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My Cabinet: The Final Chapter
Chris:
Not sure why I'm even posting this, but I'm getting ready to tackle my cabinet, hopefully for the last time, and I'm always looking for input.
My cabinet will not win any awards; its as basic as they come. Stating life as a Konami cabinet that was an empty black hulk when I got it, my initial goal was to be able to play the classics and build it cheap ($300). It worked. Sometimes I wish I had left it that way.
Once the Act-Labs guns came out, I had to have them, having fond memories of Maximum Force. This triggered a wave of upgrades that have continued to this day. I had to upgrade from DOS to Windows to support the guns, thus I had to upgrade the processor. With Windows I could now support Visual Pinball and Windows games. A bigger trackball and thus a bigger CP came later.
The machine now seems to be in a constant state of being tinkered with. People who scroll through the list and find games they want to play often hear "Oh, that doesn't work properly yet" or "I haven't set up the controls for that" or "I'm still working on that". I have hundreds of dollars in parts lying around for a "someday" that never seems to come. So now, I'm going to finish the darn thing and lock it down.
Here's what the machine looks like now:
Here's what I'm thinking of:
Artwork: I've gone with the much-maligned theme of using the MAME logo everywhere. I do like the logo, but the cabinet does more than MAME now: pinball, 2600 emulation, PC games, and jukebox. So I think it's time to give the machine a real name and artwork to match. I'm going to keep the black and blue theme, as one of my favorite cabinets was Tron which has a similar scheme, but I need to do something with the sides (probably some simple stencils or something rather than vinyl again), marquee and CP.
Monitor: Right now it has a 19" Wells-Gardner D9100, which is a PC monitor in an arcade frame. I'd love to put a 25" in there, but my cab is just 1/2" too narrow to support one. I've considered rebuilding the cabinet from scratch, using a TV instead of a monitor, and other options, but I finally settled on simply upgrading to a 21" and learning to be happy with it. This monitor has been purchased and is waiting for installation.
Processor: Right now the machine has an Athlon XP 2000+. This is sufficient for most games. However, recent versions of MAME have brought games such as Cruisin' (one of my daughter's favorites) within range, so I'm going to put some money into a new motherboard and processor. What I don't know is just how much to put in.
Control Panel: This is the biggest change. I've always considered the rounded panel above to be "temporary", and now it's time to design a replacement. What to do, though?
* The buttons are too far ahead of the trackball to be useful for trackball games like Missile Command. The joysticks and buttons need to be brought in-line with the trackball, but I can't do this without extending the panel past the natural sides of the cabinet, venturing into Frankenpanel territory.
* I have two Pole Position wheels and two Happ pedals; I'm determined to find a way to integrate these into the cabinet.
* I really really like the idea of using the Ultimarc 360; it would solve lots of my issues with beloved games such as Sinistar and Star Wars. But by the time all of the needed accessories are in, it's close to $100 a stick. This wouldn't be so bad, except I can't imagine how I can get away with making player 2's stick any other kind of stick as it won't match, and I just can't bring myself to spend an extra hundred just so player 2 will match.
* I succumbed to the lighting craze and bought translucent buttons and an LED Wiz. Since then, I've listened to some of the criticisms of unecessary lighting bling, but I do like the idea of lighting only the buttons used by the game, so I'm going forward with lighting, but only enough to be functional and not gaudy.
* I'm parting from the general wisdom regarding button colors. I know the trend these days is toward monochrome buttons, but I remember arcade machines as being colorful, so my skittles colors are staying. The challenge is to pair them with appropriate art so the colors don't look out of place.
* The tight diamond button layout is really handy for some games but for most it's just not natural or comfortable. I'm sticking with four buttons per player but I'd like to get them into a Neo-Geo layout. Of course, this goes back to the problem of the width of the panel.
* I don't know what to do about four-way games. I have a dedicated 4-way stick now, but it rarely gets used due to its position. I will probably just do away with the 4-way stick; this would be okay if I go with the Ultimarc 360 and its digital restriction patterns, but if I stay with my Supers I know this is going to eat at me every time I play Donkey Kong or Pac-Man.
* The trackball needs to be at least 6-8 inches from the glass for bowling and golf games; this design requirement affects all the others.One thing I'm thinking of to fix a lot of these issues is a partially modular panel: player 1's stick and buttons would always be in place, but player 2's stick and buttons and the trackball would have to share space by being on removable or rotatable modules. I'll never use 2 sticks and a trackball in the same game. The problem with modules is that the primary audience for the machine is 12 and under, so any swapping mechanisms need to be simple and solid with the electronics protected. I'm fond of the Rototron setup where only a section of the panel rotates.
As far as the wheels go, I'm looking at mounting them to modules that would attach to the front of the control panel box. The question is how to do this in a secure way such that the panel doesn't look awful when they're not mounted?
I also want to play You Don't Know Jack, which means finding a way to integrate a keyboard and the appropriate buttons.
So I'm not asking for much, just a way to play everything without a panel the size of an aircraft carrier. No problem, right?
Anyway, this thread probably isn't going to be particularly interesting, but I wanted to throw it up there to muse out the answers to some of these questions. Maybe someone will find it useful.
--Chris
Kaytrim:
You touch on several issues that I have as well in my CP design. I am currently running with a full modular panel system. Each control has it's own separate panel, joysticks, trackball, spinner, 6 button, 3 button and blank panels as well as an admin panel permanently mounted in the bezel area. The panels all plug into a patch panel via CAT 5 cables.
The bigest problem that I currently have is my woodworking skills and tools are not the top of the line. The panels are sloppy in their fit and tend to slide around unless I wedge a shim in someplace. Right now I am toying with the idea of larger panels, i.e. joy with 6 buttons, trackball with 3 buttons, spinner with 3 buttons. I am not sure if I want to go with the larger panels or not. I like the idea of having various button layouts for different game types like fighters, neo-geo, defender, etc. The other issues that I am seeing now is durability and the over all look of the panels. I am even thinking on using hardwood or MDO instead of the MDF I currently have for the panels.
Believe me when I say I feel your pain. :dizzy: Maybe if we put our heads together we can come up with a workable solution.
Chris:
Here's a direction I'm thinking of for the panel. The rectangle at the right represents a rotating section; two sets of controls are overlaid into the same space to represent that: a trackball with two buttons and a stick/buttons in a Neo Geo layout. It's not perfect yet; I don't have the admin buttons on yet (but those are easy), I'm not sure which way is better to rotate the section (horizontal or vertical) and I'm sure I need to do some spacing adjustments, but I think this could be a way to solve my issues without a big ugly frankenpanel.
Rotating section idea shamelessly stolen from Rototron.
Why only two sides? The height of the control panel box is the limiting factor. It's 7 inches right now, and as it is I'll need to make it a couple of inches taller, but I can't go any farther than the coin door. I'm also trying to avoid hacking up the original cabinet as much as possible in case I need to revert things for some reason.
Chris:
And for reference, here's my current CP layout. (Looks like this was before I added the 4-way. Ah, well, you can see it in the photo above.)
GadgetGeek:
Build a second cab. Sounds like you have all the parts laying about. Cab 1 is a basic 2 player layout. Second cab gets the TB, Spinner/Wheels, 360 joy, etc.
Just a thought. Hard part is upselling that to the rest of the family. :-)
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