Trapezia UM400 Restoration - Unique Triple Screen Gaming / Racing / Flight Sim

[Craterloads]

** Hi guys, just posting my build log over here to share with you all and hopefully receive feedback and suggestions on direction. I'm still in phase 1 of the restoration and phase 2 will be new the hardware stage. So will (copy paste) post progress of what I have done so far below and then update fresh from that point on. **

I came of across a system on eBay a few weeks go that was up for sale as spares / repairs, which caught my eye. Never seen anything like it and there isn't / wasn't much information about it online but it seemed cool and thought it would make for an interesting project. Having done many builds over the years whether they be small, large, water cooled etc i'm kind of bored with doing the same stuff with updated components, so this kind of project was perfect to get me motivated.

Here are some links to the system, not sure what its initial use was for but perhaps some sort of editing workstation.

http://web.archive.org/web/20040814221851/http://www.umdigital.com/product/p01_tra_400s.htm
http://www.gtrade.or.kr/buyer/product/TRAPEZIA-UM400.do?productId=C2007-0000006058&categoryId=C0402
http://umdigital.en.ecplaza.net/trapezia-um-400-dcd-system--64174-81150.html

Some quick specs

• 3 x 17" (1280 x 1024 @ 60Hz) Screens = 3840 x 1024 Ultra Wide Screen (115cm Wide with a nice curve)
• 8.4" Touch Screen (Should be great with Windows 10)
• T Class audio amplifier (Tripath TA2024)
• 2 x 3" Full range speakers
• Dual ODD Drives
• Memory Card Stuff

Hardware wise is very dated, which will of coarse be upgraded.

• Intel P4 3.40GHz HT Prescott LGA 478
• AOpen AX4SPE Max LGA 478
• 1GB DDR 400Mhz
• 3 x NVidia MX 440 SE PCI Graphics Cards
• ATI Rage Ultra 128mb AGP Graphics Card
• 460W Seasonic PSU
• 2 x Pioneer DVD Drives

Ancient stuff but still cool, 4 GPU monster
Now as I mentioned when I got the system it was spares / repairs aka it wasn't working, been sat in a garage for a while it seems. So my first goal was to get it up and running to make sure there's something to work with if I take it any further. No point continuing if the screens are dead. So over the last few days I have been prodding, probing and diagnosing the system to figure out whats up with it (with the help of the guys over at badcaps, thank you)
Here are some images of the system as I got it





















As you can see not in a very good state, absolutely filthy, had at least a dozen or so creepy crawlies living in there and I hate spiders. Thank god I had the sense to spray the entire thing with some Raid bug killer which just left me only having to vacuum up their carcases rather than having to set the house on fire

First things first, I photograph everything as there are way too many connectors and cables for me to remember what goes where. Tagged all cables and connectors with numbered labels and I can begin to mess with it.

So after a bit of prodding I've narrowed it down to a dead PSU, great that's something that would have been replaced and saves a lot of trouble shooting if that is the only issue. Only issue with that is the PSU is custom and has loads of custom connectors powering everything. For example the all the monitors are powered by the PSU off the 12v rails, something else is powered off a 5v rail etc so isn't a simple swop over PSU and test. So did a bit of bodging of all the connectors and my spare PSU to get it all powered up and tada she lives, well kind of anyway! So I know it lives to some capacity it's time to strip the thing every bolt and screw and take it apart and give it all a thorough clean.











All non electric stuff took a bath and got a good scrubbing, wiped everything down with isopropyl including all circuitry, dusty / oxidizing connectors and cables. Starting to shape up now and is nice all clean looking presentable. So put it back to a partially assembled state to test it further.











One of the screens was displaying an intermittent problem, which could have been serious, but thankfully was just a dodgy ribbon cable. So removed it and cleaned both ends and its socket, put back in and secured with some hot glue as the original tape and turned to chalk. Working as good as ever now.
One of the internal cables used to control all 3 larger screens had a dodgy connector (possibly done by me) which was a pain in the butt as is a JST connector and really finicky to work with. So settled on modding a USB 3.0 header, cutting it down to 5 pins and soldering the original cables over to it giving it a nice strong connection. Worked a treat and now got full control of the monitors. I'm happy with it but might change it later on, not sure yet.

 

[Craterloads]

Touch screen digitizer glue had all tried up and was loose so took it apart and scraped off all the old glue and ordered some double sided tape used on mobile and tablet digitizers. Cleaned up both digitizer and screen with some isopropyl before putting on new double sided tape. Got it clamped up and will leave for 24 hours to cure.







That's it with the problems I hope. And since I had it all apart, and it is literally apart down to the last bolt right now I thought why not have all the bland mild steel parts powder coated. Now I am on a bit of a shoestring for this stage of the build or shall we say restoration but given I probably wont have the opportunity to have it apart like this again, I decided to get it done. So popped down to a local powder coaters yesterday and had a chat with the guy who quoted around £60 for 18 individual parts from large to small. Which isn't a lot of money especially considering I was thinking of spraying myself which would have come close or even possibly exceeded £60, taken forever with a lot of work involved. So yea £60 not too bad. Will get parts back on Wednesday.

That's where I am at now. So things to do at this stage of the build, what' next

1. Replace the blown cap when replacement arrives
2. Mod the old USB 2.0 / FireWire ports and replace with duals USB 3.0 ports. Might have to slightly mod the mould for the FireWire port as it is a different shape to USB
3. Mod all the power wiring. 6 x Cables that require 12v and 5v for the monitors and amplifier, into a single braided ATX style socket. Will use a 20pin ATX connector and remove 4 columns leaving it with 12 pins. That way when I get a new PSU for the next stage of the build I can use a few molex cables and mod into a female end of 20pin ATX connector.

 

[Craterloads]

Just a couple of teaser pics, made some good progress.





I wish I knew how hard wrapping was

 

[Craterloads]

So given the system at stock looked like a 90s VCR I wanted to somehow spruce it up a little bit. Now I'm not the greatest fan of vinyl wrapping, and have thought before it sometimes looks a bit tacky but given this build is race inspired I thought a carbon fibre vinyl wrap would be perfect.

I wanted a two tone effect with black for the monitor side, as you want the bezels as unobtrusive as possible, and white for the bottom half. So popped down to local wrapping place and had a look at some different coloured wraps in the flesh but the white looked a bit cheap / tacky in person, so decided against it. Loved the grey so decided on two tone black / grey. They didn't have any 3m Di-Noc stuff, which ive read is the best, but the guy there said they have used all branded wraps and they felt that Averys wraps were the best, easier to work with and much cheaper. I had a look at some samples side by side and I couldn't tell the difference, and if it's good enough for them it's good enough for me. So bought a meter x 1520mm of each. Top bloke there sorted me out with a Swann Mortan scalpel and blades, a tac cloth and one of ther sqeeges for free.

When I showed him what I was wrappin I could see it in his eyes, "you gonna **** this up" and he wasn't wrong lol

Now I have to say this, this was by far the hardest mod I have ever done. Tear your hair out hard. I wish I knew how hard it was going to be and I wouldn't have bothered. I thought the top half was going to be harder but the bottom half turned out to be virtually impossible. The first day went completely too waste, spent all day wrapping with a full piece, tore it off started again and ended up tearing that off. On the plus side that full wasted day I learnt how to work with the stuff a little better. So next day I decided to break the bottom half into three sections. Left, centre and right and tackled each separately which did the trick. Now its not perfect and have tried to hide as much error I could underneath where it cant be seen. The perfectionist in me just said nope





















Still extremely pleased with the outcome, well worth the £40 for a full transformation. Got a bit of cleaning around holes / ports to do, but more a less done with the wrapping.

The powder coating is also done and photos to follow in next post shortly.

 

[Craterloads]

Really impressed with the powder coaters, for £60 you cant complain. Excellent uniform finish.









Went back even further to the rear assembly, left the LCD housing though as didn't want to mess with the connector ribbons anymore than I had to. Though is covered by the housing.

 

[Craterloads]

and finally for today the USB ports

original board



underside



desoldered



my solution, this cute little USB 3.0 board



And I couldn't have cut it down to size any better myself, what are the chances it is literally a perfect fit.





freshly powder coated casing



and how it will fit



just need to cut the old section of the PCB off, and screw this in place

Just got an OS installed for first time and have top 3 screens working, going to see if I can get the touch screen setup in w7

 

[Wraith]

That looks awesome! Breathing new life into what was a fantastic machine in it's day, I'd be more than pleased to use such a set up today. Kudos to you dude great work.

 

[Craterloads]

Just trying to get touch screen working, have had the LCD part working from a few days ago but the touch screen digitizer is a separate part connected independently.

It's a real arse getting stuff functioning as everything is geared towards windows 2000 / XP, and with me installing W7 having to run all drivers in compatibility mode. Running ATI Rage and Nvidia MX drivers designed for XP in compatibility mode in W7, all mobo drivers in compatibilty mode etc its a bit of a chore.

That and the wiring is frankensteinish at the moment, have got the 4Pin CPU power spliced off 2 molex connectors, had to cut down a 24pin motherboard connector to fit the 20pin on the board and have 6 custom connectors forced into the PSU that weren't designed to go there. Be glad to see this old hardware out.

Anyhow regarding touch screen, had to take the bottom half apart again and then take apart the touch screen and trace back the ribbon cable from the digitizer to the PCB to find the controller, allowing me to find a driver for the thing.



Digitouch DTR-01S http://www.digitechsys.co.kr/product...view.php?idx=7

Resistive touch screen, serial port communication. Luckily there was a driver for it for Windows 7 and installation was simple enough and all up and running. Works really well, can launch programs from touchscreen with one press and open up in the screens above. Could be useful when gaming on the triple screen to launch programs, browse web etc.

Does need calibrating a little though as feels about 5mm out so trying to find a calibration tool. I know they have one, seen it yesterday, but cant seem to find it now.

After this still got quite a but of work to do before we can start talking new hardware

1. Need to sort out audio as no sound as of now. Might just be wiring to amplifier or drivers for motherboard. It looks like it goes from the motherboard output jack, the green one, it connects to the amplifier via a cable and from the amp the speakers are connected.
2. USB 3.0 stuff needs doing yet
3. Got to mod all the 6 individual power connectors into a single connector like a 20/24pin atx connector. As will cut down on the amount of cables.
4. Touch screen is connected via serial port, thinking of modding it in to a internal USB cable. I know it can work via USB as the datasheet on there website list a USB / Serial port version. So before I chop it up going to but a serial to USB adapter and see if it works like that, if it does then I know for sure will be fine once modded. Again just trying to cut down on the amount of cables.

 

[Craterloads]

Ok that's where I am up to now, and sorry for the info dump.

Any suggestion and comments welcome. I would be interested in hardware suggestions, directions and colour scheme.

Need to add lettering stickers upfront by the buttons to identify them, anyone suggest where I could source peel off lettering / colours? I was thinking red to break up the black / grey.

Also rear hardware housing section is all powder coated black, suggestions for colour scheme?

And finally thinking of plasti dipping the rear housing, not worth wrapping as would be too costly and too much work and probably wouldn't look too great either. A nice simple plasti dip, but not sure on colour. Was thinking red again but might be a bit much given the large surface area.

 

[Craterloads]

That looks awesome! Breathing new life into what was a fantastic machine in it's day, I'd be more than pleased to use such a set up today. Kudos to you dude great work.

Thank you means a lot. I love doing stuff like this, getting your hands dirty and getting stuck in there.

When it's all said and done and you have a look at the before and after picks, it is very rewarding.

 

[barnsley]

This is so different. can't wait to see how this progresses

Ok that's where I am up to now, and sorry for the info dump.

Any suggestion and comments welcome. I would be interested in hardware suggestions, directions and colour scheme.

Have you got a budget in mind?

 

[Craterloads]

This is so different. can't wait to see how this progresses

Have you got a budget in mind?

Don't want to go silly with it, single GPU solution. Water is a possibility.

£600 - £800 ideally. Might push to a £1000 if required.

Instead of going skylake I would rather save a few £££ and pick up a used haswell/devils canyon based system.

 

[Tolemac]

Awesome stuff you are doing here matey I can't wait to see more

 

[barnsley]

Don't want to go silly with it, single GPU solution. Water is a possibility.

£600 - £800 ideally. Might push to a £1000 if required.

Instead of going skylake I would rather save a few £££ and pick up a used haswell/devils canyon based system.

You can get a decent devils canyon gaming rig for around £700 based on an i5 with a gpu like an AMD 390/nVidia 970 which would be perfect.

 

[Craterloads]

You can get a decent devils canyon gaming rig for around £700 based on an i5 with a gpu like an AMD 390/nVidia 970 which would be perfect.

Yea possibly even a 980 as they have dropped quite a bit in price. If I can squeeze a i7 in there but might be tough on a £600-£800 budget.

Will probably lose some of that budget to aesthetics, lighting etc too

Still got lots of work to do before I get to that stage though so plenty of time to piece it all together.

 

[barnsley]

Yea possibly even a 980 as they have dropped quite a bit in price. If I can squeeze a i7 in there but might be tough on a £600-£800 budget.

Will probably lose some of that budget to aesthetics, lighting etc too

Still got lots of work to do before I get to that stage though so plenty of time to piece it all together.

If its for gaming the i7 would be a waste of cash IMO.

 

[Craterloads]

If its for gaming the i7 would be a waste of cash IMO.

Yea benefits would be negligible but its always nice to have bigger and better Given budget probably sensible to aim at an i5 as you suggested. 16GB RAM and a midrange board.

Although some benchmarks for some recent games have showed some benefits, and apparently with DX12 should get better (although were probably a few years off seeing benefits of dx12)