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The Pinball Project, pt. 8
So... It's been a while, hasn't it. Fallen off the radar for a few months with no updates or anything. Yeah... odd how that works. Believe me, nothing extinguishes the fire in your belly like being fed serving after serving after serving after serving after serving after serving after serving of non-stop fail. This will be lightly condensed, but still long...
I last mentioned I had put the motherboard inside the cabinet, and things were still working. That bit of victorious speech was premature. Things were anything BUT working. I'd boot the system, play a game or two, then the VPin program would crash. Or more commonly, the computer would blue screen. Most times when it was just idling! The "error code" explanations weren't very helpful, either. Like the cause of the blue screen was part of the NTFS system, or memory errors, or driver errors, or graphic errors, or processor errors... literally all over the damn place! Like snowflakes, no two blue screens were the same!
Ran MemTest 86+ overnight. No issues. Checked memory seating. All good. Checked processor seating. Good, too. Chip cooling fan doing its job. Replaced the thermal compound on the processor. Checked the hard drive connection. Good... but the blue screens kept on coming.
I will admit at this point, I did not wipe the drive and reinstall Windows 10, and I'll tell you why. I removed the motherboard from the cabinet to do a lot of my testing, and the blue screens became less frequent. I put it back inside, and they came charging back with more frequency. Removed it again, and they were less frequent.
OK... So the motherboard obviously has claustrophobia or something. The biggest problem is it's mounted in the ONLY place inside that has room for it.
Looking for another solution, I read about these mini PCs that were tiny, and could run Windows 10 on two monitors. Thanks to a friend, I managed to secure one of these little marvels. It WAS small. It could fit inside the cabinet with lots of room to spare. So, I eagerly set it up, and got Windows 10 up, running, and fully updated. Then I installed the VPin program and tested out a game.
My heart sank when, while it was able to run the program, the controller delay was VERY noticeable, and made the game unplayable. We're talking about a quarter- to a half-second delay from hitting the flipper button to getting a reaction from the flipper. Totally unusable.
I only had one other usable motherboard in the house that I hadn't tried yet, and that was from my old computer before I built the one I'm using now to type this entry.
Got it set up, Win 10 installed, updated, all the drivers, got two monitors working, then installed the VPin program... and for WHATEVER reason, the playfield would appear in the backglass, and the backglass would be in the playfield in the upper right corner of the screen.
Went into Windows 10 Display properties and made sure the playfield was Monitor 1 and the backglass was Monitor 2 and in the right order. Reinstalled the backglass program and made sure the configuration and resolutions were correct. Tried to tweak every other setting I could think of that dealt with the displays. Same result.
Posted in a Vpin forum about this problem and was told to try a monitor swapping program. Got the suggested one and followed the instrux to set it up properly... and it just wouldn't work... unless I wanted both the backglass AND the playfield in the backglass monitor.
So, I walked away from it in frustration for most of November.
...
Fast-forward to a this past Monday. My mind wanders to that abysmal wreck of a VPin machine. Why is something like this giving me so much grief? What am I doing wrong? It seems to be fighting tooth and nail against me. Every avenue I take to mitigate a problem just comes up with a new, unexpected problem.
It then hits me; I'm trying to turn it into something it's really not. What I mean by that is, my vision of that pinball machine is to have the computer and everything inside the cabinet to make one, easy portable game system. And everything from the first few steps into making it told me it all wouldn't fit inside. From the original computer/video card issue onward, it's been me trying to bend reality to my will. A sort of a "ten pounds of sugar in a five-pound sack" thing.
So, let's say I give up that vision. What's currently inside the cabinet (audio amplifier and speakers, two monitors, USB controller board for the cabinet buttons) all seems to be working out fine. It's just all the cables would be sent out the back of the unit to plug into power or a computer. So, find a small computer case to house your computer and leave it at that. It won't be as elegant, but it'll still work and I can play pinball.
And with that, I'm starting again. I have the original motherboard and graphics card I wanted to use in the first place. Today, I wiped the drive to have a fresh, brand new install of Windows 10 using the latest ISO file from Microsoft. But if anything, this taught me something. I DIDN'T connect the backglass monitor during the install process, so Windows will see the playfield monitor as the ONLY monitor (i.e. Monitor 1). After Windows was up and running and updated, I connected the backglass monitor, reset Windows, and made sure the main monitor was STILL the playfield monitor. Downloaded the latest installer for Visual Pinball and got that properly set up and configured to use the backglass monitor. Installed a simple pinball table and backglass, and ran the program.
The backglass appeared in the backglass monitor, and the playfield... was in the playfield monitor, but in desktop mode. OK, this is something I can work with. A few tweaks in the settings, and the playfield was in the correct orientation in the appropriate monitor. Played a few rounds to test everything out, and it all worked properly.
SUCCESS! And trust me, after all the garbage I had been through on this over the past couple of months, it feels really good now.
So what's next? I'm really not out of the forest yet. The last piece of the puzzle is to get a case for the computer. Now, I really have to temper what I'm looking for with my expectations. If I can at all help it, I don't want to mail-order a case... mainly because with all the times I've been bitten with this project, I am REALLY shy about trusting a case description on NewEgg or Amazon with the motherboard I'm using. Because it was a specific Dell motherboard from a machine that was MADE for that motherboard, the components aren't really in the usual places. Meaning things like hard drive cages will interfere with the RAM sticks, and no backplane for the outputs at the back. I had a small mini tower case that I thought would work with it, but it didn't because of the hard/floppy drive cages. It's one of those things where I'll have to bring the motherboard with me to make sure it'll fit properly. Which means planning a trip to Boston to MicroCenter, the only real computer store in the area that isn't a Best Buy or other "big box" store.
But that's an issue for another time. This entry is already monstrous.
For now, I'll be slowly adding in tables, testing them, and hoping for the best. Then I'll install the front end (PinballY) and set that up. Hopefully by that time, I'll be confident enough to find an appropriate case for the computer and I'll call it as done as it could be (short of adding more pinball tables to play).
I thought this was supposed to be fun, not supremely aggravating. But, I'm better now.
I last mentioned I had put the motherboard inside the cabinet, and things were still working. That bit of victorious speech was premature. Things were anything BUT working. I'd boot the system, play a game or two, then the VPin program would crash. Or more commonly, the computer would blue screen. Most times when it was just idling! The "error code" explanations weren't very helpful, either. Like the cause of the blue screen was part of the NTFS system, or memory errors, or driver errors, or graphic errors, or processor errors... literally all over the damn place! Like snowflakes, no two blue screens were the same!
Ran MemTest 86+ overnight. No issues. Checked memory seating. All good. Checked processor seating. Good, too. Chip cooling fan doing its job. Replaced the thermal compound on the processor. Checked the hard drive connection. Good... but the blue screens kept on coming.
I will admit at this point, I did not wipe the drive and reinstall Windows 10, and I'll tell you why. I removed the motherboard from the cabinet to do a lot of my testing, and the blue screens became less frequent. I put it back inside, and they came charging back with more frequency. Removed it again, and they were less frequent.
OK... So the motherboard obviously has claustrophobia or something. The biggest problem is it's mounted in the ONLY place inside that has room for it.
Looking for another solution, I read about these mini PCs that were tiny, and could run Windows 10 on two monitors. Thanks to a friend, I managed to secure one of these little marvels. It WAS small. It could fit inside the cabinet with lots of room to spare. So, I eagerly set it up, and got Windows 10 up, running, and fully updated. Then I installed the VPin program and tested out a game.
My heart sank when, while it was able to run the program, the controller delay was VERY noticeable, and made the game unplayable. We're talking about a quarter- to a half-second delay from hitting the flipper button to getting a reaction from the flipper. Totally unusable.
I only had one other usable motherboard in the house that I hadn't tried yet, and that was from my old computer before I built the one I'm using now to type this entry.
Got it set up, Win 10 installed, updated, all the drivers, got two monitors working, then installed the VPin program... and for WHATEVER reason, the playfield would appear in the backglass, and the backglass would be in the playfield in the upper right corner of the screen.
Went into Windows 10 Display properties and made sure the playfield was Monitor 1 and the backglass was Monitor 2 and in the right order. Reinstalled the backglass program and made sure the configuration and resolutions were correct. Tried to tweak every other setting I could think of that dealt with the displays. Same result.
Posted in a Vpin forum about this problem and was told to try a monitor swapping program. Got the suggested one and followed the instrux to set it up properly... and it just wouldn't work... unless I wanted both the backglass AND the playfield in the backglass monitor.
So, I walked away from it in frustration for most of November.
...
Fast-forward to a this past Monday. My mind wanders to that abysmal wreck of a VPin machine. Why is something like this giving me so much grief? What am I doing wrong? It seems to be fighting tooth and nail against me. Every avenue I take to mitigate a problem just comes up with a new, unexpected problem.
It then hits me; I'm trying to turn it into something it's really not. What I mean by that is, my vision of that pinball machine is to have the computer and everything inside the cabinet to make one, easy portable game system. And everything from the first few steps into making it told me it all wouldn't fit inside. From the original computer/video card issue onward, it's been me trying to bend reality to my will. A sort of a "ten pounds of sugar in a five-pound sack" thing.
So, let's say I give up that vision. What's currently inside the cabinet (audio amplifier and speakers, two monitors, USB controller board for the cabinet buttons) all seems to be working out fine. It's just all the cables would be sent out the back of the unit to plug into power or a computer. So, find a small computer case to house your computer and leave it at that. It won't be as elegant, but it'll still work and I can play pinball.
And with that, I'm starting again. I have the original motherboard and graphics card I wanted to use in the first place. Today, I wiped the drive to have a fresh, brand new install of Windows 10 using the latest ISO file from Microsoft. But if anything, this taught me something. I DIDN'T connect the backglass monitor during the install process, so Windows will see the playfield monitor as the ONLY monitor (i.e. Monitor 1). After Windows was up and running and updated, I connected the backglass monitor, reset Windows, and made sure the main monitor was STILL the playfield monitor. Downloaded the latest installer for Visual Pinball and got that properly set up and configured to use the backglass monitor. Installed a simple pinball table and backglass, and ran the program.
The backglass appeared in the backglass monitor, and the playfield... was in the playfield monitor, but in desktop mode. OK, this is something I can work with. A few tweaks in the settings, and the playfield was in the correct orientation in the appropriate monitor. Played a few rounds to test everything out, and it all worked properly.
SUCCESS! And trust me, after all the garbage I had been through on this over the past couple of months, it feels really good now.
So what's next? I'm really not out of the forest yet. The last piece of the puzzle is to get a case for the computer. Now, I really have to temper what I'm looking for with my expectations. If I can at all help it, I don't want to mail-order a case... mainly because with all the times I've been bitten with this project, I am REALLY shy about trusting a case description on NewEgg or Amazon with the motherboard I'm using. Because it was a specific Dell motherboard from a machine that was MADE for that motherboard, the components aren't really in the usual places. Meaning things like hard drive cages will interfere with the RAM sticks, and no backplane for the outputs at the back. I had a small mini tower case that I thought would work with it, but it didn't because of the hard/floppy drive cages. It's one of those things where I'll have to bring the motherboard with me to make sure it'll fit properly. Which means planning a trip to Boston to MicroCenter, the only real computer store in the area that isn't a Best Buy or other "big box" store.
But that's an issue for another time. This entry is already monstrous.
For now, I'll be slowly adding in tables, testing them, and hoping for the best. Then I'll install the front end (PinballY) and set that up. Hopefully by that time, I'll be confident enough to find an appropriate case for the computer and I'll call it as done as it could be (short of adding more pinball tables to play).
I thought this was supposed to be fun, not supremely aggravating. But, I'm better now.