Archive for September, 2007
Oliver Winery and Colts vs. Denver
Everyone hung around and talked after church. We knew we had some time to wait either way, Grubbs had to run the kids out to his sister’s in Greenfield, and then they would come by our house on the way out.
We came home, got changed, me into my jersey:), and we waited. I did some file organization until they arrived. It was right around 1, and we headed down to Oliver. Such a gorgeous day, warm but breezy, I can’t say I remember a more ideal day to be down at Oliver. We just had two bottles of wine, and resisted for now from buying more. We are still focused on something else.
It was a great time thought, lots of laughs. Kenny and I went down by the water briefly to walk around, throw the football around and pet the huge fish.
They hung out until the half when we got back to the house and watched the game. Sarah and I watched the rest of the game after they left.
That took me right up to cartoon time at 8:00 on Fox. Mom Chapman called around 9:30 and we all chatted about the week. Sarah headed to bed, I went out to the bank, watched a little bit of tv and also called it a night. It was a crazy weekend for a change.
Installed a switcher in the Pengo
That was over a week ago already, last weekend to be exact. I was talking with Richard, and looking inside the cabinet, and then I figured out how the switcher had to be wired. I had an extra two pronged plug that was some sort of AC power source. All I needed to do was snip that connector, tie that positive and negative into the switcher position and negative, and I knew the other voltages that I needed to supply for the PCB, so I went ahead and did it.
I was nervous about clipping connectors, but I kept telling myself that I could always put it back if I needed. I would have done this earlier, but I had it in my mind that the power was coming out from the linear power supply and going to the isolation transformer. But I wasn’t looking at the wiring. The power comes in from one main source and through the isolation transformer. the transformer then powers the monitor and the linear power supply. The linear power supply takes the AC voltages and changes them into DC voltages so the board and sound can use them.
Here are the photos of what I did. I even made a little harness out of different molex connectors for the power supply connection.
I double checked my pinouts before plugging everything in. At first, the game came up, but it did it’s typical thing. I put in a ton of credits, it started resetting, and then when I pressed player 1, I got one character on screen and everything froze. I heard some clicking noises in the coin box area, and that was it.
On Sunday, I stopped and got some clips to put on my wire connections just to make sure that I had good connections. I emailed Richard about what I did, everything sounded right to him, and I explained it with intricate little questions down to if it matter how many wires you had tied to one 5v connection head.
Well, the lesson I learned, you always have to test voltages coming from the power supply again. Come to find out, I was supplying around 5.83 V instead of 5V, so I probably just toasted my board. I didn’t have it on for long, but I know it doesn’t take much. But, the funny thing is, I thought with a switcher I would be able to get very exact voltages. But you only have one knob to adjust, and I am only able to get the same voltages to the Pengo PCB as I was with the linear power supply. I have to do about 5.1 V and that gives me about 11.9 V for the sound.
I don’t know. I am extremely frustrated, don’t know if my board works anymore, and out of options again.
Indy Habitat For Humanity, Revive event
There were many different plans that were juggling around earlier in the month for this weekend. First, there was talk that Justin was going to come down on his bike, just so he could get out on a long ride. Plus, there was the Cincinnati Super Auction (Which ended up being postponed just like the Indy auction. The Super Auctions people are a bunch of tools) that was going to take place in the morning. I was really keep on going to that, it seems like forever since I have been to an auction.
But, neither happened, and I decided it would just be better to do Habitat for Humanity and help out someone else. Sarah and I both went, it was a pair of houses on a snug lot just off I-65 north of downtown. It was a good experience. I wasn’t sure how things would go, I was mostly concerned about too many people being there and just standing around not making good use of time.
We got there a touch late, and that worked out well actually. One of the “Tigers” was looking for two people to help him with some of the finish work on the face of the roof. So that is what Sarah and I did. We nailed in aluminum siding on the two peaks of the roof. We felt stupid. We spent just over four hours putting up 4 plus pieces of siding. But we were being very particular, and worked on the house like it was our own, trying to better ourselves even within that short period of time in applying this siding. We had some custom cuts, and some weird places to get at with the uneven ground and so many people walking around.
It was a great experience, I was glad to help, and we got great food for breakfast and lunch which more than covered our gas cost, donuts and pizza:)
We didn’t work physically that hard, but when we got back to the house around 2 we were both lethargic and ended up taking naps. I took a nap in front of the baseball game, she stayed upstairs with the dog.
I know I must have done some other small things around the house, but I can’t remember what. I think we watched part of The Following, early Chris Nolan work that was pretty decent, low budget feel.
Later on, Sarah went out to the store to get some supplies for tonight. We had a grill out for a Revive event at Bolden’s house. Sarah made her apple cinnamon cake which rocks, we picked up a couple of drinks and headed out to their place by Pastor off Brookville.
They have a gorgeous home, and have done some great decorating inside. The group tonight was much smaller, about 6-10 of the regulars weren’t able to come, they had prior obligations. It was gorgeous weather, so everyone sat out back on the their porch and they had toppings to make your own grilled pizzas, very awesome! We want to do those again. I taught John Durkin, Mr.Camping, how to do a banana boat (never heard of it) and we all just sat and talked. All of the current Revive board members were there, so they had an informal meeting, talking about direction of the group. John dominated most of the night from there on out, he was on a roll, turning steam in humor.
We got to meet the American Dingo puppy too, LeeLu (sp?) Very sweet dog, reminds me a little bit of Nokes but bigger and less furry. We’ll all have to hang out and have a dog date sometime.
Space Invaders Deluxe is gone.
Everything continued to work as planned, which lately, has been a real problem for me. I tried it at 4:00, and then again when the Richard Sain came by to get it.
A little bit bitter sweet since I have had it so long, and of course, one of my few working games, but feels good to have that touch more room in the garage working towards getting it cleared out for the winter.
Wizard Of Wor RAM Boards back
I got them earlier in the week, on Wednesday actually, but didn’t put them in until tonight. I had some time to kill while waiting for the buyer to arrive for the Space Invaders Deluxe, so I put them in the machine and tested it. I was so excited at the possibility of having that game fully working too and ready to sell.
Well, I got lines on the screen. I have no idea what that means, it is weird, fast horizontally moving lines. I wanted to check voltages before putting the boards in, and I got a pinout for the game, but wasn’t really sure because of the weird connections in the game if I should check them at the connection to the cage or at the connection to the one board.
I hope that wasn’t a mistake. I am going to email the guy that repaired them, he’ll probably know the problem, he is really knowledgeable. It almost looks like a sync issue, which is an easy enough fix if that were true. But it looks a little more serious than that.
Day Two of Time Off
Started my morning early again. Got up and as soon as we had some light I took Nokes on a walk.
Then from 8:30-12:30 I worked on Rotheblog. Mostly ironing out smaller details, but the main detail was deciding on how to make the sidebar work. I couldn’t find a plugin that let me customize what showed up there, as well as allowed me to have drop down lists. So, as much as it pains me, I made it manually. That let me customize it all I want, and although it isn’t dynamic, all of my posts still are. I don’t mind maintaining one portion of my site for a little while. Eventually I will come across a plugin or something that will do what I need.
I had some lunch, and then spent some time making some changes to DSW. Then just after 2, I headed down to the comic store. I haven’t been there in about 4 months, man it has been awhile. The fact that we don’t lift down there anymore doesn’t help. Said hi to Rob, picked up my books, but didn’t stay long. I came home and read for awhile, and thought, you know, I might be over buying comic books. My main book, Batman, hasn’t been good in about a year now, and that is all I buy anymore. I could really just save that 20-40 bucks a year for something else.
At about 4:30 I met Dave at the gym to lift. I was a very bad husband, I was supposed to bring clothes for Sarah, but I forgot them. She got all the way there and I realized it, and felt terrible. She said she was going to go shopping since she was already there, so at least it wasn’t a total loss.
I got back and we had some dinner. Sarah ran out the door to go to a candle party at a friend from Church and was gone until about 9 pm.
I was supposed to have a guy come over and buy the Space Invaders Deluxe around 7:30. He didn’t end up arriving until about 8:30. While I was waiting I took out the Jr. Pac-man marquee and started to scan what I could. I think my Canon scanner is officially dead, so I installed the printer / scanner combo Christine gave me and used that where possible. Only problem, the control panel on it is raised, so as long as you only scan items around 8.5 x 11, you should be fine. That, doesn’t work for me at all.
By the time I got the Space Invaders out, it was late, and it had been a long day already. Sarah and I talked and chilled a little bit before heading to bed. We knew tomorrow morning would be an early one.
Scrubbed off some more paint on the Food Fight
I was waiting for the Jr. Pac-man to arrive, so I took the time to rub off some more of the black paint from the Food Fight. I still don’t know what to do. Do I trash it? Do I try to get all the paint off and then sell it? Do I keep it at that point with all that work?
I can’t seem to sell it, so I will hang onto it for another 2-3 weekends, but soon after I may just throw it out. We’ll see how much paint stripping progress I make, and how much Food Fight artwork I reveal before that point.
