My first (Fisher Price!) Mame Bar Cab - Now nearing completion of construction!!

[Rick]

You're a funny man, Sully. I like you. That's why I'm going to kill you last.

[Cretster]

Glad it's not just me then.  

The more times I watch that film, the harder I laugh.  If Matrix was here, he'd laugh too!

I just received a dozen of these today too:
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/CHROME-EFFECT-ARCADE-BUTTON-BLUE-NEW-/390177106975?pt=UK_Video_Games_Coin_Operated_MJ&hash=item5ad85e2c1f#ht_1483wt_1138

6red and 6 blue.  Also ordered some red 9/16 t molding today too.
Not sure how I can cut the slot yet but am working on that.

Can't wait to get this thing fired up and configured.  It's come a long way since the phase 1 build just 6 weeks ago!

[Rick]

LOVE the Commando theme. It's just so versatile. It was really Arnie's first breakout funny movie. So over the top. Such a classic. You can keep your "get to da choppah!", but for me, it's the fight scene with the Green Beret that clinched me as a life-long fan.

[Cretster]

Good man.

Welcome back John.  So glad you could make it!

Bennett is the best villain the world has ever known.  I only wish they'd made a whole string of those films, but then better that they didn't since it would be impossible to beat that.  And they must have used up the world's supply of p1ssant soldier extras (although in reality I think it was about the same half dozen over and over and over!).

[EvilNuff]

Commando's a great cheesy movie.  If you're going to make it Commando theme'd I think you are required by law to include a bunch of one-liners somehow.

[Cretster]

You must be psychic!
That's exactly what I wanted to do.  The plan was to have a large bennett on the side,or possibly the main cast with LED eyes that could light up at the same time as an appropriate wav sample from the film would play.  The problem is I'm not sure how I could do that.  A mate says I can just write bat files to control the wavs, but not sure how I could co-ordinate that with controlling the LEDs.

Probably not happen but that was the general idea.
I also wanted to motorise the whole steering wheel transition too, but I think that would be a nightmare for a simpleton like me.  If I could do it though I'd have it play the transform sound from transformers of course.

[emphatic]

One of the best themes ever!  I love the father-daughter dynamic between Arnold and that chick from Charmed who played his daughter in Commando. I love the scenes in the start with them eating ice cream and petting forest animals.

[Cretster]

Cheers mate.

Gotta admit I wasn't expecting such a positive response to this theme actually - it pleases me much that you dudes have such good taste. 

I just hope that it doesn't end up looking like a polished turd once I've finished making it.  It's at the stage I really hate now - prettification.  Totally my weak point!

[Rick]

It's at the stage I really hate now - prettification.  Totally my weak point!

You're lucky! We must be genetic opposites - I've got a million over the top completion ideas and irons in the fire, but haven't cut a single piece of wood yet. I still have to make all of my paper dreams a reality. (Every night, I spend two hours or so with my 3D model - anxious to build!)

Yours is at that stage I hate, only because once its done, you can't do more. Of course, asd I understand, its onto the next cab!  (I have two more 'in the works' once mine is done.)

Congrats - yours looks awesome.

[Cretster]

I soooo wish I had the patience to do all that as I would have much nicer results if I did!

Applied the first piece of vinyl to it tonight, around the screen.

Also, the LEDs have arrived for my fancy new buttons and the new Happ Competition joystick has turned up too.


Having thoughts about building a better control panel already since I can't quite figure out how to make this one look how I want! 

[Cretster]

Covered the speaker panel last night so it's slowly beginning to look better now: 


I've also cut the slot for the t molding but it's a shocking job.  I'd bought a router attachment for the dremel to do this but routing end on into chipboard with a 3 mm bit and expecting nice neat results is apparently a 'bit' optimistic!

The t molding is here now so once the main vinyl bits are on the sides I can glue that in.

[Cretster]

Right!  This evening this project has moved to the next stage. It's now been migrated from its birth in the garage to the 'den' where it will take its rightful place.

I couldn't quite figure out where or not it needed any further sawing/drilling/sanding/filling but reached the conclusion that anything like that which may still need to be done 'should' be minor.  This is good as it means I can probably get away with doing such things as late night clandestine ops without the mrs knowing that I'm doing woodwork inside.  That's also good since I don't want to be cahoneless! :

So, having bolted on a beam at the base of it with some castors, I managed to manhandle the behemoth round the front of the house, in through the front door, and into the room where it's going.

After a bit of very minor fine surface filling on already filled screw heads I decided to have a bash at fitting the vinyl covering on one of the side panels.
Really wasn't looking forward to this as I was convinced that it
Would be full of bubbles
Would be badly aligned in terms of the 'grain'
Would get creased up
Would rip
Would look awful anyway due to surface imperfections

Fortunately none of these things happened and it actually went on really well and looked good afterwards.
Then I decided to try doing some of the T molding.  I'd read that a hot glue gun is the thing to use where the push fit alone is not enough to secure the molding in place so I dug mine out and set to work.
Have got one side very nearly finished before I ran out of glue sticks alas.  You can see where I've run out just before the bottom of the cabinet.

But even though the tmolding is not a perfect fit by any means, I'm still really pleased with how this is now beginning to look.
Finally it's starting to look a little like an arcade cab and not some random bits of wood bunged together.



No door on it at the moment and it only has one side panel covered but I'm getting my motivation back again now that it's starting to look better.

[BadMouth]

It's come a long way. 

Gotta finish her off so you can play!

(I say that, but I never leave my stuff alone long enough to play it.  sigh)

[Cretster]

Cheers mate.

Ok - not much more to look at tonight pic wise, but today I applied the vinyl to the other side of the cabinet so it looks fairly nice overall now from the sides at least!  

Did a couple of bits of trim here & there, but I'm ultimately stuck because I don't have any gluesticks so I can't get the rest of the Tmolding on yet.  Was going to get some but my mate turned up and the local hardware store was shut when he left.  Will score some at BQ on my way home tomorrow then.

But this evening I decided I HAD to see it running.  So I set about installing the PC.  Had to remove it from the baby cab first.  Luckily the motherboard/PSU/HDD nestle neatly beside each other on an internal shelf so that seems fine.  There's an awkward panel across the back though behind the mobo thanks to mr haphazard here just bunging the cabinet together any old how, without really thinking it all through or planning it. :whatever:

Anyway, I got it provisionally installed so I decided to fire it up and check it all worked.  Imagine then my utter dismay as I found the monitor did not power up at all.  Gutted!  Swapped power cables to no avail, and started wondering just how much sawdust had got inside and if something had gone bang without me realising etc.  Then I remembered it had a tiny rocker switch for main power as well as the power button on the front.  Doh!  Sorted anyway.

So, once it was fired up I plugged in the cables from the Arcade Controller 2 to the buttons on the control panel, and decided to fire up Mamewah.  Result!


No sound yet since it wasn't plugged into the hifi and the amp is not yet installed in it, nor speakers wired up, but it felt ace having it switched on and playable, with the (blank) marquee lit up etc.  Tons still to do, lots of trim work, wiring for the red cathode tubes and the steering wheel etc, plus all the speakers and the second monitor and so on.  But it works!

One thing that I decided today was that it would be handy to install a trackball in the control panel then it saves having to have a mouse installed.  But then I thought, why bother, since I can install a mouse touchpad instead.  Easier for using windows then.  Not sure if that can be used as a trackball in emulator games but we'll see.
Not sure about how to house a keyboard either but we'll see about that too.  

One thing I have to suss out straight away is how to get the control menus etc for Zsnes.  The first thing I wanted to do was try out SF2 Turbo but the controls were all funked up, and I couldn't find a way to bring up a controls menu.  Was pressing the normal menu button loads of times til I realised I wasn't in Mame any more I was in Zsnes!

This looks helpful for all that anyway.
http://slackware.sukkology.net/packages/zsnes.svn/zsnes.svn/docs/Windows/readme.htm#default_keys

It's coming together anyway and at least I can do setup tests now when I can't do cabinet/hardware or can't be bothered,

[Cretster]

Not much left now in terms of construction dudes.

The front door panel has been sanded to fit better on the edges and the vinyl added over it.  Replaced the handle to pull it open with a more simple one after a fella on my forum took the piss out of it! 

The LEDs in the fancy buttons have been wired up now as well, and I've cut and painted trim strips to go either side of the screen to give a nice join between the screen panel and the side panels.  3 coats of satin black paint which is an effort unheard of with me previously!!


I've housed the two switches for the cold cathodes in the control panel, and have replaced the tweeters with some new, front mounted ones for better sound and better looks.

Still need to cover the bottom panel around the pedals.  Was thinking about adding a layer of acrylic over the vinyl since feet will be moving a lot around the pedal area and it will inevitably get scuffed and knackered.  We'll see though.



So, I still have various finish things to do like the graphics to print for the marquee, and for the control panel, plus little touches here and there, but it's very close now to completion.

Last night I found a much better gfx card to put in (Radeon X1650 512DDR2 AGP) so I've done that.  Also got epsxe working now, although I don't know how to get the games to mount through the front end.

I've actually swapped from Mamewah now to Gamex after someone pointed me at it and I gave it a try.  It's really nice but I'm sort of surprised not to see it appear really on here.  Hope it's not a taboo product or something!

Now I can easily play Tekken anyway.

All construction criticism & feedback appreciated since this is my first (proper) effort!

[Cretster]

Did another addition to the project today.  I've been wondering how I could properly integrate a keyboard to the cabinet for ease of use with windows as & when required.  Long term use hopefully it won't be needed too much, but for now with ongoing setup hassle it's a must.

There's nowhere I can rest a keyboard on it, and I can't fit the favoured slide out drawer due to the steering wheel setup that I fitted.
I have a teeny bluetooth one but it's barely bigger than a phone keyboard and is a pain to use.  So what to do?

Well this solution is not the prettiest, and infuriatingly, I've found that it's slightly on a twist somehow, but hopefully I can resolve that.
But it works.  Basically it ia stored inside the cupboard section on a long pivot arm that swings it out below/past the stashed steering wheel, and upwards to the front of the control panel where it is ideally positioned for typing.  As I say the implementation is not the most beautiful in the world but that can be improved a bit if I can be bothered in future. 

Pleased though as it means no having to hold a keyboard in the air or balance it precariously etc.  When stashed, it is fully out of sight too.

Here you go:
Out of sight inside the cupboard - where is it?


Door opened to reveal the keyboard inside, lurking beneath the steering wheel:


It swings out past the wheel like so:


Then folds sort of like this:


Fully up now:


I used nyloc nuts on the pivot points so that I can torque them up just enough to make it all moveable, but stiff enough that it holds it in place even when typing.

Quite pleased even though it could look a bit nicer.

[Cretster]

Hi everyone
 
I've been fairly busy lately with a lot of changes to my cab (now christened the cheesy name of Commandotron900 ).
 
I've added a 3" Happ trackball and a set of 3 'mouse' buttons, pinball flipper buttons & pinball launch button.
Have got working interfaces for xbox360 wireless controller, various console pads, and a whole new relatively powerful PC that it's based on.
 
Originally the arcade was using a P4 3ghz machine, with some very very basic and old graphics card.  It worked ok, until I began using PCSX2, when it quickly became apparent
that it wasn't up to the job.
 
I then built a better machine running an E6600 core2duo processor, which helped, but even overclocked to an extent was not enough to play some PS2 games.
 
Tried to get round that by getting a faster E8400 cpu but couldn't really overclock it for some reason.
At that point I figured "It's silly having an arcade machine with steering wheel & pedals, and not having it able to play modern PC based driving games", so I scraped a few quid
together and got some used goodies: i5 2500K & board/ram, an Asus 6850 graphics card (first time in 15 years of PC use that I've bought a half decent one!), a sandisk 240gb
SSD, and a new PSU.
 
Well it flies along now as you might expect, but much to my surprise, it still struggles with the odd PS2 game here and there.
In particular, I want it to play GT4 nicely.
For the most part, it does do and keeps a decent frame rate going at about 60fps or very close to it from what I can see, but every few seconds it "stutters" (freezes for a
fraction of a second) which makes it unplayable really.
I've no idea where to start with what settings I should try changing in PCSX2, or the video plugins etc so I'll have to go and do some homework on how to use all that.
 
I've installed a few decent driving games now, but annoyingly there seems to be no way with some of them to avoid the use of a keyboard.  So with that in mind, I've had to
rebuild the way my keyboard works with the cabinet, in order that it can be folded away when not running PC games, but can be used at the same time as the wheel etc, and
hold itself in place while in use.
 
This is the solution I've come up with for now (please excuse how the machine looks in terms of finish aesthetics - it's my intention that once I have the cabinet and hardware
setup to work exactly how I want that I will then eventually take my time building a much more refined version of the cabinet and transfer the hardware, but have a full working
machine in the meantime):
 

 
You can see here (above) this is with the main front door panel folded down, and the keyboard folded back on itself against the inside face of the door.  This is how it will sit
when locked away, for playing MAME and console games.
 

 
This second pic is with the keyboard in situ for any PC based games, since the keyboard being readily accessible seems to be a necessary evil, even with the main driving
controls set up for the wheel/pedals etc.
 
 

 
 
I also decided the project needed a bit of 'reinforcement' in the audio stakes:
 

 
So I dug these out from my garage and dusted down/tested them, then installed to the cabinet.  Great improvement except for 2 issues:
1) Slight hum when in use
2) The Alpine amp runs from the main PSU, meaning it forgets its settings every time the machine is powered down.  Not sure how I can get round this.  Is there any way a
computer PSU can provide residual 12v supply to a device without being properly running?
 
I did wonder about using a very low power 12v power supply (not a PC one) to wire to the "Battery" terminal on the Sub amp in order to keep the amp's memory running 24/7,
although it will still get unplugged once in a while and forget its settings, which will be annoying.
 
I wonder if I can bridge an output from my main hifi amp and add a crossover to power the sub?  The main speakers are tiny so there should be enough spare power.
 
Cheers!
Jim
 

[Cretster]

So here we are overall at the moment, included the recently added trackball & mouse buttons, pinball buttons, front USB/headphone ports, front playstation controller sockets, reworked keyboard (kb and wheel fold inside):




Next is to get the marquee made properly, concentrate on software and games, then maybe think about improving it cosmetically.

Still need to figure out this subwoofer thing though.

[Cretster]

Oh, and I still need to find another cheap 7" vga LCD to go in the hole above the monitor where the old one was until it broke.