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Mameroom Ultimate Arcade II projects
_) (V) (-):
I like the headphone idea, not for myself you understand, but for when the kids want to play (for hours and hours) and I have to do some horrible task, like balance the checkbook. It's just too darned distracting hearing that sirens song calling to me . . . c o m e . . a n d . . p l a y . . .
jlfreund:
CONTROL PANEL:
Starting with all the parts, and the board and plastic cover all drilled, jigsawed, and routed, and a crimped wire harness for our MiniPac, we spent about 4 hrs building the control panel.
First, we sanded the corners of the acrylic using a sanding block we made out of fine sandpaper glued to a block of wood. Sanding the corners was actually very easy -- the sandpaper does a great job on acrylic.
My friend had slapped together a simple "galaxy" image using some fancy paint or 3D program and we printed it out at the local printer for about $50 on nice photgraphic-like paper at 32"x32" (big enough for both control panels). So the next step was to use a pen knife to cut up the edges and holes of the artwork.
Next, we installed the joystick, spinner, trackball, minipac, and buttons. It turns out the wiring harness that comes with the minipack just barely reaches all the buttons on our stock Mameroom UAII control panel. We didn't need to crimp any wires or cut and solder anything to hookup all 20 buttons + 2 joysticks.
Finally, using the minipac instructions, we wired up the panel. Everything went very smoothly since we'd already made sure everything lined up during the cutting phase.
We're almost done (with one of the cabinets -- the second is pretty far behind). All that's left is waiting to receive the wiring harness for the trackball from Ultimarc, finishing up the bezel, plugging in 2 buttons left at my friend's house, and installing the control panel on the cabinet. And of course then comes the software configuration :)
Jason
jlfreund:
MOUNTING CONTROL PANEL:
After about a month off, we got back to it last weekend and basically finished my cabinet. The second control panel went much better after we discovered the 1 1/8" hole saw cuts through our plexiglass cover and 3/4" MDF like butter. Overall, we spent $100 cutting a $10 piece of plexiglass for the control panel cover.
There were several problems with the UAII kit in terms of assembling the control panel. The first is that there doesn't seem to be a way to close all the fastener screws, which are on the inside of the box. It's not too touch to get 5 sides of the box to fit together (though we had to remove some buttons after they were wired to get to the fasteners, which was a pain). But getting that last side (we left the bottom for last) was impossible. There's no way to reach in with a screw driver and close all the fasteners. Luckily, the fact that the control panel sits on the bottom side keeps the thing together.
Another problem was that the kit uses short wood screws and L-brackets to fasten the control panel to the cabinet. Not only is it flimsy, but the wood screws make it hard to take the panel on and off if you have to service it.
One adaptation I made there was to use special nuts that sink into the wood (see bolt picture, below), so that I don't have to use wood screws to fasten the control panel. The bolts are much sturdier, and can easily be removed or reattached. The measuring was a pain, and the panel ended up sitting 1/2" away from the monitor, but other than that, it worked great.
Another problem I had was that the keyboard tray is hard to get to and gets stuck on the control panel if you try to slide it out. To fix that, I added some plastic strips to elevate the control panel above the drawer, and added a nice matching black plastic drawer pull.
I really hope Mameroom fixes the control panel assembly and mounting difficulties. I never assembled the back panels of the cabinet because of the same problem -- the fastener screws are all on the inside, and I don't know how you can turn the last screw when all the panels are in place.
The last thing to see is the control cables coming out from the control panel. The two USB cables are for the MiniPac and spinner. The RCA cables have ground + 2 buttons spliced into them (coin1, coin2). Once I get my coin door, I'll wire RCA female jacks so that I can easily unplug the coin door from the MiniPac.
Anyway, it's probably 95% done. Left to do: Coin door is in trasit, the MameWah menu is all setup the way I want it, but there is still a lot of tuning for game menus. Lastly, I need to cleanup and package up the computer and power strip and attach one back panel, and put everything in its place. Maybe 2 more weeks :)
Jason
jlfreund:
Here are some parting shots of the final cabinet, with the coin door installed, pushed into it's resting place in my garage. Post-mortem of the project:
Good thing:
- Getting the UAII Kit was the best decision. The kit has some major assembly problems installing the last pieces of the back and control panel, and with mounting the control panel, but overall, the quality is much better than I could have done otherwise, the laminated material is better than I could have produced, and it cut the development time in half.
- 1 1/8" hole saw makes cutting the control panel and acrylic a breeze. I spent over $100 trying to cut a $10 piece of acrylic before I tried the hole saw.
- The LCG3 power strip from SmartHomeUSA.com makes it easy to build a master power switch
- The wiring harness used to install two audio jacks took a while to figure out, but it's worth it.
- MaLa front end had some tricky things to work out, but in the end, it's a great front end with all the features, and it's very easy to use once you figure out what you're doing.
- The control panel layout works great. I like having the trackball and spinner with their own dedicated buttons on the bottom row. It let me bring the two joysticks in an inch or two closer together but there is still plenty of room for smacking the trackball in marble, and doing two player games.
Bad thing:
- Happ 3" trackball part sucks. It doesn't engage both wheels for small angles off the main axis, and it seems to totally jam up every once in a while.
- I'm not happy with the Ultramarc Magstick Plus joysticks either. Maybe they are the only 4/8 switchable from top, but playing robotron, it's extremely hard to shoot horizontal or vertical (diagonals work great). Also, the travel isn't great. Next time, I would buy a pair of reliable 8ways, and just add a dedicated third 4way stick in the middle somewhere.
- My audio jack placement is not ideal. Should have put the jacks on the side of the control panel or something
leapinlew:
Wow! Looks great.
I know what you mean about the magstiks. I tried those as well. You can swap them out for some supers easy enough - they use the same bolt pattern and the supers have been.... uh... super! I really like them. You can't play 4 way games with them - but I'd say I couldn't play 4 way games with the magstiks so it wasn't a loss.
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