Ok, Its finally done!

[HeadRusch]

 

It may not be anything revolutionary, but its mine, and it doesn't look like complete crap (something very possible when I get to "building" anything!)

I finally have a mame cab.  Hard to believe that I actually built this thing (well, not the main body, I just modified the heck out of it!).....and for the most part it works ok

Its an Athlon 1.6Ghz with half a gig of ram, and I think a 40 gig HD in there...currently set up to run Mame .61 but i'll be updating to .68 soon.....it'll run everything I throw at it reasonably well and it works just fine with Unreal Tournament 2003 using that little mini keyboard and mouse (Will have to think about making a "cover" for the control panel in the event I want to have a more stable surface to mouse/keyboard on.

Cab was...well, no idea...it was a junker I got locally for $20 bucks...I gutted everything but the supports.
There are some areas of damage that I will eventually fix along the bottom edge, its sitting up higher now due to the castors I installed.

Its covered in 3 layers of Rustoleum Hammered Black (props to SirPoonga).  I desperately tried to get hammered red or hammered blue, but to no avail..nobody stocks the stuff, and I wasn't ordering a case!
I wound up using 3 pints to do the 3 layers...$30 bucks total.  As you can see some areas where there is heavy puttying require some paint touch up as the putty soaked it up, will do that this upcoming weekend.

I'm using a $150 Daewoo flatscreen 20" television as my monitor.  It has Svideo and Component inputs, and I figured if I REALLY hated it I could always replace it with a 21" computer monitor later on down the road and use this for my xbox and PS2.  The Svideo has some ghosting, could be a convergence problem on the TV but I'll try a better cable just to make sure (again, this weekend).  Windows is rough, of course, even with 120dpi fonts..BUT the games look AUTHENTIC.  Low res and a little blurry!!!  vector games like tempest have some slight ghosting on this TV so it really DOES look authentic.  
Raster games look fantastic, all of them...much better than on a PC monitor due to the larger "dot pitch" of Televisions.

My CP:  Ok...you'll notice no trackball.....cept the cheapie on the floor.  I'm not a big trackball game fan...so it wasn't a big deal for me to leave this out.  I agonized over wether to add one or not...ultimately deciding not to......maybe in the future in a redesign, but not right now.  There is a dedicated J-stick 4 way at the top of the CP and that silver thing near the bezel is just the remote for the TV.

I had hoped to get a 25" TV in there, but no dice.....all the 25" TV's I found were about an inch and a half to two inches too wide.....also, try to find a 25" TV with SVideo input that DOESNT have side speakers.
I figured for my first cab, taking apart a 25" and mounting it in the cab would get me electrocuted, so I said 20 inches it is.  Thankfully it doesn't look TOO small, playing games youd ont notice the screen size.

THINGS LEFT TO DO:
1) Paint touch up..this weekend

2) Work out lingering issues with my IPAC...I have a spare IPAQ, I may swap it out this weekend to see if my programming issues persist..if not I must have a bad chip int he ipac...or a wiring issue of some kind, anyhow, this weekend.

3) Gotta drill a few holes in the edges of the CP to "tack down" The edges of the Lexan to the CP.  I'm also considering trimming off the contact paper along the edge of the box and painting that with the hammered paint as well, or a flat black.  I dont really like the way the rounded edges look with the CP paper going over it.  We'll see.  Also, I am waiting on an inkjet printer to print a few graphics for both adhesion to the Bezel as well as under the CP, something simple and not too intrustive.  I might wait to do that while I can still LIFT the edges of the lexan before finally attaching it down.  

4) Eventually gotta put some molding or something along the bottom edge to cover up the destroyed edges of this cab (left front is particularly bad).  

I'm sure there is other stuff but this is it for now...also gotta switch to MAME win and use a better front end than MAME32 gives me.

[HeadRusch]

Oh one more thing to add..I installed a couple of red LED fans in either side, just below and to the rear of where the CP Box mounts....also, there is red cold-cathode lighting that filters up from behind the control panel to bathe the screen and bezel area in a soft red light.

With the lights out in the room (and no flash) all you see are the screen, this nice red glow around the screen and bezel, and the cool LED fans on eitehr side of the case whirring away....hard to capture in a picture, the monitor light washes out the red glow on the digcam..I'll try to get a good snap of it running with the monitor off later on.  Since this is also a recroom/home theater room I wanted to be able to keep the room dark, but still be able to see your way around the control panel and the cold cathode lighting worked out perfectly.  

[TazMan]

Congratulations!

I think you might be the first one to have a cabinet that is "done"  
Or is it done for now but you will continue to tweak it like the rest of us geeks  

Nice work!

[SNAAAKE]

oh hey !  
yeah nice looking cabinet..alteast its "finished"  
Unlike lots of other cabinets !  
anyway looks pretty nice and clean but the monitors is little small for 4 players game...getting a bigger one later  

[rampy]

Looks good HeadRusch,

Question:  Do you ever regret *not* getting the slik stik you originally were thinking of getting?  i.e. was the journey to build your own worth it/meaningful/fun in any way for you.

Just looking for your perspective as someone who was gonna go they buy your own, and after getting chastised a bit, decided to build your own... know what i mean (i.e. justify our pompous elitist attitude will ya!? )?

*shrug*

rampy

PS where's the cupholders?!  

[HeadRusch]

Yeah lemme rephrase that: Its not "Done", its "Functional!".

Snake, the monitor is a "no choice"....between the MDF I've only got about 23 inches to work with, and I couldn't find a 25" TV that would fit in that space.  Well, I found one....a Panasonic with SVideo in that would have cost me almost $350 bucks......I was going to get a 25" "brand x" tv with no SVideo in and take it out of its case, but I decided on my first outing I'd probably electrocute myself doing so

I might scan the paper for a 25" used and think about gutting it.  I think so long as I dont touch anywhere near the back, I wont die.  But for now, this is my solution....plus, the flat screen helps alot.  I've found that like with most games, once you focus on the game you tend to forget the size of the screen, so long as its not TOO small...and because the control box isn't too deep, you aren't too far away from that screen.
I'm still debating on wether or not to add a plexi front to it or not.  

I still fear the ass-end of an exposed monitor..TV or otherwise....so I settled for what would fit easily.

Slickstick...hehehe I knew someone would ask that question.

First things first: The CP was a pain in the ass.  The not-quite-right angles, the too-much-wood-putty that took 9 days to sand down, the fact that its the PERFECT HEIGHT for me but I didn't quite make it deep enough....all of these things come into play.  

If I had bought a slick, I probably wouldn't have regretted it..save of course all the cash I'd have had to spend.  But there just isn't any comparison to taking the time to do it yourself.  You learn new skills, you make a few mistakes but hopefully you focus on the goal of building something, and I really enjoyed that part.  I enjoyed figuring out the problems, and getting the job done....fixing my own mistakes, etc.
The creative aspect of it...that was real fun....I imagine I'll be thinking about redoing the control panel sometime this year....but thats for another day...(first I gotta get the damn IPAC working right).

Now....I gota order me a druid interface, and a couple of spinner joysticks for Vert-Mame, the vertical mame mini coctail cabinet and end table:)  (I got another pc, I gotta do SOMETHING with it!)

[Sprucemoose]

Headrush,
Looks good.  A nice clean cab.  Is that a huge subwoofer on the lower left hand corner of the cab?  Don't hurt yourself, lol.

[HeadRusch]

Hehehee...its an optical illusion, the Sub sits outside the cab to the rear.  Inside the cab the bass is too boomy, and I don't want to get into stuffing the cab with Polyfill    Its a Logitech 5 speaker system I got for $50 bucks refurbished......works out very well.  Because the cab is positioned in front of one of my basement support pillars (obscured in this view) and there is a leather recliner behind it, the sub can sit outside the cab and still not be obvious.  I'll put a fake plant in front of it to seal the deal

I wanted the cab to be simple and clean, not too over-the-top.  Basically I got what I wanted.  I'll be replacing the red front-facing buttons (coin buttons) with black buttons, I've decided I dont like the red buttons there.  I'm also seriously thinking about adding a happs trackball...why? Cuz I feel WRONG for not having one..and..marble madness and Golden Tee PC are actually far more additcive than I remembered them being with a trackball.

I took alot of insipration looking at all the examples here........