Project Slimtendo - scratch build

[vwalbridge]

I would round the top back corner like at the bottom.

The top-back corner was never rounded on the original. It was squared off.

[JDFan]

Looks nice and slick.
What I would do with the side artwork is print it in the original size and cut it so it looks like it's coming out of the wall.

I did see some pictures ( Link from John ) where the side artwork was resized and it didn't look good.

That is a good idea - I was thinking also maybe just adjust the perspective so it is narrower but still shows the entire sideart something like below (1st is original and 2nd with perspective adjusted) 

[opt2not]

I'm going to temper my opinions here since these days honesty isn't the best policy with some of our really sensitive members. 

But this build is an interesting one, and I'm looking forward to seeing how it looks after it's completed. Really curious how a slimmed down Ninty cab will look when all's said and done. Keep up the sweet progress!  Like others have said, you got some good woodworking skills there.

[artyfarty]

OK, made some progress on the painting.

First, used Taubmans 3-in-1 Sealer/Primer/Undercoat to put on 2 coats. Sanded with 240 grit between coats, and 320 grit after the second coat:



Then put on a coat of Taubman's water based enamel in black:


Sanded the black areas with 320 grit, and applied a second coat:




I've now routed out the ventilation hole on the rear panel:


And painted the rear panel:



For the painting, I've been using a 10cm roller with Micro-Fibre covers. I've read that you need to spray paint to get the best finish, but I've tried spray painting before, and don't have a talent for it.

The results I'm getting are good but not great. Dampening the roller with water before starting, loading up the roller with a lot of paint (just not quite enough that it drips), rolling on the surface when horizontal, and letting the weight of the roller do the work (rather than pressing down at all), would be the tips I've learned.

I had to thin the black with a little bit of water, as I was painting on a hot day, and I couldn't keep a wet edge. But I'll be painting the sides at night so I don't have this problem - there's a big difference in finish if the paint takes a couple of hours to settle as it dries, rather than drying in minutes.

[artyfarty]

Looks nice and slick.
What I would do with the side artwork is print it in the original size and cut it so it looks like it's coming out of the wall.

I did see some pictures ( Link from John ) where the side artwork was resized and it didn't look good.

That is a good idea - I was thinking also maybe just adjust the perspective so it is narrower but still shows the entire sideart something like below (1st is original and 2nd with perspective adjusted) 

I like the idea of this (although I'm not sold on the vs artwork). But I've only got about 30cm of depth, whereas the original must be close to 60cm. So it would mean pushing the perspective a lot, and may just look too strange when you're actually looking side-on.

[johnrt]

I must say: This cab is looking better and better for every update! I'm following this with great interest!

[dkssprs]

I must say: This cab is looking better and better for every update! I'm following this with great interest!

+1

[ChanceKJ]

This is awesome!    Nintendo cabs are pretty deep, short, but deep. So far so good! That biscuit work is awesome!

I'm gonna be following this build for sure.


Oh and 1+ with John on the Spousal Aproval point of view. I do what I want.

[ChanceKJ]

Build added the the Nintendo sticky. 

[artyfarty]

Started work on the control panels. Decided to do the 2 player panel first, because I know what I want from it, and I am going to reuse the parts from my previous build to make it. For the P1 panel, I haven't decided whether to have 2 or 3 buttons; and I want to use Ultimarc gold leaf buttons and a Magstik Plus - but the Magstiks are out of stock at the moment, so I can't place my order.

For the 2 player panel I have 2 x Ultra Stik 360 joysticks with the ball top handles, and 6 buttons per player - Electric Ice 2 concave buttons with micro-leaf style microswitches, plus P1 and P2 buttons, and one admin button for pause/exit (planning on having pause by default, and using the script that waits for the button to be pressed for 3 seconds to invoke exit). I haven't decided whether to use the RGB LED lighting in the buttons yet.

Decided to use the slagcoin "Clustered arcade layout", with only the left 6 buttons and the joysticks at 63 mm distance from the buttons:


I drew out the template on the panel, but didn't feel there was enough room to rest my hands, so moved everything 18mm higher up (if you can make it out, the circles are the original positions, the squares indicate the new positions):



Drilled the holes:



And I've primed and painted the underside, and primed the top:



I've set this up for the pause/exit button to be the button in the centre of the panel, and the P1 and P2 buttons to be in the same positions relative to the P1 and P2 joysticks. But now I look at it, I'm wondering whether to put the P1 and P2 buttons next to each other, and have the pause/admin button in the top left corner.

I started drilling the holes for the joystick blind mounting kits, and went all the way through the panel when the tape around my drill bit slipped. So I've filled the hole, and am waiting for it to dry...

[artyfarty]

I bought the blue paint. I went for Dulux A326 Liberty as the colour, a recommendation from the aussiearcade forums:



Got a couple of coats on and drying:



And stood the cab up for a look at progress:




It'll need another couple of coats. The instructions on the paint can say not to sand between coats, but I really think I need to.

[BadMouth]

Purty.......

On the buttons, if the two middle ones are centered, I'd definitely put the player buttons there and exit on the left.  That way P2 doesn't accidentally hit it.
If the pause/exit button is dead center, I'd stick to the original plan.

[johnrt]

This build rocks! You are SO proving me wrong. I was sceptical at first, now I'm not!

[artyfarty]

OK, a few updates.

Put another 3 coats of blue on the sides - looking good now. And temporarily put the joysticks and buttons in the panel to see how the overall effect is shaping up:



Drilled the holes for the feet and fitted them:



And put casters on:



Made the shelf for the monitor. I'm using a 40" LCD TV turned vertically, so I made a channel 2" wide and 1" deep along the length of a piece of 90mmx30mm wood. The edge of the monitor will sit in this, with the top edge of the monitor against the back top corner of the cabinet:




Unfortunately the router slipped a couple of time while I was doing this, but the front edge is neat, and the monitor will cover the slips.

Then I fitted the shelf to the cab, just behind the control panel, and screwed in the shelf with the monitor in position:




So much still to do....

[harveybirdman]

Nice Chance feet slipping into the pictures!

What are you thinking for CP artwork?

[Aceldamor]

This build is growing on me fo sho.

[Ond]

Nice work going on here!  Also a nice outcome, learning by starting with your first build to building what suits you.  Goodonya mate.  Keep up the good work. Cheers Ond.

[artyfarty]

OK, a progress report.

Took the painters tape off the front of the cabinet, and found that the paint had bled underneath:



So I taped it up again and touched up the paintwork.


Then I installed the t-moulding. Put a cloth around the end of a hammer so I didn't damage it - felt very Fix-it-Felix when I  was doing this! What a difference it makes to the look of a cabinet:




Wired up the buttons on the control panel into the Ultra Stik 360s:




Built the power panel - the IEC is pass through to a smart power board, which will turn on all devices when the PC power is turned on. The red button will be wired into the PC's power button, so I can start the PC from outside the cab.




Installed the speaker - a cheap 5" speaker from Jaycar electronics, using flyscreen as mesh in front of it. I'm using an old Logitech Z323 speaker system to power this, it connects into the back of the Logitech subwoofer. I've taken the satellite speakers apart to salvage the amp and volume control, but don't know whether I'm going to make the volume control accessible from outside the cabinet, or only inside - mostly because I can't think where to mount a volume control on the outside of the cabinet without it spoiling the lines of the cabinet.





Then I turned my attention to a problem I had to solve. The TV that I bought was a 40" Soniq LCD, refurbished stock from JB Hi-Fi online for $250. Unfortunately, it doesn't turn on automatically when power is applied. No options in the menus to do so, even after downloading and applying the firmware update from the Quatius ftp site.

I knew I couldn't live with having to use the remote control every time I wanted to use the cabinet, so I started looking for a way to emulate the remote control signal from the PC. I came across a product "USB Infrared Toy v2" at dangerousprototypes.com, which looked like it would do the job, and found I could order it from SeeedStudio for $22 delivered.



So I plugged it in to the USB port of my PC and installed the driver and software package. I used the record utility to generate a file of the remote control power button being pressed, and then used the playback utility to play back this file with the IR Toy pointed at the TV. Success - the TV would power on and off. I'll be able to script this to run when the PC starts up,  to power on the TV as part of the cabinet startup.

Happy I had a solution, I attached the IR Toy to the front of the TV:




Next problem, the coin acceptor. I bought the coin door and a Wei-Ya acceptor from Arcade Bits, before I had done any investigation in to how to hook it up. At the moment I don't have a separate keyboard encoder, only the interface on the Ultra Stik 360s, and it doesn't appear I can connect the acceptor to them. Looking at the coin mechanism, I could see that after a coin was validated, it would cause a plastic tab at the rear of the acceptor to rise when the coin dropped out of the acceptor. Using inspiration from this forum, I got out my hot glue gun, and stuck a microswitch in a place that it would get triggered by this action:



It turned out I glued it a bit too close - the coin would get accepted, trigger the switch, but not be able to drop out. But a couple of minutes with a file, and that was all fixed. So now I can connect one of the U360 inputs to this switch to enable the PC to register credits from coin insertion.

And I connected a coin counter as well:




Lastly, I got some foam board to use as bezel around the visible area of the LCD. I'm going to set up the display as 1080x1080, so I only want to be able to see a central square. I cut the board to size, and spray painted it flat black:





 The sewer drain cover won't be the same for a while:

[yotsuya]

You do a nice job with the woodworking, my friend. I would advise not putting any side art on at all. I think anything will look like a compromise. It actually looks fine the way it is.

[artyfarty]

Thanks all for the encouragement. I'm loving the process of learning how to do all this.

For artwork, I'm leaving any decision about what to do for marquee/panel/sideart until after everything is built. So I can see how the cabinet looks "blank", and how the bezel art being displayed per-game through MAME might look with other art. I think yotsuya may be right in saying to leave the sides blank - the Nintendo blue *is* great any way - but I do want some art for the marquee and control panels.

I would like any artwork that I do put on to be reminiscent of Nintendo art to keep to the cabinet style. I know you guys know that the cabinet isn't authentic, but most people that use it won't know that - and I'd like the overall look to make them feel like it could be.

Anyway, a challenge for later. Still lots to do.

[markc74]

That's some nice work auto turning the tv on. Most peeps (myself included ) would have settled with the remote!

Kudos if u could put together a separate guide on how you got that working for reference to future builders.

Love the cab! If only I didn't hate donkey Kong! (I seriously don't get the love for this game)

[vwalbridge]

That's some nice work auto turning the tv on. Most peeps (myself included ) would have settled with the remote!

Kudos if u could put together a separate guide on how you got that working for reference to future builders.

+1, I'll be stealing this neat little tip on a future build. Cool idea.

Love the cab! If only I didn't hate donkey Kong! (I seriously don't get the love for this game)

How dare you? You monster.

[EvilNuff]

Looks good so far, nicely done!

[artyfarty]

That's some nice work auto turning the tv on. Most peeps (myself included ) would have settled with the remote!

Kudos if u could put together a separate guide on how you got that working for reference to future builders.

+1, I'll be stealing this neat little tip on a future build. Cool idea.

The nice bit about this is that it automatically means that you don't see any of the PC startup and Windows startup screens, as the LCD doesn't get powered on until after Windows starts.

Unfortunately you still see the LCD startup splash screen, and I can't see a way to stop this or change the image.

[DaOld Man]

Good work here my friend!
Brilliant idea on the coin door switches.

[artyfarty]

OK, an update on the marquee and bezel.

I bought some acrylic sheets from Bunnings, one grey and one clear (Suntuf 900x600x3mm), and also a metre of aluminium gutter mould and a metre of aluminium curved mould. I used my router to cut the grey acrylic to the dimensions for my bezel, and the clear acrylic to the dimensions I wanted the marquee, and cut the aluminium to the width of my cabinet.

I've been considering for a while how I wanted to attach the bezel and marquee to the cabinet, and decided I liked the idea of using magnets.

So I got some metal from an old flourescent light housing, and routed out two strips the width of my cabinet, and attached them to the edge of the top and bottom of the marquee box (bottom only in photo):



Then I spray painted the aluminium black:



And cut up a magnetic sheet into strips and glued these to the back of the aluminium:



The glue didn't attach the magnetic strips very well, so I reglued them with liquid nails, which did a great job.

The magnets hold the aluminium stips tightly to the metal on the edges of the marquee box (bottom only):



Then I printed out some test marquee art, and put it all together:



The gutter mould sits over the top of the marquee and attaches to the top edge of the cabinet; the curved mould holds the bottom of the marquee in place, and also prevents the bezel from coming forward.

[BadMouth]

I like slimtendo as a project name, but not so much on the marquee.
You mentioned it was a test marquee.  Is the actual marquee something else?

[artyfarty]

Not the final art at all- I don't know what to do for that yet. This was just something to put behind the marquee glass for general effect, that was quick to design and print.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[yotsuya]

I like slimtendo as a project name, but not so much on the marquee.
You mentioned it was a test marquee.  Is the actual marquee something else?

I agree. I'd rather see you use a collage of Nintendo characters than Slimtendo, to be honest. And I **hate** character collages.

[artyfarty]

OK, some more updates.

Tried to tidy up the wiring inside the cabinet:



Fitted the control panel lockdown latches. Not very happy with these, they flip out horizontally in to the cabinet, and the right hand one gets too close to the player 2 buttons & wiring. It all works, but I have to be quite careful when putting the panel in place, and when taking it out. I may have to replace then, particularly if I can find something that stays more vertical when disengaging.



One of the wiring tasks I have left to do is to put some kind of quick connects on the wires that go from the control panel to the coin mech switch. I was wondering if you could use the latches to complete the circuit between wires going from one half of the latch to the coin mech switch, and the other half of the latch to the U360? Haven't seen anyone else try this...

Next was button lighting. I bought RGB Drive II lighting modules and an LED Wiz from groovygamegear so I could light up the buttons used by each game. I didn't think this through properly though, as the LED Wiz only has 32 outputs, and I need at least 36 for my 12 buttons. So I think my options are; buy a 2nd LED Wiz, replace the LED Wiz with a PAC LED 64, or wire some of the buttons without all 3 RGB connections. For now I've just wired 4 buttons per player (forgot to take photos of it finished):



Next I decided to try out some new marquee artwork. I'm going to call the cabinet Retro Echo - it echoes a previous time, is a smaller version of the original, and makes the sounds of yesteryear. And given it's a Nintendo based cab, I tried a donkey kong style to the marquee. I tried to do a mashup of the Double Donkey Kong style marquee (because I like the colours), with Donkey Kong and Mario images from the DK sideart (because I prefer the images of Mario in colour and DK holding Pauline).

I used the Jumpman font for the text, but had trouble with it. In Word, I used the text effects to put a double outline round the letters; but wherever there were two straight lines coming together in a point, the outline was corrupting. I ended up exporting this corrupted text into Paint, touching up the corrupted areas, then importing this text into Inkscape and using the trace function to convert it back into vector art. It ended up looking OK, but more work than I expected.



I quite like it, but the text isn't big enough and isn't centered. And now I've put it on the cabinet, I think I'll probably end up ditching Mario and DK - looks OK while I'm playing Donkey Kong, but I think I need a more generic marquee to go with all the other games. But still thinking about this.

Next step was to get my software up and running. Windows 10 installed, and latest Nvidia graphics drivers. I used the Nvidia utility to set a custom display mode that was rotated 90 degrees, and 1080x1080 resolution. I was concerned that there didn't seem to be a way to have this non-centered on the LCD, but luckily centred was in the perfect spot. I know I could have used retroarch to give more control over placement on the screen, but the great thing about having this done at the OS level, is that every app should use this resolution.

Then I installed the Ultimarc software for theU360s. I wasn't able to find the firmware on the Ultimarc site, so checked with Andy. Apparently newer U360s need different firmware from the old U360s, so good to check - he sent me the right ufw file.

I decided to use Attract Mode as my front end. I know a lot of people here like Mala, but it doesn't appear to have any active development any more; and I don't like Hyperspin for a cab. And Attract Mode has got plugins for U360s and LED Blinky, has a simple interface, and supports shaders - and I like that it has active development.

I put a set of MAME 0.161 files and ROMs on the cab, no CHDs (if I find a CHD game I really want, I'll copy it) and then cut the set down with MCM Plus to remove all preliminary drivers, mechanical, not working, mature, mahjong,  utilities, casino, print club, tabletop, and foreign language quiz games. I've seen the arguments about the pros and cons of keeping everything on the cab or not, but I know I don't want to play these, and I want everything to fit on my SSD. Total space for these ROMs is 13GB.

Installed Autohotkey, and a simple script to pause mame when pressing my admin button, or exit back to Attract Mode if pressed for more than 3 seconds. I want to do more in this script, but haven't investigated yet. It would be good to be able to control volume with admin+ joy up/down, and reset the game (F3) if I hit the admin button 3 times in quick succession.

Then I converted the MAMEUI "Golden Age" game list into Attract Mode format, and did the same for the "BYOAC Top 100" list. I thought those would be a good starting point for cut down lists, before I get a chance to hand craft a list of my own favourites.

And then I moved the cabinet from the garage into the house:




And despite needing to sort the artwork, and fix a couple of wiring issues, am a proud owner of my very own arcade cabinet.

[ChanceKJ]

.

[vwalbridge]

This cab needs some artwork. Like bad. Bezel art, CPO art, Side-Art...something. Heck, even a Coin decal would help.

I'd definitely ditch the virtual bezels for a real bezel too. Keep the colors from the marquee throughout the bezel. (Blue, white, red)

And +1 what Chance said about getting a reverse printed Marquee.

And if you really don't want to wait, you can get very reasonably priced translite prints too. However, that does not include shipping to Europe I'm sure.

[yotsuya]

I'd leave the sides as is. No side art.

[ChanceKJ]

.

[mgb]

this is a great looking cabinet