northerngames Virtua Mamer project W.I.P. updated with more pic almost done

[northerngames]

Hi here is my virtua mamer W.I.P.

    I had got a steal deal on a fully working dedicated virtua fighter 1 machine from a local off of ebay and everything was in alot better shape then I had expected. The machine had a few ding's in the side's and the control panel edge's were kinda beat and while I was playing it with a friend I noticed the the control panel was kinda uncomfortable for 2 regular sized people. We were toaching shoulder's becuase we had to squeeze toghether in order to play on the 26-1/2" wide X 8"-9" inch's or so deep control panel and if we were any larger I don't think 2 people could even play comfortably or at all so once I got fed up with that and board with the same game I decided to strip it and make a custom mame cab out of it and so I start here:



this is the cabinet stripped down to the cab only I removed all the gut's and art work also a great live and learn do not pull the side art with your bare hand's not only did I muscle them babies off but left 90% of the glue on the cab lol. So I tried oven cleaner tile cleaner with bleach windex rubbing compound and a few other household chemical's and none of them really did anything but I did not want to scrape it or sand it off so I tried my wife's nail polish remover along with 2 bag's of cotton ball's on each side and boy did that work miracle's if you do not use enough of the nail polish the cotton ball's will stick and make more of a mess and if to much is used it make's the glue slimmy and spread's it and make's a bigger mess so I hold the cotton ball over the end of the nail polish removed opening and hold it there for 1-2 second's and stuck with that it took me around 2 hour's on each side to get the glue removed and it removed it all with no scratch's no pit's and did not discolor it all and I ended up with a like new like on the side's so here is the cab stripped and sanded so far.



here is the plain control panel replacement I made from 3/4" MDF it is now 42" wide X 15-1/2" deep



here is the bottom base of the control panel set on the cab but not fastend down yet



here is the much more comfortable control panel with the laminate finsh and looking great



this is as far as I am now becuase I am waitng on the button's and joy's and still need to make a shelf for the well's gardner 25" 15khz standard res monitor becuase I removed the 26" nanao 25khz med. res becuase mame don't like them lol.

[Kronos]

nice.. keep us updated with lots of pics.

[Kaytrim]

I hope you didn't just toss the guts.    The monitor could be reused in the new incarnation of this cab just get the ArcadeVGA card from Ultimarc.  The boards could be sold to someone that wanted them and the controls have some value as well.

[northerngames]

nope I still have all the gut's for sale here at the buy sell trade.

   I do have a new v.2 arcadevga for this project but even with the arcadevga the regular nanao 26" med. res is no good when compared to the standard 15khz wells gardner becuase the game's still cannot be ran with the correct native display on a 25khz monitor and there where only a handfull of 25khz games made and thousand's of standard 15khz so I went with the 15khz replacement so 98% of mame can be displayed correctly with 100% native res . with the arcadevga I spoke with andy at ultimarc for quite awhile on understaning monitor's and a arcade 15khz standard display monitor is the way to go or a expensive wells gardner 9200 multi display a 25khz vga and tv will never display the game's as truly as the 15khz monitor with 15khz game's and the arcadevga 

[northerngames]

Well I found out my nanao has a switchable display by moving the wire harness yay lol

so I am now going to use the nanao and sell the wells gardner I have finished some more of the cab and took more picture's and when I feel I made enough progress and picture's to be worthy of posting I wll post some more if it soon here so far so good though..

[psychotech]

Looks very nice!

How much did you pay for the cab?

Just three days ago I managed to find about a three cab deal about two hours too late ..Virtua Fighter, Virtua Striker and one another "general" cab went all for 110€! F! And two of them were actually "in good working condition", according to the seller....

All the best with your build!!!

[steveh]

why are these pictures dated 2003?

[northerngames]

I alway's for to get set the date and anlway's swapping the battery becuase of the flash and somehow I manage to forget that almost every time lol

[rolls rolex]

This might hurt knowing afterwards but that sticky sticker glue is very easy to remove with lampoil.
If the glue  is very thick (or if the paper is still on top) you just need to let is soak in, it will turn soft and you can rub it off with a cloth. Very useful for those rediculous tags/stickers that leave sticky crap on your new bought stuff. You can easily whipe that off with a piece of kitchenpaper with a drop of oil. All those sticker removers and chemical crap can even damage/melt your things, lamp oil is dirt cheap and not agressive.

[northerngames]

I about have it done and took many picture's but I am still missing the artwork everywhere.

I have hit a problem though I did not think ahead of how to mount the top of the control panel to the bottom control panel base so any pic's of your rig or suggestion's would be helpfull becuase i am still scratchin my head on waht to do I was thinking drill 4 hole's in the base and 4 in the top and stick a metal cylinder peg in the hole's and that would stop it from moving around and I know it would just lify off if pulled up off the peg's but that would be kinda neat if anything but tough to alighn them correctly the first time would be a pain but let me know what you guy's thing becuase this is the only thing holding up really the picture's above is what I am working with.

[NickG]

If you are planning on having the panel removable, a search for "knock down fittings" will lead you to items such as captive screws, giro bolt assemblies, cam and dowel, etc.  I was recently shopping for such items myself and decided on some nylon snap-in fittings.  They work ok so far, but they are not threaded, so, for soft materials (MDF) glue is required.  I was about to buy some plumbing fittings but I finally found those instead.
 

[northerngames]

those would probably work but I am worried about getting them lined up right I went to the hardware today and was looking at some angled chest lift support's and the may have worked but was not sure so I aksed if they had any magnet's and they had 1/8" thick by 1/2" wide by 10ft lengh of magnetic tape with a sticky backing so I am going to put some around the top of the bottom base and then stick some on the top I am going to try a little at first to see if it is enough but I do not want to just do it all the way becuase then it may be to stiff to get off so I will fart with it later and see what result's I get they should be good to hold it but I did not want to put any hardcore magnet's on there becuase of the monitor and would hate to ruin it by the magnet's so hopefully all goes well if not I will probbaly go with what you had showed me in that link to the plug type.

[Crowquill]

Why not use a piano hinge and control panel latches. That's how pretty much all games with a similar control panel to this were made. The hinge goes on the front edge, and the latches secure the back or sides. You can reach up through the coin door to release the latches.

What's the oddly-shaped hole to the right of the coin door?

[northerngames]

I ended up using pressure peg type where a arrowed shape metal went on 4 side's of the top mounted underneith and the bottom base has 4 seperate peice's that the arrows lock into with two roller's on each of the side's so now I press it down and it pops in or just give it a lift with a little tug and it pops off the was perfect becuase now I can swpa the top layout with another finshed sheet with another type of control layout so the top now is a quik change I can swap the top with another set in less then 2 minute's and only have to swap one wire with no tools needed

to answer the question above that is where a dollor bill validator goes but it was a optional part on these machine's but i ended up making it my power/reset plate hehe

and here is most my current progress

added the T-molding in chrome on the cab and control panel also added new locks for both coin doors and replaced the stcok blown coin insert light with new one's and ran a 5volt wire off the stock virtua fighter power supply to power them both



control panel pretty much done I used 1 blue and 1 red happ super joysticks for this and happ comp. buttons still not sure if I am going to put anything else on it or leave it as it is in formica I also ended up sticking with the stock nanao ms8-26su after I found out it can be switched from 25khz to 15hkz by swaping a wire loom on the chassis plus it is 1 inch bigger then the wells I was going to use and I could use the stock monitor mounting psu and the bezel it was matched with so it worked better for me all around.



I ended up using the stock arcade speakers seen up top and wired them into a RCA surround reciever seen later I still have many more speaker's jack's left oopen now but it already sounds good with just the two I may a few more eventually. alos the stock marquee bulb was shot so I used one out of an old aquirium set-up I had and when I stuck it in still did not work but it did in the aquirium fixture so I removed the transformer from it and swapped it with the stock arcade and they worked becuase everything was the exact same it was even the same branded items guts wise lol and same thing I am running this off the stock VF PSU.



now onto the rear these are the shelve's seen prior that I installed and fastened all the elctronics to them   



this is the RCA surround reciever also dvd player but I think I will remove the dvd drive and put another pc drive in it's place instead also the nice and neet ultimarc video amp on the right needed to make this monitor display and control great



pc athlon 64 with a 64 freezer pro heatsink and fan combo that thing is a beast and probably would not fit in most pc case's but boy it serve's the purpose for this it runs very cool all the time using a sony 32X dvd drive for the disk player WD caviar 160gig for the HDD forgot the name of the pc psu but it is a 400watt with blue led fans and all chrome it had way to many different harness's so the extras I just cut off and hot glued the ends but I left a few just in case I wanted to add more later have 1 gig ram but pictured 512 mobo is a epox with way to many options to list it is huge also



agp arcadevga v2 with vga from it to the video amp and then on the otherside of the video amp is where the monitor input jack's are for the signals I also ran into a problem with the surround and the pc attaching the output from the pc to the reciever so I went to radio shack and got a adapter the would plug into the pc and then split out a L/R signal in rca style and then took a L/R RCA wire set and plugged it into the adapter and then into the rca jacks on the rear of the surround and it sounds great now. 



and the bottom well not much there just the VF psu and the power strip I have the monitor marquee light and monitor and the coin insert light on the VF psu on it's own switch and the pc and other good are ran off the power strip I will have it all on the power and reset on the front plate once I get a smartstrip but for now this is what I have to work with wich is fine but I would like to get it all down to a singal press to power on/ff and one reset for everything there is all kind's of left over power out's on both the strip and vf psu along with the pc psu so if I need to add anything else power is availible everywhere still in all types



I still have to add the artwork and some more chrome trim here and there along woth some cold cathlode lights on the inside so I will add more when I get more done and then I wil post the