saloonstudios' Star Trek Bartop

[saloonstudios]

So 3 years ago I found this place and started building a full-size cab to house a 27" CRT that I had. I began cutting, assembled it into a standing position, looked at it for a few months...




Then I realized that'd be a big waste of space in my current house, so that project was cancelled, then my wife got pregnant....
Flash forward to present day and I got the itch again. I already had a SFIV TE Stick and my Wii was jailbroken to play old ROMs, so that seemed like a perfect fit. I'll just use what I've got...

Well no, that'd be boring. So I ordered some new PC parts to build a Bartop.








Cardboard box does the job fine for now. Configuring Mame and the other emulators has actually proven to be far more difficult than I imagined.
For buttons this pic is a little outdated as I've decided to go with clear rim/white plungers for LEDs.





Today I got bumped to the night shift, so I was finally able to go pick up a sheet of MDF and start cutting some wood-








I got most of the interior pieces cut as well, and I'm regretting the choice to use 3/4" MDF on the insides. It's very heavy. I'm also really unsure about how I'm going to fasten the tinted plexi over the monitor, and how I'm going to get the marquee attached.

You're also probably wondering how any of this has to do with Star Trek. I'll have to fill in more on that later-

[Dance Commander]

This is ripe for a slick LCARS frontend.

[sandheaver]

I don't know how you guys keep bartops from moving around when you play but I will admit this looks pretty good, so far.

[BobA]

They do not move because most of them are quite heavy.   In the 35 to 45 pound range when made out of MDF.

[rablack97]

I don't know how you guys keep bartops from moving around when you play but I will admit this looks pretty good, so far.

ummmmm rubber feet maybe??

[BobA]

I tried screw in rubber feet and they tend to pull out if the cab is pushed around the bartop alot.  I now use t molding on the bottom of the cab at the 2 sides and they now sit rock solid when played.  I think it works better because there is more surface area making contact.

[saloonstudios]

Yeah, between the 3/4" mdf and all the stuff that's going to be crammed into this frame, rubber feet are all this cab will need to stay put.
Also Re: the LCARS, you're on the right track with what I'm thinking-

[PL1]

I tried screw in rubber feet and they tend to pull out if the cab is pushed around the bartop alot.

You may want to consider using rubber feet that have a metal washer on the inside so they won't pull over the head of the screw.

Use a machine screw and washer/nut instead of a wood screw to attach it so it doesn't work it's way loose/strip out the MDF.


Scott

[sandheaver]

I don't know how you guys keep bartops from moving around when you play but I will admit this looks pretty good, so far.

ummmmm rubber feet maybe??

Well, yes, but then you have tipping, especially backwards.  They seem inherently unstable, to me.  I'd want to bolt it down...

[wp34]

I tried screw in rubber feet and they tend to pull out if the cab is pushed around the bartop alot.  I now use t molding on the bottom of the cab at the 2 sides and they now sit rock solid when played.  I think it works better because there is more surface area making contact.

T-molding seems like a great idea.

[saloonstudios]

No visual updates- But I did cut a proof-of-concept for a starfleet insignia cutout. I'll take pics when I get a better template made. I've been pretty busy at work and haven't had time to work on the cab much, that and I'm hoping to pick up a new table saw this weekend to re-cut some 1/2" sheets instead of the 3/4" ones to free up some interior space.
Good side news though, [deleted] (I'll just wait two weeks then mention it)

[saloonstudios]

Minor progress. Spent the weekend installing a new table saw. Then I re-cut all of my inside panels using 1/2" MDF to cut down on overall weight and to save whatever precious interior space that I could.



Looking back at my old idea for a stand up cab, I'm so glad that I let that idea die 3 years ago:




Hideous, right? I was happy with the LCARS, but man that's busy.
So I spent some work on the artwork for this minicab. While still preliminary, I think it's much classier and simple than the original standup idea:




I'm going to do a cutout on the sides, backed by white plexi on the inside. Here's a rough prototype to see if it was even worth it.



Then I did a template and a few test runs to get it the way I wanted.



Then with much apprehension, I went for it:




Also received some additional hardware. I went for the iPac VE for the free air mail. For anyone thinking about going for this option, just know that it really does take a full month to receive:




Next steps are cutting slots, rabbeting the inside of the insignia, and starting to put the thing together.

[sabreerbasAlpha]

How much do I like that CP Design.. This is coming on nicely. Nice job so far mate.

[AGarv]

You have a good eye for design - looking very sharp so far!

[saloonstudios]

Yeah that's the old cp idea for the original standing cab. I wanted to backlight individual sections of it so that certain lcars buttons would light depending on the situation. I realized I was really only building a full size cab just so I could have an lcars panel, so the idea was scrapped and I forgot about mame until a couple months ago.

Sorry, I realize it's confusing that I'm mixing old photos of the standing cab with current photos of the bartop-

[Typefighter01]

I re-read the thread a few times in case I missed it, but what the heck is LCARS, or what does it stand for?

[sandheaver]

I re-read the thread a few times in case I missed it, but what the heck is LCARS, or what does it stand for?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LCARS

Just double-click the word you want information on, and right-click.  Then click "Search Google" and you'll know.

[Louis Tully]

.

[Typefighter01]

For the next 2000 people who view the thread and know nothing about Star Trek:

"LCARS" stands for  "Library Computer Access/Retrieval System", an operating system in the Star Trek universe.

"LCARS" is frequently used to describe the style of the computer displays of the LCARS system, especially the screens from The Next Generation.

Wow, that was easy...my mistake

[saloonstudios]

So, I've done a little bit of work since my last post:

Routed speaker holes



120mm fan port



Hinge "mortises"?



Prepped some dowel pegs



So that I could do a quick temporary 3D build. Really helped me to see just how cramped the interior will be. Also showed me where my measurements were
off-





Made a hard drive rack, that I'm sure won't fit into the cab...



Took apart some Logitech donor PC speakers for installation into the cab...



Test fit-





Cut a slot for my tinted acrylic-



Glue prep-



Using my new brad nailer for the first time-



Discovered that spackling is crap-



Re-cut my cp since I previously didn't leave enough space in the corners of the joystick space for my nut inserts-





Coat of primer-



Coat of white paint and some test fitting of the polycarbonate cp overlay-



Also, what I wanted to mention a couple weeks ago but hesitated-
Anyone who saw or is going to see Into Darkness, make sure to stay until the end of the credit roll and find my name under "Additional Color". I put in a lot of hours on that movie!

[AGarv]

Saw it last Saturday - great movie!

What scenes did you work on?

[sabreerbasAlpha]

What are you putting in the Famous Star Trek shape you have cut either side? I see you have routed out an inlay on both. What's going in there mate. ?

[saloonstudios]

I'm going to put white polycarbonate on the inside with leds to light up the insignia. I have two LED Wiz's so I may as well have as many programmable lights as possible-
Re: STID- I worked on the whole movie. Spent more time on the 3D version though-

[saloonstudios]

Ok, here are some more updates. Keep in mind it's far from complete. I've learned a lot from the build, and there are many things that I'm disappointed with but it'll still turn out pretty well I think. Also at the end of this post I have a big 12v question that's holding up the build-





Shaping acrylic for control panel-




Adding LEDs for "viewscreen" effect







Garage is getting to be a pretty big mess-



I had to use heat shrink tubing on the backside of the Sanwa buttons for two reasons; One, the UILA Leds I got would not fit inside the buttons, so they needed to be attached underneath. And two, I didn't want light leaking from one button to neighboring buttons, so the tubing helps isolate the light.
In this image, I had gotten everything attached and wired only to find that I had fried one of the LEDs. I had to slice the sides of the tubing on one button so I could slide out the bad LED and slip in a new one.




Control panel fully wired (minus USB cables)



(thanks PL1)



So here's my predicament. My marquee and side-insignia LEDs are 12v, as is my audio amp, so I need to pull power from my PC power supply. I had it all wired like show in the above pic, but when I went to fire up the PC it just spun the fan once then did nothing. Must be a short circuit protect or something. So I checked continuity from where the 12v positive comes from the PC PSU and it's a complete circuit at the "GND" terminal on the LED Wiz. Is this correct? Seems wrong. In fact when I check continuity between any 12v positive  line to any negative terminal on the board I get at least 0.833 continuity, with 0 being a complete circuit.

[emphatic]

Beautifully done, man. 

[PL1]

How do I embed Youtube videos? I have a test animation with it all wired up-

Just copy and past the URL into your post -- no tags required.   

IIRC, it should be an "http" and not an "https" URL.

If it is an "https" URL, try changing it to "http" in another window before adding it to your post to be sure it will work.


Scott

[saloonstudios]

So I tracked down the issue. The DC plug that I was using to connect 12v power to the audio amp wasn't labelled in a way that was clear to me, so I had the polarity inverted. I should've double checked before connecting. I'm lucky I didn't blow any of the boards.

BUT, now I've noticed that the audio amp is picking up a lot of noise from the PC power supply. So much that its unbearable. I confirmed that the amp itself is clean when I get 12v from an outside source, so does anyone have any ideas on how I can clean up the audio? Instead of returning the negative 12v from the amp back to the PSU ground, can I just connect it to the 110v AC ground? Am I going to blow up my face if I do that? Worst case scenario I can try to cram a 12v AC/dc transformer in there just for this audio amp, but I'd really like to make the 12v from the PC PSU work-

[Drnick]

Unfortunately the issue you are experiencing will be almost impossible to resolve without using a different 12v.  You can get ground loop isolators which connect on the cable along with trying to get the cable from the pc to amp whilst keeping away from as many power lines as possible. But most likely the issue will persist.  I don't suppose your monitor has a 12v out by any chance.  I have a dell monitor that does so it resolved the issue for me.

[saloonstudios]

Ok, so to fix the noise issue I have added a 12v transformer in addition to the cpu power supply. It's a tight squeeze in there. There's still a ways to go on finishing the build, but now that it's playable I'm having all sorts of software configuration questions. To this point I've never really used MAME, so the way it works is not clear to me. I'm sure these questions have been asked by many people before, so please excuse me for asking them again. I'm currently using the pre-compiled 64-bit Mame 1.039:

1. I want to save high-scores for each game. Not necessarily within Mala, just within the game when it's loaded. I've noticed that when I re-load a game it seems like it's loading a save state from the point when I last exited the game. This seems to store the high scores exactly as I want. Is this normal and reliable? Is the "save-state" stored as a .cfg file?

2. Many games have varying degrees of sound level, so when switching between games some are very loud and some are very quiet. Is there any way to balance this out?

3. I had planned on lighting LEDs for each button as needed per game. I thought this would be as easy as pointing Mala to my controls.ini file and telling LED Blinky/Mala to "Light Game LEDs". This isn't working. Anyone have broad ideas for what I'm missing?

4. Re: the lit LEDs, is there a way to have Neo Geo games recognized separately within MAME/Mala so that I can give them a different LED config? I.E. I want them to have colored buttons instead of my default all-blue layout.

5. Can you re-map control schemes on a per-game basis? The Mortal Kombat button layout is unique to those cabinets and does not work for a standard button layout.

6. I have an Ipac VE. I only have 8 player buttons and a coin and start button. Is it possible to assign the coin button to be the ipac SHIFT button? It doesn't seem to allow it in the WinIpac software?

7. When scrolling down in Mala it generally clicks more than one game at a time, is that just a nuance of the joystick switch connecting more than once or is it a software issue?

Again, sorry as I'm sure these issues have all been addressed at some point in the past, but it seems like a lot of MAME configuration is not documented, or the documentation is split among many different sources making it hard to find some things.

Current instagram photo:

[AGarv]

Looking sharp man, can't wait to see that sideart applied! (BTW sorry I have no experience with MALA!)

[CoryBee]

 - Regarding MALAFE -

Do you have a gamepad encoder? I had this issue when I would use a gamepad and joytokey. I would setup the gamepad to use the keyboards "UP, DOWN, LEFT, RIGHT" which are already mapped in MALA under keyboard. That would cause this issue if you setup mala to use the gamepad as well.

Might not be your issue, but if it is....

[sabreerbasAlpha]

Bee U Ti Full....Love the white...Looks so sharp..

[mcseforsale]

Yeah, this is nice.  subscribed POW!

AJ

[mike boss]

Love the cut outs on the sides and the curved control panel (front).
Awesome work!

[saloonstudios]

I've sorted out all of the issues I had listed earlier except the first one. I cannot figure out how a game like NBA Hangtime is saving it's game data. I don't think it's a "save state" as the full system boot happens whenever I start the ROM, but once it's loaded it retains the same number of credits and high scores that were there when I last exited. I'm assuming this is game-specific behavior, possibly emulating the way the original cabinet operated? If that's the case then I can live with it. Ideally, I'd love for all games to operate this way somehow. I read that there's a switch when starting mame "-autosave" that saves the game state on exit? Does that mean it auto loads the last game state on load?
I am still trying to get Mame 0.139 to compile with the hiscore/nonag diff, but if/when I finally do get it compiled, is that going to affect the way NBA Hangtime stores it's game data?
(note, I refer to NBA Hangtime only because that's the game I've tested most right now, ideally I'd like everything to store any necessary user data)

[mcseforsale]

Isn't there a plugin for MAME that has save data for all games?  Then, when you want to get rid of HS data, you delete the file(s)?

AJ

[TheDude]

Wow man, you've done something unusual with shape of that bartop ! Very sleek !
 

suscribed