Fast and Dirty Kiosk Conversion

I'm putting this project up as it was a request @Anthony

Was originally just going to quickly convert and give back to owner so he has it before Christmas.

@kiwimex nicely organised to both purchase and transport a number of kiosks up from Newcastle. I immediately put my hand up for 2 as two mates of mine keep seeing mine and wanting one. Only one available for me as they were popular and cheap so I let them "fight" it out 😉

Not going to go into a lot of detail as it's all pretty basic. I forgot to take pictures before I tore it down so here's one from the original ad:

First thing is I took the phone handset off from the side and threw it away. The mounting bracket is still there as taking the fascia off to unscrew it is a pain the arse and I'm leaving that to my mate when he gets it.

Took the front cover off to see what was inside. I wasn't actually expecting a PC but one was in there. Though let's see if it works. There's a power board near the top and an IEC PC power socket so plugged it in and fired her up. Screen works and PC fires up.

In case this is the same as everyone else's the two plugs I pulled out are for:

1. A dialup modem which I pulled out and binned
2. The REALLY noisy case fan

You can see the IEC socket wired into the powerboard. There is a space behind the base near the foot where the external power lead can be run. Also note the power supply which was for the modem and also binned. FYI the power supply you can see zip tied is for the sounds amp so leave that in but move if you like.

Inside with PC gone.

That metal tray has a small keyboard attached and as you can see like the Mouse have PS2 connections despite having USB ports on the PC LOL

The PC below is a Lenovo SFF PC that's been installed into a custom case:

Unfortunately, the HDD in it which is a laptop one is dead but looking at the bios, it was running Windows XP and was new at least 12 years ago. 256mb ram and a Celeron CPU. Now I have spare drives I could use and for some software this would work no problem eg:

SKJukebox: http://wiki.aussiearcade.com.au/index.php?title=Jukebox_Software

But I want this to run E-Touch so needs something a little beefier. I have a spare Core 2 Duo sitting around and I'll put a 1TB drive in that my mate bought for it. Install Windows 7, E-Touch and fill with music 😉 The screen itself works fine, so I'll grab drivers when ready.

My only real concern in the speakers. Normally you'd want at least a 2:1 PC setup for this. The unit includes two speakers mounted just under the screen. You can see the grills from the front. Now I'd suggest these are really shitty but I couldn't test with the PC dead. I should hook up a laptop to see and will let you know. Interesting is what appears to be an amp with volume control on it though:

I'll report back with findings but even so you REALLY want a sub in this. I'm a big fan of Logitech's range of speakers. I've gotten years of service with 2 sets of X230's: https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16836121119 but you'd find it hard to retro fit these into the units and there's not a lot of room. You could also hook this up to an external amp/speakers or media unit no problem using an aux cable.

Eventually my mate is going to paint this unit. Personally I wouldn't as the silver and black looks fine imo. A real good clean and you're done. If I did anything, I'd be creating a speaker grille in the door and covering it with speaker fabric from Jaycar so that audio is unimpeded and it sounds nice.

Updates to follow

Cheers,

Brad

Okay I was stupid and built a spare PC for this upgrading to a 1TB HDD. Stupid me didn't measure first and the case doesn't fit inside these units :redface

Hunted around and found a spare I was saving for a Mame cab =(. Oh well, HDD swapped, Windows 7 installed, music transferred and now setting up a number of Jukebox Software options. My mate is hopeless with computers so trying to give him a few options.

1 - Nordbneat Jukebox - Now Free

2 - SKJukebox - Free

3 - E-Touch Jukebox - Commercial.

He's used to E-Touch due to mine always being used and he's borrowed it a number of times. I tell ya Nordbeat is fkn slow building it's music library :confused:

This will be finished this afternoon sometime. Also working on my EM restore.

Brad

I like SK, and am trying out etouch. I find etouch slow to add a new CD. Any tips to make the process quicker? When I add them they seem to file through all the CD covers after loading the CD you added and this takes about 5-10 mins per cd

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Aussie Arcade

I'm not sure what process you're using but I always add my music in bulk and do a full rebuild clearing all lists. This makes the rebuild really clean and accurate. The time it takes depends on your PC specs and the size of your music collection. A full re-build on my collection takes around 20-30 mins.

Brad

Well I'm running a Dell Optiplex 780 SFF dual core 3.0ghz with a 250GB HD...but all my music is on a portable HD plugged into the USB port maybe this is causing it to be slow....When i first added all the music.....8K plus of CD's it took 27hrs. I have now reduced the CD's to about 1600

 

Would I be better off getting another larger HD as the music collection is over 250GB.? The computer I have uses a Laptop Hard drive.

USB is definitely the bottleneck.

I just whacked a 1TB internal into this. Taken up 700GB of storage ;)

How much memory you got in your machine. CPU is good

Brad

Looks good Brad, just drop it around any time tomorrow after 9

Thanks Mate

250gb

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Aussie Arcade

No thats storage. Memory = Ram You'll want 2GB minimum imo

Brad

Good point silly me. It’s 4gb sorry

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Aussie Arcade

Well this machine is 4GB and has an AMD Athlon II P360 Dual Core. Runs really well.

Brad

So I should be able to add a 2nd hard drive into the pc and that will make things a lot quicker....Guess I’ll look inside the machine to see if there’s an other slot for the additional HD

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Aussie Arcade

I just replaced the original. Partitioned into 200GB and 800GB partitions. Installed Windows 7 64bit into 200GB partition with Music and Jukebox software into 800GB partition. This machine is a SFF so only room for one drive. If yours fits 2 or more go for it.

Cheers,

Brad

Mine will probably only fit one as well, As its SFF as well

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Aussie Arcade

Well replace/rebuild or use clonezilla to image it then write that image to the new drive

Brad

Gives you bugger all room for growth. I mean go ahead and use it as long as you're fine not having much room to add lots more

Brad

No I’ll have to ditch it, I can’t add my music now as it only has like 150gb for some reason. Not too techie on computers so I’ll hunt around and see what I can work out, Other than that i have found a 1tb Drive on EBay for like $80. Considering 2tb to allow for videos later. But was thinking I might need a better computer for videos

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Aussie Arcade

Just means the boot sector or partition table is wrong OR you only set it for 150GB at the start. If you go to Control Panel/Admin/Computer Management/Storage/Disk Management you'll probably see the balance of your drive as unformatted. You can add it there by extending or creatina new volume (dont do that)

Either way you can get a 1TB drive from http://www.msy.com.au for about $65.00

Brad