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My old MAME Cabinet Revision
jimfath:
--- Quote from: drventure on July 06, 2011, 10:58:43 pm ---Or better yet, drill a hole ALMOST all the way through from the inside, put a magnetic alarm switch in it, then you can just wave a magnet over the area to power up the cab. Look ma, no buttons!
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This sounds cool but not for me. I wonder if a degauss gun would work in setting it off or on? You could potentially set it off from across the room with some practice. Keep it in a holster. Maybe someone's playing on your arcade machine, then the computer suddenly shuts down. They turn around and see you standing their pretending to blow smoke out of your degaussing gun like a cowboy.
--- Quote from: kalars123 on July 07, 2011, 12:08:39 am ---For the LCD if "and only if" you have the money to spend on it consider a WG 9000 26" replacement LCD it has a beautiful picture and will allow you useing groovymame to run games at the correct refresh rate. However it is very much a luxury item and is not needed.
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I'm thinking about it. It's pretty $$$ but would be precisely what I'm looking for and would slave up to the smart power strip with ease. I might have to hold off on that for now. I don't know if Groovymame would work for me. I read that I'd need an ATI card and the PC I use is an Intel build.
--- Quote from: kalars123 on July 07, 2011, 12:08:39 am ---For the speaker's look into a good set of 2.1 speaks with a remote power/volume switch then you can either decase them or just mount them face down, and use a drill to drill speaker holes through the bottom of your marquee make sure you use a drawn layout first to mark your holes so that it looks good, don't want just a bunch of random holes drilled through.
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This is GREAT. I can easily drill out and/or dremmel any number of patterns. Is this a standard practice? I'd love to see some patterns. I'm not even sure what the search terms for looking this up would be. I'm thinking circular lighting of some sort.
--- Quote from: kalars123 on July 07, 2011, 12:08:39 am ---"Edit" a smart strip has a master outlet and 2-6 slave outlets, basically it cuts all power to the slave outlets when it see's that the master outlet as fallen below as certain electrical draw, and conversely it power's on the slave outlets when the draw on the master outlet increases. so when you wire your computer power switch to the top using a normal arcade button+micro-switch, when you turn on your computer a few seconds later everything else will power on as well, and when you shut down your computer a few seconds later everything else turn's off. It literally is the perfect solution for power management for a Mame cabinet
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For now I will be using the old CRT television. It looks like it will give me trouble. I've read a few threads about trying to slave up a regular TV and, while it does remember the channel it was on after powering off, it will not stay on by holding down the power button. Maybe I should put the TV in the Master Outlet and use the Remote until I get some $$$ for that LCD.
Thanks for the tips so far.
Another thing I'm contemplating doing is housing some classic controllers within the rig. (NES, Atari, Playstation, etc) I'd make that angled panel below the keyboard tray a swinging drawer where the controllers could live. Maybe they'd have retractable recoiled cords. I'm not sure about this yet. I don't know what having those devices hooked up all the time would do to the bus speed. It would require a USB hub and some serious cable management, which is what I do for a living.
Wait... are those controllers sacrileg on an arcade machine?
kalars123:
nothing is sacrilege on your arcade machine :laugh2: it's your's do what you want with it.
as for the wood speaker grills you could draw that pattern on a piece of paper or any pattern you would like then tape it under your marquee and start drilling, or cut the holes out on the paper and tape it up then mark the holes, then take the paper off and start drilling. I wouldn't exactly say it's common practice most people use a Jig saw and cut out the speaker opening then use a speaker grill to cover, but this method would work just as well in your particular case.
for groovy mame yes you need to have a ATI card, but it supports a very wide range of cards, and you would be able to use it in an intel system as long as you have the correct AGP/PCIE expansion slot, the only time ATI/Nvidia cards come into conflict is when you are wanting to Xfire/SLI them, then you need a mobo specific to that application.
you could use the tv as the master, however you would need to set your computer to power on after power loss, it's a setting in your bios, not all computer's have this option but a very large portion of them do.
jimfath:
That looks really cool. I hope to have time next week to start cutting into the wood. I need to get my drill back. It's on loan.
How hard is it to replace hardware in the CP? Are the Joystick, spinner, and trackball housings standard? THey look similar but I'm figuring they are not. I was contemplating replacing my existing buttons with LED's and maybe the joysticks and trackball. Below is a pic of what I found when I opened the control panel.
I can manage reconnecting the wires as is, I'd just like to avoid having to rewire the I-pac and the Optipac. I can't really follow all of it as it's laid out. The number scheme is wrong and the color scheme is ignored. Plus I don't have a lot of experience with it.
I'm hoping LED's have their own power that I could connect and manage separately. If I did get LED's I'd like to employ the LEDwiz or whatever app lets me mess around with the light scheme. Ideally lighting up during games when in play for certain games and flashing around when the machine is powered on and idle. Is that even done?
Gretl says "hi" by the way.
newmanfamilyvlogs:
There are some regular consumer LCD panels that will work happily with GroovyMame and run at correct refresh rates. I don't think anyone has hammered down a list yet though.
I've got a Dell 19" LCD that ALMOST does it-- I ran several games on it at native refresh rate and they were smooth with no tearing or judder (eg: the "character scroll" in MK1 was totally smooth), BUT it displayed an "unsupported resolution" warning in the middle of the screen the whole time. :banghead:
As for running intel graphic vs ATI; the cheapest ATI card you can find will work. I'm using a card that current retails for around $30-40. You could probably ebay or craigslist one cheaper.
jimfath:
Update: I ripped out the old wiring. I removed superfluous buttons. I received the first of many test LED buttons but there are some issues with getting them seated in the CP. I also decided on a LCD monitor that fit my needs and was within my price range. So the old TV is on it's way out. The Smart Strip is on it's way along with some new wiring and a new PC switch to power on the PC.
I abandoned plans to drill many speaker holes after reading about some sound quality issues and my wife wants me to make this into a juke box as well so the sound needed to be great. The search for good mountable speakers begins.
Buttons
I removed (11) buttons that I felt I would not need anymore.
(4) buttons (2 pair on each side) wired to the optipac serving as L and R mouse buttons. (utter overkill)
(3) buttons hard wired to a modified remote control that used to run the power and volume on the old 27" tv set. With an LCD on the way it was launched.
(4) 7th action buttons from 1-4 players. I will soon remove (2) more buttons from players 3 and 4 as well. I can't think of a reason to have (6) at all 4 players if they are not playing anything but arcade and older console games.
Does a 4-player cab really need all 4 players to have (6) buttons or just players1&2 with (6) and players3&4 with (4) buttons each? I'm not using these controls for anything beyond arcade and early console emulation(NES,Atari, SNES). I'm inclined to think it doesn't. For simple symmetry I can't justify the added expense of extra LED buttons. Not sure if how it will look.
I plan on filling the holes with pieces of wood and wood glue. Towards the end of the project I plan on getting a nice custom overlay to cover it.
There is a row of (10) buttons at the top that I never actually used. They were wired into button #8 on the ipac. I'm not sure how many extra buttons I'm going to need with Hyperspin running the machine. What's buttons will I need besides Esc?
In removing the buttons, I noticed that the holes might not be exactly 1⅛". It took a considerable amount of force to remove them and many of the threads appeared to be smashed.
I received a new test LED button from Paradise arcade. It's not wired but I wanted to see how it felt next to my Happs. I have a used Ultralux on order as well. I'm hoping to test some Electric ICe and Nova gems as, based on what I've seen, I am interested in them the most. They appear to have been sold out for a while now.
As you can see, the button doesn't quite fit into the slot. I am not going to smash these in there. I'm going to try redrilling these holes with a basic set of hole saw drill bits that are on order. I'm using them to make make speaker and power button holes in the cab. The set does have a 1⅛" bit. I'm hoping it's as simple as running that bit slowly and evenly through the existing holes edge. Worst case I get a new control top. I'd like to avoid that though. $$$
Here is the inside all cleaned out. There is a superficial gouge under player 1's buttons. It was there originally and never affected game play or how the buttons sat.
LCD monitor
After a lengthy search and this reading this thread http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=112940.0
I settled on a Hanns G that was sale on Newegg.com.
It's widescreen dimensions allow for some of the Bezel artwork to be displayed. After working on the computer on a 23" lcd I found it incredibly hard to work on it looking at a 27" crt television set.
1080P support, 1920x1200 panel, which is 16:10. It is also 27.5".