hi,
i am quite the newb to this scene and this forum in particular. but i have begun work on a cabinet project... so, i thought i'd start a thread
ever since i first heard about mame cabinets, i've always thought they were quite the amazing idea and wanted to build one. sounds familiar, right ?
well.. i have kicked around the idea for quite some time... and one of my oldest friends (and now coworker) was actually the maintainer of the x-box port of mame for some time.. and ended up building a cab himself after x-arcade gave him a demo unit for testing. it was quite the wonderful hack. i had enjoyed playing it many times, but it wasn't until the night that my brother came into town and we had a SF2 tournament with some other guys.... that i realized how amazing the whole "homebrew cabinet experience" was
it felt like "old times" in our childhood years ago....
a nice feeling. fun.
what i find so wonderful (and inspiring) about these types of projects...and the other related projects that many of you work on here... is how they tend to combine a very vast base of skills.. and require 'design thinking' at many levels, not just technical.
there is the aesthetic of the cabinet itself, the usability of the hardware and software....... how everything is laid out.. all the interactions of all the various moving parts all the way from base mechanical and electrical level to more complex hardware/software. all the compromises, and decisions that must be made along the way to end up with a quality usable product in the end. it's quite challenging and interesting.
as a practice, it relies on audio/video knowledge, software integration/development, pc building, knowledge and appreciation of vintage arcades .. their history, their design and implementation specifics, the 'experience design' driving them... carpentry... electrical/mechanical engineering... but, most importantly it requires a level of "art" .. there is a purely creative sense to it... in that it is rather free form if you can somehow manage the alchemy to mix all this knowledge and such a disparate collection of things together to just birth something beautiful and wonderful and alive out of just a pile of parts and wood/glass/metal. builder manifest.
it is quite an 'ultimate hack' for these reasons. and i find that its very inspiring to watch all you extremely gifted creatives out there doing such wonderful work.
anyways.
so, i have been working on a cabinet for my little brother as a bit of a christmas/birthday present.
the design requirements are as follows:
- appear an arcade machine that has been taken and had its brains hacked out
- support simultaneous 4 player game play (as my brother would say, "2 is awesome but 4 is a party.")
- support console emulation
- play widest possible range of titles properly
- maintain authenticity
- maintain simplicity but boldness
- short build time with focus of time spent being pc/control/AV related
so, I decided that finding a gutted cabinet was the way to go. the "patina" of authenticity from being used in an arcade will be more than welcome, it will be cheap, quick and produce good results.
I ended up with this...
nfl blitz 99, 4 player, gutted
i wish i had taken pictures of the place i got it from... they had, well, quite the large arcade warehouse/graveyard. it was beautiful. they needed to clear some space and i ended up striking quite the deal for this gutted blitz cab.
i went to go pick this cab up, knowing i was getting a cab for myself.
but i knew that it would be my brother's ultimate fantasy in his life to ... well, live the dreams we both had as children (and i'm sure many of you as well
)......
1. "have an arcade with all the games, and unlimited quarters"
2. "have a nintendo with all the games"
SO, i ended up picking up TWO cabs.
and, well, decided to build the one for my bro first.
it was some form of midway cab as well. it had been converted multiple times. it was a buck hunter game at one point, a trackball bowling game (world tournament, i think), and some 6 button fighter type game as well. it came empty and totally stripped. i picked up the blitz cp 'just in case it would become useful', monitor/marquee glass and bezel to add to it.
total investment at. this point about $200
.
here are some pics of the cabs.
they pretty gutted aside from PSUs. 1 cp had 3 x sticks, the other 4 x sticks. i had contemplated re-using the 49-ways.
this cp is a tome of the machines former life .. showing (from the other side via overlay covered cutouts and such) how it was at least 3 games (buckhunter,bowling,fighter).
i had to haggle a bit to get the glass included
.
i really love this about this midway cabinet design.....one of many nice things about it, the full metal mesh over the speaker panel.
i found rather interesting.... i wasn't quite sure what to make of it... this is the inside of the coin box, where the bins go.... i took a close look and noticed this...............
strange right? was midway 'recycling' cabs? this appears to be OEM
WEEKEND 1
The first weekend I have it home.... I figured I'd take a break and let it sit and think about it for a week...
Well, my uncle comes by and innocently asks "where's that old Zenith TV you said you were saving?"
... And well, instantly that's the invitation to begin hacking. Screw waiting and pondering
"Let's prototype."
I dig up the old Zenith 27" , from the attic, .... and yes I had been saving it for this very occasion
So, I gutted it.
Then I did some of this kind of stuff.
And, basically, using a combination of the TV case OEM braces... and cabinet OEM monitor mounts... some drilling, some cutting, some grinding.... end up with this:
I took the PCBs off and mounted them inside the cab. And I took a board and cut it to size to make a frame for the cardboard "anti-death-shield" (i.e. to keep poking heads of little punks away from the 30,000V... including me.)
I wired the TV's spkr amp into the OEM cab speakers and slapped an old 400MHz PC from the attic in there... I slapped the thing back together...
Well, I find enough parts in the 'parts bin' to breath life into this 400MHz.. and quickly install XP + MAME onto it ... and I hook up some old Microsoft something or other gamepad joystick thinger... and I play pac-man and some others
And, well, I'm sold. The first prototype is working. I can play games, I have sound, I have picture. This serves as V1.0. I now have a baseline and some experience.
Here's what I learn:
- the zenith aint gonna cut it, composite input sucks. need some way to get a much more "authentic" picture. not willing to compromise here.
- 'regular' speakers are just fine. re-using the tv amp is a really fun clean hack. but testing out my new computer speakers... well, ken's dragon punch is just that much more fun when its loud as all hell and has a touch of thundering bass.
- even that small task of hacking together a 'test' mame cab in a weekend, involves lots of tedious work. having things that plug together easily will help.
- all these parts. all this hacking. oh my... this is going to be fun.
Now it's time to iterate.
(continued...)