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| notbillcosby:
Hello party people! What follows is a semi stream of consciousness rambling through some ideas and potential problems I'm having with a cabinet design. Brain storm with me! I'm currently in the pre pre pre planning stages of a cabinet build. I have the room and requisite dorkery for a full sized machine, but do have plans to move in the next year or so, so I'm really trying to think of a good way to either build this in stages, make it break down nicely, or some combo of the two. My initial plan was to build a bartop, with plans to attach a pedestal in the future, making it a full size cabinet. All of the guts could live in the top half, which could somehow un clip or un screw and lift off, and then the pedestal could easily be broken down into 5 boards and some cinder blocks or whatever would be weighting it down. I see the potential for this to be a wobbly cabinet though, without the rigidity required for a good get-mad-and-pound-on-it arcade machine. The other issue I see is the overall size of this bartop. After having an XArcade for a few months, I have the desire to build my own panel with a slightly different button layout, and a dedicated 4-way stick in the middle so I don't have to find a clever way to take a restrictor plate on and off when I have the whole machine put together. However, my ideal control panel would be fairly wide at that point, making a bartop cabinet pretty huge. A few thoughts I had... I could just make the control panel stick out wider than the rest of the cabinet, but that ruins its chances for snuggling into a corner in my basement. NOT A HUGE DEAL! Just a thought. My other idea is making a quick release, quick-swappable control panel. The interface could live inside the cab, and I could use whatever connector (25 pin printer cable?) to let the control panel unplug and pull off. Why the hell would I do that? Well, I'd have one panel with 2 8-way sticks and 6 buttons each, and one panel with 2 4-way sticks and 3 buttons each, and maybe include a track ball or spinners on this one too. Start and Insert Coin buttons could be build into the cabinet to reduce the need to re-buy a bunch of buttons. This way is maybe more stupid than just making a wide panel, but it could be fun to have more tidy dedicated panels instead of one huge do-everything panel and would change the whole look and vibe of the machine upon switching them. Anyway. Has anyone else attempted a two-half standup cabinet? Ideas and thoughts? |
| notbillcosby:
I should also mention: I've seen the plans for the WeeCade. It's elegant and lovely and would probably be the grown-up thing for me to make, but damnit, i want a big machine too. I would probably think about starting with something like that as a starting point for the bartop, just make a wider control panel fit. I feel like an XArcade is bordering on too cramped as it is... so the WeeCade woudl really really be pushing it. The other thing is, I feel like a full size cabinet should be DEEPER than the WeeCade. If I made the Wee, then a full sized cabinet, the full size would need to sorta envelop the WeeCade isntead of letting it sit atop a pedestal to make it look like a legit arcade cabinet. It seems silly, I know, but all the new cabs I've seen that you can buy that are made to be slim and work with a flat panel TV look goofy to me. If I want to stand up and play video games on my TV, I can do that already. It doesn't feel like an arcade experience though! |
| Le Chuck:
There have been a few nintendo style cabs that have been chopped off just below the control panel. Other than that they are full sized. I imagine it would be fairly simple to build the top with a large square inset and when you build the base just make a box with the fitted square on the top to key into the upper. You could even wire a coin door and use a USB or 15 vga style connector to marry them up for power and data. Build a popeye, no body builds popeyes around here and it's my favorite cab. http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=120791.0 |
| notbillcosby:
That IS a cool looking cab... I need to look into the Nintendo cabs more, I'm not very familiar with them. After doing some more poking around this morning, I think maybe an Aussie Lowboy could be a cool option, and the top half of that would actually be remarkably close to a WeeCade. I have a rack mountable server that I plan on using for the brains (if I can get the damn fans to slow down!! I'm not too worried about this computer overheating on Mame...) and a 19" 4:3 flatpanel that might end up being too small... but I could pretty easily make that into a lowboy bartop I think. |
| PL1:
Sounds like a good plan, NBC. You might want to make a list of all the items you want to put on your removable panels then make a list of how many wires it will take. Ground - 1 P1 joy - 4 P1 buttons - 6 P2 joy - 4 P2 buttons - 6 ----------------- 11 wires Spinner - 4 Trackball - 7 ----------------- 11 wires -- or 1 or 2 USB if encoder(s) are on the panel Also consider enclosing the removable panels so the wiring isn't damaged in storage/handling. Shponglefan is doing something similar here. Scott |
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