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Ping of Pong (the recycled ping pong table cab) - Actually all the way done now.
AurorasDady:
bravo,
the cab is looking great. I am not looking forward to the art part of my project, the whole getting things to print the right size may end up beyond me.
Woodshop Flunky:
This build looks great! :applaud:
BadMouth:
Alright, back at it......(been side-tracked by lawn maintenance and non-arcade related projects)
Couldn't get the latches I used on the CP to work right and didn't think they'd stand up to a 6yo pulling on the CP, so I removed them and installed these L brackets I had laying around.
Hooked up the generic gamepad that I hacked for practice.
Unfortunately, the gamepad behaved oddly until you pressed the "mode" button. I understood that the mode button would switch between the analogue stick and d-pad, but figured I had enough buttons to not use either. For some reason though, it would register two of the buttons pressed until you switched it out of analogue mode. I messed with it for a while, but couldn't figure it out. I'm sure it has something to do with my hack job, but then why would they work fine in digital mode? Anyways, gave up and soldered wires for a mode button to be placed on top the cab. Really lame to have to press an extra button every time you fire up the cab, but oh well....need to move on.
I really needed to get the marquee done tonight. I had planned on a Galaga marquee, but there was really nothing else to tie the green and white into the cab, even though I used a galaga bezel. I'm not a big fan of the MAME or MULTI artwork, but I wanted it personalized for my nephew, so I went with the generic Defender style mame marquee. It was quick and easy to cover up MAME and drop his name in it's place. I can always swap it out if he doesn't like it and the cab comes back to me.
Printing the marquee was as big of a PITA as I expected. I installed my printer drivers on the xp computer in the cab (because anything newer than xp doesn't give you the option of banner paper). The software all worked fine and I could just print from paint. I cut down a piece of posterboard and fed it into the printer.
It got about a third of the way through, was looking awesome and then my printer stopped and said I had to clear a jam. :( I guess the posterboard was too stiff. Then I bought a sketch pad of regular paper that was 18" wide. Trimmed it down and fed it through. All seemed to be going well, but somehow the printer took two pieces of paper at a time and printed on the normal size one...well as much as would fit. Third time was the charm and it printed correctly. Not as nice as the posterboard would have looked, but acceptable. The paper got a little wavy from being soaked with ink. :-\
It looks pretty good without the light on. (now that I see the picture of it, I should have filled the blue parts with the same blue from the bezel...might do that)
Meh..with the light on.
I actually pulled all but one of the four bulbs in the light fixture I was using. It's still plenty bright enough.
Quick, simple layout in MALA:
The mess inside:
Not a bad little setup for a pile of junk:
Still need to cut out a back and install power and mode buttons. That should go pretty quick.
I'm having trouble with some of the games. Some of them just don't work. Something must have gone wrong in the rollback process.
Space Invaders worked, but the background was missing. I added the artwork files and now it doesn't work anymore.
Making sure everything works and the spinner is tweaked correctly for each game is going to take some time.
I'm going to finish up the back, then sit it in the corner until I feel like working on the rom maintenance stuff.
If anything is to be learned from this, it's that there really isn't such a thing as a quick or free cab build.
After all is said and done, I'm probably going to have 40 hours in this little pile of trash. I also ended up spending around $50 on paint and miscellaneous hardware. Most people aren't going to have scrap plexi, bezels, etc. laying around to use (or ping pong table trim that makes great marquee retainers).
Unless I get some crazy idea for upgrades (there is a gameport on the pc.....), this will be my last update for the ping pong build. :)
leapinlew:
--- Quote from: BadMouth on June 03, 2011, 01:14:38 am ---If anything is to be learned from this, it's that there really isn't such a thing as a quick or free cab build.
--- End quote ---
We try to tell n00bs this, but there are always some builders here who insist it can be done.
Very nice job. I've built a few cabs on the cheap before and the trick is knowing when you should bite the bullet, spend some time and save the time. The gamepad issue is a bummer, but it's easy enough to swap out if you ever get a free encoder.
Bender:
Great job! :cheers: :cheers:
Love the Idea and the Execution!
and really $50 for that cab is phenomenal
Take a break for a while then come back and fix up anything that still bothers you and you'll have the coolest gift ever!
It will really make someone happy
I mean $50 to blow someones mind when they're like "How may games on here, you mean I can Play Donkey Kong whenever I want!"