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Infinicade (fka My Cab Without a Name)
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Well, after years of putting it off, I finally started building an arcade cabinet.
By way of background, I bought Saint’s Project Arcade book at least three years ago, and I’ve been reading (and generally lurking on) the BYOAC forums regularly since before even that. During all this time, I’ve been working on possible designs (and discarding most of them) and buying the tools I’ll need (using gift cards, coupons, discounts, clearance sales...seriously, I don’t think I paid even close to full price for anything, leaving more money to spend on the actual arcade parts!), all while putting off finally taking the plunge.
Now that I’m finally starting, this will be my little narrative of the planning and building of my cabinet. Once it’s built, though, I might not be posting anymore...because, with any luck, I’ll be too busy playing games!
Here’s what I’m planning to use as the guts:
Dell Dimension 8300, Pentium 4, 3.0 GHz, 1 GB RAM (eBay)
ATI Radeon 9800 Pro 128 (thanks for the deal, dweebs0r)
JVC AV-27320 27" television with s-video (Craigslist)
Creative SBS 330 2.1 speakers (eBay)
I’m using Windows XP as the operating system. I’ll be running MAME for the vast majority of games, along with Daphne, Model 2, Vivanonno, Mjolnir, Zinc, DICE, and some others for the games that don’t run as well (or at all) on MAME. Maybe I’ll even give AAE a shot for the vector games that don’t look too good on the TV. For the games that are just way too demanding for the system, as well as the games that aren’t working in any arcade emulators, I’ll be using the Dreamcast/N64/Playstation/etc. ports with the nullDC/Project64/PSX/etc. emulators. I plan to use MAMEWah as the front end, since I’ve found it to be basic, straightforward, and easy to customize, at least once you get over the learning curve.
I doubt I’ll be doing anything revolutionary in designing and building this thing, but I’ve always enjoyed reading other members’ posts about their projects, so I’m hoping that some of you enjoy reading about mine.
As always, feedback/comments are welcome!
TAG:
What finally lit the fire under me to get started was buying the wood, which I didn’t even intend to do at the time I did it. I had decided to make the cab out of MDO, but after calling around to the lumber stores in my area, I discovered that MDO would have to be specially ordered and that it would run around $60 or so per sheet. One Saturday, pretty much on a whim, I stopped by my local 84 Lumber to ask about the MDO, and maybe, just maybe, actually order it. When I asked the clerk about it, though, he said that he had recently ordered some for a guy who apparently changed his mind about needing it. As such, the clerk had it sitting in the back, and I wouldn’t need to specially order it. Plus, he offered to sell it to me for $30 a sheet, which wasn’t much more than MDF at Home Depot. Since I didn’t want to pass up such a good deal, I went ahead and bought the wood.
Now, with three big pieces of wood out in the shed taking up space, I definitely had to start building soon. I went back to my various plans and tried to work out a final design. I had scrapped ideas for cabinets with rotating panels and the like, since I didn’t think that would be the easiest way to cut my teeth on woodworking! (Maybe next time around....) I finally settled on one that I based on the designs for LuSid’s cab, the Neon MAME, and the Neo Geo cabinets.
Here’s a scan of the final design:
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Once I had the cabinet design, I moved on to finalizing the plans for the control panel. I couldn’t imagine ever having four people around who wanted to play a game, so I went with a typical 2 player design: one joystick for each player, plus 7 buttons each, with the bottom row approximating the Neo Geo layout. I also put a trackball between them. Above all that, I put a spinner (with buttons next to it specifically to keep the original Tempest layout), a joystick for the 1 player or alternating 2 player games (intended to be an UltraStik 360, so that I could use it as a 2-way, 4-way, 8-way, and analog stick), more buttons for that joystick (designed to also have a workable layout for Asteroids, Defender, and Vanguard – an old, personal favorite), and, finally, a trigger stick (for M.A.C.H. 3, Zaxxon, and the non-lightcycle Tron levels). It probably qualifies as a Frankenpanel, but I really thought I’d need all of those controls for the games I wanted to play.
Here’s a scan of the final CP design (click on it for a bigger version):
(For the record, when I was planning on a rotating CP design, the top and bottom rows of the above design were going to be on separate panels.)
As you can see, I have the player 1 and 2 start buttons and the pause and exit buttons right above the top row of controls, but that plan may eventually change, as I’m considering making a separate administrative panel that would go right under the screen. I also plan to put some holes in the CP between the first and second row of controls, which can then be covered up by a flap of the vinyl overlay, for attaching modular pieces (steering wheel, Star Wars yoke, etc.), but that idea might evolve (or devolve, maybe), too.
While I’m on the subject of designing a control panel, I can’t recommend highly enough making a simple mock-up using cardboard or some other material. What looks fine on paper doesn’t always work in practice, and I found that to be the case with my designs. Testing things out on my cardboard and rolled-up paper model led to the spacing on almost everything getting modified anywhere from a few sixteenths to a couple of inches. Using the mock-up really let me come up with a final design that seems to take every possible situation into account. Without it, I’d have been banging my forearms on other joysticks when playing Asteroids and Tempest. Here's a picture of what was left of it after going through many revisions:
Anyway, with the designs done, all I need to do is pick up a few more supplies at Home Depot and Lowes, and then I'm officially out of excuses (being too cold out doesn't count) and ready to start building! I figure I’ll deem it a success if (1) I finish up with a cabinet that doesn’t collapse in on itself, and (2) I still have all my fingers (although I suppose that would have allowed me to take a few buttons off the CP design).
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Once I had all the materials together, I almost had second thoughts about trying to build this thing. I mean, look at this pile of wood. I’m really going to be able to make THIS into a working arcade game???
I mean, I made a pencil box and a lamp in high school shop class, and neither one of those turned out looking all that great.
Still...I really wanted to play Donkey Kong with a joystick while standing in front of an arcade cabinet, so I figured it was worth a shot.
At any rate, I plan to stay fairly close to the Project Arcade book as far as the construction goes. A few differences I’m planning are using one long shelf for the TV and the CP; an additional riser for the TV; additional support for the TV/CP shelf; and additional attachment of the sides to the base.
Here’s my work area. It’s a bit cramped, but all the cutting and painting will be done outside, anyway.
Rather than measure and lay out all the pieces at once, I planned to draw, then cut, draw, then cut. Since I made a few changes to the Project Arcade plans, I couldn’t use the layout in the book. So, before I did anything on the wood, I planned it out on paper. After several attempts, here’s what I came up with:
I figured I’d wind up straying from the plans, but as least this would give me some idea of where things would go before I started cutting. With only three pieces of MDO, it’s not like I had lots of room for error on the big pieces.
I’ll be doing the cutting this weekend, so wish me luck!
TAG:
I started by laying out one of the sides. It seemed to look a lot different there on the MDO than it did on paper, but I figured that I’d be okay, since (as can’t be recommended often enough), I measured several times before I decided I was ready to cut. For the first side, I used a circular saw and a jig saw (for the curved portions). Using a sawboard (which is HIGHLY recommended...I made my own following DrewKaree’s guide) and a couple clamps made the process much easier.
Once that was done, I proceeded to lay out the second side on the second piece of wood. Even though I’d be using the first side as a pattern and tracing it, I wanted to make sure one more time that the original measurements were right. If it turned out that I was wrong somehow, I’d only have to buy one replacement piece of MDO, rather then two if I went ahead without measuring the second side. At any rate, once I had it drawn, I put the first piece on top of it, lined up the lines (it fit as expected), and clamped them together. Using a router and a flush trim bit (a Whiteside #2710 with top and bottom bearings...great bit!), the second side was finished in no time and matched up perfectly with the first side.
Honestly, I’d never used a router before, and reading the directions made it seem like it was going to be really difficult (I pictured the thing picking up speed, jerking out of my hands, and flying across the shop, leaving me standing there staring at the hole in the wall). Once I got started, though, it was a piece of cake. I can already imagine using it on a bunch of other projects long after the arcade cabinet is done! For whatever it’s worth, I tested my skills on a few pieces of scrap wood before working on the actual cab pieces.
Once the sides were done, I went back to measuring, laying out, and cutting the rest of the pieces. For cutting the angled sections (cabinet top back and CP box back), I used the circular saw set at a 45 degree angle (if I would have bought a chamfer bit for the router, I probably would have used that, instead). The only things I messed up were the lower supports and baseplates, because their size didn’t allow me to easily use the sawboard. Rather than get more and more frustrated, I just replaced those pieces with pieces cut from a 10 foot strip of 3 x 1 wood. It would only require changing the measurements on the front door, so the replacements didn’t significantly affect anything that couldn’t be modified to work.
As I was cutting, I labeled each piece before I set it aside. After all, why spend all that time being careful about precise measurements, only to risk screwing the wrong pieces together later on?
Finally, I put the slot cutter on the router and cut the t-molding slot along the cabinet sides and the CP top. I had read that it’s easier to cut the slot in MDF than it is in plywood or MDO due to chipping, etc., but this thing cut the slot in the MDO with no problem at all.
Cutting the slot was so easy that I considered finding more pieces to put t-molding on, just so that I could keep using the router. ;D