Got myself need for speed cabinet.
It has the CRT, Immersion touchsense board, steering wheel anf force feedback assembly, all buttons, switches, lights etc but no PC.
That's fine, I wouldn't dream of trying to get NFS running on it again.
The plan is to put a small PC in the back to run a rally game I'm working on in Unity.
This is a very early WIP. Like days into the project rather than weeks or months.
The first thing is to assess the suitability of the existing controls for a Unity game.The steering and force feedback system run from the immersion I./O board in the back of the cab. It has a USB port, a 24v in, a 24v out to the force feedback motor and jeaders labeled Xpos, Ypos, Zpos, Wpos.
There is other stuff but it's of no interest to me.
According to the manual for it the Xpos is where the potentiometer for the steering wheel goes.
The steering pot is 5k, so is are the pots for the throttle and brake pedals.
The brake pedal and throttle pedal are wired to some huge connector that plugged straight into the PC but I don't see a reason why I can't wire them to Ypos and Zpos.
The Immersion board just acts like one big analogue USB encoder (amongst doing other stuff)
The wiring for this was missing for the steering so I measured the pin pitch and 6 pin molex plugs were ordered alongside 3 pin plugs for the potentiometer.
The manual gives pinouts for the header on the I/O board so I wired up a small harness, plugged it in and one of the legs snapped off the ancient potentiometer on the back of the steering wheel.....
I have an old broken guitar amp with around 8 potentiometers in it so I removed one and measured across it. 8k.... original NFS one 5k... Does it matter?
I don't think it does. It's only dividing the 3.3v the I/O board is sending out so I installed that in place of the old broken one.
I downloaded and installed the drivers for the force feedback board, disconnected the 24v feed so the force feedback motor didn't kick in and joy.cpl found the wheel in windows and it moves through the full range of left to right.
I hooked up the 24v FF fed and the motor kicked up, it span one way then the next and kept spinning but the belt wasn't moving.
On closer inspection it's missing a grub screw to attach the belt rotor to the shaft.
I'll leave it disconnected for now and crack on with hooking up the rest of the controls.
The NFS cab is quite nice. 2 speakers at the front, one bass bin in the cab and 2 speakers in the seat.
I've popped a usb sound card in which supports surround sound and it drives the speakers as expected.
I'll add more pictures/progress as the project moves along.
It has the CRT, Immersion touchsense board, steering wheel anf force feedback assembly, all buttons, switches, lights etc but no PC.
That's fine, I wouldn't dream of trying to get NFS running on it again.
The plan is to put a small PC in the back to run a rally game I'm working on in Unity.
This is a very early WIP. Like days into the project rather than weeks or months.
The first thing is to assess the suitability of the existing controls for a Unity game.The steering and force feedback system run from the immersion I./O board in the back of the cab. It has a USB port, a 24v in, a 24v out to the force feedback motor and jeaders labeled Xpos, Ypos, Zpos, Wpos.
There is other stuff but it's of no interest to me.
According to the manual for it the Xpos is where the potentiometer for the steering wheel goes.
The steering pot is 5k, so is are the pots for the throttle and brake pedals.
The brake pedal and throttle pedal are wired to some huge connector that plugged straight into the PC but I don't see a reason why I can't wire them to Ypos and Zpos.
The Immersion board just acts like one big analogue USB encoder (amongst doing other stuff)
The wiring for this was missing for the steering so I measured the pin pitch and 6 pin molex plugs were ordered alongside 3 pin plugs for the potentiometer.
The manual gives pinouts for the header on the I/O board so I wired up a small harness, plugged it in and one of the legs snapped off the ancient potentiometer on the back of the steering wheel.....
I have an old broken guitar amp with around 8 potentiometers in it so I removed one and measured across it. 8k.... original NFS one 5k... Does it matter?
I don't think it does. It's only dividing the 3.3v the I/O board is sending out so I installed that in place of the old broken one.
I downloaded and installed the drivers for the force feedback board, disconnected the 24v feed so the force feedback motor didn't kick in and joy.cpl found the wheel in windows and it moves through the full range of left to right.
I hooked up the 24v FF fed and the motor kicked up, it span one way then the next and kept spinning but the belt wasn't moving.
On closer inspection it's missing a grub screw to attach the belt rotor to the shaft.
I'll leave it disconnected for now and crack on with hooking up the rest of the controls.
The NFS cab is quite nice. 2 speakers at the front, one bass bin in the cab and 2 speakers in the seat.
I've popped a usb sound card in which supports surround sound and it drives the speakers as expected.
I'll add more pictures/progress as the project moves along.