Its alive!

Today I show the mains layout used in the cabinet. In the last blog news I talked about two switches to turn on and off the cabinet. The switch at the rear is a pre-exisiting one, whilst the one at the front is a hidden one only for those in the know! The idea being that the VecCab could be placed in a real amusement arcade and not be at risk from rogue persons who like to switch things off. Of course for the home user, knowing about that secret front switch (and hidden reset button)  is very handy. The following diagram shows the VecCab  mains electricity diagram.

I could have just used a junction box or terminal bock and wired the Vectrex and marquee light directly in. But I think its sacrilege to cut off plugs. Therefore instead I purchased a  four way adaptor from Clas Ohlson and mounted it inside the cabinet. It is easy then to plug in what you want. I did buy a small junction box, but this was used just to connect the other wires together and keep everything tidy.

I took the cord off the four way adaptor, soldered some terminal spades to the wires, added heat shrink and mounted to two of the terminals on the mains switch at the rear. This mains switch is recessed at the back and mounted on a metal plate, so I took care to earth the metal plate. The following image shows the metal plate and mains switch detached from the cabinet:

Next I mounted the main switch and metal plate back in the recessed hole at the base of the rear of the cabinet. I took new wires of the-is rear mains switch into a junction box. The secret front mains switch is wired in series with the live signal and connected to the four way adaptor.

The following iamge shows what can be seen when the rear door of the cabinet is removed:

 

And an image of the back of the cabinet when the rear door is secured:

You can see that its still got the original stickers on, when the cabinet used to earn its living back in the 80's! The stickers are a bitt tatty but for now I'll leave them on, just to make the cabinet look more real.