Hi guys
After months of research and discussion on these boards I finally took the plunge on Monday and purchased the last of the major hardware purchases for my arcade project; that being, the monitor. It's due to arrive by the end of the week, after which I will dimension it up in CAD and being planning my cabinet.
I know it's still early days but with the investment already put into this project (PC, monitor, joysticks, encoder etc) this is not going to be a stalled project.
Before I continue, let me first thank all the people who replied to my numerous threads in these boards during my months of research, and also for the many awesome cabinets that have been built before mine that served and continue to serve as inspiration.
As you all have no doubt gathered from my numerous threads, I intend on building an Aussie Lowboy cabinet. It will have a genuine arcade monitor for the most authentic arcade experience I can make.
I will be basing my design on the lowboys previously built by
Holdennut and
hbm*rais, although I plan to deviate slightly. The main reason for this is that I want to make the monitor rotatable, which will mean that my lowboy will end up being a few centimetres wider (and maybe deeper) than normal. But, as anyone who's played side-by-side on a lowboy knows, these extra few centimetres will probably be a good thing.
I also plan on adding a few bling factors to my cab, such as Neon MAME style side neon rings and lit transparent buttons.
The control panel will be a simple 2-player setup, with 6 or 7 buttons per player. There is not going to be a spinner or trackball installed, as lowboy control panels do not have space for these. I do not know how many admin buttons I will end up with, although I want as few as I can get away with.
So, without further ado, here are the specs for my cab and some of my current plans for it:
PCPentium 4, 3.2GHz processor, 1Gb RAM, on-board sound etc, ArcadeVGA video card (already purchased and setup)
Monitor20 inch CGA arcade monitor and chassis from
Highway Entertainment here in Australia
Other hardware2x UltraStik 360s from Ultimarc (already purchased)
I-PAC
2 keyboard encoder from Ultimarc (already purchased)
LED-Wiz and NovaGem arcade buttons with graphic inserts from GroovyGameGear (yet to purchase)
T-molding (yet to purchase)
Arcade SoftwareMAME v1.18 (have acquired the full romset from a burner)
Daphne (have acquired the full romset from a burner)
Intended Front-EndMaLa with LED-Wiz and UltraStik mapper plugins
Intended Colour SchemeI am planning a light blue and yellow colour scheme, influenced greatly by the colours in the control panel of
Knievel's Evolution.
The current idea is a black cabinet with yellow T-molding, blue and yellow themed graphics for the control panel overlay, menu interface and marquee, and blue and yellow buttons on the CP.
Cabinet nameThere is no name yet for my cab, but the working title is "It's On Like Donkey Kong!"
Immediate items on my to-do listMy immediate plans are to go through the games list and cull it down to several hundred of my favourites / classic games. The resulting games list will dictate the number of buttons per player. In other words, if there are some NeoGeo games that survive the culling that are best played with four buttons in a row, then I will build the CP with seven buttons per player, otherwise it will be six for SF2 etc. If pinball arcade games survive the culling I might install buttons on the sides of the cab, pinball-style.
The build diaryIt hardly needs to be said, but this build will proceed with lots of posts along the way, lots of pictures of the build process, and no doubt even more questions along the way.
That's all for now. More posts as things start to happen.
Cheers,
Anubis_au aka David.