somewhat portable MAME cabinet

[mohrt]

Hi,

I'm pretty new at the whole MAME cabinet building, this my first post here. I've been throwing around some ideas on building my own cabinet (who hasn't?) , and I came across an idea that I thought I'd mention here before acting on an impulse   What I have in mind is a cocktail table design, except that it would only be several inches tall, basically tall enough to accomodate the joysticks, computer and screen.

To accomplish this, I was thinking of using an LCD panel for the display, and either a laptop computer or a 1U rack-mount system, basically something slim that would fit snugly under the LCD. With this setup, there could be any number of controls, maybe even on all four sides for 4-player action (although I'm not sure how well that would work for some games, looking at it upside down.)

Anyways, I'm wondering about the LCD panel idea, would that be doable? It would probably be a more costly route than a monitor, at least until the prices fall to a reasonable level. But how about viewing angle from all sides, would it work OK? I would think it would be as good as looking at a laptop screen from all angles.  What would work best between a 15", 17" and 19" panel? The cost goes up pretty steep with each step. Also, I don't know about how the games would appear on the LCD vs. a monitor since they are such a different technology (CRT vs. LCD) Again, I think it would be much like running MAME on a laptop, basically depending on the video card.

With this design, I could set the MAME cabinet on a coffee table for use, and stow it away, lean it on a wall, move to another room, etc. considerably easier than I would if I had a full blown 200 lb. gorilla MAME cabinet.

TIA for your input!

mohrt

[eightbit]

Not a bad idea. I think a laptop would be easiest but you would be limited to a small screen. If you could seperate the laptop screen from the keyboard you could flip the screen all the way over. Basically the laptop keyboard would be face down with the screen face up. This would mean hacking a laptop probably beyound converting it back.

Unless you have a laptop to hack up a LCD panel would probably be better. I bet you could build the thing in less than 4"s with a standard mother board. Buying a rack mount box would be a lot of extra expense. If you get a motherboard with everything built in you could keep the computer down to about an inch thick. If you can't find a mobo you like with everything built in I've seen adapters to turn PCI cards parrelel to the motherboard like for mounting in a 2 U rack case.

I've seen some small setups with full size monitors (bar top setups) and I've seen small stand alone controllers without a monitor that have the PC built in. Both can be done in a very small area. An LCD panel takes this idea to the next level.

There are few 4 players games that you could play from every side. The only ones I can think of are the racing ones like super sprint and ironman offroad. I just put my laptop screen flat and could view it just fine from all 4 sides. Did you mean different controls on each side? Not 4 player, that would probably be cool. I'm pretty sure you could set up a front end to rotate the screen appropriately for each game and remap your controls on the fly. It would be much simpler to stick with 1 player at a time games or 2 player cocktail games that  flip the screen.

1up has proven with the rotating control panel that whacked out ideas can work. Also have you seen cyberpunks jukebox with LCD panel? Though not an arcade panel he shows how small you can go. He's even got a cd burner and floppy drive mounted in that thing.


Keep up appraised of your progress and get yourself at least a cheap digital camera because we love pics!

[mikgus]

a little warning about the screen you should really try to view it from the angels you are going to use. I played with same idea a while ago (tabletop coctail) heres my result.

old Taxan 10" works with all angel except upside down
dell laptop  14" works from all sides.
new dell 17" works from all sides but  better from  sides  than up or down
older screens at work 15" big difrence in brigthnes from diffrent angels.

another thing is how well (and fast) the screen "stretch" when not running in the native resolution.


 

[rampy]

Have you looked at this guys examples/prototype/projects http://www.inanna.com/~calhoun/projects.html??
specifically his first one that looks like a little phone/end table...  it's tiny, but wasn't very functional (i.e. it hurt to sit down and play for extended periods...)

*Shrug*  it's a starting point anyways...

rampy

[eightbit]

Have you looked at this guys examples/prototype/projects http://www.inanna.com/~calhoun/projects.html??
specifically his first one that looks like a little phone/end table...  it's tiny, but wasn't very functional (i.e. it hurt to sit down and play for extended periods...)

*Shrug*  it's a starting point anyways...

rampy

Oh man those are some sweet examples. The first one isn't the best, check out the other ones.

I especially like the picture frame, I've been wanting to do that with a I-opener device that I have.

[rampy]

Have you looked at this guys examples/prototype/projects http://www.inanna.com/~calhoun/projects.html??
specifically his first one that looks like a little phone/end table...  it's tiny, but wasn't very functional (i.e. it hurt to sit down and play for extended periods...)

*Shrug*  it's a starting point anyways...

rampy

Oh man those are some sweet examples. The first one isn't the best, check out the other ones.

I especially like the picture frame, I've been wanting to do that with a I-opener device that I have.

OT: you have an iopener? cool... I was (back in the heyday of hacking i-openers) despondent when I couldn't find any in the local circuit citys' .... and then I ended up with a websurfer pro , but it wasn't as cool (no crappy lcd screen) and it was too underpowered to be a divx set top box...  ended up giving the websurfer pro to a friend to make a mp3 jukebox (not in jukebox shape - just the songs on HD) or something out of...

rampy

[1UP]

Cool idea.  You might think about adding some fold-away legs (a-la card tables) underneath for true portability!  

[mohrt]

Have you looked at this guys examples/prototype/projects http://www.inanna.com/~calhoun/projects.html??
specifically his first one that looks like a little phone/end table...  it's tiny, but wasn't very functional (i.e. it hurt to sit down and play for extended periods...)

*Shrug*  it's a starting point anyways...

rampy

Those prototypes are pretty nice! To take it a step further, you could make one with back-to-back LCD screens for head-to-head games, or 4-player games (just duplicate the screen on both LCD's)

mohrt