Sudocade portal

The sudocade portal is a work in progress combined arcade machine and hackerspace to hackerspace video portal. Currently juul is working on this project.

Plan and purpose

Here are some of the reasons for building this project:

• Promote inter-hackerspace communication and collaboration
• Use multiplayer games as ice-breakers leading in to video chat
• Raise money for hackerspaces by charging money for playing proprietary games (open source are free)

Bill of materials

The following materials have been procured:

• One HP Pavillion dv4 laptop with a broken screen

Found by tunabananas in a dumpster while dumpster diving for food :)

• Power supply from
• Two sets of arcade buttons and joysticks

Donated by lilia

• One empty home-made arcade machine case

Via Craigslist free. Retrieved by factotum and juul.

• One 26 inch dell lcd monitor

Via Craigslist free. Retrieved by juul.

• One logiteh HD Pro C920 webcam

This was actually purchased since we wanted a high quality camera. Money donated by sudo room members notconfusing, matt and mk30.

The following materials are still needed:

• A SATA harddrive.

Status

The laptop needs a sata harddrive. Desktop harddrive is ok. Then we need to install the screen

Notes

HP laptop smart pin problems

We didn't have an official HP power supply so we had to open the laptop and solder another power supply directly into the laptop.

Unfortunately the HP laptops have a "smart pin" in the connector.

A resistor between the smart pin and ~19 volt line on the laptop tells the laptop how much power the supply is capable of supplying.

Internet sources indicate that a 430 k resistor on there should make it work. Other sources report that a 1k resistor is enough. One source measured the resistance on a 65 watt and 90 watt official supply. And found 285 k on the 65 watt supply and 360 k on the 90 watt supply.

I (Juul (talk)) took apart a HP Pavillion laptop dv4 and found five wires:

• Two black: Both ground
• One red: DC plus
• White: Smart pin
• Yellow power for LED (not needed)

I had a 330 k resistor lying around, and connecting it between the red and white wires allowed me to turn on the laptop. I don't yet know if it's causing the laptop to think that a 65 watt supply is connected. If so, it may prevent the CPU from operating at full speed.