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| javeryh:
Dude your garage is bigger than the footprint of my house LOL. I'm jealous. The cabinet itself looks good but I'm not a fan of the CP you have designed for a couple of reasons: 1. There's too much going on. Spinner, trackball, flight stick, 4-way, too many action buttons, etc. It's going to confuse your friends/family and after a few months when you figure out you only play a handful of games you are going to have a lot of unused controls. 2. The flight stick blocks the screen. Not good. 3. The CP does not need to overhang the cabinet. There is plenty of room for a 2P setup on the cabinet you are using. I don't mean to be harsh but I feel like you are trying to build a panel that plays "everything" and that often doesn't work out like you think it will in your head. I'm speaking from experience - early on I built a three-sided cocktail cabinet that tried to accommodate both vertical games and horizontal fighters plus I had a spinner on one end and a trackball on thee other and it was a hot mess. Less than a year after getting it set up I gutted it. I really think a "standard" 2P CP with 6 buttons per player and a trackball in the middle will look and perform great - you will get to play 95% of games and if you use ServoStiks you can seamlessly switch between 4 and 8-way controls. If there are games you want a flight stick for or whatever else you can always add a USB port for controllers or maybe that goes on the next cabinet. Just some food for thought. |
| Vater:
Thanks javeryh...all good feedback, no worries. --- Quote from: javeryh on July 23, 2021, 12:08:40 pm ---1. There's too much going on. Spinner, trackball, flight stick, 4-way, too many action buttons, etc. It's going to confuse your friends/family and after a few months when you figure out you only play a handful of games you are going to have a lot of unused controls. --- End quote --- I know my panel is not for everyone, and this is the exact feedback I expected to get. --- Quote ---2. The flight stick blocks the screen. Not good. --- End quote --- Actually it doesn't at all. It blocks Akira's face on the bezel, which is not a concern for me. :) --- Quote ---3. The CP does not need to overhang the cabinet. There is plenty of room for a 2P setup on the cabinet you are using. --- End quote --- It does if I want all the controls I have, and I do. BUT...the final outcome looks a lot better. What you've seen so far is just the mockup. It'll still look too large for some (maybe most), and that's cool. It does look a bit large, but I've noticed it more so in photos than in person, which is kind of annoying when all I can share are photos on here. --- Quote ---I feel like you are trying to build a panel that plays "everything" and that often doesn't work out like you think it will in your head. --- End quote --- For the record, the build is complete--I'm just writing up the process and posting it in pieces as I have time. Again, I knew this panel was not going to be to everyone's liking and I expected this sort of feedback. Totally cool. I'll be honest though, it works really well for me--even better than I expected--for a few reasons: 1. You are correct: I wanted a cabinet that plays "everything".* As someone who loves the retro single player games like Galaga, Donkey Kong, Pac-Man, Q-bert, Popeye, etc., I wanted a ball-top joystick and the Ultrastik serves that well (and I can configure it for any game I want). I wanted the two-player setup for fighting games. And I wanted the Tron controls because Tron is cool. And of course a trackball for Centipede and the like. 2. I have zero plans to build another cabinet, which is the exact reason for #1 above: I wanted to get the most use out of this one cab. It took me 10 years for this thing to go from giant paperweight to usable arcade cabinet. I'm like a lot of guys who have big plans when they start a project: we never finish. ;D 3. I really, really like being centered when playing the single player games. It's not that the player 1 Happ (yellow) is too far to the left when playing fighting games, but one of the primary things I wanted from this cab was to wax nostalgic over the games I loved in the arcades as a kid, and part of that was to ensure I had a straight-on view of the monitor. Success. 4. Keeping in mind the hatred frankenpanels get on here, I did so much measuring, testing, and deliberating to see if these controls met my needs and stayed out of the way of other controls, all while attempting to keep it as uncluttered-looking as possible. Very hard to do with this amount of controls, I know...yet I'm happy with it. I think the color choices did a pretty good job of dividing the panel into "sections". And as you'll see later in this build that I've hidden some of the buttons to keep it less cluttered. It ain't perfect, I know. But I've been playing all sorts of games in MAME and so far I haven't had a single issue that has caused me to regret my panel design. The only thing my kids aren't crazy about is the feel of the Ultrastik, so they tend to use the Happs exclusively. Yeah, it's only been a couple months, so I suppose it's possible my feelings might change, but so far so good. *Not literally everything, mind you. Driving games and such are not really ideal (I can play them with the spinner, but generally don't). I leave the driving games to my Xbox and Playseat setup: |
| Vater:
PART IV It's March now. Lets get building... One of the great things about this build is that I didn't have to buy and lumber; just tools. When we first moved into the house, we found about 12 large 5/8" particle board panels under the stairs in the basement. And I had leftover pieces of a really nice blonde wood veneered executive desk I'd assembled in my office--I had to cut the hutch down to fit under the gabled ceiling, which left me a large enough slab of MDF (might even be HDF) to use as a control panel. Because the mockup looked and felt a little to big for the cabinet, I measured the final CP to be an inch less in both length and width: 34"x16". Despite his intense focus, Gus had little interest in this project. The hole saw and Forstner bit did a solid job making clean holes in this material. I used a jigsaw for the notches along the rear edge. Unfortunately I cut the right notch a little further in than the left, and seeing how perfectly the left notch fit over the cabinet side, my perfectionism won over and I decided I'd need to fix the right one vs. cut more from the left to even them out. That'd come later. Because I intended to keep the basic design of the original panel, I needed to make a front side panel and attach it to the bottom of the control panel. Also, the original panel was hinged along the bottom of the front side so the whole thing opened forward; mine would do the same. In order to determine the dimensions of the front side, I'd need to extend this base portion of the original control panel: I had removed this piece eons ago with the intent of replacing it with a larger base, but a friend advised to reuse the original board to give it more stability. This worked well; I cut a piece to fit around the front of the cabinet, clamped it to the original base and drilled 8 holes to secure it with bolts, nuts and washers (I might eventually change these out to round headed carriage bolts, but not really a concern for now). It's now the beginning of April. While contemplating how I wanted to continue building out the base of the control panel, I decided on a whim to take the PC running MAME, strip out all the components and mount them to a board to permanently mount inside the cabinet instead of just sitting the PC loose inside. This would also help keep the PCBs cool. I'd never completely disassembled a PC before, so it was a fun little project. Having attached the new base (by regluing/screwing the original) in place allowed me to position the control panel to determine the dimensions and angle of its front panel. I cut a length of particle board and affixed it to the bottom of the CP's front edge using glue, wooden dowel pins, and finishing it off with a strip of board screwed to both sides. Apparently I completely failed to document all the work I had done on the underside of the CP. I routed out the joystick and trackball locations, and installed threaded inserts to ensure the top of the panel would be clean. Unfortunately I made a mistake when first tracing the trackball; I had the trackball incorrectly sitting 90° so that the two "points" were opposite of where you see them below, which presented a potential problem for both joystick locations. The flight stick fit fine, but I had to dremel a notch into the plastic trackball housing for the U360 to fit, and I had to get creative with the screw placement for that same corner; thankfully the U360 base has a couple different screw hole locations. Oops. Back to the base build. I had planned for the last decade to reuse the original VF panel's hinge, but after completing the new panel I felt that hinge wouldn't be robust enough to hold all that weight. I had another desk my son once used sitting in pieces in the basement, so I grabbed a couple cabinet hinges from it to use instead. This turned out to be great operationally and aesthetically, but it's probably my least favorite thing about this whole build, which I'll get into later. It's starting to take shape... |
| Drnick:
Looking good, Nice to see the Foofy supervisor got in there, Just checking this big ol box out, Got any snacks? Nope, I'm off then :) :) :) Cats, mostly you have to love them. |
| Vater:
I kinda wish I'd named him Foofy Supervisor now. Very apt. ;D PART V In order to completely enclose the panel, I needed to cut two small rear panels and the side panels. The rear panels would each have an admin button, and I planned to also relocate the main power switch from the rear of the cabinet to the right rear panel for easy access. As I mentioned earlier, I wanted the side panels to have the same basic shape as the originals, so I used the originals as a template to scale up the new ones. I then took the original side panels to Home Depot to color match the paint that I'd be using for all the externally visible pieces (except for the control panel itself which would be black). Additionally, I drilled two holes in the base panel for coin buttons, though I planned to wire up the original coin door as well. I like the idea of having hidden coin buttons so I can tell my friends to bring quarters...then see if they can figure out how I keep playing for free. :) The rear pieces were affixed to the base with wooden dowel pins and glue, and reinforced in the corners. I routed the side panels for T-molding and then painted everything. While the paint dried, I replaced all the chrome T-molding on the cabinet. Then I attached the newly painted base assembly and installed the side panels. The base assembly is attached to the cabinet by the 8 bolts along the base, but I installed a 2" screw through both cab sides and into the top of the rear panels for (much needed) additional stability. I didn't use glue because I want to be able to remove the full assembly in case the cabinet ever needs to be moved. This would never fit through a standard doorway otherwise. Also seen in these next photos: 1. The latches and loops from the original cab which lock the panel in place. These are accessed through the coin door opening. 2. I added side rails to provide additional support to the sides of the control panel. 3. The main power switch is installed and wired up. 4. An el cheapo Amazon amplifier is being tested here. I decased it so I could install it in a more permanent location (will get to that later). After test fitting all the controls and installing the T-molding to the sides: Internally, I made some subtle changes that I'm pretty happy with. Power: As I said before, I relocated the main power switch. Well, in reality I bought a new one as I didn't want a hole in the back of the cabinet. Basically, I mounted an industrial power strip to the floor of the cab, ran its cable up and spliced it to two pins on the new switch. I pulled the original power cable inside the cab and plugged it into the strip; this is still wired up to the main switch on the back of the cab, which stays "On". Then I took an extension cable, spliced it to the other two pins of the new switch, and ran it out the back of the cab. All other components inside the cab are powered off the strip. Audio: I initially ran the MAME PC's audio to the RCA inputs on the original Virtua Fighter audio board. This worked fine except for a pretty annoying ground hum that I chased for years and could never find. This was the reason I bought the external amplifier, and ran new speaker wire to the speakers. Since I wasn't using any part of the original game anymore, I disconnected all original wiring (the CPU fans were loud) so the cab boots up and runs much quieter now. Marquee: The flourescent light bar is not original to the cab, as I found out when looking through the manual. It's a cheap plastic consumer grade fixture that has I think a 12" single bulb. I positioned this a little further back to widen the spread so the full marquee was more evenly lit. Subtle, but you can see the difference between the original photo when I first got the cab and now. I may eventually swap this out for a larger/brighter LED fixture. Next up: get the controls working! |
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