Honey, look... triplets!

[bobbyb13]

Since I am waiting on things for EVERY other project in the works at the moment I figured what the hell...

I've had this bartop profile in my head for too long now.
I really needed to use up some smaller pieces of plywood that make building something bigger impossible at the moment.
I needed to clear up space in the shop by using up other parts I had on hand.
I needed an excuse to build something for a horizontal something since Aaron had fpga'd some fun stuff that I want to play again on the new BitKit2!
I can't help myself.
The activity is far enough away from the house that the missus usually doesn't notice this ridiculous activity so I don't get in trouble.

First off is how small can I make something that fits a 19" tube.  I've been at it for a few years with the graph paper.



I figured this was realistically the smallest thing you could hope to cram a 19" tube and a JAMMA setup into and I wanted another cabinet with a really geometric vibe.

I have run out of space for full size uprights (until I win the lottery- which I don't/can't play) so I needed to rethink this train wreck of a hobby/obsession as it was anyway.

I HAD actually spent some time on it so that by the time I got around to dropping a monitor on it the whole thing actually appeared feasible and not simply a waste of a piece of plywood.



You can see where I am headed with this round of what the hell already.
I'm convinced the urban legend of the military guy in Hawaii with a dozen environmental DOTs is a fabrication of some bored maniac so I need to do something and I have all these parts now, so...

What is REALLY awful about the whole thing is the girlfriend of a buddy of mine is opening a second location for their rather eclectic vintage everything store and after hanging out at my house for a bit asked for a cabinet to put in there, ostensibly for sale (ha ha- all the girls who work there want something to do at work I think.)

I won't have anything but a legit CRT using thing in my universe and the ladies wanted real retro so it is a wonderful excuse to go down the "how small can I make this freakin thing anyway?!" path.

Giving 18" plus from screen apex to the back of the neckboard (and then considering the neckboard can be 1.5" above tube centerline)- and then leaving a little wiggle room after that, and then making it wide enough to accomodate the bracing to actually hold the tube securely (which I went with 21" inside panel width to not fight with it all) I arrived at this:



And holy crap it fits.
Even have enough room to get the neckboard off without having to remove the tube.
I also wanted enough room to sneak the whole chassis out through the front with the control panel out if need be.
It all works.

If you look you can see that I included a seperate access panel underneath the control panel so that you could pop that off to work on something without needing to pull the entire CP out.

There is also enough room above the screen for a Missile Command style marquee and speaker setup.
Plenty of airflow, room enough for a SMPS, isolation transformer, and monitor chassis on the bottom panel and a JAMMA board on one the interior walls and- Bob's your Uncle.

Of course it all gets worse than that.
If I'm making one for me, and one for the ladies, then why not... three?!



Conveniently, I caught a head cold on our flight back from the East Coast so I had the last two days to finally work on ripping CDs down to FLACs for the jukebox build (oh yes!) and to get going on this project.

I got some decent time on these today and yesterday, so-



Time for some spar varnish sanding sealer!

[firedance]

Think you have a problem and just don't know when to stop   

Love reading about your projects and the frogs/toads, keep up the great work 

[javeryh]

Madness.

The profile you came up with is super pleasing to the eye.  I think that bottom rear corner not being there really makes it look smaller than it is.  Very nice.   

[emphatic]

This looks amazing. 

[bobbyb13]

Thanks everybody.
Another silly one that is turning out to be kinda cool.
Like normal, proper graphical treatment will require years- maybe all the rest of them I have left.
 

It seemed a little quiet around here so I figured I should post something for the sake of entertaining the gallery if nothing else!
Hope everyone is enjoying their summer.

What is really disturbing though is that there have been even a few more over the last year that I refrained from posting.
 

[bobbyb13]

It's too quiet around here!!
And therfore I will be annoying.

I have been logging small bits of time here and there figuring out my BitKit2 board- with help from Aaron as usual.
That guy rocks.

Of course as a "proof of concept" I need to work on the one of these bartops that I will definitely keep, yeah?!
I have a control panel to play a few of the games Crafty already has built the HDL for and I am putting together another CP to play Wacko and DOT also.
This is going to be awesome.



The details are starting to sort themselves out anyway but I have some glass work to do to be satisfied.

There is still some gameplay weirdness but I can't figure out why as I am using a regular old K7000 so it shouldn't be gagging on displaying MCR games- but it is.
Sorry about the squishy pic.



There is definitely an odd one inch worth of crap on the left side so I need to figure out what I am doing wrong here.
This is of course a Franken-monitor from a consumer tube and real arcade chassis but it produces a really nice image except for when it is running an MCR game presently.
I'll figure it out.

At least at this point I am confident enough that I can keep going.
I just need to decide what board goes in which box at this point.



Pandora Box?
19 in 1?
Shift to a vertical screen with an old 4 in 1?

Glad to have choices-

Any thoughts anybody?

[Mike A]

Very nice work.

[bobbyb13]

Thanks Mike.
They're getting there.
Bezel and speaker/marquee panels are always a time suck so impede progress.

And I sorted out the display on the BitKit2.
Image widened to adjust out that extra bit and getting the screen flip setting correct made all the difference.

Now its pray for a DOT update from Crafty!

[thatpurplestuff]

Love the look of these, nice work!

[javeryh]

These are coming out great.  The CRT is the icing on the cake. What kind of artwork are we looking at here (if any - the black looks pretty nice)?

[bobbyb13]

Thank you all. 

The artwork call is a tough one for these- especially since I should only wind up with one of them in the end anyway?

The third one I'm going to try to shoehorn a 19" tube in vertically and put in an old 4in1 jamma board, 4 way stick, and 1 button.
I had a few small pieces of bug gut green T-molding laying around anyway so figured that would go nicely with some Galaga side art for a classic look for that one.

The other two horizontal ones I really can't make up my mind about.
They will probably just get some odd T-molding for a bit while I wait for something to occur to me or for someone to request something specific that I can have printed up and put on the second one.

I'm making them to put in my buddy's girlfriend's shop just for the vibe but you never know, somebody might want to buy one of them?
 

[Zebidee]

Love this, so glad you're squeezing CRTs in there 

[bobbyb13]

Well...
It seems like a great idea to keep a tube in it until you try to carry the damn thing.
 
Must be 80 lbs complete.
Anyway, on with the vertical orientation one!

Remembered that I had this 4in1 board (how old must this be?!) and this seemed like a great use for it.
Ms. Pac, Frogger, DK, and Galaga.

Got a few shielded isolation transformers because this is so shoehorned together that I discovered that an unshielded one was making the image do the hula.

Sideart on, T molding in and it starts to look like a reasonable facsimile:



Of course then there is one of the least fun parts of the whole building your own stuff- bezel/surround/whatever you want to hide the inside of the machine with.
I was NOT in the mood to get crazy with this one so I tried to think of what would be easy.
1/4" plywood seemed like a great idea.
And then you try to get a decent start on the parabolic curves of the stupid tube perimeter and figure out that this approach may be as ridiculous as all the other crap you have done so far.

I hope all the 19" tubes are this same stupid shape and I can just trace my pattern in case I get this dumb idea again.



After what seemed like a half hour of shaving and sanding I finally got something that fits well.
Biggest issue with this approach was having to go so damn slowly because once you take the wood off it is gone forever.
But the silly thing fits.



The next thing I hadn't thought at all about is how the hell do I hope to get speakers in here since I turned the tube vertically in a cabinet I designed for a horizontal 19".
Can't go above so must go beside.
Anchoring them was a head scratcher since I didn't want to screw with how nice and clean the smooth surround was going to wind up and then I thought "why not just epoxy some machine screws to the backside of the thing?"
Cut holes for the speakers, try to bullseye where the screws should go, and then get out the glue.



Paint the thing up, put a little screen over the holes so that some punk kid can't stick their finger through the cones, and then bolt them up.
Damn, they fit.

I'll spare everybody the process of glassing the control panel.
Love the finish that it produces though.
Controls wind up easy with just those four games.
Ambidextrous even.

And the first one is complete.



Now if I could just make up my mind about all the crap on the other two I could send these somewhere and clear out some space.

[Mike A]

Well isn't that pretty?

Nice work.

[pbj]

How am I supposed to play Street Fighter 2 on that?

[Mike A]

I suck at SF II.

One button would be fine for me.

[bobbyb13]

How am I supposed to play Street Fighter 2 on that?

That will most certainly be the first game asked for once this is somewhere other than my shop.

I suck at SF II.

One button would be fine for me.

And I suck at pretty muc every game you can think of.
Exceptionally bad at ones with more than 3 buttons.

Of course that didn't stop me from building the multi-Williams and torturing myself with my deficiencies.
 

[Zebidee]

I'll spare everybody the process of glassing the control panel.
Love the finish that it produces though.

The shiny control panel was the first thing I thought about, looking at the pics! But yeah, you've covered fibreglassing plenty of times elsewhere.

Next thing I thought about was how the sound comes out from the speakers past the front glass... but there isn't any front glass! And it is just fine like that too.

Very nice   

[bobbyb13]

With the agony I've put myself through in the past with bezels and trying to get a piece of plexiglass over the screen in every machine it was quite the revelation to figure out it was unnecessary.
It hadn't occurred to me that it would even be an option until my first Rush 2049 cabinet appeared in my life with nothing covering the screen.
It's not like anybody is really going to be able to do anything detrimental to a 2-in thick piece of glass, certainly not in someone's house.
As long as nobody throws a drink in it things should be just fine!

[SNAAKE]

I suck at SF II.

One button would be fine for me.

capcom vs snk 2 cammy totally playable with 1 button..I won many times with just 1 button 

[pbj]

I had a 19” tube I was trashing once.  Decided to test all those theories about fists and beer bottles breaking the glass.  We’ve all seen it in movies and the like.  My hammer was literally bouncing off the front without leaving a scratch.  Over and over.  Nothing.

Now if I was going full Elvis and shooting at the tube every time the Dallas Cowboys screwed up…. Who knows… but I wouldn’t risk it for fear of ricochet.

You’ll be fine without a bezel.

 

[bobbyb13]

Would've loved to have been a fly on the wall the first time some Hollywood crew was trying to smash one for a scene!
We deal with movie set stupidity out here regularly so I imagine it was the proverbial monkeys humping a football kinda thing.

Glad you weren't injured during that escapade.
Were you wearing riot gear?
---steaming pile of meadow muffin---, I'm actually afraid of the shower of glass possible from one going poof.

I've been in earshot of one when the neck got violently broken off and it made a quite loud and startling popping noise when it went.

Hopefully a similar fate awaits none of mine.
I would be in tears if the one now in the Cosmic Chasm cabinet blew.

[pbj]

Riot gear?    I have gone to the ER, uh, several times from eye injuries.     

[Zebidee]

I've been in earshot of one when the neck got violently broken off and it made a quite loud and startling popping noise when it went.

I've deliberately popped a few necks when disposing dead CRTs. Wore safety glasses and used a small mallet. There's a pop and sometimes a faint "woosh" to hear. Not that exciting, but I guess that was the point.

Now I wish I'd kept some of the neck assemblies to study closer, and also they look kinda cool, like some retro ray gun (which is, literally, what they are!).

Never bothered attacking the front glass of a CRT, tough as they are!

Reminds me of when I was a kid and bored one day, went down to the dump/rubbish tip with my bro, where we spent an hour or so trying to destroy a car windshield by throwing heavy stuff at it. Point being, the glass was surprisingly tough. Easy enough to crack and "craze", but actually penetrating it was much harder (due to reinforced film layer in middle). Nothing like what you see in the movies!