Mount DVD drive on the Admin Bar?

[spjuenger]

I have a lot of extra room on my admin bar and was thinking about adding a slim slot load DVD drive in the empty space.  This is my first cabinet so I'm not sure how much it will get used.  I will play some PC games on it, but is it worth the trouble?  Will it take away from the "Arcade Look"?  Lets hear some thoughts.

[mh12]

would you watch DVDs on it? is it a good screen/in a good spot at your place, that would make sense to have a DVD player in?

i think that should be the only concern... you may get a few purists here later!

of course it would be good for getting files to your cab, too. i have to rely on a USB drive for that (until i finally *finish* the thing off soon ---right). anyway, i have a TV tuner card in my cab. we don't bother with cable, but where we are living now it's included in the rent. and the cab is the biggest screen, so why not?

oh and as for PC games, all i've done is make an ISO file, put it on my USB stick along with any necessary NO-CD crack, install it on the cab (using Microsoft's tiny "VCD control tool") and then there's never any discs to deal with.

you're going to play PC games and have an "admin panel" - that's already taking away from the "Arcade Look." 

[Ginsu Victim]

I'd go for easy access through the coin door. Once you get your cab setup the way you like, a DVD drive will barely be needed. I don't have one in my cab at all. I just copy everything via USB (port installed under CP).

[severdhed]

other than when i installed windows on it, i have not used my dvd drive once.  i installed a USB wireless adapter in the cabinet so i can copy files to it over the lan. 

[Epyx]

Agreed. I use a portable 2.5" drive via USB which is a lot more convenient than cd/dvds. I also added a wireless USB stick to my pc inside the cab so if I need to go online for a quick download I can.

[miles2912]

Slapped a wireless card in mine to get new files.

[drventure]

Yeah, I'd say go wireless.

But, hey, it's your cab. Maybe stick a slimline black front DVD on there, It'd be almost invisible at that point.

Or... mount it BEHIND the admin panel and put a drop hinge on the admin panel itself.

Or put a USB port somewhere on the bottom of the CP so you can just stick a USB mem stick in it when needed.

Guess it depends on how much of a purist you are 

[Zebidee]

I installed a DVD drive behind a control panel in a cab I did a few years ago .... here are the pics. Note that I blacked the border of the  surrounding hole after taking these photos. I don't really bother with DVD drives anymore for the same reasons put forth by other posters - it is too much hassle for little benefit. Noone really uses DVD drives anymore except for installing some software or watching movies, and it is easier to just make the DVD drive accessible from the front door.






These pics come from the third cab in my sig lineup (below)

[severdhed]

I say put the DVD drive inside the cabinet and see how much you use it.   after a few months, if you see that you are using it alot, then mount it where you can easily get to it.  not only do i not use mine, i dont even have one anymore. i hooked up the drive to install windows, then removed it.  there is just no need for it in my cabinet.

[Zebidee]

Actually, I do use the DVD drive for ripping my CDs to MP3s, mainly because I use my arcade cab(s) to play music from my collection. In fact, after talking about it I now recall that after installing the DVD drive (pictured above) I ripped all my CDs and auto-created playlists for them so that I could launch them from MameWAH and play my music in the background . The ripping process became just so easy. I now have about 60GB of music on my main arcade cab, so there is always something to listen to while playing Galaga or Tetris or whatever.

Having said all of that the ripping process is a one-off and does not, in itself, justify a cab-mounted DVD drive. When I think about how much work I invested into mounting it into the door, I shake my head at myself. 

[protokatie]

If you could incorperate a slit style DVD drive (as opposed to the tray style) I say go with it. Simply for the sole purpose of using the cab as an impromptu CD player. If you could have a program sitting in the background waiting to play any ACD put in and then stop playing when ejected, it could be worth it. Would be kinda cool to start up SFII and then pop in "Rust in Peace" as an added soundtrack as well

It IS your project, and as long as doing a test involving this is concerned and if you aren't too tight on money to do it as an experiment, then just do it. I would like to see how it turns out. (Although, I wouldn't recommend trying to watch DVDs on a cab... Wouldn't be very comfy, just stick to ACDs and MP Cds and for adding new roms)

EDIT: And to answer your "real" question: You already have an admin bar, so no you cannot do much more to "take away" from the "arcade look". Although, the fact you are using a slot loading DVD drive just means you can hide more "non authentic" arcade stuff and also eat it too!

[spjuenger]

I'm going to go ahead and add it to the admin bar.  The drive jas been sitting on my desk not being used anyway.  I'll post some pictures once I'm done.  Hopefully next weekend.  Thanks for all the input.

[Pixelhugger]

I mounted a slot load drive in my admin panel. It's one of my favorite things about my project.

Here's the writeup on how I mounted it.

[Zebidee]

Sweeeet!

if you are interested, I can show you how I set up Mamewah to play my music in the background while you play Mame! I use mplayer and nircmd together to put the program up into higher memory so that it plays the music "in the background" and won't interfere with most games (except for maybe really CPU intensive ones).

[mj147]

I gotta go with the crowd here, Since the install of windows I have yet to use my dvd drive.

But if I were to, the way to do it is the way Pixel did his 

By the way Pixel  did ya ever finish that cab? I remember seeing this in your thread  bout 2 years ago 




mj147

[Zebidee]

Pixel's work is truly awesome and inspirational.

In my defense, I built my admin panel with DVD drive (pictured above) from the DVD "cage" itself from the PC, scrap pieces of wood in the shed and an old table placemat