PC?

Andrew76

Steve SI wrote: »

Is it anything to do with the 1 ohm/75 ohm switch on the monitor chassis?

I have that on a little board in the control panel with the contrast/brightness pots.

When I switch it to 1 ohm its very dim on 15khz and 31khz but if it set it to 75 it looks fine on both frequencies.

I think if you are playing in 15khz it is supposed to be 1 ohm and then 75 for 31khz. But its much to dim on both for me when set to 1 ohm, 75 is fine.

.

Unfortunately not, like you I always have that set to 1K ohm setting to give it the bit more brightness. But it doesn't make much difference overall. I'm trying to remember do I have the dim problem when the MVS board is hooked up. Somebody over on AO had a similar problem and blocked off all the video pins on the JPac which cured it for him - but when I do that the picture starts to jump vertically but I didn't think it made the pic any brighter. Not sure what the root cause of the problem is yet tbh.

Steve X2

Andrew76 wrote: »

Unfortunately not, like you I always have that set to 1K ohm setting to give it the bit more brightness. But it doesn't make much difference overall. I'm trying to remember do I have the dim problem when the MVS board is hooked up. Somebody over on AO had a similar problem and blocked off all the video pins on the JPac which cured it for him - but when I do that the picture starts to jump vertically but I didn't think it made the pic any brighter. Not sure what the root cause of the problem is yet tbh.

Hmm, its brighter on 75 ohm for me.
Although my monitor chassis is not exactly to be trusted.

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Andrew76

Steve SI wrote: »

As for powering up the pc, I haven't decided yet.
Maybe some fancy remote power on gadget or just another tiny hidden button wired directly to the PC. You can get some really tiny buttons online.


How do you power up your PC?

Remote would be cool. I have the second option where I hooked up a mini arcade button to the power on connection on the mobo, just made up a long cable so I could feed it up to the cp and out the side. Reposting a pic from above, that blue cable with black taping is it, the button just juts out the back side when the cp is closed. Not the prettiest solution but you can't see it from the front. If your miniature button fits inside the lock hole though I might just sacrifice a lock on the left hand side to feed the button through there. (Lol hope that made sense.)



Actually here's a pic of the cable and button contraption I made.

Andrew76

Steve SI wrote: »

Hmm, its brighter on 75 ohm for me.
Although my monitor chassis is not exactly to be trusted.

.

Ah sorry I read your post incorrectly. Weird, I'm pretty sure it's brighter for me on the 1K ohm setting. Here's a pic from my monitor manual which matches with what you said though - the 75 ohm setting gives a brighter picture because the video source doesn't have it's own amp?



There's a few little niggly issues with my cab like this brightness issue, everything is perfectly playable but they just irk me a bit.
Hey does you're stepdown output 100v or 110v do you know? I have a suspicion the power supply (either the stepdown or PSU or both) aren't quite correct.

Steve X2

Andrew76 wrote: »

Hey does you're stepdown output 100v or 110v do you know? I have a suspicion the power supply (either the stepdown or PSU or both) aren't quite correct.

Not sure on that, I'll check later and let you know. I guess 110v stepdowns are more common than 100v so it's likely that's what Ronnie gave me.

I am on the look out for a better quality one but I think the one included with the cab is actually a decent one. I don't think you can get one that doesn't have a slight hum to it. Would be nice to get one just as good but a bit smaller/lighter maybe.

Edit:
On another note, how handy is it to install a stereo amp?

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Andrew76

Steve SI wrote: »

Not sure on that, I'll check later and let you know. I guess 110v stepdowns are more common than 100v so it's likely that's what Ronnie gave me.

I am on the look out for a better quality one but I think the one included with the cab is actually a decent one. I don't think you can get one that doesn't have a slight hum to it. Would be nice to get one just as good but a bit smaller/lighter maybe.

Edit:
On another note, how handy is it to install a stereo amp?

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Yeah 110v is the norm but I've read our PSU can be picky as it requires 100v. Re: the stepdown, I've seen these recommended a few times on AO: http://www.airlinktransformers.com/japanese-transformers.asp, supposed to be good build and quiet too. Unfortunately they're not cheap especially because of the weight and shipping cost, that 300VA one for £50, shipping is almost £40 I think so you're talking £100 for a stepdown. :eek:

If you mean using the cab speakers with the Taito stereo amp then it's simple. You'll have two connections (F & C as per pic below) inside the cab that plug directly into the amp and then you just feed L & R phono connections into it also.



Not as powerful as using Logitech speakers I guess but it does me.

Myrddin

Regards powering on the pc, most folk prob just use the power settings in the BIOS to "restore power on a/c" or something to that effect. I prefer to use a seperate button though, just a standard arcade player button hidden on the underside of the control panel, connected directly to the motherboards two atx power on points (essentially exactly the same as the button in a pc case).

Andrew76

Speak of the devil, video amp just turned up:



Let me know how you get on whenever you get your pc hooked up, handy to have someone else with a similar setup to compare notes to. (except for the skynet pc )

Steve X2

Andrew76 wrote: »

Speak of the devil, video amp just turned up:


Let me know how you get on whenever you get your pc hooked up, handy to have someone else with a similar setup to compare notes to. (except for the skynet pc )

Yeah, skynet should be completed and up and running by the weekend(I got nearly everything installed last night and am just waiting on the CPU and I'm all set).

So once that's done I can spend some time on the Hyperspin PC and get that baby hooked up and running in the cab.

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Myrddin

Steve SI wrote: »

Yeah, skynet should be completed and up and running by the weekend(I got nearly everything installed last night and am just waiting on the CPU and I'm all set).

So once that's done I can spend some time on the Hyperspin PC and get that baby hooked up and running in the cab.

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Just whatever you do...don't, I repeat, don't...connect it to the internet