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Defender style general MAME control panel
jukingeo:
--- Quote from: ghettodish on December 07, 2008, 12:19:20 pm ---Keep us posted with your project. I'd like to see how it turns out.
Note: The Trackballs are the largest controllers. Make sure you have room for it if you add one later.
That's one mistake I made. I can't add one to my cabinet.
--- End quote ---
Oh, yeah, I know what you mean. I have a 3" trackball for my Hyperbowl project and it is huge! When I saw that thing I knew right off the bat I would need to go with a separate panel. In fact it was because of the large foot print of the trackball that was the final nail in the coffin for me going the "Frankenpanel" route and to go with interchangeable panels.
This project I am going to work on is going to be a small cabinet design. I would like to make use of all those nice LCD displays that came down in price over the years. The LCD monitor can yield pretty small cabinet designs.
Geo
ghettodish:
This give you any ideas?
jukingeo:
--- Quote from: ghettodish on December 07, 2008, 04:50:02 pm ---This give you any ideas?
--- End quote ---
Heh Heh, is that yours? Really nice work! It does look as if you cut the wall out and put a full size cabinet in the wall!
I have thought of something similar along these lines. What I was going to do was something like this:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jessedylansmith/882779716/in/set-72157600975006254/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jessedylansmith/882779850/in/set-72157600975006254/
The "proposed wall" is a center dividing wall in my parents basement. One side is a finished basement and the other side has a shelf unit facing an unfinished side. So it is very easy to cut a hole in the panel, build it into the shelf unit and nicely frame it out. Naturally I would be adding my custom control panel to this. My mom loves Pac-Man, so it would get her seal of approval. But I intend to build the wall 'cubby' in such a way that should I need to, the entire MAME setup could be removed and what would remain would be a nice bookshelf :).
That is one of my options.
Another option is that I own one of these:
http://www.bestbuyslots.com/product_std_images/cherrymastercounter.jpg
The CRT is bad and thus it makes for a high candidate for a mame conversion. Trouble is the control panel is very small only room for one joy and two or three buttons. However, with the CRT gone, I can put in a small LCD and there would be plenty room inside for a computer CPU, hard drive, power supply, etc. I don't need to install a CD-Rom and I would update the machine via a USB memory stick.
The last option is a Cocktail. The reason I like a cocktail is two fold. For one, it would be the only option where I do not have to worry about the issue of rotating the monitor. You just "sit" at the correct control panel for the given orientation. While this method would take up the most room, it also is a functional table.
So these are the three ways I intend to go. But yeah, if I were to go with a full size arcade design it would be something along the slimline design you have shown me. In fact I envision a wall of about 3 or 4 of these slimline machines.
The nice thing about video games is that you no longer need those huge cabinets (unless you want to). Going slimline like this saves precious game room floor space. So where you couldn't fit an air hockey machine in before, you could if you could reduce the arcade game foot print. The same is true if you want more pinball machines. I personally like pinball more than video games, so I do need my floor space for pinballs. It is a shame that you cannot "compact" a pinball. Yes they do make small (or cocktail) pinballs, but they don't play like the full size machines.
I have to run!
Geo