Mame Firebird

[paigeoliver]

I guess I should make a bit of an announcement about this one.

I originally bought this Space Firebird mini a couple years ago. It had the (rather common) no shot animations problem. No one seems to know how to fix that. I finally ended up selling the empty cabinet to a co-worker, and trading off the internals for something else.

MUCH later the co-worker gives me the cabinet back because he is moving, and never quite got around to making a Mame cabinet anyway.

Made a deal to trade the cabinet, but it never quite happened either.

Now just this week I finally started working on it.

The cabinet is probably a solid 8 or 9 as far as condition goes. A few dings and such, but it has white formica on it, so it has held up like a champ.

The current state of the project is as follows.

Done so far

14" PC monitor decased, and arcadified (mounted on a wooden mounting board). Installed, with all monitor controls easily accesable. I did a VERY solid mount job on this. This monitor isn't going anywhere.

Extra piece of smoked plexi added to hide the lack of the small black plastic monitor bezel.

Switches added behind the coin reject buttons, so that the reject buttons trigger the switches (this is so clean looking that I am going to HAVE to take a picture of it).

Still need to do.

Install Happs Universal joystick on control panel.

Put computer together (using arcade motherboard cage leftover from the Tournament Solitaire), and install.

Do minor back door surgery so that the back door can go on again (monitor sticks out just a smidge to far).

Pictures coming soon.

[paigeoliver]

Photo. The game has the wrong joystick in it in this picture.

[paigeoliver]

I have hit a slight snag. Both of the supercheap "profounddevices" encoders I bought are dead. Neither one works at all. What junk.

I have no idea why the guy even bothered to send me two dead encoders long after I had already left him negative feedback for blocking my email, and a month after he got kicked off ebay.

So I looked at my stack of keyboards in the closet and picked the heaviest one. I cracked it open, and BAM, bonus, it has a full size PCB with an individual switch for each key (no membrane). That is by far the easiest kind of keyboard to hack. With any luck I should be able to use the default Mame keys with no issues (maximum simultaneous button presses I would be looking at would be 4 since it is just a single 8-way with two buttons).

Best thing about hacking that type of keyboard is that afterwards you can put it back together and it will still be functional.

[zero-one]

paigeoliver,

I just in case you're starting to feel like you're just talking to yourself... I'm listening.

I've never seen a cabinet like that one. The control panel angle is so extreme I'm wondering how comfortable it will be to play?

What are the rough dimensions of the cabinet? It looks nice a compact.

I started a keyboard hack (for a simple bartop) and I picked a keyboard that had a small PCB with contacts like a PCI card. I sanded the black coating off and soldered wires to the contacts I needed. That's as far as got. I felt this approach was cleaner than using a whole keyboard. Granted the keybaord can never be reused but I have a too many of them lying around anyway.

Cheers.

[jcoleman]

Why is this not in the KLOV?  I couldn't even find anything resembling it.  Emulated at least as far back as .37b16, too.  Weird.

John

[paigeoliver]

The extreme control panel angle is fine for games with limited controls. Lots of cocktails came with control panels with even steeper angles.

So basically, fine for Invaders, Galaga, and stuff like that, not so hot for Marvel Vs. Capcom.

The cabinet is roughly 4'9" tall, 19" wide, and 20" deep. I can provide more exact measurements if anyone needs them.

Oh, and the game is in Klov allright.

http://www.klov.com/game_detail.php?letter=S&game_id=9655

Nintendo programmed the game, and it was then licensed by Sega, Tehkan, and I guess UPL (since Klov says UPL).

It is one of the more common "rare" games. They often tend to develop a boardset problem of missing shot animation that no one seems to know how to fix (since every component on the board still tests good when this happens).

The same basic mini design was used for Turbo and Monaco GP as well (I am trying to snag one of those matching minis to sit next to it).

[ErikRuud]

JColeman,

Look again!

http://www.klov.com/game_detail.php?letter=S&game_id=9655

There are so many video games called Space somethin or other that it is easy to miss one in the list.

[IceCold]

I have hit a slight snag. Both of the supercheap "profounddevices" encoders I bought are dead. Neither one works at all. What junk.

I find it interesting that everybody had so much trouble with that guy.  I bought 1, received it like 3 days later and it works great...

Anyways, I think that will end up being a very nice MAME cab.  I hope it goes well!  It's very cool that you have both dedicated and MAME cabinets.

[paigeoliver]

OK, I have the game almost fully assembled now. I mounted all the PC components on the back door, so it can be removed for easy service. I had to notch the back door for monitor clearance. I went ahead and covered over the notched part with more wood, as I was trying to make this game "location safe". Not that it will ever go on location or anything.

I added a PC power button on the back door too.

I used a keyboard hack. I used an older keyboard (from before they had the windows key), that had a full length PCB. I wired everything up to the default buttons and it works perfectly with no blocking. Or at least it can't block during gameplay, and that is what matters. The keyboard PCB with fully functional keys still attached is screwed to the inside of the cabinet.

I had two layers of smoked plexi to hide the lack of bezel, but it turned out too dark, so I had to pull one. But "luckily" the monitor in my Solitaire decided to blow up today, so it is going to donate it's bezel to the cause.

I had originally set up game launcher and had it working perfectly on my other computer. But now that I copied it over the games don't show up. I checked the configs and everything is correct. Maybe it is just because I didn't "install" it, and just copied the directory?

I also still need to install the speakers and wire up the marquee light.

[Spaced Invader]

Paige,

That cab is AWSOME!  

Ok, I love minis (building one now), but I've never seen anything remotly like that. I would love to replicate this little beastie for my gameroom. Is there anyway we could get some measurements. I for one would be extremely grateful...if you can find the time (I've seen your todo list).

[jcoleman]

Nintendo programmed the game, and it was then licensed by Sega, Tehkan, and I guess UPL (since Klov says UPL).

Ah ha!  I saw the Gremlin/Sega on the marquee and assumed they made it.  Lots of licensing going on in the early days, I guess.  Cool!

John

[paigeoliver]

Ok, I got a fully functioning frontend going now.

I am using Game Launcher in vertical mode. I already had it installed but it didn't work, I found a little configuration application on the gamelauncher website that made it work for me.

I still need to come up with a good way to shut down this cabinet. Can gamelauncher launch .exe or.bat files (to run a shutdown utility, or a shutdown.bat?).

What sucks with this (and many other vertical frontends), is having to generate vertical screenshots. It was painful enough doing it for the 100 games on the Artic Mini, and now this cab has like 500 games on it.

[ErikRuud]

Paige,

Yes GL can launch .bat and .exe files.

I use GL and everything on my cab is launched throug .bat files so that I can have different IPac configurations, and so I can have lists that intermingle games from different emulators.

You need to setup a seperate emulator configuration to do it.

There should be an example of how to do this in the glaunch/config folder.  Look at the misc.cfg and misc.map files for an example.

Let me know if you have any problems.