At the beginning of the project I had an old 166MHz computer with DOS 6.1 on it, collecting dust, so it made a good candidate for the project.
Next came the control panel. I started by acquiring Happ 8-way joysticks, buttons and microswitches on Ebay and then had to decide how I was going to interface them to the computer.
I spent many long hours matrix mapping several keyboards, trying to find one that would yield at least 15 consecutive key presses without ghosting. I read everything that I could find on the subject to stop the ghosting problem. I even tried using diodes. I read about others who had success, but everything I tried failed.
Then I remembered that a year or so before I had built Niel Simon's PSX/N64 USB adaptor to use a Playstation controller on my computer, so I decided to experiment with it.
If it worked I would have 16 switches and 2 joysticks available. That would be enough for 2 players with 6 buttons each for playing, 2 coin buttons, and 2 start buttons.
After many hours of testing I was still unable to get the second joystick to work reliably, so I had to try something else.
I then learned about an interface called the I-PAC, which upon investigation look to be exactly what I needed.
I purchased the interface and after much testing, found it to be perfect.
The control panel could not be built until I decided upon a cabinet, so I scoured Tucson Az. and outlying areas looking for a cheap cabinet. After several months I discovered an old cocktail cabinet in a warehouse in unknown condition. I brought it home and my wife wanted to know what it was and why I bought it. I told her that I didn't know as there were no signs or labels on it. I then told her why I needed a cabinet. She ask me if it worked and I told her that I didn't think so and I was just going to strip it for the cabinet. She said "plug it in" so I did expecting at the most sparks.
Would you Believe it! That old game came to life and worked perfectly. It was a Namco Galaxian and both my wife and son said "no way are you going to destroy that game". When it came to life I had already decided that it was worth saving.
Oh well, back to searching for a cabinet that I wouldn't feel bad about stripping. After several months I found an old Trojan upright in a thrift shop. The operating condition was unknown, the cabinet was in fair shape and it only cost $45.00. When I got it home I had to figure how open it up (No keys!). It had stuff loose inside so I wasn't going to power this one up. To get the back door off I had to remove a large lock and hasp. When I finally got it open I saw that almost every thing inside had been smashed up. Someone must have had quite a temper. Now I didn't feel bad about stripping the game. Everything was useless, except the power supply, isolation transformer, control panel and coin door. I stripped the cabinet and saved what I could.
Now I could start designing the control panel. To fit the Trojan cabinet the panel would have to be 23 inches wide and 8 1/2 inches deep. I designed a prototype control panel and a carpenter friend made it for me.
The first panel was set up for two player with 6 buttons and 1 joystick per player, 2 flipper buttons and a pinball plunger.
My wife, son and I gave it a thorough testing and decided that the panel should have 3 groups of 5 buttons each.
I was pleased with the layout, but decided to add a trackball.
I wanted it to also serve as a mouse so I looked at what others had done. Standard arcade trackballs were out of the question. They cost an arm and a leg. One person mentioned that he used a child's Crayola trackball mouse. I was able to purchase one for $4.00 to experiment with. It worked well, but it was an ugly yellow color and would be very hard to mount in a control panel.
Back to Ebay for more searching. Someone was selling a set of two government surplus three inch trackballs. I won the auction with a bid of $10.00 and when they arrived, I opened one up. After testing I determined that the optical encoders would work with a standard mouse pc board. Many days later I had a working ps2/serial trackball with 2 buttons.
I made another control panel that included the trackball and because of size constraints I had to go back to 6 buttons and one joystick per player. I wasn't happy with that layout, as I wanted the control panel to have three groups of five buttons.
That meant making the control panel deeper. I couldn't make the panel wider, because then the cabinet wouldn't fit through the interior doors of my house and a removable control panel would be a pain.
2/17/03 After thinking on the problem for several months I decided to go with a cocktail table.
Read my review here.
2/19/03 Converted the trackball from PS2/serial to PS2/USB and since my early model I-PAC interface came with a footprint for a USB "B" connector, I installed the connector so I could use a standard USB cable.
2/20/03 Made and assembled a prototype 9 1/4 inch by 5 inch control panel to insure that everything would fit before cutting holes in the control panels that I ordered as an option with the cocktail cabinet kit. As I was fitting all the wooden parts of the control panel together, I discovered that the control panel bottom has the joystick shaft clearance hole in the center.
I had to offset the joystick to the left to make room for the three buttons. Making a new clearance hole is not a problem, I'm just glad I discovered this now before I glued and screwed everything together.
2/22/03 I have decided to put up a miscellaneous web page to cover the details that have value, but won't fit anywhere else.
3/5/03 I have put up a page about my original Galaxian Cocktail cabinet.
7/27/03 It has gone on too long without an update, I have finally put up a progress report.
7/29/03 Added some pictures and corrected last entry date.
8/03/03 Updated progress report.. Solved the nagging problem of cooling the cabinet. Modified cabinet and top for monitor. Added more pictures.
8/06/03 Added player 1 and 2 control panel pictures to progress report and corrected some spelling errors.
8/16/03 Finally! The first successful test of the electronics.
9/05/03 I've made a lot of progress in the construction of the main control panel.
10/21/03 Updated progress report with information on top glass.
11/02/03 I finally got a cheap spinner.
11/06/03 Repaired and converted spinner.
01/10/04 Now that the holidays are over, I've started work on cabinet again. See progress report.
06/25/04 Wow! The time has flown by. Very little has been accomplished, but I need to post something. See progress report.
07/16/04 Made some changes to web pages and fixed the broken links
01/08/05 Changed email address.
Currently this is a work in progress. I will update this page on a regular basis.
Questions? Contact me Ernest Kemp
