Mame Bartop / Upright Arcade Build - Finished! (settingsons)

[settingsons]

I always dreamt of one-day making my own arcade cabinet ever since I played the pre-Mame Sparcade arcade emulator by Dave Spicer many moons ago (mid 90's).     It was always a long-term plan but never materialised.  About a year ago I built myself a full-size virtual pinball cabinet, so after that was completed I thought I should finally build myself a mame cabinet.

For anyone interested here is my Virtual Pinball thread over at vpForums.org
http://www.vpforums.org/index.php?showtopic=12721&st=0

Bartop / Upright Build
I liked the bartops that have been made but I also wanted an upright arcade machine to re-kindle my youth ().  Therefore I decided to build a self-contained bartop, and then build a simple base to stand it on to make it like an upright arcade cabinet (the bartop bolts to the base and can be easily removed).    The base is in fact a cupboard for my wife to use for her books/paperwork/etc.   so that is how I convinced her to let me put it in the living room .

I was very lucky to find a secondhand 19" Dell 4:3 LCD monitor with a stand which allows the screen to rotate.  Absolutely perfect and only 5 euros at a street market!  I managed to detach the rotating bracket from the monitor stand and mount it on a baton.

I built this last Oct/Nov and started with a cardboard prototype.  I used the Ultimarc 4-way/8-way switchable joysticks with ball-tops which I have to say are superb.  Pacman plays so well in 4-way mode.  

I use the Mala front-end with videos, and have a button to rotate the video output between Portrait and Landscape.  The screen is easily rotated manually by removing the plexi-glass, rotating the screen by hand, and replacing the plexi (as shown in the video).

I currently run Mame, Atari VCS Stella, and Dolphin.  I use a desktop PC standing at the side of the cabinet for now, but there is plenty of room in the bartop to build a dedicated PC (once funds allow).  I we vill eventually add two pinball buttons on the side although this isn't a priority as I have the Pincab.

I have uploaded a few pictures below (probably too many) and a youtube video.  Any questions please ask!

Cheers

[Louis Tully]

.

[Le Chuck]

Welcome, thanks for sharing.

Can you go over your button layout?  Never seen anything like that before.  Admin buttons along the top are coin1,2, player 1,2 exit and pause?

Anyplans to add a trackball in the trackball cutaway spot on your control panel overlay?

[settingsons]

Thanks for the comments!  

For the control panel layout.   To be honest for the games that I play (Pacman, Amidar, Shoot 'em ups', etc.) so I only need a joystick and two arcade buttons for gameplay.  The small service buttons at the top are for Coins, 1start, 2start, escape, etc.  From within Mala I used the service buttons to rotate the display, etc.

For the remaining buttons I asked my two sons who normally play with console controllers how they want the buttons laid out, and that is what they came up with (you will see four buttons laid out like a PS2 type controller).   They play the fighting games within mame and they say the layout works quite well, but we plan to re-configure them a bit per game.   I am sure the layouts that many of you have are better.

Within Mala we use the left joystick is used to scroll up and down the game list (joystick up/down to move one game in the list, and joystick left/right jumps a whole letter through the game list).  The right joystick left and right movement is used to switch from console to console, and up and down to switch fav lists.

I am actually on holiday atm away from home, so can't give precise layout details, but will post the details next week.

I would love a trackball for missile command, but no plans at the moment.  Maybe one day .

By the way I want to save thanks for all the advice and tips I have picked up from reading these forums.  

[Donkbaca]

Yeah, not a fan of the button layout, looks too confusing, but otherwise good job.

Constructive idea:  Take some black electrical tape araound the edges of the monitor, or get a sharpie and color out the silver admin buttons on the monitor.

[settingsons]

Video link fixed in first post - apologies.

That's a good idea to cover the monitor logo, etc. with black tape - thanks for the tip.