fast's geekhouse in progress

[fastbilly1]

Consolette:
Early last week my wife came home with an RCA Victor HFP Consolette given to her by her aunt. It is in pretty rough shape, it had been painted black instead of the rich mahogony it should have been, the movement plate for the record player was worn down to where it would make about a 1/3 of a rotation before stopping, the bakelite was scratched and pitted, one of the knobs was missing, and the tweeters were dust.



The amp is the same as in the RCA SHF-6, however one of the transformers had gotten wet...I figured what the hey, lets fire it up and see what happens. It started moving like it had not been used in fifty years. Creaks and groans all over the place, but a couple of shots of oil later it was running ok, not great. Then parts started falling off the record player. Ohwell, out it comes. I am trying to retrofit one of our current record players into the space, I think it will work, fitting the receiver is the trick.

Originally the Consolette ran two 4inch tweeters and a 6x9 woofer. The one tweeter I had was dust, but I refoamed the 6x9 with some random old speaker foam I had and it works decently well. Taking another 6inch woofer and a 4inch bulletproof tweeter I wired them up to a crossover I had handy and got decent sound out of it.



I am hoping to rewire the volume and power to buttons in the main part area so it works similar to how it did originally.

[fastbilly1]

DDR:
So while I play DDR like our resident master, Popo:


My wife actually use to be very good, I imagine like Popo is when he is not pole dancing with the bar. So we are planning to buy two Precision pads this fall when we are on vacation (the new hotness in the home DDR world, made in Oakridge TN, just like the Abomb), we are making due with our foam pads. But I know there is a difference. So I did what any person with more time and gumption than brains.


But ofcourse, the cut was too much for my ripfence so I had to freehand it. Meaning that the 40.5x44.75 squares were off by a little bit. But some skillsaw work and they are flush enough. We cut some test boards then realized that my wife was measuring the wrong sides. This is why you buy more 2x4s than you think you need.



Some quick miter saw work and it is taking shape:


I did notch the front bar for the box on the pad:


Cant ever have enough clamps:


Trial run:


Per my wife, it is as good as she could hope for outside of a real machine and ten years behind the curve.

Materials:
1 sheet of 1/2 inch birch plywood
4x 2x4s
1x 2x8
Glue - Titebond II
Cost of roughly $75 (I had the glue)

Used three 2x4s for building both. Now we have to paint them, find and attach handles to the front, and spray glue on some felt to the bottom. Eventually that 2x8 will get a bar attached to it. If we have significant flexing, I will cut a piece of 1/2 inch plywood to go over each side and cross over the front, but I doubt I will need to make that modification soon. For now it is taking 8 step songs on hard with no issue on uneven floor. The space for the pad is 33 1/4 in each direction, Precision Omega Pads should slot in with no issue. These weigh about 30 lbs each, so the with pad about 35, with Precisions, they will be just over 50. There will not be an issues with them sliding.

For now it will be hooked up to one of my arcade tables. But in the future I will either build the cab as a DDR/PPU machine or it will look like Synergy from Jem.

Note, the BB8 build was trashed, you will no longer see the greenball of newspaper in the pictures. That was mark 2, since the first one fell apart when bondo was applied.

[noiseredux]

impressive, dude.

[fastbilly1]

impressive, dude.

Thanks chief.

I will note, these were built to where you cannot play Doubles (almost 8inches inbetween pads). My wife never played Doubles so that was not important to us.

[mjmjr25]

That is a project I can endorse - it is exactly the type of thing I would do - love it.

Cant ever have enough clamps:

Aherm....aheerrrm. Copyright infringement?

[fastbilly1]

Cant ever have enough clamps:

Aherm....aheerrrm. Copyright infringement?

Honestly, I need more clamps. The pistol grip dewalts are really ruining the standard bar clamps for me. They are an unsung hero of the workshop and stupidly expensive.

For those interested if you have Homedepot color match Gliddens Kissable Pink and Cutter Blue into Behr flat, you get very close to the DDR arrow colors. I have one pad primed the raised bars will be colored, the inner area will be flat black, and the bottom will be felted.

I also removed the existing wood panel for the record player, and slotted in some cut 1/2 ply from the ddr pads. I can easily fit the record player and receiver now. Then I took spare 2x4 and made a platform for it. We need it to be close to the same height as our buffet, which is 3.9 inches. A 2x4 and some 1/4 ply is close enough, I think. The base will be painted white to blend in with the molding. The back left of the consolette is missing its foot, so this platform will allow me to shore it up

[fastbilly1]

So if you missed it in the finds section, last week my wife showed up with a 42u Compaq cabinet. It was pretty beatup and worn. So some time with a mallet, clamps, and some paint and this is how it stands now:

Since I am keeping the whole thing, all PCs that can be, will be rack mounted. I am building sides painted the same color as the wall so it can kinda disappear. The front however is cloud white, since it is a personal cloud...surprisingly, that was my wife's joke.

Raise beds from the last few years of building are still doing well:

ten types of peppers, six hills tomatoes, six hills cucumbers, a row of okra, a dozen other plants I cant think of, and that monster in the foreground is squash... I have never seen a squash plant grow that big and flower out ten squash at the same time. No joke, ten.

[Exhuminator]

I've tried to garden in a raised bed in my backyard for a few years now. Every year I get my hopes ups when stuff sprouts, but then it dies. Tried to grow exotic corn, various strawberries, and flowers. The flowers grew okay, the corn and strawberry years failed miserably. This year I've got some peppers sprouting and I think the bastards might actually make it.

[fastbilly1]

Get a soil test:

That will give you an idea of what you are lacking in your soil.

Strawberries failing where you are typically means your soil is too alkaline. That big bed in the background is pretty much nothing but strawberries, there is one flower in there whos name is escaping me.

And just keep trying eventually something will work. My wife is an apprentice horticulturist and last year we got zero peppers and only five good tomatoes. Her aunt is a master and she got only a couple dozen tomatoes. It was just a bad year for them where we are thanks to highly acidic rain early in the season.

Edit:
Purple Iris, thats right.

[samsonlonghair]

Groovy.

Just for funsies, look into rack-mountable audio hardware too. There are some neat receivers, amplifiers, reel-to-reel players, and audio processors that can be mounted. Also, there are neat old tape players with analog VUs by makers like TASCAM.