Hello! and welcome to a side page type thingy.
This is where I’ll be dumping pictures and quick write ups of stuff I have made, modded or reproduced.
If you have any questions, direct them thru the usual channels…
A bit of ‘hand-draulic’ woodwork (rather than my usual CNC work machine)
My machine wasn’t available when I needed to make a under wooden control panel for my next Isis cabinet project – Food Fight. The wooden panel holds the joystick in place and has clearanve holes for all the buttons.
Operations –
- Chain drill out the square aperture to take the body of the joystick. Filed out the semi circles to finish.
- Oversize drill out the fire button holes with a 40mm hole saw (borrowed from work)
- Hand routed out the ‘tennis racket’ shaped holes, to take the leaf switch bodies.
- 22mm drilled holes to take the start buttons
- used the joystick mounting plate as a drill fixture for the joystick mounting holes.
- 8mm drilled holes for the mounting bolts.
More tinkerings from the 3D printer. The damn thing is awesome when it behaves and actually works ok – the magic is all in the first layer…
Anyway, I needed some extra tall legs for my Bosconian pcb (as it has very tall molex connectors on both pcb sides) This was actually one of the few times my printer was actrually going to solve a problem for me, rather than just being a flight of fancy or doing little jobs for my friends… I quickly designed it on Fusion 360 and poked it thru Cura. They took half an hour each and work like a charm.
Here’s an arcade one for you (altogether : NO! – REALLY?)
Shaun picked up a very small cab for me called a Consolette. I know very little of it, apart from that Atari made one very similar with Breakout in it. This one is FRENCH and has left, right and fire buttons rather than a pot dial for Breakout. On further examining (and breaking into) I found clues to it;s identity…
Clues that a bootleg Galaxian board was in there, the black and white monitor has GALAXIAN screen burn – oh, and it doesn’t work 🙁
Inside, it’s a bit nasty – dead spiders, various muck, dry mould and a lot of dust.
Here are some pictures. My first job was to take it to my work and blast it with compressed air to give it a good old blow out.
Vectrex Asteroids Controller
I have wanted to make some more Vectrex controllers for a while but didn’t really understand the circuit required to enable a Vectrex use a digital set of controls rather than analog. I recently found a very simply perfboard circuit with 8 resistors to do just this. It was very straightforward to make – thanks Vectrex Fans Unite Facebook page!
I bought an enclosure from ebay (overpriced!) and used 24mm Sanwa Buttons (commonly used as start buttons) I also used a 9 pin d plug and an extension cable rather than cutting the end off and hard wiring it to the controller. By doing this I only need to use one cable for future controllers and they controllers can be store away much easier without a 6ft cable hanging off of them!
Here are some pix of the prototype panels and the actual thing. The 2nd video is the final testing and show off stage.
ZX Spectrum+ Quick Fix
My mate Alex gave me a non working (but boxed) 48k ZX Spectrum+ at an arcade meetup the other day. He said it didn’t work and wasn’t sure of the fault. Well, my very own 48k Spectrum+ was used to make another friends work and has a non working keyboard membrane, so I needed a new one.
I firstly modded the display output from skanky old RF to ‘a lot better’ composite AV. This is a very quick snip and solder 1 wire mod which improved the display by a billion zillion times abd will work on newer tvs just fine.
I then hooked it up with my SMART interface (By Retroleum) which has a super duper diagnostic utility built in and along with a liney picture, informed me that IC6 was bad. This happened to be a 4116 ram, part of the Spectrum’s lower ram section. I unsoldered the ram, soldered in a socket and fitted it with a new ram chip and it works perfectly!
To make the computer a bit better and future proof the keyboard membrane, I removed the old 7805 voltage regulator and aluminium heatsink (which gets toasty very quickly) and I fitted a modern switching voltage regulator (which doesn’t need a heat sink as it doesn’t even get slightly hot) The heat from the old voltage regs used to heat up and (over time) knacker the keyboard membranes.
Horace goes skiing anyone?
Pi2Jpac or Jamma Pi Thingy (you decide)
I prefer Pi2Jpac, but the master software tinkerer Rich Gregory calls it the Jamma Pi Thingy, which equally describes this. I have always wanted a small as possible mame setup which can easily plug into any jamma arcade machine, but a PC is rarely small enough to be able to do this easily and you have to power it and interface controls etc etc. Then along came (our now old friend) the Raspberry Pi. Coupled with some sort of video and audio interface to an Ultimarc Jpac does the trick perfectly. As you can see in the pictures the whole unit takes up 7″ x 6″ and has everything you need to play emulated arcade games on an actual arcade machine. The whole lot is powered by the arcade machine via the edge connector. A hdmi to vga adapter and the software putting out a 15khz video signal takes care of the video while a usb sound dongle attached to a small amp to the edge connector does the audio (with a nice volume knob too, so you can have some late night quiet Star Force sessions. Another reason for me to make this and bug Rich for tweaks to the software is the cost. Some pi to jamma pcbs usually run at about £100 + the actual Raspberry Pi computer. The Pi2Jpac is about £45 + the Pi.
Huge thanks to Rich Gregory for his tireless work on the software side of this project.
Without him this simply wouldn’t be here.
Atari Warlords Spinner Knob
Fired the old 3D printer up after a lifetime of non use. Shame on me. I used a file that John ‘Battlezone” Keay sent me to try out my settings and table levelling. Worked a treat. Looks kinda nice in white, too. I was also told it looked like a Leprechaun’s hat. Can’t argue with that.
Frogger VFD Mame
A youtube video says a thousand words…
UK Megadrive to US Snes Power Converter
I was given some Snes’s to have a look at – the owner didn’t think they were working properly. One of them was a US Snes, which I’ve never encountered before. I borrowed a UK PSU and TV lead from Alex ‘Nintendo Arcade’ to try them (thanks Alex!) But I was going to need something a bit different to check the US Snes, as the power supply was totally different. The UK one is AC and the US one needs DC. I did a bit of reading and apparently you can NOT plug an AC supply into a US Snes, so an adaptor had to be made. I followed the instructions from Mmmonkey, with 2 parts from maplin and some wire. Here is the end result and the US Snes works fine using this adaptor and a UK Megadrive supply. I think it’s pretty snazzy – I even shrink toooobed it!
Theremin
This is an odd musical instrument I was inspired to make after seeing Mark Kermode (ace film critic and musician) playing one at the British Film Institute (BFI) – My friend Shane Williams gave me the way to make one – an electronic kit! See his circuit bending too, at Shane’s Facebook Page
I’m also here, looking far too serious making a noise! Facebook Noise Video
The kit also required an Arduino Uno, a wooden box (for effect) and some aluminium tubing (for pitch and volume controls) Here are a few shots – and yes, that is a cheeky arcade ‘function’ button!
Famicom Power LED Mod (NEW)
This was a quick n dirty mod too. The famicom never came with a power led, so if you are setting up a Famicom and don’t know if it works or not, you’ll have difficulty knowing whether you’ve actually got the thing turned on or not. I just wired in a red 5v led to a +5v point and GND point on the famicom board and routed the wired led to a nice place on the housing. I drilled a 4.9mm hole in the shell, next to the power switch (using just a drill bit and spinning it with my fingers, while applying pressure to the top of the drill bit – it’s only plastic and went thru quickly) I rammed the led in, as it’s a nice snug fit and voila! – Looks like it should’ve been there in the first place! Many thanks to Lesolei (Dean) for helping me repair other parts of the famicom while I was in there.
Seimitsu 2 Suzo Happ Plate Adaptors
My lovely Podcast co host Shaun Holley asked me to do this for him. He wanted to replace just one of his arcade joysticks (a standard jamma Suzo Happ stick) with a Japanese style stick. I had a spare Seimitsu in the arcade, but the mounting plate would not fit the hole pitches of a Suzo Happ. This is where I come in – I have made literally dozens of these kinda thangs before. A piece of material (usually 3mm ally plate) that has the hole pattern to attach the stick to it and the hole pattern to attach the whole lot to an arcade machine’s control panel. Bish bosh!
I used some weird material I acquired from work. Its black perspex sandwiched inside very thin plastic coated ally plate. It’s light weight, easy to cut and remarkably stiff.
Anyhoo, a few pictures speak, well, more than a few words –
SD 2 IEC Case
I bought an SD floppy disc emulator for my C64, without a case, as I hacked my C64C and mounted it inside the computer itself. However – I now have a Vic 20 (my first ever computer) and I can use the SD 2 IEC on that too, so I decided to make a nice case that I can swap between the two computers.
Aloooominum Leaf Switch Arcade Buttons
Some simple copies of arcade leaf switch buttons made out of good old aluminium. I made these about 10 years ago. All parts made on a CNC mill (I didn’t have access to a lathe – the correct machine to make these sort of things on) The plunger is nylon, so no conductive parts ever touch the leaf part of the switch. They have a really nice feel to them, too. I must use them on a machine one day…
I even made a pair out of brass (with a stronger spring) for someone who used them on an Indiana Jones pinball. Cool!
Virtsticks ™
I made a half sized repro Taito Trimline Invaders cab a loooong time ago and I couldn’t find a joystick small enough to use on it, so I thought “I’ll just make one” – I looked at an existing Japanese style stick and made one up. It worked so well, I decided to make a ‘proper’ sized one. I popped it up an one of the arcade forums and then people started asking for them…
I sent one to a particular joystick abuser in Scotland who said he’d actually BROKEN arcade sticks before! He never broke the stick and 8 years on I actually got the stick back – long story and it is still bullet proof!
All construction is aircraft grade aluminium (L168) and stainless steel (S143) The only parts that weren’t made are the microswitches and springs, screws, washers etc.
I personally have 3 Virtsticks and I believe there’s about
25 out in the wild. I’m not planning on doing any more and,
NO, you can’t have mine! 😀
Aloooooominum NES Controller
Now, this one’s a blast from the past. I made this about 5 years ago. Just because I was bored at work and you know what they say – all work and no tinkering makes Victor a dull boy.
I don’t even know if I still have the CNC programs for these any more. Designed with a vernier caliper, OneCNC Cad/Cam software and a Haas VF2 CNC mill. The red buttons look odd, because there was no electronic guts in there at the time. I presume it would work, but I’ve never wired it up! Criminal!
3D Printy Madness!
After getting my 3D printer for my birthday in June (thank you Mrs Lovely wife) I went a bit mad and made some stuffs. Sadly, I haven’t had any time to get down n dirty with it for ages. Must make time for that – it’s awesome.
Atari Button Cones
Everyone in the arcade world knows how hard it is to find Atari Cone buttons, right?
I needed some, so decided to make ’em! –
Note – on the right hand picture, the right hand cone is an original
- Cut 1″ black nylon bar into roughly 12mm billets
- Milled both faces, hole and threaded hole on my CNC mill
- Turned the 45 degree angle on a fixture on a centre lathe
- Enjoyed cones…
Modded Pac Man TV Game
This was a simple one, but it had to be neat! Introducing a power socket for a 6v DC power supply (rather than 4x AA batteries)
I drilled out the back panel (it all comes to bits, handily) I then filed the hole until it fitted the power jack component. Squeezed it in, drilled some 1.6mm holes thru the holes of the component. Tapped the 1.6mm holes M2 and screwed in some screws to hold it on place. Simples.
Reproduction Subelectro Isis Coin Mech Plates
Right, call me a heretic, but I never use coin mechs on my arcade machines. It may be original, but it gets very old, very quickly when you have to keep retrieving your 10 pees to put in the coin slot to play a game. Sooo – I make a nice looking (brand new, hot off the cnc mill) repro. Usually with some kind of custom engraving. I also mounted a button to the centre coin return button, which gives credits.
Reproduction Atari Fuse Block
On investigation, my Atari Centipede had a corroded fuse block (the main 5 power brick fuses)
Replacing this with an original ‘Littelfuse’ block is easy enough if you live in the US and are cheap, but postage to the UK negates this as an option. Well, let’s buy 5 single fuse holders and knock up a block for them all the snuggle up together on!
I just bandsawed 2 pieces of 3mm (black) perspex and drilled the 2 end / centre holes thru holes for some slightly longer than original 4-40 unc screws and the 3 in the middle M3, so I could screw them in 
to the perspex and the 2 end screws would hold the unit to the power brick, like the original did.
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Quick n Dirty Marquee Insert For My Subelectro ‘Isis’ Cabinet
This was just a printed out picture of our podcast logo for my little cab. Printed on decent white matt paper and stuck behind the glass marquee. I also stuck some frosted sheet material behind that, as the glare of the tube light was to bright and you could see the shape of the bulb behind the art.