The BBox
   BBox Power     



When it comes to power, old Brad isn't the swiftest. But, I will tell you this. Thanks to this project I learned a lot about electricity and I only got zapped once ;-). I find it very interesting. Maybe someday I will go back to school and study it in more detail, but for now lets see what I did. Basically, I wanted just one electrical cord coming out of the cabinet so I didn't have to worry about a bunch of power cords sticking out. I also wanted a simple switch to turn off the lights when I wasn't using the cabinet. I also new that I wanted a continues power feed to the CPU. I thought long and hard about cutting the wire to the TV and putting it behind the switch for the lights, but I finally figured what was the point since the TV doesn't come on once power is applied to it anyway.

Here is a detailed description:

First things first. I learned a lot by reading Bob Roberts "I want to build a game". I used this information as the building block for my wiring. Below is the wiring schematic from Bob's site.



power The first thing that I did was take a 6' power cord and cut the end off that normally connects into the computer. I was left with 3 wires (black=hot, white=neutral, and green=ground). I planed on having two sides to my power system, the "always hot" side and the "switched" side (which I will get into much greater detail below). I connected each side directly to the power cable by twisting all three sets of wires together. I first wired the "always hot" first. By this I mean that as long as the cord was plugged in, I could get power. I figured I would need three "always hot" connections. One for the computer, the TV, and the speakers. Technically, I didn't need one for the speakers, but instead of rewiring the 9V converter, I figured it would be easier to just plug it in. I went to Lowe's and bought two AC junction boxes and wired them up. Basically the outlets are labeled, so you just run your ground, neutral and hot wires where they tell you. The first box in the run is chained to the second one (all three wires). This is pretty straight forward and was completed real quick.
power The second half of the power distribution system is the switched side. This side will allow me to turn off the non-vital components to the B-Box without dropping the computer hard. This is where Bob's diagram above comes in real handy. Basically, in this picture, you see that I have the wire coming into a line filter with the hot (black) wire running through a fuse. Some more of the bennies from the old Mechanized Attack arcade cabinet. On the back side of the line filter, the hot wire goes through the switch (which gets mounted later) and then into the power distribution block. The power distribution block is not a complicated thing, but I had a hell of a time finding one. I probably could have manufactured one. I ended up buying one from Bob Roberts at his parts site.
power I grounded the system (green wire) to a transformer. It is not being used right now, but I included it in case I decide to by an arcade monitor down the road. From the power distribution block, I ran 110V to the power converter and to the florescent lights (not shown, but I hope you get where I am going with this).
power Here is a picture of the whole thing before I mounted it into the cabinet. Notice the 1x2s which will act as a support for the mini shelf that will have the switch and the speaker controls on it.
power Next I put in the shelf. In the picture you see the power switch and the speaker control that I ripped out of some cheap speakers mounted on the shelf. The goal for the shelf was to have it so I could just reach behind the cabinet and adjust the speakers and flip the power.
power I then installed two triangles from the cabinet construction scrap wood pile for the power board brackets.
power Everything was connected and was waiting a trial run. I plugged it in viola, well not exactly!! I had power to everything but my lamps. The 12V lamps to be specific. Anyway, I busted out the multimeter to discover to my dismay that the power converter that converts the 110V AC to 12V and 5V DC was fried. Now what??
power I remembered reading about a power supply hack for this, but I couldn't remember where I saw it. There is some mention of it at arcade controls, but the description is weak. Anyway, I had an old AT computer case in the garage, so I figured I would hack it. The first thing I did was take it apart and pull out the power connectors on the back. I also ripped out a switch that was in the circuit as well since I didn't need another switch. You can tell by looking at the picture that I wired the AC directly into the power supply.
power You know these wires. They are the standard computer peripheral power chain off any power supply. It consists of 4 wires. I cut them off!
power So now I have 4 naked wires, but what was the voltage on them? I pulled out the multimeter to find that the 2 black wires were ground, the red wire was 5V and the yellow wire was 12V. What do you know, the same as the power converter that didn't work. So I took the yellow wire and one black wire connected them to my 12V lamps.
power And here it is all cleaned up and working 100%. Way Cool!!!!!!!!!!!!!!