My Finished 3-sided Cocktail Cabinet!

[Virtualmatt]

My dad and I finished building this last summer, but ever since we finished, I forgot about these forums!  Fortunately, that porn PM was emailed to me, and reminded me to post my completed pictures!  Here they are:

(They are only stamped with my web address because I don't want them stolen or anything, lol)







What do you guys think?

[audiomidiman]

Looks nice. What are the specs of the MAME?

[BamBam]

Looks good.  That is one big monitor.

[Kaytrim]

   Looks you built the cab around just the monitor.  What size it is?

[ChadTower]

The cabinet looks very good.  One question, though... I don't see any visible means of heat management and you have that thing REALLY tight in there.  Are there fans we can't see?

[melarky]

I like it.  I am actually just building a 3 sided cocktail cabinet myself.  Looks like you are using MaLa as your frontend, how do you have that configured (do you have the side 2 player panel hooked up to player 1 and 2 as well as the end control panels?  How do you flip the screen with mala to them?  I actualy just posted yesterday asking about this: http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=62188.0)

Also, what did you use for the top?  Is that glass or plexi glass.  What type of "smoked" is it?  Is it the Greylite 19 that gets mentioned here so often?  Did you have the glass guys cut it out for you with the rounded corners?  How much did it cost (I called our local glass place and it is really expensive for the 1/4" greylite 19, just wondering if it's like that everywhere).

Any tips you can think of for someone building a 3 sided cocktail cabinet (things you would have done different/same etc...).  This is my first cocktail cabinet, so I am not 100% sure what the best layout is for the controls and such (like should I bother putting 6 buttons on the end control panels, or are there no vertical games that would use 6 buttons etc...).

Your cocktail cabinet looks great, hope mine comes out half as good.

[Virtualmatt]

Alright, I'll do my best at answering all the questions:

That's a 19" Flat Screen CRT monitor.  I didn't realize that was big for a cocktail, lol.

Since it's powered by a 1ghz HP Pavilion, it doesn't generate much heat in there at all.  Even so, I have a clear fan blowing air out a grill on the side.  You can sort of see it on the bottom right of the 2nd picture.

Melarky: I was actually the person that replied to your thread telling you what I did.  I have the horizontal and vertical player 1 controls hooked up to the same ports on my IPAC2 keyboard emulator, and the same goes for the player 2 controls.  I set MaLa so when I move the player 1 controls, the screen flips and displays vertical games.  When I move the player 2 controls, the screen flips and displays horizontal games.  It was the easiest workaround I could think of.  The only annoying part is having to explain it to guests.  Aside from that, it works great.

I used tempered Graylite 14 glass, which seems perfect.  I couldn't imagine having it any darker than that.  The guy at the glass place rounded and smoothed the edges for me.  It was SUPPOSED to be pretty expensive, but the guy misquoted me, charging me the UNtempered price for my tempered glass.  So it only ended up costing me $75, but I imagine it generally costs a lot more.  I wouldn't get anything other than tempered glass though, as untempered (I think they call it annealed) is really fragile.

I only have 4 buttons on each of my end control panels, and 6 on the horizontal ones.  I haven't played any games yet that use more than 3 buttons, so I like what I have.

Thanks for everyone's compliments; I'd be happy to answer any more questions as well.

[ChadTower]

Since it's powered by a 1ghz HP Pavilion, it doesn't generate much heat in there at all.  Even so, I have a clear fan blowing air out a grill on the side.  You can sort of see it on the bottom right of the 2nd picture.

It's not the PC that generates heat.  It is the monitor.  That is why cocktails usually have a good amount of open space.  You could run into heat issues since you didn't decase the monitor and didn't leave much space for disspation.  I'd suggest adding an intake fan as well.  Just removing heat isn't nearly as effective as adding cool air while doing it.

[Virtualmatt]

Hm, I didn't know that.  So far I've been fine, but I'll definitely look into that next time I'm home on break.  So far I've left it running for awhile, opened it, and felt around for heat - it's always felt pretty cool.  I'll pick up a digital thermometer to test it with the next chance I get.

[ChadTower]

Well, it could be that it runs just fine like that and could run like that for quite some time.  It will shorten the life of the monitor, though, and also the hard drive on that PC.  The things that are earlier failure points will fail sooner than they otherwise may have.

[Havok]

Mmmmmm.... marble....

 

[ChadTower]

Hey, it could have been marble contact paper.   

[Virtualmatt]

Well, it could be that it runs just fine like that and could run like that for quite some time.  It will shorten the life of the monitor, though, and also the hard drive on that PC.  The things that are earlier failure points will fail sooner than they otherwise may have.

It honestly never felt hotter than room temperature in there, so I don't think it will have much a problem.  If so, I'll pick another 19" monitor up off eBay for like $50.  The hard drive is brand new.  The fan is pretty powerful too; unfortunately it's noisy.  I may invest in a quiet one at some point for a few extra bucks.

And yea, that isn't stone on the control panels - it's some sort of really thick plastic tile sort of thing.  I forget what it's called, maybe it is marble contact paper?

[ChadTower]

Looks like countertop laminate.

[Virtualmatt]

Probably; it has a really sticky backing too.  If anyone is actually interested, I can find out for you.