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Author Topic: My first cab: Mame Bartop cab from laptop guts.  (Read 8766 times)

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ulfur

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My first cab: Mame Bartop cab from laptop guts.
« on: March 03, 2011, 05:26:19 pm »

My friend recently gave me a fully functioning Dell C610 laptop that was about to get thrown out. Sure it's old and slow by todays standards but it had obviously been taken care of as it was in, more or less, mint condition. The first thing I thought was "Mame machine!"

So I started digging around and came across this forum. There are some fantastic designs on here and I even got ideas on what software to run.

Basically I got my software setup from Silas's post and danivempire was kind enough to share pictures of his cab with me I can use for reference when building mine.

Considering how much help I was getting I figured I should try and give something back in case it might be of use to someone else.

So here is where I'm at:

The laptop is a Dell C610 15" running a PIII processor and a measly 256MB ram.
This is obviously quite limited so I decided a stripped version of linux was the only way to go. I posted a short write-up of what I did here.

Once I had my software set up and I knew this would work from a hardware/software standpoint I set about tearing the poor laptop to shreds to see how I could mount the thing.
The attached images show what I ended up with. Essentially a bare LCD panel and the laptop guts (cpu, ram, mb, hdd, etc) in a package that fits neatly behind it. I powered it up and it still runs like a charm so I'm well pleased.

I left the mounting bracket on the LCD so at the moment I'm thinking I might screw the panel directly onto a sheet of plexi with a bezel spraypainted on the inside. Then using a custom bracket mounting the guts on to the plexi as well sitting right behind the LCD. This way I could cut channels into the sides of the cab using a router and slot the plexi with everything on it into those channels between the two sides.

I'm still in the planning phase of the cab build it self so any ideas, suggestions and critisisms are welcomed right now :D




javeryh

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Re: My first cab: Mame Bartop cab from laptop guts.
« Reply #1 on: March 04, 2011, 09:20:35 am »
Nice.  How are you going to power it on and off?  I've got a bunch of laptops that my office was just going to throw out and I've wanted to use them for a MAME machine but I'm not sure how you could wire the power button on the computer to a microswitch to turn everything on and off...

ulfur

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Re: My first cab: Mame Bartop cab from laptop guts.
« Reply #2 on: March 04, 2011, 09:29:17 am »
Nice.  How are you going to power it on and off?  I've got a bunch of laptops that my office was just going to throw out and I've wanted to use them for a MAME machine but I'm not sure how you could wire the power button on the computer to a microswitch to turn everything on and off...

Unfortunately that's one of the problems I haven't quite solved yet. The power button is soldered directly onto the motherboard assembly and it's a momentary switch which makes it a bit awkward.
That being said I haven't really taken a close look at it yet but I'm fairly certain I'll find a solution to it... probably involving a soldering iron.

I'll post my solution here as soon as I've figured it out.

danivempire

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Re: My first cab: Mame Bartop cab from laptop guts.
« Reply #3 on: March 04, 2011, 10:27:53 am »
at first I was thinking about a netbook or even a nettop computer for my cab, but this power button issue was a little too much  :banghead:

it's not impossible, but not the easies way either

I can't wait to see what your going to do ^^

any idea about joysticks and buttons?

justinjstark

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Re: My first cab: Mame Bartop cab from laptop guts.
« Reply #4 on: March 04, 2011, 10:43:01 am »
The power button is soldered directly onto the motherboard assembly and it's a momentary switch which makes it a bit awkward.
That being said I haven't really taken a close look at it yet but I'm fairly certain I'll find a solution to it... probably involving a soldering iron.

I'll post my solution here as soon as I've figured it out.

Any pushbutton will work but you can also find momentary contact pushbuttons (Happ sells some).  It shouldn't be anything more than soldering on a few wires and connecting them to the pushbutton, am I right?

GadgetGeek

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Re: My first cab: Mame Bartop cab from laptop guts.
« Reply #5 on: March 04, 2011, 12:49:26 pm »
If the bios supports it, turn on wake-on-keyboard and then just any keypress should turn it back on.

ulfur

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Re: My first cab: Mame Bartop cab from laptop guts.
« Reply #6 on: March 04, 2011, 02:49:18 pm »
Unfortunately this old bios doesn't support wake-on much anything.

However, I just had a look and the power button circuit isn't anything special at all.
All that is needed is to short pin 9 of the connector to ground and that either switches on or of depending on the current state.
This leaves me with two options. I can either permanently short the pin which means that whenever there's power to the computer it'll turn on and whenever the power is taken of it'll shut off.
The other option would be to hook any standard momentary switch up to the circuit and make it accessable from outside the cab.

There is a third option involving a custom circuit but it's way more hassle than it's worth and I'm way too lazy to implement it.

In any case this is a pretty easy problem to solve and it definitely shouldn't deter anyone from using laptop guts for a Mame cabinet :)

Donkbaca

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Re: My first cab: Mame Bartop cab from laptop guts.
« Reply #7 on: March 04, 2011, 03:23:54 pm »
go for option 2, if its permanently shorted, when you plug it in it will turn on for a few minutes and then shut itself down.

ulfur

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Re: My first cab: Mame Bartop cab from laptop guts.
« Reply #8 on: March 04, 2011, 03:26:30 pm »
go for option 2, if its permanently shorted, when you plug it in it will turn on for a few minutes and then shut itself down.

You think? You could be right, I tried keeping it continually pressed before but I doubt I ever tried for more than a minute.
I might jump it temporarly later just to find out but I was leaning towards option two any way, it just seems a lot more sane for several reasons.

phatmeat

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Re: My first cab: Mame Bartop cab from laptop guts.
« Reply #9 on: March 05, 2011, 03:44:56 pm »
I just did something like what you are doing . Have fun . Here is a link , I dont have pics of the built though  ???
http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=109825.0

Here is the best pic of the on switch that I wired to a arcade button to turn the computer on and put into sleep mode . Since the switch is most likely a  surface mount you will have to do a continuity test the switch leads . The solder area is really small . I was able to connnect 2 wires to the solder joints. It was 24 or smaller gauge wire.
Hope it helps   GL

ulfur

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Re: My first cab: Mame Bartop cab from laptop guts.
« Reply #10 on: March 06, 2011, 01:42:37 pm »
I just did something like what you are doing . Have fun . Here is a link , I dont have pics of the built though  ???
http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=109825.0

Here is the best pic of the on switch that I wired to a arcade button to turn the computer on and put into sleep mode . Since the switch is most likely a  surface mount you will have to do a continuity test the switch leads . The solder area is really small . I was able to connnect 2 wires to the solder joints. It was 24 or smaller gauge wire.
Hope it helps   GL

Thanks for the advice. My board has the exact same switch on it. The solder area is quite small and it indeed is a smc.
I was thinking I'd just bring it to a friend that has considerably more soldering experience than me and also has access to better equipment. He hand solders surface mounts for a living ;)