> MSP430F2x/4x

That is exactly what I thought of too!

u/blue_dreamer has the right idea here. Arduino is okay if you have money and time to throw at it and dont mind "gilding the lilly"...everyone likes arduino, and I am no exception, but in this instance its kind of overkill when a better, cheaper solution that takes less time can be produced more elegantly. An Arduino board will set you back {$25.00](http://www.amazon.com/Arduino-UNO-board-DIP-ATmega328P/dp/B006H06TVG/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1409167668&sr=8-2&keywords=arduino) compared to the cheaper Launchpad boardand that is just the board...whereas you can probably get a free MSP430 chipset (without any board) for free as a sample from Alibaba or Texas Instruments if you ask.

Get an Arduino and you will have an ocean of help from 1000 laymen who all know what they are talking about, probably. Get the MSP430 and save a buck or two and get INDIVIDUALIZED ELITE ASSISTANCE from an electrical engineer who knows EXACTLY what he is talking about; and it sounds like he is willing to hold your hand each and every step of the way---which, as an electrical engineer myself, I can tell you is no small thing to offer a stranger. You are a better man than I, /u/blue_dreamer!

Correct but I found that using the Rasberry Pi 3 was difficult to configure and use screen flip mode also the Raspberry Pi uses HDMI and most cheap monitors you can find on Craigslist or a thrift store use the old VGA connectors and the HDMI to VGA with the little 3.5mm speaker output are at best iffy. I tried to get it all working for quite a while before I threw up my hands and bought this thing from Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Arrival-Classical-upgrade-Arcade-Machine/dp/B0103X7KXS
Although many of the games are duplicates or require an 8 way joystick or a roller ball like Centipede. So by the time you turn off all of the games you don't like or are not really compatible with a cocktail game (no screen flip etc), you might as well get this board which is actually better. https://www.amazon.com/Easyget-Classical-Arcade-TV-Plug-Play/dp/B01L1UT0R6 You just need to buy little stand offs to keep elevated so air can flow around it. You can get the stand offs and the power supply you need and the harness by getting a kit like this https://www.amazon.com/Classic-Multigame-Multicade-cocktail-control/dp/B00F1YQ9LO but I bought extra buttons (illuminated kind) and a blue knob so that player one is red and player 2 is blue.

But yes, if you are thrifty the build cost is at about $500.00

Glass: I found a lady selling two glass top end tables on craigslist for $50.00 so $25.00 worth of glass

Monitor: I found a guy selling used LCD monitors. I paid $25.00 and I regret it. I walked into a goodwill just to see what they had and they have a bunch of old LCD monitors for $5.00. I used a 19" Dell but a 17" would actually fit the bezels better.

For the wine barrel again Craigslist. There are quite a few people that get them from wineries and resell them. $75.00 - $125 is common. I paid $100.00 because I got to pick the best one he had. You want a fresh one that still smells like wine and hasn't been sitting outside in the elements for months.

For the control box I used MDF. I had the guy at home depot do the rough cuts for me for 25cents per cut because I have tools to do the finish work. If you don't you could plan it all out and have him do all the cuts for you. :)

MDF was about $50

The artwork was the expensive part. The printing for the bezel was about $100.00 and the vinyl graphics from ebay that I used for the control panels were about $75.00.

I also bought a switched power receptical so I could plug it into the wall and have a switch to turn the arcade on and off. Also a cheap power strip hot glued to the inside of the barrel for the monitor and computer power supply. I found some old computer speakers that I ran in series to make them 8 ohm and connected them directly to the computer box. Put them wherever you feel you need to but keep in mind these old games don't need the best sound quality and you can hear them plenty loud under the bezel and glass. You don't need them in the front panel facing the player.

That's pretty much it.

The EPROMs I generally get from ebay or aliexpress. Their prices have gone up since the china tariffs hit, but can usually still be found for less than $1 a chip, especially if you buy in bulk. I do not have a particular seller that I buy from, just whatever is cheapest.

The 27c322 SNES Adapter boards can be purchased from mrTentacle on tindie. This guy is absolutely top notch, everything he sells is great. His products ship from Sweden, usually takes about 2 weeks to get to me in the US. He sells the 74HC257 chips as an add-on for the boards as well, but they can usually be found for cheaper if you're willing to look. A word of warning, the adapter boards have a steep learning curve. they have to be very thin in order to clear an official SNES cartridge, so they are fragile, and they require removing the plastic from the header pins to fit. I junked two of them before I was able to get one to work, but now I have the knack for it and haven't had further issues.

The GQ-4X is still considered the gold standard for repros, but I actually do not have one. I have a TL866PLUS, with this adapter. It is not fantastic but it gets the job done. One thing you will want to invest in if you give this another shot is a UV EPROM Eraser. A lot of the time the cheap junk from china still has data on the chip, causing it to appear faulty. A pass in the UV oven or two will remove that, and you'll be able to reflash the chip. This is also invaluable when you mess up, which I do frequently. That's why the chips have the quartz window in the front.

Hope this gives you a good launching point about where to start. Feel free to reach out if you ever have any questions. Having a big stash of donors means you can make a lot of mistakes and learn lots!

Well I want to thank you all! Even though I didn't go with any of the suggestions here, you all helped me do some very critical research into what was out there and what to look for. In the end I went with TL866II Plus. Not only does it work with the PIC 12c508A and 12F629 chips that I already have, but they claim it work with 1500+ other chips. I ordered it yesterday with Amazon Prime and it was here today at around 2:30PM. Flashed my PIC and its working great!

What type of sensors are you using? Would it be possible for you to post a picture or link?

If the motion sensor is anything like these ones, it should be able to be configured to output "High" until there is no more motion. That could easily be attached to one pin of an AND gate.

 

However, without a micro-controller of some kind, the light detector would be a bit harder. If you are using something like a photo-resistor, you will read different values (Analog) based on how much light it is detecting. This is easy to interpret and compare with a micro-controller, but is a bit harder to do with discreet logic.

I would run 3.3-5V through a trim-pot, in line with the photo-resistor and then wire this into a Schmitt Trigger such as this. Typically gates have 2 voltages for which the vendor will guarantee they read high and low, but between those two, they don't make any promises, which is a problem when using analog components, as between the time it goes "High" and "Low", it will read in that grey zone. What a Schmitt Trigger does, is waits for the input to go very high before switching to high before switching the output high, and waiting for the input to go very low before switching the output low. This way, it mitigates the uncertain zone, and adds some hysteresis. Then wire this into the other terminal of the AND gate.

The particular one I linked is a Schmitt Inverter, so when it is bright and the photo-resistor decreases its resistance value, the input on the Schmitt Inverter will go high, and the output will go low, preventing the system from triggering, and vice-versa once it gets dark.

You will also want to make sure that your photo sensor is decently far away from your lamp/ light source, or else it will detect the light and shut back off

 

You can do all this with discreet logic gates, but if you do it the way I mentioned, it would still take at least 2 IC chips and 2 transistors (1 for the Light Sensor circuit and 1 to control the actual output lamp). It would probably be easier and also use fewer components if you were able to use a small chip like an ATTiny85 which is a small, 8-pin IC which can be programmed in Arduino (There are probably cheaper places to buy these than here, but you can take a look at the chip).

Amazon has some pretty barebones kits, but you have to provide DIP switches, LEDs, sensors, etc and wire them into a breadboard yourself.

If you want to spend more money, take a look at this kit. These are the boards used in my Digital Logic classes, and are easy to use. They also come with onboard IO.

I'll have to double check about the fans blowing the wrong direction, thanks for the tip! As for viruses, I've been doing regular scans of my computer with both Avast and Malware bytes, so I've fairly certain that's not the case.

I went ahead and tried feeling the tubes again and I feel like an idiot, the first tube felt cold because I was feeling it in the middle, whereas I was practically touching the end near the CPU for the "warm tube". Definitely seems like a broken liquid cooler might be the problem now. As for the thermal paste, I used this stuff (link). And I definitely cleaned off the previous thermal paste, I followed a tutorial and did the x-pattern when screwing it back on, etc.


I'm really leaning towards it being a broken liquid cooler now. Still, does that warrant 85-92 degrees on idle? I'll try to buy a new liquid cooler and apply the thermal paste more carefully this time, if indeed I messed up.


Thanks a ton for the feedback, I'm truly grateful not to be left alone figuring this stuff out :P

Right. The Mini-PAC comes with a wire harness that looks like you'd just plug it in. And on the U-trak page they mention an "Optional USB2 interface" that looks like it's just the pin header you'd plug the trackball connection to and a USB connector. Do you know what kind of trackball you have? I've got an old one that looks like this. https://www.amazon.com/Track-Ball-Arcade-Trackball-Translucent/dp/B00J1M38PC/ Two 4-pin connections and I had to use a cable like this to connect it to a 60-in-1 board. https://www.amazon.com/Jamma-Replacement-Wiring-Harness-Trackball/dp/B00F1YQHMK/

And I've got a newer trackball that looks like this. https://www.amazon.com/Track-Arcade-Trackball-Jamma-Icade/dp/B00OX0MKD8/

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Oh! Found this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7w_8zXYno8 In the comments someone asks about the USB interface they used. It's a U-HID Nano. http://www.u-hid.com/home/uhid_nano.php A nano would be enough for 1 trackball. For the arcade style trackballs, you'd need a harness that looked sort of like this https://www.amazon.com/Jamma-Trackball-Interface-Wiring-Harness/dp/B00F1YQHDE/ or maybe this https://www.amazon.com/Trackball-Interface-Wiring-Harness-Trackballs/dp/B01AIM5HZC/ but I'm not sure these would be wired correctly for what you want. The trackball/spinner harness for the Mini-PAC should be correct. For your setup, you may be able to swap the wires around on that last harness if it's not wired correctly.

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I used these PCB mounting feet Worked great!

https://smile.amazon.com/Programmable-Development-DE0-NANO-4CE22F-CYCLONE/dp/B00MEKRXAE/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&qid=1492411497&sr=8-6&keywords=FPGA

With free 2 day shipping. They're used in every undergrad computer engineering program on earth.

There's already 20 some pins to use. How many more do you need?

If the default pins don't cut it you could always use something like a mux/dmux chip.

Yep! There are several ways, but I’d personally use a multiplexer. They’re inexpensive components (I think I got a bag of ten last time at a dime apiece or something like that.Here are some on Amazon.. There are cheaper ones of Banggood).

You send it the signal you want and a bitwise address (eg 101 for pin 5), and it sends that signal. You then cycle through. It takes nanoseconds for it to switch, so the switching time is quite invisible.

Connect one multiplexer to the power conductor of each column and another to the ground conductor of each row. To light a given light, send HIGH to the column you want and LOW to the row you want.

Signstek TL866A Universal USB MiniPro EEPROM FLASH BIOS Programmer AVR GAL PIC SPI Support 40 Pin with Unique Interface ICSP https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00K756PB6/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_ZQM0AbPDZ49E1

Will this work for programming an fv1?

My school teaches cplds in dld, so I picked up the below fpga to practice on. Haven't actually done anything with it yet, but these reasons are why i bought it.

• Altera and quartus 2 is what my school uses and is one of industries leading companies, so it was a plus for me
  -most other "teaching/learning" fpgas used software that wasn't used in the industry
  
• many of the other "teaching" fpgas kinda died as projects and didn't offer any additional tutorials
  
  Disadvantage is that's there is virtually nothing on the board to play with, so doing anything will require separate modules wired to i/os. Not even 7 seg display or buttons.
  
  Programmable Logic IC Development Tools DE0-NANO (4CE22F) CYCLONE FPGA DEV KIT https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00MEKRXAE/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apap_c6fyfaqFWZjPS
  
  Edit, CPLDs are much cheaper and supposedly slightly easier. May be better to start off with.

Get one of these

Hardly. You can get a USB Blaster clone for around $10.

Example: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00IRODADK

Actually I guess I do have a question! Im using the
MSP430G2 dev board:

https://www.amazon.com/Texas-Instruments-Educational-Products-MSP-EXP430G2/dp/B004G52S82/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1480834698&sr=8-1&keywords=MSP430


Would I be able to do any of the stuff thats linked after lesson 7? Since I know it states it uses a different board....like are they gonna be WAYYYY different?

This is a condenser mic. Nothing else is this small, and also they are super cheap. They vary by dimensions, so look for that. Yes, they do need phantom power, which your headset is already providing. (maybe this is the failure point.)

Example: 6.0mm diam. x 3.4mm
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B018HXM9RS

The terminal attached to the case is (-)

Test if there is phantom power. If not, that is the problem, or the mic wire is broken. Turn it on, put a voltmeter across +/- on the mic.