Cocktail Cabinet - MS Pac Man

[shanghaiguide]

So, I still had one lonely iPac sitting at home, after building 4 cabinets for people (2 *large* and 2 "normal").

It was crying out for a home, so I did some googling, and found some plans for a Ms Pacman cabinet.
It all went relatively painlessly - much easier than the other projects I've done before!.

We went ahead and build straight from the plans, rather than measure the monitor (which is something I've learned to do before cutting any wood hehe).

Insides are IBM PC 300GL that work was tossing out.
21" CRT Monster from the second hand stores in the crappier area of town (Qiu Jiang lu for anyone in Shanghai)

This is actually slightly different internally - no HDD.  Everything runs off of an 8M CF Card.

I managed to squeeze in Dos, Vantage, Glauncher, the classics, and what has to be the must MP3 for any arcade machine -  Desert Planets - Return of the Ninja Droids (http://personal.inet.fi/cool/ninjadroids/)

Boot takes about 5 seconds from the BIOS Screen to Glaunch running and music going.  When I have a moment, I'm going to change the BIOS logo to the Atari one, instead of IBM - then it will feel like a proper machine!

PC Sits underneath the monitor.  The 21" monitor fits perfectly (as in < 1cm each side to spare!) which was wonderful - I was expecting all kinds of headaches.

Time will tell to see if it likes being face up.  So far its been happy, although i have had to degauss it once or twice when the colors in the corner started getting a little tinted.

Glass is 15mm safety glass - feels solid (and frikking heavy) and no issues from glasses being placed on top so far.

The entire unit fits nicely into the boot of my jeep, which is also a plus 


Pictures below:

The top and joystick sides.




Mostly built (sorry, all the intermediary pics weren't taken, as it all got done while i was at work)



Other side


I'm not a traditionalist - I like black, sorry to you purists out there 


Testing the monitor and PC.


With glass and joysticks


I have the top marquee image printed - just haven't got any photo's yet.

The swing top design is a delight to work with, maintenance is just so easy.

Some things I haven't done - I was going to throw coin acceptors in - but the screen literally takes up all the space.
What size were the original screens in cocktail machines?  17"?
I could take the monitor out of the casing, but mounting looks like it would be a pain, and its not so safe open.

I'm quite impressed with the end result - I really have to post pics so it does it justice.

[SirPeale]

What size were the original screens in cocktail machines?  17"?

Midway cocktails took a 19".  Thing you have to remember is that an arcade monitor has a lot of empty space around it.  Your PC monitor is still in it's case.

[IG-88]

I managed to squeeze in Dos, Vantage, Glauncher, the classics, and what has to be the must MP3 for any arcade machine -  Desert Planets - Return of the Ninja Droids (http://personal.inet.fi/cool/ninjadroids/)


I'm quite impressed with the end result - I really have to post pics so it does it justice.

VERY NICE!! This is precisely what I've had in the back of my head to do. Would you have time to describe how you set up the DOS, Vantage, Glauncher with the Classics thing? I've been having a little trouble with it.

Oh yes, more pics! I want to copy this thing !! 

ps. Aren't those Daleks in that crazy video??? It's great!

[shanghaiguide]

No problem.

I can make an zip image of it for you if you want (without the rom's of course!) should be ok - its all freeware (freedos, vantage, glaunch...)


This is basically what I did (going from memory)

Basically I bought a IDE -> CF adaptor.
Plugged it in, formatted it as a bootable drive.

fdisk (create partition)
format d: /s ...

I then tested it booted ok in the would be cocktail machine.

Pulled out the card, threw it into a card reader, and copied over vantage.

The next steps were done back and forth from internet connected pc -> cocktail pc as required.

put a rom into the roms directory (1942 as it is easy to test flipped), and checked that vantage ran.  Unfortunately the test only lasted till about level 20 odd before I lost all my planes but I digress

(Testing *is* fun for these projects!)

Had to play around a little for the flip mode in vantage - easy enough - just modify the config file.

Once that was done I did some searching for the dos sound drivers (thats the hard part!), and got sound going.


I then added glaunch in, and configured it just to run using the mame.cfg, mame.rom settings.

(in glaunch/config delete anything except mame.*)

I added in the games manually - I'm only using the ones vantage supports, and only the 'good' ones - i.e. a handful of games.

Checked glaunch ran, and set it to run sideways also so it would look good for the 1st player.

added himem.sys, smartdrv  to config.sys for a little speed boost (it has 128M ram)

Edited autoexec.bat to load everything and checked everything ran ok on boot.

Most games I had to change the dip switch settings to cocktail, and reset them.

(Tab, set cocktail mode, some also have  a flip screen option if its upside down for player 1, then reset game.  Vantage autosaves the settings, so its a once off process for each game.)

Vantage is about 2m total, dos about 1m total, roms - barely 500kb, glaunch (can't remember offhand).

It all fit in at around 4M. 

I had the Desert Planet mp3 lying around, and thought it was perfect for an arcade machine.

When you turn on the cocktail, glaunch boots - starts playing the mp3, and you choose a game, then play it.

I still need to put in extra buttons for 2nd player coin, and escape from game - right now i haven't made an escape button so its power on/off to change.  This is fine for its current application - it might stay that way, or i make a recessed 'reset' somewhere else.

PC is set in the BIOS to turn on when power is turned on.  So no buttons needed, just plug in the power and everything boots on. I also turned off all the tests in the BIOS (usually something like Quick Boot or similarly worded)

It all boots quickly (like 5 seconds to glaunch menu) and off of cf, so i'm not worried about things getting corrupted if people power on /off rapidly - i think its all read only anyway up to vantage loading.

Really - the most complicated part of it all was finding drivers for the sound card.  I had to try a bunch of them to find one that worked.

The best computers are the ones with generic sound AC97 chipsets - eg RealTek , ALi or other taiwan brands.
They usually have drivers available on the web for dos.

Newer computers don't necessarily have dos drivers lying around to find.
Soundblaster cards are a pain.  (I've tried a couple, and find that other peoples sound cards are so much easier to get going in dos.).

I've looked at linux, but for this kind of application, dos is best - linux doesn't like power on /off, and mounting a filesystem read only is a hassle for a simple application like this.

But hey, I'm waffling here

I'm moving apartments at the moment, but will try take more pics tonight.

I have the MS Pacman printed out and installed, but someone split water inbetween the glass somehow, so its not looking so great.

I'm going to reprint the top again in a matt - gloss didn't work out well

Its only RMB50 for the top marquee mounted on board, so its no big deal.
RMB50 = $6.5 (or in real terms RMB50= 2 macdonalds big mac meal sets)

Again, if you need exact settings, I'll zip the whole shebang for you for download, and you can check it out.

you'll have to set the soundcard up yourself though - its going to be different for your motherboard than mine.

Cheers,

Lawrence.
 

[shanghaiguide]

Some more pics - looks a little worse than it should  because i need to redo the marquee graphic in matt rather than gloss - its sticking to the glass or something - anyway, makes things look bad..

Also still need to paint the screen black.  Still waiting on whether I want to swap the screen or not before i do that - for some reason I might have warranty issues if i paint the bezel black, i've no idea why.  heheh


Top open


The highly complicated monitor mounting, cough cough.



Underneath the joysticks - basically they just lift out - slightly different from the original spec, but works out well.
(Joysticks cannot be lifted out when the top is on)


Monsieur iPac, and his friends Mrs Button, and Mr Joystick - apologies for the upskirt photo Mrs Button


The start buttons.  We were in a rush to get this machine finished because it was for a friends event.  Buying stuff in Shanghai is hard - everything seems to be in different area's, these buttons were the only things I could find at short notice where I was.  I plan to drill more holes into the joystick control bit to mount these properly when I get some time.  It all works though, but its not 100% user proof - i have visions of people jabbing the buttons and pushing them through the very thin wood.


Side view.  The skirt hides the wheels - its highly portable.  The back two wheels have stoppers, but you have to lift up the machine slightly to do that.  Good enough for now (tm)!


Slightly embarrasing marquee - again this is getting replaced / reprinted.


Side view (long side) - I put space for 2 padlocks.  I should probably go around the edge of the marquee with a black pen, but again, i'm gonna replace it soon.  When I get around to it.


More photo's in the album here - http://www.sheed.com/gallery/album05

Comments appreciated!

[IG-88]

Looking great! I'll try that zip if you want. Send it to this addy:

dde.biz@gmail.com

Thanks!

[dweebs0r]

Nice!  I want another cocktail.

I'm going to have to get one now. 

-Dweebs

[AlexC]

Very nice.
Sent PM for zip file ..

[shanghaiguide]

I've PM'd everyone who asked with the download link.

Took a while, because I had to remove the cf card from the pc - and that meant moving the monitor.  21" monitors are not light 

Lawrence.

[kkingsto]

I've PM'd everyone who asked with the download link.

Took a while, because I had to remove the cf card from the pc - and that meant moving the monitor.  21" monitors are not light 

Lawrence.

Can you post the download link?

[zenmasterbooty]

Are you located in shanghai also?

[shanghaiguide]

Lets see - question was asked in 2006, and its 2011. Better late than never replying to this one!
Yes, in Shanghai (still).

Wish I still had the pics for these, sigh.

In the process of building some more cabs - this time using SNK NEO GEO MVS as hardware, as cartridges are cheap, and I happen to like both  Metal & Slugs