DIY Arcade Button mod walk through with photos for VCI 100
Hi.
I fitted arcade buttons to my VCI 100 over the weekend and thought I’d share the process with you in a photo guide ( see below ). I know how difficult a decision it is to do this yourself plus I couldn’t find much info on how to do this other than the video on DJTT but that was for people who want to go the machine shop route. So here’s how I did mine and hopefully this will give you the inspiration and courage to do it yourself.
DJTT kindly sent me the cut guide to print out, I couldn’t have done the mod without it.
Here’s how my new VCI SE Arcade looks and it works a treat, I’m really happy with it, it’s so much more responsive 
Firstly download the cut guide from here - http://www.ianphillips-mclaren.com/djtt/Arcade_MachineGuide_Register_point.jpg
It would be a good idea to watch the Arcade Button mod Video VCI-100 DIY Arcade Mod - DJ TechTools
- Cut out the template around the sides and then the holes on the paper template where the arcade buttons will go with a pair of nail scissors or similar, then cut out the guide hole which is above the arcade holes. The guide hole on my print out was a few mm high, I don’t know if that was my printer or the original file from DJTT’s that was out but as long as you get all four sides lines up with the VCI 100 you’ll be fine.
Cut round the sides and holes.
I put my scissors in the guide hole to keep the template in place and then taped it to my VCI 100.
I used a large screw to scratch around the template holes in order to mark where the button holes should be on the VCI 100.
The holes scratched onto the VCI 100 surface, as you can see there pretty rough at the moment but that’s ok, they’ll be filed later.
I then drilled out some of the blank space where the buttons will go to save me filing the whole area, this saved me quite a bit of time.
Once I drilled all the blank areas, I used a pair of wire cutters to cut out some of the metal, you don’t have to do this bit, I was trying to get rid of as much metal as possible. I then put some tape along the outside of my markings for a rough visual guide so that I never got to carried away with the filing and made the holes to big. I started to file the holes with a round file.
Once the holes were big enough to get a half round file in, I then used the half round to finish off the holes.
First hole finished, yeeh Haaar!!
It’s a good idea to try one of the buttons every now and then to make sure it fits and you haven’t gone to far with the file.
This is what it should look like with all the holes finished.
It’s time to put some of it back together now so watch the DJTT video again for this bit to refresh your memory.VCI-100 DIY Arcade Mod - DJ TechTools
Here’s what it looks like inside once you start to put it back together, see the video for cutting the wire off the buttons.
Here’s an extra bit that I’ve done, I’ve numbered the remaining wires, just in case I need them some day, I’m not sure what I’d use them for but I thought it was a good idea to do this, it might be that you want to use the remaining wires to fit led buttons or something so better safe than sorry.
I now get my earth / ground wires and my diodes ready for fitting.
Here’s the earth / ground wires that you need to make and fit to the earth / ground wire which is the first wire that you cut in the video, just get 4 pieces of wire, solder them together, then solder a diode to the end of each wire making sure that the diodes are pointing in the right direction.
The diodes This is the bit that everyone seems to get stuck at, I know that I did and there doesn’t seem to be any info around on this. Anyway here’s the info you need:
The diode has a silver ring around it, the silver ring goes nearest to the button.
Then you can either tape the diodes and the solder or use the shrink wrap stuff like I have here. Also - I cut the wire by about 1 cm off each side of the diode before I soldered them to the earth wire as I thought the wires on the diode were too long.
OK, it’s time to fit the buttons, this is where it starts to get exciting I think it was about 11.30 pm when I got to this point and I had already had 2 pints of strong lager for some dutch courage lol
Nearly There - All you have to do now is to solder each live wire to the buttons and then solder the earth / ground wires that you made earlier with the diodes to the other prong / spade on the button. I cut the wire by about 1 cm off each side of the diode as I thought the wires on the diode were too long. Put it all back together again and Wallah! all done.
All I have to do now is wait patiently on DJTT to bring out the new overlay
I hope this helps anyone else that wants to do this upgrade / mod.
all the best
Ian
