Best Ultimate Tech Talk Hang Out Loud Edition Season V

what’s a jlw?

A Joystick from Sanwa.
Different from JLF.

I’ve seen a handful of people with some great looking breif-case/metallic cases turned into Arcade Sticks on this forum, it’s something I was interested in doing for my next stick. I can’t seem to find a cheap attache case or metallic case that I would be willing to chop up and use for an arcade stick though. Anyone know what I should be searching for/where I should be looking? I think I can rule out looking for briefcases since they are rather expensive. I’ve seen a few cheap-ish CD cases that look like metallic attache cases, but even they were fairly pricey (around $30 for one big enough to fit the guts inside).

If this is the wrong thread for this I apologise!

Yay! Finished modding the Turbo lights and the XBox ring in my TE to all-white! Pictures and a quick vid in the morning. I’m sleepy. :stuck_out_tongue:

I’ve found that cheap poker sets seem to be the right dimensions for that sort of thing. I picked one up from a Walgreen’s for $10 just for that purpose. It’s cheap, but it works. If you want it to be a quality case, then you can expect to pay for it.

I never would have thought to look for a poker case, but theres some cheap ones on ebay, and I could probably find some cheap ones from places like K-Mart as well! Thanks!

I’m not really worried about high quality, just so long as it’s sturdy enough to hold the parts basically. Could I use regular power-tools to drill the holes etc, or would I need a special drill bit?

you need a 24mm and a 30mm holesaw drill bit. If you want imperial equivalents it is 15/16 in and 1 3/16 in. That is for Japanese parts.
If you are using american buttons you need a 28mm or 1 1/8 in hole saw.

I figure this didn’t need its own thread since I just followed a video from YouTube for the actual desoldering/soldering process.

Anyway, if anyone wants to change out the Turbo and/or XBox ring LEDs in their TE (I’m pretty sure the SE is the same, someone might want to confirm), here are the polarity layouts for the LEDs.

…yeah yeah, who cares about Turbo…but I know some of you care about that XBox ring. hahah

Thanks to Toodles for (almost) confirming the size of the LEDs (hahah I ordered them after your hunch was better than mine), and thanks to years of no-caffeine for the ability to solder these tiny-ass LEDs. :tup:

Notes:

  • take off anything that can be removed from the PCB. I left the Lock switch cover on it as I was desoldering the green LEDs and ended up laying my iron accidentally on the switch cover. So now, my lock switch has a Gumby/1990s Bobby Brown fade. :rofl:

  • Careful desoldering. The solder pads for the LEDs are very small and without desoldering braid, you run the risk of burning off the solder pads.

Video Guide: [media=youtube]qs7rSM731gk[/media] (This video is for an 0805 chip component, but it’ll work for an SMD LED all the same)

Polarity: Anode = Positive, Cathode = Negative
How to read the polarity on your SMD LEDs: How to tell the polarity of 0402, 0603, 0805 and 1206 SMDs

Turbo Panel: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/83840/turbo%20panel.jpg
XBox Ring: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/83840/xboxring.jpg

Finished product:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/83840/fullylit-001.jpg
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/83840/fullylit-002.jpg

Do you recall what brightness you went with for those LEDs?
I was thinking about swapping out the LEDs on the guide for a different color to match a stick i’m working on…

50 Surface Mount LED ~ White 0805 ~ SMT LED - eBay (item 140429784232 end time Jul-26-10 21:47:56 PDT)

These are the ones I ordered from eBay. Minimum 330mcd/max 360 mcd

I bought a secondhand SE from a local seller. I must say I underestimated the quality of this thing. The size is of my preference! The videos of American proportions made it smaller than I judged too! I immediately swapped the parts with Sanwa.

There’s two things I want to change with it. What is the material on this SE default art? I want the material to be as close as possible to the one I’ll be replacing with. Another thing is to find a solution to the dangling cable. Just Velcro wrap this thing?

Yesterday, my computer’s power supply blew up.

Like, literally blew up. Smoke was coming out of the top of my computer.
I replaced it with another I had around (I bought it for a friend)

Its covered under warranty, but now I have to deal with RMAing it and stuff. Goddamn.

I’ve had similar happen, Upas. No actual smoke. I hear “pop” and smelled burning. Preempted the fire by pulling the plug on it.
I was pissed, it was a nice Corsair PSU too, they were pretty good about the RMA processor. What make is it?

Yeah, I also pulled the plug right away, but I guess at that point it was too late. I was playing SC2 at the time and was kinda wondering what happened.
The good news is that nothing else in my PC was harmed.

My PSU is a PC Power and Cooling, which came with a 5 year warranty. Its been about 9 months since I bought it.

You’ve seen what tekniqs and I have done with out Horis (velcro tie that attaches to the case), you can try that.

I know I’ve been going on and on about this whole JLW thing, but I tried something else last night while trying to figure out the final setup for my stick. When I used the JLW with a ball top and circle gate, it was useable. Not great, but it had a decent amount of tensionand I could hit the directions with a slight adjustment (still used to teh ultra manly happ springs…). I switched and went to a bat top and it felt like garbage again. Tension was mushy and hitting the diagonals weren’t nearly as accutate. My guess is the bat top has a bit more leverage on the joystick pivot because of how it’s held (on the top), whereas the ball top (held like a wineglass, I suppose) has less leverage.

Either that or I had too much to drink. Further testing to ensue…

I just wanted to maybe add to this or see if anybody else has seen this, as it is similar.

On my JLF, when I put a bat top on with a shaft cover and tighten it, it gets really gummy and the stick will not go all the way in any direction. It’s like some invisible tension is being applied magically or something.

A bat top with no shaft cover is fine and dandy and works perfect. My JLF does have LS32 and 55 springs in it, but I don’t think that would be the conflict. Weird stuff.

You are not supposed to use Shaft Cover with Bat Top.
The Shaft Cover is too long to use with Bat Top.
Have to cut Shaft Cover if want to use.

Interesting… I used a stock TE with a Sanwa bat top for maybe 6 mo without any problems. It does sound like the shaft cover is getting pressed down into the pivot bushing. I imagine you could grind off .5-1 mm from the top of the cover and have that go away.

Ahh. Did not know that. Makes sense, as it is pushing the shaft cover down into the pivot. I am going to go and try and sand it down now…