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Project PacMame with Pics. 56k beware
92greenyj:
Thought I should go ahead and get a project thread going, even though I'm still in the early stages of this project.
I have an original 1980 Pac Man cabinet with the Ms. Pacman daughter board and Marquee. the monitor gave up the ghost a few years ago and it hasn't been touched since. Recently my Mom decided she wanted to get it working again. Of course, after I did some research I came across MAME. being a child of the 80's I love the idea of having all my classics and favorites available. So the idea for this project was born.
Obviously I don't want to tarnish the cabinet if I decide we want to sell it down the road. So this is going to be a resto mod. The paint on the cabinet is a bit rough and faded and a poor touch up job was done in a few places with the wrong yellow. My idea is to remove the stock CP, Marquee, Monitor, and Bezel and save them someplace safe.
I have an Acer x193W monitor, a used HP Compaq tower that I loaded with XP, a 120 Gig Hard Drive and a 160 Gig Hard Drive. 2ghz processor. I am going to add a bit more memory as it only has a 256MB stick in it at the moment. I also am going to add a wireless card with an antenna on the cab so I can download stuff straight to it whenever I want.
New CP will attach like stock, house 2 8 way joys and a 4 way. 6 buttons per player on the 8 ways and 2 to 3 on the 4 way, 3 admin buttons, and will have a hidden drawer with keyboard and mouse underneath it. It will only stick out about 3"s further than stock. Paint plans will be to mirror the original CPO. Ipac2 will be used for the interface.
I will also be restoring the paint and artwork on the cabinet.
So far I have gutted the monitor, marquee, bezel, and CP. I also relocated the boards inside the cabinet to make room for the PC and such. I will post pictures of my progress on Tuesday.
Almost forgot. Planned front end currently is Mala. If i ever get this damn PC working right I am going to download a few different front ends and play around to see what I like while I work on the cabinet
severdhed:
i'm looking forward to seeing how you get all of those controls on a pacman cabinet and keep it looking good. good luck and take lots of pics
opt2not:
http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=87614.0
If you haven't read this thread yet, I recommend you you do.
Great restoration, and really inspiring.
Looking forward to your end-product.
92greenyj:
thanks guys. I'll see if i can get some pics up tomorow night. Havent done too much to the cab itself yet. I'm in the VERY tedious process of masking the lettering with 5/16" an 3/32" fine line masking tape. Its taking a LONG time to do all the little details.
92greenyj:
Sorry for the delay. Been banging my head against the wall trying to get the PC for this project working the way I want it too. I'm still having issues getting MAME and MESS running. Post about that in the software forum.
Anyway, heres some pics. Unfortunately I didn't take any prior to gutting the cabinet and starting.
So heres the cab:
First thing I did was pull the CP, bezel, Bad Monitor, Marquee, and the coin door. The coin door is all masked up and is being sprayed. No pics of that at the moment. I also went ahead and put a fresh coat of black paint in the screen area and the speaker shelf behind the marquee.
Its a good thing I went and moved the boards to make room for the PC tower. My little supervisor was curious what I was spending so much time on
And the thing I have been working on for the last few days. Masking the graphics for a fresh coat of paint. I have black on hand so I am starting with that. I was doing a small section here and a small section there.
Herre you can see how bad the paint is, the left side I have already re-painted, the right is not
Some of my masking work. this has taken me a LOT of time. again i'm using a few different types and sizes of different masks for this. Blue vinyl 5/16" fineline for the rounded parts as it curves nice and easy. beige 5'16" fineline tape for the straight ends as its easy to see thru and runs straight lines nicely. beige 3/32" fine line tape for the really small details. and of course the standard blue and green masking tape in various sizes.
This is really tedious and time consuming. but my plan is to mask everything off in one shot and do all the black paint. then go thru and peel it and re-mask for the next colors. I had thought about taking some transfer paper and just covering the whole side and cutting with an exacto knife, but my hands just aren't steady enough. The rest of the pics can be found here:
http://s30.photobucket.com/albums/c313/92greenyj/PacMAME%20Project/
And I will be updating this thread as I move forward with this project. It will take a while to complete though. I welcome and appreciate any and all thoughts and comments.