MVS-99-6 - Project on hold until further notice (2014-03-10)

[Yvan256]

Hello everyone,

I've been working on a replacement for my Micro-MAME cabinet.

The name of this new cabinet is MVS99-6. Some people will be able to deduce something from that name alone.

I've done all the plans with Google Sketchup. In fact without Sketchup I don't think I would have been able to even plan it, let alone make it.

This cabinet will include three features that, in my humble opinion, will make it amazing given its size:
- marquee
- screen
- coin mechanism

And thanks to Bender and his tips about taking great pictures, here's a preview from my Sketchup model:



 

P.S.: pictures of the build-in-progress coming soon.

[vrf]

Ahh... so here it is.

I am one of those people who is unable to deduce anything from the name. Over my head, perhaps.

Please show a picture of the whole cab. Include approximate dimensions. 

[Yvan256]

Please show a picture of the whole cab. Include approximate dimensions. 

Picture of the whole Sketchup model? Not right away! What would be the fun in that!

Here is a picture of the cabinet, IKEA style:


The highlighted parts are the ones that are already cut and ready for sanding/priming/painting/assembly:


As for the approximate dimensions, the assembled cabinet is going to be much smaller than a 25x25x25" cube.

[vrf]

well, I'll be watching this one.

Nice shape to the box!

What are you using for hardware and arcade parts?

[Yvan256]

well, I'll be watching this one.

Nice shape to the box!

What are you using for hardware and arcade parts?

Thanks. The name, shape of the sides and color of the sides in the "preview" should be more than enough to know what kind of cabinet it is.

As for the hardware, it's going to be:
- mini-ITX motherboard (probably intel Atom, but I do need to do some tests) running FreeDOS or Linux (not sure which one yet, that's part of the tests) with 512MB RAM and a 1GB IDE flash module.
- The joystick is a Sanwa JLF-TP-8T with a black Sanwa LB-30 ball (I sure wish they made LB-24N 24mm bat tops...)
- The four main buttons are Sanwa OBSF-24 (one red, one yellow, one green and one blue)  
- I'm not sure which control buttons to use though, I'd like to get Sanwa SDM-20-WH but they only seem to be available from arcadeshop.de

[vrf]

Neo Geo MVS... duh. I don't recognize the 99-6, though.

I will be interested in your tests, especially Neo Geo games on the Intel Atom. I'm also considering an Atom board.

[Yvan256]

Neo Geo MVS... duh. I don't recognize the 99-6, though.

I will be interested in your tests, especially Neo Geo games on the Intel Atom. I'm also considering an Atom board.

It seems that sometimes SNK name their cabinets by the number of games dash screen size, sometimes the other way around. They're not going to be all Neo-Geo games, but I will limit the cab to 99 games just so the name fits. And 6 is supposed to be the screen size, although it's 6.4 inches. But MVS99-6.4 sounded like a version number or something.

And since you figured out the cab theme, I'll even give the real dimensions: 9 x 12.625 x 14 inches (width/depth/height).



Some details in the control panel are not up to date on this picture. From left to right: boot, Samurai Shodown, Dig Dug.

As for the Atom board, keep in mind that I have the first intel board (D201GLY) which has a single-core CPU.

[vrf]

oh my... that's going to be awesome. And SMALL. Wow.

Actually, I'm interested in the single core Atom tests because all the netbooks out there these days use that CPU. Properly dissected, they might make for a good engine for future micro-cabs. The LCD is already there for you.

(By the way, I suppose I should inform you that your first take on the micro-MAME cab was part of my inspiration for Pixelbox. The MVS system may inspire me toward a second attempt. If #1 ever gets finished...)

[Yvan256]

oh my... that's going to be awesome. And SMALL. Wow.

Actually, I'm interested in the single core Atom tests because all the netbooks out there these days use that CPU. Properly dissected, they might make for a good engine for future micro-cabs. The LCD is already there for you.

(By the way, I suppose I should inform you that your first take on the micro-MAME cab was part of my inspiration for Pixelbox. The MVS system may inspire me toward a second attempt. If #1 ever gets finished...)

Thanks but that's only going to be awesome if I can pull it off. 

But it does "work" in Sketchup (i.e. all the things do fit inside that space).

Netbook as a computer+LCD building frame... I like it. I don't like the fact that most netbooks are widescreen though.

As for Micro-MAME being an inspiration for Pixelbox and MVS99-6 being an inspiration for a future project of yours... The shape of Pixelbox inspired me to do MVS99-6! Let's not do this too many times or we might open a rift in space or something. Causality, etc...   

So... are we the only two people in here who like mini bartops? And am I the only MVS fan? 

[bobdanoob]

Your not the only two who likes mini cabs.    I built a bartop with 2 player controls and trackball, but now I have a hankering to build a mini mame. The two of you guys' projects got me thinking. When I first went to building my bartop, I got a lil carried away with an inch here and inch there, so it ended up being a lil bigger than I thought it was going to be. But if I had a chance to redo it now, I could get something a lot smaller.

 I've also been looking into the netbook route in a minicab. I got a Asus 1000hd. Its a celeron model, with 120gb, and XP. I got a friend who has an atom model though if you wanted me to test out mame with a few games for ya (if thats what you were interested in). His has the 4gb SSD, and I installed Ubuntu Netbook Remix on it for him; as it came with the crappy linux the ship with it). If I were going to use a netbook, it would definitely have have SSD. You could get a stripped down linux distro with a frontend to boot pretty quick I bet. You data would be safer especially in a cabinet your going to be moving around a lot.  Then just store your 'data' for mame or whatever on an external USB drive. Let me know if you want me to try anything specifically on either of them.

More pics of progress Pleaseeee. 

[cboy]

NICE......

I'm going to want to build one of these now. lol

I'm also curious on how mame will work on the atom processor

[SavannahLion]

Please show a picture of the whole cab. Include approximate dimensions. 

Picture of the whole Sketchup model? Not right away! What would be the fun in that!

Here is a picture of the cabinet, IKEA style:


The highlighted parts are the ones that are already cut and ready for sanding/priming/painting/assembly:


As for the approximate dimensions, the assembled cabinet is going to be much smaller than a 25x25x25" cube.

Slightly OT. Did you construct those components piece by piece in Sketchup or is there some kind of "unwrap" plug-in?

[Yvan256]

Slightly OT. Did you construct those components piece by piece in Sketchup or is there some kind of "unwrap" plug-in?

Nope, I do build each panel one by one. Sketchup seems to be made for "empty" models (i.e. only surfaces, like game engines I guess).

And then I took each panel and rotated it "flat" and moved all pieces in that pattern. Takes time, but it was worth it for the joke.

Strange that nobody mentioned the marquee yet...

[HaRuMaN]

Strange that nobody mentioned the marquee yet...

Are you putting a tiny LCD in the top right corner of your marquee?

[Yvan256]

Strange that nobody mentioned the marquee yet...

Are you putting a tiny LCD in the top right corner of your marquee?

Yep, the MVS "mini marquee" is a tiny 1.2x1.2" LCD screen. Looks easy enough to program, I should be able to drive it from the parallel port of the computer.

I may have to rework the printed marquee artwork a bit so that the LCD doesn't appear so tiny relative to the text, but otherwise that's more or less the final look.

[polaris]

just planning a mini cab myself, or maybe now i'm just copying not planning anymore 
 looking great, what main screen are you using?

[Yvan256]

just planning a mini cab myself, or maybe now i'm just copying not planning anymore  
 looking great, what main screen are you using?

I got kind of lucky on the LCD, I was able to pick it up for only about 50$ a few years ago. It's a 6.4", 4:3, Sharp LQ064A5CG01. Yes, it only has a composite input. But it also has a resolution of 480x234, which is double what the Neo-Geo and older games need. Well, some games were 320x240 so I'm missing 3 pixels at the top and bottom. Big deal.

Problem is, I would rather have a 320x240 LCD with a VGA input, but those probably don't exist. A 640x480 LCD would be exactly the same (2x2 pixels) but they cost a bit too much.

And last, the width of this cabinet is tailor-made to the LCD diameter when rotating.

[polaris]

rotating?

[Yvan256]

rotating?

Hopefully automatically motorized, too. 

[polaris]

rotating?

Hopefully automatically motorized, too. 

bastard, mines at best gonna be a manual rotation, awesome you're doing this now, i've been stumped thinking the last few nights 

[Yvan256]

bastard, mines at best gonna be a manual rotation, awesome you're doing this now, i've been stumped thinking the last few nights 

At this size, you could probably get away with motorizing the whole thing with LEGO parts.

[polaris]

bastard, mines at best gonna be a manual rotation, awesome you're doing this now, i've been stumped thinking the last few nights 

At this size, you could probably get away with motorizing the whole thing with LEGO parts.

im way too rubbish for that, when i say mines rotating, read remove and replace in a different orientation

are you making a metal CP, dont those buttons (sanwa) only work on metal panels?

[Yvan256]

are you making a metal CP, dont those buttons (sanwa) only work on metal panels?

I'm still not really decided on the CP material. I'd like to make a metal CP since the MVS had that and it would be easier to mount those buttons, but then again I'm not used to work with metal, especially the bends that would be required for the CP.

[cboy]

ok that marquee is COOL

[Yvan256]

Small update: I just received the LCD for the mini-marquee! I guess this means mini-marquee LCD coding this weekend!   

[polaris]

ok , cheeky request, any chance you can post your cp plan, sketchup is killing me and maths is making my tired brain hurt and i'm trying to plan my cp, need an idea of how far apart the buttons need to be. my cp is basically an adaptation of yours now ive seen it, so it would really help me if you don't mind
 

[Yvan256]

ok , cheeky request, any chance you can post your cp plan, sketchup is killing me and maths is making my tired brain hurt and i'm trying to plan my cp, need an idea of how far apart the buttons need to be. my cp is basically an adaptation of yours now ive seen it, so it would really help me if you don't mind
 

What's your CP size (width/depth), joystick plate size, buttons size, etc? Same as me? Sanwa JLF and four Sanwa 24mm buttons?

As for me, I still need to fit two 8mm 7-segment LEDs and two or three white menu buttons. 

[polaris]

ok , cheeky request, any chance you can post your cp plan, sketchup is killing me and maths is making my tired brain hurt and i'm trying to plan my cp, need an idea of how far apart the buttons need to be. my cp is basically an adaptation of yours now ive seen it, so it would really help me if you don't mind
 

What's your CP size (width/depth), joystick plate size, buttons size, etc? Same as me? Sanwa JLF and four Sanwa 24mm buttons?

As for me, I still need to fit two 8mm 7-segment LEDs and two or three white menu buttons. 

i'm trying to work out the CP size, U360 and same buttons but 6 not 4, i can find button spacing for regular sized buttons, but not for this smaller size, i think im gonna order some and go with cardboard to work it out

[Yvan256]

i'm trying to work out the CP size, U360 and same buttons but 6 not 4, i can find button spacing for regular sized buttons, but not for this smaller size, i think im gonna order some and go with cardboard to work it out

My CP is only 8" wide, I had to mount the Sanwa JLF "sideways" (i.e. vertically instead of horizontally) and there is barely enough width left for the four 24mm buttons, even including the fact that the first one is lower than the others.

I'm still not sure how I'll be able to add the 7-segments LEDs for the coin mech (a dumb "coin counter" that only goes up, controlled by a PIC microcontroller) and the menu/player/etc buttons. I know I need a "player 1 start" button, and a minimum of two buttons (Esc and Tab) for MAME and a Pause button would be nice too, which makes it three buttons for MAME and one more button for the CP itself.

I was thinking of using a Seimitsu PS-14-DN 24mm Pushbutton (white body with clear plunger) and put a "player 1" graphic in it since 24mm "player" buttons don't seem to exist. But even so, I didn't have room for another 24mm button at the top of the CP...

Then I remembered that MVS cabinets don't have "player 1", "player 2" buttons because the text is on the CP itself! The original machines have "Left Player Start" and "Right Player Start", so all I need is a completely white SDM-20 Sanwa button and a "Player Start" text! If I can squeeze three more of those at the top right of the CP for the menus/etc, I'll be all set and I'll also be able to preserve the original MVS "look" of the CP.

[vrf]

Yeah, I had to mount my joystick sideways, too. It really frees up some room.

I was originally going to have a tiny panel like on a Byrdo stick, but I ended up adding the trackball. So I had to move up to panel about 9.5" wide.

One idea I think would be cool is to take a Byrdo stick design and add an angled netbook display and motherboard. It could be REALLY small.

http://www.byrdo.org/arcade_joysticks.htm

[Yvan256]

I have switched to working on the control panel for now, hence the lack of updates on the cabinet itself...

I thought I had no room for the joystick, buttons, etc under the control panel. However, once I started placing cables and the keyboard encoder in there... it's even worst!   I'll have to put the keyboard encoder on tall pcboard risers just so the PS/2 cable can pass in-between two main buttons.

I'll also have to cut the metal plate of the joystick to gain 3/8" at the top of the CP to make room for the control buttons (menu, pause, quit).

Also, I've worked for two days on the small LCD display that will display the Neo-Geo MVS mini-marquees and other game marquees. It's connected via the parallel port and I will release the MS-DOS program once it's done to display graphics from the command line (the cable is extremely easy to make). After two days, however, I'm still puzzled as to why I can't get it to display anything. It seems I have a "third" controller not mentioned anywhere, judging from the pictures of the Epson and Philips LCDs. It's a bit complicated. If anyone has experience working with the Nokia 6610 LCD please contact me. 

Other than that, all is going according to plan. 

[Ond]

I'm starting to really get the bug to build one of these little fellas everytime I see one, yours, Vrf's and others.  I've even got a hacked out laptop Mobo and spare controls ready to go.  Nice work, I'll be following along watching 

[Yvan256]

I'm starting to really get the bug to build one of these little fellas everytime I see one, yours, Vrf's and others.  I've even got a hacked out laptop Mobo and spare controls ready to go.  Nice work, I'll be following along watching 

If you do decide to build one, or even if you only make plans for one, I'd be interested to follow your progress! How about a miniature Retro-Futuristic cabinet? 

A bit off-topic... anyone know if the MVS cabs were painted or laminated? I'd like to get the same finish and color as the original cabs.
Never mind, I found out they were vinyl-covered. Now I need to find that red MVS vinyl...

I'm also looking for the artwork (side, single game marquee with mini-marquee area on the right) in vector form. The one available at localarcade.com isn't correct, the fonts are not the same as the originals (as seen at arcadeoverlays.com. If you look closely at the fonts, the differences are easy to see.

Of course, at that size I could very well use those "low-res" JPEGs (after cleaning up the compression artifacts of course), but I'd rather go with vector graphics for the source.

[Yvan256]

Okay, so it seems I messed up on the speaker grils. It's three slots alright, but the middle one has to be a bit wider from the photos I've seen on the net. I know it's not a restoration project, but I'm trying to follow the style of a full-size MVS cabinet as much as I can, deviating only where necessary because of the size, single player cab, etc. If anyone sees any error and doesn't think it has to do with limitations, feel free to say so (wrong fonts, positioning of elements, etc).

I already know that the Sanwa OBSF-24 colors don't match the original button colors, but what can I do. 

Also, unless someone here can CNC custom joystick handles, I'm stuck with using either a bat top joystick that looks too big for the cabinet, or a small ball top that fits but deviates from the bat top of the original cabs.

Anyway, here's a "before vs after" rendering of the different speaker grils, along with a "before vs after" rounded corners. The little bumps at the bottom of the cabinet on the right are screw bumpers (Madico 31934) that I use for my desktop cabs.


Here's a picture of the cardboard mock-up with a printed screenshot of Samurai Shodown compared to the actual Samurai Shodown MVS cart.


And finally a picture of the tiny LCD display that's going to be used to display marquees compared to the actual Samurai Shodown mini-marquee.

[Franco B]

I've missed this project somehow. Its looks like its going to be great

i'm trying to work out the CP size, U360 and same buttons but 6 not 4, i can find button spacing for regular sized buttons, but not for this smaller size, i think im gonna order some and go with cardboard to work it out

If you want, I can have a play in Autocad and make you a button layout using the smaller buttons. If you do let me know what layout you want I can draw it and scale it to suit the buttons. There are plenty of layouts slagcoin.com if you haven't seen them.  Have you got a project announcement yet bud?

[drventure]

Cool project. The "screen in the marquee" thing will be very nice.

[polaris]

I've missed this project somehow. Its looks like its going to be great

i'm trying to work out the CP size, U360 and same buttons but 6 not 4, i can find button spacing for regular sized buttons, but not for this smaller size, i think im gonna order some and go with cardboard to work it out

If you want, I can have a play in Autocad and make you a button layout using the smaller buttons. If you do let me know what layout you want I can draw it and scale it to suit the buttons. There are plenty of layouts slagcoin.com if you haven't seen them.  Have you got a project announcement yet bud?

cheers mate, trying to draw a square in sketchup leads me to the border of a nervous breakdown. ill send you a pm.

[javeryh]

Wow.  This project is going to be AWESOME.  Rotating screen in such a small footprint with an LCD in the marquee???  I can't wait to see this thing.  How thick is the material you are going to use?  I'm guessing 1/2" since you say the CP is 8" and the overall width is 9" but I thought I'd ask.   

[Yvan256]

Wow.  This project is going to be AWESOME.  Rotating screen in such a small footprint with an LCD in the marquee???  I can't wait to see this thing.  How thick is the material you are going to use?  I'm guessing 1/2" since you say the CP is 8" and the overall width is 9" but I thought I'd ask.   

Rotating 6.4" LCD screen in 8" inside cabinet width, here's the rendering in parallel projection so we can see both sides correctly. The black circle not only represents the radius of the rotating screen, it's also used to cover up the empty areas in the bezel in either positions. I even had to make rounded corners in the display area of the bezel otherwise you see inside the cab.



As for the LCD marquee... well I tried for two days to make it work, however it seems I either got a dead unit or a third unknown undocumented controller, which means I might as well have a dead unit. 

The sides are actually 5/8" MDF. I was planning on using 1/2" but I already had 5/8" panels and T-molding.com only had white 1/2" T-molding when I ordered. So it's going to be 5/8"MDF for the sides, making the cab a bit wider than expected. I may change my mind however, since 5/8" might looks too "fat" relative to the size of the cabinet. The rest of the panels, however, are 3/8" MDF to make the cabinet lighter.

Next on my list is cutting a mock-up control panel including the elevated 1/4" edges of the side panels in order to do some real-world play testing. I also have to do rounded corners + T-molding tests, I don't want to cut the sides yet until I know everything will go smoothly.

I also need to do some test cuts into the T-molding itself, cutting a clean coin slot in the middle is going to be a challenge to say the least. All my hand-made cuts so far look like crap. 

In short, lots of tests to do before I can work on the actual cabinet.... 

[clickhea]

could you share your plans to this one once you have everything set?