Basically 100% done MAME cabinet. . . On like Donkey Kong

[Chicken McNobody]

Now I have to put some bolts into the coin door, and I also need to wire a central power switch for it all.  But other than that, this one is the can!  This has been 5 years in the making, and I couldn't be more satisfied. 

On the subject of power, does anyone have a suggestion on how to wire the computer's power switch with a power strip?  Right now, I have it where it requires the computer to be turned on separate from the rest of everything else. 

Thanks in advance for any help and checking this out.  And my 4 year old daughter is playing Moonwalker, and she is actually pretty decent at it.  She loves saving the children the most. . .

[javeryh]

Real nice job.  What I usually do is wire the pins on the computer's motherboard for the power button to a microswitch just like any button.  Then I plug everything into a SmartStrip with the computer being the "hot" plug.  One press turns everything on and off.

A couple of questions:

What kind of monitor are you using and how did you mount it?

How did you finish the cabinet (I assume paint but spray or brush?)?

 

[Chicken McNobody]

Thanks for the advice on the power switch, I'll give it a go soon.  Like most people, I am having a hard time prying myself away from this to do anything that isn't playing the games themselves.

It is actually an old school 19" CRT computer monitor that I got as a hand me down for what was originally to be a MAME cocktail project.  I picked up a Midway Space Invaders cocktail game from Craigslist that needed very little restoration, so that replaced the need to MAME a cocktail game. 

I removed the monitors front plastic bezel to allow a curved CRT bezel to clean up the opening, and then I cut a large piece of cardboard to fit with the opening, and painted it black.  Since it is so dark in there, it looks great, even if it is very very low budget.  I put a 2x4 at an angle to sit the monitor on, and then put another angled in the back for it to rest against and not fall back or out.  I then took two 2 1/2" lag screws and screwed through the 2x4 and into the monitor casing (I made sure there was enough room to do so first.)  And this made so the monitor stays put, and won't risk sliding down in heated play.

I intentionally have the monitor set a little lower than maybe was needed to allow a good angle for taller people looking down.  The Wife and I are 5' 4" and the cabinet is about that same height.  Also this allows our daughters to see it when they are sitting on the bar stools used from the kitchen.  You can see in the one picture that my oldest is perfectly lined up to see and play with ease.  And that was very important to me.  My neighbor is about 5' 10" and he says the angle is great from him whilst looking down at the screen, so it worked out as I had hoped.

The cabinet itself is painted, I am not 100% sure how it was applied, as the basic cabinet and side art was another purchase on Craigslist.  I have very little woodworking skill and no access to a shop, so this was a perfect set up for me to finish.  I added the back panel and all the interiors, as it was just a scratch built "shell" that was already dressed up, and ready to finish.

I know a lot of you will chastise me for this, but I am simply using MAME32, and don't have a "front end" set up.  I tried using MaLa and maybe I'm stupid with this, but I can't get it to only show the games I have available.  The list is all the games that MAME32 works with, and that is 6,000, when I have only about 1,500.  I don't plan on or intend to have the full 6,000 to play.  I am more than satisfied with my selection, and may add here or there from time to time.

Any help on this would be great, I tried reading the threads about using MaLa and the likes, and I guess my brain can't process what I am doing.  Since I can't seem to get it to work right for me.

[pinballwizard79]

That machine is super nice

[Chicken McNobody]

Thanks for all the kind words, I worked pretty hard on it, and am very proud.  My girls love to play it, and that makes it all worth while.  I am not the kind to document the process, so I have no mid production pictures.  I'm sorry, I know a lot of you enjoy seeing those, but that's not how I work.

For those who may have missed it in my art posting, here is another picture of the CPO itself.  It worked out perfectly and Mamemarquees is the only way to go in my opinion.  Scott is very pleasant to deal with and is a true master at his craft. 

[javeryh]

You should be proud.  Building one of these things and actually having it work is very rewarding.

Try MaLa again - I'm not sure what is going on with your gamelist.  From your description you seem to have the "All Games" gamelist showing and nothing else.  Try making your own gamelist.  Right click and select options and go to gamelists (if I remember correctly).  Then you can drag and drop whatever you want into separate lists and name them however you want.  Then click off "Hide All Games list" and only the smaller lists you created will be selectable from the front end.  The guys in the MaLa forum are VERY helpful.  Try poking around there.   

[Bender]

love it!

I have one thing I'd change on the CP art though
I really like that you kept as much of the original art as possible, but do you really want to play with the jump button on the top row?

Could you flip the "jump" triangle upside down and place it on the bottom row?

[Donkey_Kong]

Could you flip the "jump" triangle upside down and place it on the bottom row?

I'm guessing it's a little late for that?  He will get used to the jump being there, I think...

Nice work chicken mc

[Chicken McNobody]

I approached it from two ways actually.  I like it being where it is now, at first, I had it programmed for all Nintendo games to have both the 1st and 2nd player jump labeled as the button to give it more of the original arcade feel.  That worked great except for one semi major problem.  My girls love to sit and "play" as the second player whilst I play the games, and this has caused many many mishaps in those games.  So I removed the dual button set-up.  I am totally used to it now, and have no issues what-so-ever.  Maybe when the girls get a little older (my oldest is 4 and youngest is almost 3.)

But hey, it's all up to what you are comfortable with, and I am totally comfortable with it this way.

[Chicken McNobody]

You should be proud.  Building one of these things and actually having it work is very rewarding.

Try MaLa again - I'm not sure what is going on with your gamelist.  From your description you seem to have the "All Games" gamelist showing and nothing else.  Try making your own gamelist.  Right click and select options and go to gamelists (if I remember correctly).  Then you can drag and drop whatever you want into separate lists and name them however you want.  Then click off "Hide All Games list" and only the smaller lists you created will be selectable from the front end.  The guys in the MaLa forum are VERY helpful.  Try poking around there.   

I am very proud of this build, my oldest daughter will sit next to me kind holding on to me in a loving way while I play New Zealand Story, I love it when she mimics the loosing a life sound, it is very cute.

So I found a really simple break down MaLa Wiki FAQ, and there is a simple button to check to only list games with ROMs available, so that fixed that issue.  So now I am at least using the default MaLa set-up which is fine by me.  I found a way to turn the computer off when exiting MaLa, and now I can't seem to find a way to boot right into it.  It's not that hard to click a few mouse clicks to get there, but that would make things even better.  I also can't seem to figure out how to get these custom GUIs to work. 

Once again, I am a big time noob with this stuff, and any help or pointing in the right direction would be great.  I searched the forums in that section, and I don't get half of what is being told to people.  I am not a technical thinker, pics help a lot, that's why that Wiki I found worked out great, but it didn't cover the other issues.

[severdhed]

glad to hear you gave mala another chance.  it works really well, and if you play around a little, you can make a pretty cool looking front end.

as for making the pc boot directly into mala...you have a few choices.  you can simply create a shortcut to mala.exe and place it in the windows startup folder.  you will still see windows booting, but at least it will start up automatically. 

if you want to make it a little less windows and a little more  "custom arcade".  you can follow the article in the wiki

http://wiki.arcadecontrols.com/wiki/Hiding_Windows

it will show you how to change the windows boot screen, and set MALA as your shell, so the desktop never actually loads.  it takes a little effort, but is well documented and when it is done, people will have no idea that is just a windows PC running everything.

[Chicken McNobody]

I'm not so concerned about the PC Vs. Genuine arcade look thing.  I just want to make it as simple as possible, so when The Wife, or my Mom go to turn this on to play with my girls, it will be a simple one step process. 

I got it to boot right into MaLa, and I even figured out a way to get it to go right into Donkey Kong.  So even if you touch nothing, you will get something when you fire it up.

I know I should make up some favorites lists, but I hate doing that stuff.  But I would like to figure out how to use custom designs, maybe to spice it up a bit.  I also wonder if anyone knows how to make it scroll faster, I only have about 1,600 games at this time, but the search can take a while right now.

Any suggestions?

[Bender]

I think in mala there should be a up and down by letter function you can map to a pair of your buttons so you can get through very quickly
I also have a page up and page down mapped to a couple buttons

[Chicken McNobody]

I think in mala there should be a up and down by letter function you can map to a pair of your buttons so you can get through very quickly
I also have a page up and page down mapped to a couple buttons

I couldn't get this to work right.  I saw all that, and it didn't seem to change anything.  What am I missing with this?

[spOOf]

Your cab looks very, very nice.  Unfortunately I haven't reached the front end phase yet so I can't answer your current question.  But I can say I know you can setup buttons to help page through the lists.  Have you searched the Mala forum?

Good luck with the fine tuning!

[Chicken McNobody]

Thanks, and I figured out what I was doing wrong.  I kept setting the spacing different and not seeing a change in the searching of the games.  Well, I didn't realize until someone had worded it in that way, that I needed to assign the buttons to do the actual searching/scanning.  Now I have a good set-up that I can work much much better with.

I have the joystick for the 1 step up or down.  The rightmost top and bottom buttons on the p1 side to go up and don a letter accordingly.  And the bottom left and bottom middle buttons to do a 10 game jump within the list, right goes up and left goes down. 

I am good now, thanks to all for the heads up and assistance.  I can live with this much much easier.

On a build note, I refinished the coin door, and installed it, and I cut out the new joystick dust rings.  The ones I have are the standard fighting stick large ones, and they covered the arrow art around the joystick, and they didn't keep the Nintendo feel that I was going for.  I got a couple smaller diameter rings from some Sanwa parts I used for my SFIV PS3 joystick, and dremeled out the center ring to a perfect fit.  I love the new look, but now I realize just how off center the P2 joystick is.  The P1 is off as well, but not nearly as much as the P2 side.  But I can easily live with it, especially since it is a minor cosmetic deal, and the buttons are all perfectly line up with eachother and the art. 

I will post updated pics of said work when I get home tonight. 

All I have left is the power switch and eventually getting a much better computer since the one I am currently using is about 10 years old.  Great for the majority of the games I play, but I miss my MKII, KI, KI2, and SFIII.  I know you see MKII in one of the pics, but it runs slllllooooow, I gues just wishful thinking there.

[Franco B]

VERY nice indeed! Great work    

[Chicken McNobody]

So the coin door itself was in decent shape, and with some paint it looks great.  Still looking for permanent replacement on the bolts, but what I have for now will work.  The coin mechs themselves didn't clean up so well, so right now they look fairly sharp with a heavy duty silver paint, but they shouldn't shine that much.  I found a great deal on the mechs, only $10 a piece, so until I order those, this will do for now. 

You can see on the up close CP shots that the dust ring is much smaller, and it also shows the misaligned P2 controller.  It really bothered me at first, but now I am pretty used to it, and it really isn't that far off.  Also this is a really nice metal CP that I made up, and it would be a little too much for me to redo the who thing to shift the joysticks as little as 1/8".  Maybe in the future, if I have nothing better to do, I may just get a new CPO printed up to realign the whole thing.

Other than that, I am in love with this thing.  My almost 3 year old (not the one pictured playing above) loves to yell at Donkey Kong.  She calls him a bad monkey and tells him to be nice to Mario and Pauline.  They have really enjoyed watching me play some Galaga, one of the all time favorites for me as well.

Thanks again to all for the kind words, I am very pleased and admittedly surprised that this turned out so good.  And hearing the positive feedback from those whos work I have drooled over for the past year doing research give me a warm tingly feeling all over. 

You guys are great!

[Chicken McNobody]

Well what do ya know, I did have some mid production pics lying about.  Nothing really all that exciting, but it does show a failed CPO, that would have killed  my knuckles if using the P1 joystick, you would knock about even with simple movements.  But alas, it was included with the deal, so it wasn't a total loss, and I am very pleased with my version of the CPO anyway. . .

[Shortbus]

Very Mccool. good info in your posts too! Thanks

[severdhed]

that looks great.  I like how you kept it looking pretty much like donkey kong,  but managed to make a few tweaks to make it more functional.  that cabinet looks like it is in good shape...the one i picked up is in need of a little TLC.

i know you said you didnt have any mid-build pictures, but i'd love to see how you mounted your PC monitor...do you think you could maybe take a pic or two?  i plan on installing a 19" CRT pc monitor in my cabinet and i'm not exactly sure how i am going to do that yet.  I know it is alot to ask, but if you could find time to take a few pics of that, i would greatly appreciate it.

looks good, congratulations on a great project. 

[Chicken McNobody]

Thanks all for the kind words, and Severded, I can get you a pic if needed, but this is a crude drawing of what I did.

The black bars are 2x4s cut to the length of the inside of the cabinet.  I cut various small pieces of 1/2" scrap wood, shown in red, to drill into the side of the cabinet using 1" wood screws.  The cabinet is 3/4" thick so this gave it sturdy brackets without risk of screwing through the cabinet itself.  I then used 2 small L brackets on the 2" inch sides of the 2x4s to attach them to the thicker sections.  I put one brace at the front angled up for the front part of the monitor to rest one, and then I put one angled with the back casing of the monitor.

The monitor is shown in blue, and it was still in the case, i removed the plastic bezel, but cut out the corners to keep it help in place.  This way I could get a cleaner view, and use the monitor bezel that I had.  After I got the angle right for me, I screwed 2 2 1/2" lag screws through the back brace to hold the monitor in place and keep it from sliding down.  It admittedly took a few tries to get the angle right for the monitor, well right for me at least. 

That sucker is held in there solid.  A friend of mine and I had moved it up and down on stairs, and it didn't budge at all.  Now I mounted mine horizontal, since this is a MAME cabinet designed with fighting games in mind.  So I don't know how well this would work with a vertical setup since most monitor casings are angled in on the sides.  And if you decase the monitor entirely, that adds a whole new design in general.  I did that with my Bump N' Jump, and followed not only what the original design was for the cabinted, but I remounted a different monitor size using the same technique that javeryh used for his.  But my BNJ already had guides built in for the wood, so I just reused what was already there.

Hope this helps, if not, or it is confusing, I'll do better with real pics or better descriptions of the setup.

[DaOld Man]

Great job Chicken McNobody!!!

I like what you did to the CP to make it a mame cabinet, yet pretty much kept the original DK look.

 

[severdhed]

cool...thanks for the diagram.  i'm not 100% sure i need to decase it...i have to bring the monitor upstairs here and look at for a while to see how it will work.

once again, that is a great looking cabinet...congrats