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My first cab: Mame Bartop cab from laptop guts.
ulfur:
My friend recently gave me a fully functioning Dell C610 laptop that was about to get thrown out. Sure it's old and slow by todays standards but it had obviously been taken care of as it was in, more or less, mint condition. The first thing I thought was "Mame machine!"
So I started digging around and came across this forum. There are some fantastic designs on here and I even got ideas on what software to run.
Basically I got my software setup from Silas's post and danivempire was kind enough to share pictures of his cab with me I can use for reference when building mine.
Considering how much help I was getting I figured I should try and give something back in case it might be of use to someone else.
So here is where I'm at:
The laptop is a Dell C610 15" running a PIII processor and a measly 256MB ram.
This is obviously quite limited so I decided a stripped version of linux was the only way to go. I posted a short write-up of what I did here.
Once I had my software set up and I knew this would work from a hardware/software standpoint I set about tearing the poor laptop to shreds to see how I could mount the thing.
The attached images show what I ended up with. Essentially a bare LCD panel and the laptop guts (cpu, ram, mb, hdd, etc) in a package that fits neatly behind it. I powered it up and it still runs like a charm so I'm well pleased.
I left the mounting bracket on the LCD so at the moment I'm thinking I might screw the panel directly onto a sheet of plexi with a bezel spraypainted on the inside. Then using a custom bracket mounting the guts on to the plexi as well sitting right behind the LCD. This way I could cut channels into the sides of the cab using a router and slot the plexi with everything on it into those channels between the two sides.
I'm still in the planning phase of the cab build it self so any ideas, suggestions and critisisms are welcomed right now :D
javeryh:
Nice. How are you going to power it on and off? I've got a bunch of laptops that my office was just going to throw out and I've wanted to use them for a MAME machine but I'm not sure how you could wire the power button on the computer to a microswitch to turn everything on and off...
ulfur:
--- Quote from: javeryh on March 04, 2011, 09:20:35 am ---Nice. How are you going to power it on and off? I've got a bunch of laptops that my office was just going to throw out and I've wanted to use them for a MAME machine but I'm not sure how you could wire the power button on the computer to a microswitch to turn everything on and off...
--- End quote ---
Unfortunately that's one of the problems I haven't quite solved yet. The power button is soldered directly onto the motherboard assembly and it's a momentary switch which makes it a bit awkward.
That being said I haven't really taken a close look at it yet but I'm fairly certain I'll find a solution to it... probably involving a soldering iron.
I'll post my solution here as soon as I've figured it out.
danivempire:
at first I was thinking about a netbook or even a nettop computer for my cab, but this power button issue was a little too much :banghead:
it's not impossible, but not the easies way either
I can't wait to see what your going to do ^^
any idea about joysticks and buttons?
justinjstark:
--- Quote from: ulfur on March 04, 2011, 09:29:17 am ---The power button is soldered directly onto the motherboard assembly and it's a momentary switch which makes it a bit awkward.
That being said I haven't really taken a close look at it yet but I'm fairly certain I'll find a solution to it... probably involving a soldering iron.
I'll post my solution here as soon as I've figured it out.
--- End quote ---
Any pushbutton will work but you can also find momentary contact pushbuttons (Happ sells some). It shouldn't be anything more than soldering on a few wires and connecting them to the pushbutton, am I right?