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First Cabinet Build - Sapro's MAME
sapro:
Three months ago I didn't know MAME cabinets existed. One of my coworkers casually mentioned he'd built one and I don't think I've gotten a decent night's sleep since. This idea has absolutely consumed me.
Since that time I have scoured the Internet (ending up on this forum 9 times out of every 10 searches!) and have crammed, planned, spent, and finally started construction.
First off, let me say that this is a very humble project compared to the many, many excellent exampled on this site :notworthy:. I'm making efforts to have this look good but my skill level is keeping me from anything fancy at this point.
System:
My old PC - a Dell Dimension E510 w/ 1GB RAM
21" CRT monitor (found on Craigslist for $20)
Software:
MAME
Daphne
Hyperspin Frontend
Considering an NES Emulator as well but this will not be included in the initial setup...
Controls:
Classic 2 Player / 6-button setup with a 3" trackball
Cabinet:
Slightly modified Lusid design
Budget:
Shhh... let's not talk about that with the wife around.
Not having read any complete build threads, I decided to give myself a completion date of May 14th - a party at our home at which time 50+/- people will be here. No pressure :)
Most of my photos thus far have been with my phone, so apologies in advance for the crappy quality.
Nephasth:
Welcome to the forum and the disease ;). Your anticipated completion date is pretty optimistic, but you might be able to pull it off if you keep the budget hidden from the wife ;D. Good luck with your build.
EDIT: Oh yea, let's see those :pics
sapro:
When I first started planning, I put together a sketch of my controls. "I need something for every possible game, right? And 4 player! Yeah, 4 player too!" ... then I read some more, including a number of wonderful posts on this forum and some humorous ones at CrapMAME :laugh2:
I simplified the idea into a very rough sketch:
The left yellow button is a "shift" key. shift+P1 = P1coin, shift+pause=back, etc. This reduced the number of buttons I needed by a few, and gave me flexibility in configurations going foward. Note: I don't want to deal with a keyboard so this is kind of important.
After seeing a few really cool designs I changed the Lusid CP design to have a sweeping curve in the front instead of the three angular cuts.
I then drew everything up in autocad
I took the CP layout to a reprographics place and had them print it out at 1:1 scale so I could use it as a template.
After reading Mountain's AMAZING build, I decided to borrow his admin panel idea for the power switch and volume knob. I found a nice momentary switch online ($35 shipped) then pulled open my PC to find .... proprietary Dell crap where the power switch would be wired. Google helped me not at all, except in locating numerous other people trying to track down a pinout or similar so they could mod their PCs. ... all to no avail.
I almost gave up on the idea then looked at the location of the momentary switch the PC comes with, which is surface mounted to a circuit board :angry: ... but looky what we have here
Hard to tell scale in this photo but those leads stick out plenty to solder to. I used a short piece of wire to jump the two leads and sure enough, the PC fires up!
sapro:
Thanks Nephasth. I wasn't clear about this earlier, but I am already 2 weeks into my build and have purchased most of the parts, although some have yet to arrive. Still aggressive on the schedule, but I feel like I'm making good progress.
Since the beginning my thought has been to paint the cabinet black and use Mortal Kombat style red t-molding. With that in mind, I enlisted the help of a friend to do my CPO design...
Simple but cool, that was what I was goign for. Note the top layer is my ACAD drawing, used for scale and positioning. Obviously that layer was turned off when I sent it to Gameongrafix...
When it came time to do the marquee, I was all out of creative ideas. Anxious to get the CPO ordered, I just bought a generic marquee, I'll do something more clever when the idea comes to me.
On to the building!
First we started by going over the Lusid design, my modifications, and our approach. It was time well spent, as you can see above my only real "plan" is the side of the cabinet itself. How it all fits together is something we're figuring out as we go.
First the cabinet side rough cuts
Then a test of the control panel front curve. I noted the radius on my ACAD drawing, we just had to measure that distance (49.5") from the inside of the router bit and screw down a long board to make the arc.
Test cut shows we're right where we're supposed to be (after a couple of adjustments)
Then we cut the actual top
I laid the full size template over the CP and punched a center point for each button and joystick. A few minutes on the drillpress had all the holes, nice and clean - although I learned afterward that the Happ Comp buttons wiggle a little bit in the 1 1/8" holes. Not terrible or anything, but I could have gotten away with a hand drill for the holes.
Personally, I thought the sticks felt short bottom mounted, so I routed 1/4" into the back to mount the joys (Happ Comp 8-way)
And the kids hold up the outcome. Note the trackball hasn't been dealt with at all at this point.
Lastly, we made a jig for the monitor area, jigsawed then cleaned up with the router and jig, and then clamped the two sides and trimmed a couple of spots to make them perfectly line up. This is the first moment the kids recognized what we were doing.
End of weekend 1...
TopJimmyCooks:
Good looking stuff and obviously you've planned. that will keep everything smooth and fast.