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?

[cboy]

I'm really liking this.....

[vrf]

From the cardboard mockup, it seems the LCD will not be able to rotate. It looks more possible in the illustration afterward, though.

I personally would skip the rotating LCD in the interest of making the cab as compact as possible.

The profile looks GREAT with those slight curves added.

[Yvan256]

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

Once everything is built and I'm sure of all the data in the Sketchup model, sure why not! As long as we start calling these "desktop cabinets". Bartops are so much bigger it's not even funny. 

[Yvan256]

From the cardboard mockup, it seems the LCD will not be able to rotate. It looks more possible in the illustration afterward, though.

I personally would skip the rotating LCD in the interest of making the cab as compact as possible.

The profile looks GREAT with those slight curves added.

Yeah I know, I'm looking at the cardboard mockup right now and even in person it's hard to believe, but I tried with the real LCD panel and there's enough room. I even have a huge 1/16" gap on each side when rotating! 

Worst case scenario I'll cut the inside walls to make room for the rotation.

And as for removing the rotating display to make it as compact as possible, well it only adds 1".

The width comes from a lot of things, actually:
- The mini-ITX motherboard is 6.75", might as well make it 7" wide so it has a bit of room on each sides.
- The narrowest it gets the more cramped the controls gets.
- The wider it gets, the more puny the mini-marquee LCD will look.

I have to balance everything between the control panel, LCD marquee, rotating display... and 8" is the magic number for the parts I'm using. With different parts you might need to make it 7" wide, with other parts it would be 9". It all depends, otherwise things will look out of place such as those 30" wide cabinets with 14" LCDs in the middle of a huge black bezel. It's still playable but it doesn't look right.

As for the profile, that's why I'm testing everything in Sketchup, then doing small parts of the cab for real so I can test them.

A few hours ago I cut the sides near the control panel (sort of the front of the sides) just so I could test real-world problems with the positions of the joystick and buttons relative to the 1/4" edge of the sides panels vs the control panel.



The top of the test control panels are made of masonite which is only 1/8" thick. It's strong enough to play however since it's only 8" wide. It's also much easier and a lot cheaper to make many iterations and modifications if needed. Then I hook everything to a USB mini-PAC and I test with MAME on my Mac mini. After all I'm testing CP usability here, not the mini-ITX board of the cab.

[shatteredzman]

Your rotating monitor plan looks a lot like mine. I am interested to see how you do yours.

[Bender]

This is awesome don't know how I missed it

can't wait to see the lcd in the marquee, and a rotating monitor in an 8" cab just so cool!

[Yvan256]

Your rotating monitor plan looks a lot like mine. I am interested to see how you do yours.

Well so far all I have is a small 4" rotating plate ("lazy susan", Madico 27661). I did work fine for my previous cabinet (manual rotation) and the weight of the LCD isn't that much (about 400 grams), I don't think a small 5 volts motor will have any problem rotating the whole thing. I'm thinking LEGO motor and gears controlled by a small PIC micrcontroller with limit switches, since I'm going to need a PIC for my 7-segment credit coin counter anyway. Hopefully I will be able to have the computer send a rotation signal via the parallel port to the PIC.

[Yvan256]

This is awesome don't know how I missed it

can't wait to see the lcd in the marquee, and a rotating monitor in an 8" cab just so cool!

Yeah well that LCD is giving me a lot of headaches... You see, there is supposed to be only two different types of controllers. I have tried the code for both and nothing seems to work.

And if you look at the pictures, it seems I have a third, unknown LCD type:


Epson controller (notice the dark connector in the red circle, along with the white area around the silver strip which is the controller itself):




Philips controller (notice the green connector with the NXP white text, along with the dark area around the controller):




Well, wouldn't you know it, I have a third, different LCD (dark connector like an Epson but dark area around the controller like a Philips):



And I don't care if the little red sticker says "Epson", the Epson controller codes don't seem to work. 

[shatteredzman]

Your rotating monitor plan looks a lot like mine. I am interested to see how you do yours.

Well so far all I have is a small 4" rotating plate ("lazy susan", Madico 27661). I did work fine for my previous cabinet (manual rotation) and the weight of the LCD isn't that much (about 400 grams), I don't think a small 5 volts motor will have any problem rotating the whole thing. I'm thinking LEGO motor and gears controlled by a small PIC micrcontroller with limit switches, since I'm going to need a PIC for my 7-segment credit coin counter anyway. Hopefully I will be able to have the computer send a rotation signal via the parallel port to the PIC.

That is a lot more sophisticated than my design. I turn mine manually because I did not want to have more things that could break. I wish I had the skill to do a automatic rotation like you are doing.

[vrf]

well here's something cool....

http://translate.google.com/translate?js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.elotrolado.net%2Fhilo_pocket-neo-arcade-2-0_1251492&sl=auto&tl=en&history_state0=

[cboy]

I saw that today on Engadget....thought it was cool. The buttons are HUGE thou haha

[Yvan256]

Not a huge update, but here is the control panel with the Sanwa JLF joystick and the four Sanwa 24mm buttons. Hopefully I'll be able to fit the "player start", "menu", "quit" and "pause" buttons along with the two 8mm 7-segment displays for the coin counter.



As mentioned earlier I also had to cut the joystick plate at the top and bottom to have enough room underneath the control panel.  I had to redo the CP twice because of small errors in planning (support beams, everything positioned 12mm too low, etc...)



You can compare with the original plate if you go to www.lizardlick.com.

[Yvan256]

Looks a lot better even with a black and white paper print overlay. The artwork needs to be redrawn a bit because the buttons were not supposed to be that far to the right at first, it's missing round corners in the "red with white stripes" area, etc. But it still gives you a pretty good idea.



The player start, pause, menu and quit buttons are still to be found. At the beginning I was planning on using completely white Sanwa SDM-20 buttons but they would be way too big for the CP, they're almost twice the size of the white circles in the overlay above.

I also made a mistake in the size of the 7-segment displays, they will be roughly twice the size shown above, unless I can find digits smaller than 7.62mm.

[vrf]

Nice work so far!

For the small buttons, you could maybe use the Happ mini buttons with a black bezel and white center...

http://www.happcontrols.com/pushbuttons/49057700.htm

The measurements are there for you to see if they could work.

[javeryh]

Very nice!  Have you thought of maybe moving the buttons 1/8" closer - just far enough apart so that the bezels have about 1/16" between them?  This would give the appearance of a little more room on the CP.

Also, check out Bender's thread (at the bottom) for small buttons - they might work for you.   Looks great so far!  

[Yvan256]

Nice work so far!

For the small buttons, you could maybe use the Happ mini buttons with a black bezel and white center...

http://www.happcontrols.com/pushbuttons/49057700.htm

The measurements are there for you to see if they could work.

Thanks!

The circles on the printed overlay above are 0.375" in diameter. The Happ mini button "type A" bezel is 0.75" in diameter which is the same as the Sanwa SDM-20.

The SDM-20 seems to be available in all-white, which would be better since the player buttons on the MVS cabinets were regular white buttons like the A, B, C and D buttons. I just don't have the room for four additional 24mm buttons (white 0.375" circles = 10mm) otherwise I wouldn't have this problem right now. 

[Yvan256]

Very nice!  Have you thought of maybe moving the buttons 1/8" closer - just far enough apart so that the bezels have about 1/16" between them?  This would give the appearance of a little more room on the CP.

Also, check out Bender's thread (at the bottom) for small buttons - they might work for you.   Looks great so far!  

Yes, moving the buttons closer together would probably look better and give me more room on the right for the artwork. Then again I really don't feel like re-doing this CP a fourth time. I'll have to see how it looks once the artwork is corrected for the current layout.

As for those buttons, they don't seem to be available in all-white. I'm beginning to think I'll have to do custom buttons, using the Happ "type D" button (95-0011-00) at the bottom and a custom button top on top of it.

[vrf]

Maybe you could re-color the black buttons with white vinyl dye.

[Yvan256]

Maybe you could re-color the black buttons with white vinyl dye.

I just read a bit about vinyl dye, didn't even know that stuff existed. Looks like a solid option and would allow me to get any button as long as the size and shape fits, I would simply need to dye it white. Thanks for the tip!

However, the more I think about it, if I have to re-do the CP once again to put the main buttons closer together I might as well try and see if I could make the CP deeper and simply use those white SDM-20... The 7-segment digits in DIP packaging seem to be available in 7.62mm at the smallest (no way I'm soldering surface-mount digits) not to mention that the 5mm digits are two single-digit side by side, it just doesn't look right, it has to be a double digit display. Making the CP deeper would offset the bigger size of the digits, as it is now they look too big for the "circled area" with the player and control buttons...

And I was so glad to be finally done with that CP yesterday... 

[Bender]

would white buttons with a black base work?

I've seen some small buttons like that somewhere

[Yvan256]

would white buttons with a black base work?

I've seen some small buttons like that somewhere

Nope, it has to be all-white buttons:



Are you thinking about the Sanwa SDM-18? I have one right here in front of me. I might end up being the SDM-18 with the base vinyl dyed white. Or I might just not use the base at all and glue the button itself on top of those small Happ test switches (I already have those).

Relative to the size of the 7-segment I'll probably end up using, however, the SDM-20 would be a perfect fit. I just don't know how ArcadeShop.de can have all-white buttons for sale when Sanwa's own website doesn't list such a thing. Are they vinyl dyeing buttons one by one or is Sanwa's website just not up-to-date? 

... I so didn't want to have to re-do that %$@ CP again but it looks like I won't have a choice... and all that trouble only to make it 0.5" deeper... 

[javeryh]

You have to remake it otherwise it will be all you think about whenever you play the cab.  An extra few hours of work is totally worth it.

[Yvan256]

You have to remake it otherwise it will be all you think about whenever you play the cab.  An extra few hours of work is totally worth it.

Indeed, knowing myself that would probably bug me a lot. Better fix it before going any further in the project. I got a bit of spare room in the cabinet depth, so far the modification works in Sketchup. I'll need to re-cut the bottom panel of the marquee, otherwise there's not much modification to do aside from where components are located.

Is there anyone who sells those all-white Sanwa SDM-20 buttons apart from ArcadeShop.de? Their prices for the buttons are in the ballpark, however the shipping cost from Germany to Canada is a bit high for only 10 small buttons.

And I'm still waiting for someone with a Neo-Geo MV-LED board to tell me the part number of those 7-segment displays. 

[vrf]

Have you looked at Lizard Lick Amusements? At least you won't have to cross an ocean...

http://www.lizardlick.com/pages/pushbuttons.shtml

[Yvan256]

Have you looked at Lizard Lick Amusements? At least you won't have to cross an ocean...

http://www.lizardlick.com/pages/pushbuttons.shtml

Yeah, I usually order my parts from LizardLick, however I've asked Chad and so far he seems to be as stumped as me as to where ArcadeShop got their all-white Sanwa buttons... 

[Yvan256]

Well, since Shiden makes the buttons that Sanwa is selling as "SDM-20" I thought I would check Shiden's website.

The Shinden part number is SDP-1003C-41 and yes those are available in all-white and all-black (amongst other colors for both the body and button).

The problem is finding these buttons for sale online, apart from ArcadeShop.de which is oversea for me (high shipping cost, long shipping times). I did send the Shinden part number to Chad at LizardLick, we'll see if he can find a source for these.

In the meantime if anyone in north america happens to have three all-white Sanwa SDM-20 / Shinden SDP-1003C-41 buttons in mint condition for sale, please contact me.


In the meantime, I would like to thank javeryh for giving me a push into re-doing the CP for a fourth time. It's not done yet, but the revised CP overlay speaks for itself. The white buttons layout is roughly based on jeffhlewis'  Neo Geo MVS Mini layout.




edit: yes, I know. It's missing the letters in the dark area around the main buttons. 

[Vebbo]

Very nice project u got here Yvan256, lots of brilliant ideas. Hope u find those buttons, i'll keep my fingers crossed. Maby i copy this project one day 

[Yvan256]

I made the front of the unit so I could test playability on such a narrow control panel.



It's not comfortable, but then again it's not unplayable either... I would need about 2 inches on the left of the joystick to be able to rest my hand, but there's just no room for that. To have enough room the joystick would have to be right above the "B" (yellow) button. When doing a micro bartop (desktop cab?) you have to make compromises. 

You can also see the "old vs new" layout for the buttons. The buttons are in the old position and the paper overlay shows the area where the buttons will be on the fourth revision of the CP (see reply #65 above. Thanks again to javeryh for pushing me on redoing the CP until it's right).

[javeryh]

Now that is looking good!  How does it feel?  Are your hands cramped?  It looks good from the picture. 

[cboy]

sweet

[Bender]

if you move the CP up a bit so it's even with the sides(just below the T-molding)
I think you'll find it much more comfortable

[Yvan256]

if you move the CP up a bit so it's even with the sides(just below the T-molding)
I think you'll find it much more comfortable

Yeah I thought about that. However, there's two problems with that solution:
1. My hand would still not have enough room. I need two more inches to the left, lowering the sides would only give me 5/8". The elevated side doesn't really get in the way, it's only 1/4" high.
2. It would lose a lot of its Neo-Geo MVS look, which is something I'm trying to preserve as much as possible (unless I decide otherwise). 

I'll be playing with it a bit more, however it's not that bad as it is right now. Heck, giving me hand cramps after playing too much could actually be a feature: "built-in system to prevent you from playing too long".   

[Yvan256]

Very small update, but for me it's a big part that's almost done.

I cut the sides yesterday, with the usual "print the shape on multiple sheets of paper taped together then trace the contour" trick. I don't think I need to post a photo of that.

Ever tried to make the sides of a cabinet without a router contour bit or a scrollsaw? I'm not sure I'm doing the right thing but I did finish the outside cuts including rounded corners. The inside cuts, however, have been done with round drill bits (3/4" and 2"), now I need to finish the rest of the cuts... I'm thinking jigsaw with guides but I'm not sure.

Here's what the sides look like for now, I guess I would be able to finish cutting if I had access to a scrollsaw for only 15 minutes or so.

[vrf]

She's got a sharp looking profile, all right. 

[Yvan256]

She's got a sharp looking profile, all right. 

Except for minor modifications, it's the same sharp profile as the genuine north american cabs:


Well, except I cut the bottom part and shrank it a lot. 

Talking about sharp looking profiles... is Pixelbox back on track? I still can't believe what happened to it. 

I should be able to finish cutting the sides of MVS-99-6 next weekend, I just remembered I have a Dremel with the right parts to use it as a small router. 

[Yvan256]

I've ordered two 7.62mm dual 7-segment displays (LDD-E304NI-RA and LB-302VF), along with a few PIC12F509 microcontrollers.

Hopefully they should get here today so I will be able to work on the coin mech/coin display hardware before going any further with the control panel, just in case.

The goal is to have a real 7-segment display to the right of the "player start" button, just like a real Neo-Geo MVS cabinet. The display, however, will simply be a dumb coin counter like the one that is usually inside the cabinet (for accounting purposes). The counter will be reset when the cabinet is off.

This way, I don't get the trouble of trying to force something the MAME developers don't want (i.e. a real, working coin mech that can be used commercially) and I still get my working 7-segment display for the coin counter. Heck, I might even go crazy and connect the start button to deduce one from the counter, though in a very dumb way (pressing multiple times would still decrease the counter, no matter what MAME does).

I'm looking forward to cutting that small rectangle hole in the control panel....   

edit: nope, didn't get the parts today... 

[vrf]

There's always tomorrow. But, if not then, there's the two-day wait until Monday... 

[Yvan256]

Control panel version 4.0 (and hopefully the final one)

I don't have the three white buttons for the top row but I did have a yellow/black and a green/black, to get an idea of the final look (without artwork). The mis-shaped rectangle hole is for the 7-segment display.

[Ryglore]

Nice work Yvan! NOw get some white buttons! 

[Yvan256]

Received my parts from Digi-Key!

I will need to re-center the 7-segment display (it's a millimeter or so too low right now), but other than that it's starting to look like a real Neo-Geo control panel!

The 7-segment display + coin mech will be driven by a PIC16F84.

[vrf]

Four control panels. I admire your persistence, the need to get it exactly right.

Me... I just did this...

[Yvan256]

Four control panels. I admire your persistence, the need to get it exactly right.

That's still less work than what Bender did... a complete prototype cab + the actual cab.   

[Bender]

well the thing folds up does that count for anything?

I had a secret hope that the prototype would work out and I wouldn't have to build the second one, but I made too many mistakes. I feel like I'm a better builder now beause of it

the 360 sticks I made straight off, actually 2 at the same time

but you do have to get it right or it'll drive you nuts

[Yvan256]

Okay... I've written directly to Sanwa, Shinden, LizardLick and even asked for Digi-Key to carry these Shinden SDP-1003C-41 white/white buttons.

Yes I could order directly from ArcadeShop.de, but it's the shipping cost that's the problem. I do understand that shipping overseas is costly, but I hate paying 15$USD to ship 30$USD worth of buttons...

Yes, I also asked ArcadeShop.de if they could ship surface instead of air, let's see what they say.

I'm going to use my current SDM-20 buttons in the meantime, but it sure kills the overall Neo-Geo look of the CP. 



follow-up: Sanwa: replied, doesn't have those. LizardLick, tried but couldn't find a supplier. Shinden, no reply at all. Digi-Key replied, doesn't carry those nor anything that doesn't have a black bezel. ArcadeShop replied, surface shipping cost is so close to air shipping it's not even worth mentioning.

So all in all, everybody except the original manufacturer replied. 

I guess I have no choice but to order from ArcadeShop.de 

[Yvan256]

Buttons ordered from ArcadeShop.de  I just can't have black body buttons with colored plungers, especially not after all the CP revisions I have made to make it look more like a real Neo-Geo CP! I ordered 11 all-white and 4 all-black buttons, 15 of those buttons being the maximum weight that fits under 0.5kg. Three of the all-white are for the CP of MVS99-6 (duh) and two of the all-black are for Colecade.

Hopefully I'll be able to finish the sides this week-end. Not having the sides ready is holding me back to work on the other parts because of the 0.25" edge all-around the cab and the many angled cuts I will have to make.

In the meantime that small LCD is giving me headaches so instead I'm working on the PIC16F84 + dual 7-segment + coin switch part.



And no, the final version won't be such a mess.   

I also need to find a cheap source for a tiny piece of smoked plastic to put over the 7-segment display so that the unlit segments aren't so visible. I have searched for thin frosted plastic school binders but I can't find any in black. Maybe I'll make the circuit, add a battery so it's portable and just walk around in stores to test the thing "live" with the materials I find. 

"What are you doing, sir?" "Oh, don't mind me, I'm just testing the opacity and diffusion of the materials."

[Epyx]

Maybe I'll make the circuit, add a battery so it's portable and just walk around in stores to test the thing "live" with the materials I find.

"What are you doing, sir?" "Oh, don't mind me, I'm just testing the opacity and diffusion of the materials."

Lol...I do things like that all the time...samples of paint etc...recently I brought a laptop to Best Buy and asked the store manager if I could test it with a few LCD tvs (Hyperpin).  Yes, he let me but I sure got the stares...oh well, if I am going to plunk down the cash for a tv...darned right Im gonna make sure it works...plus they decrease the chance of me coming back with a return

[vrf]

So are you going to resell some of the extra buttons to help you cover shipping costs?

(I'd take two black and two white, although that would clean you out of black ones.)

[Yvan256]

So are you going to resell some of the extra buttons to help you cover shipping costs?

(I'd take two black and two white, although that would clean you out of black ones.)

I only really need two blacks for Colecade, so that would be okay. I overdid it with the whites simply to max out the 0.5kg limit, even if I ever build three MVS99-6 that's only 9 buttons, so two whites would be okay too.

"Parcels weighing up to 2 kg will be shipped by airmail (delivered in 3-7 days)", so I guess I could receive the parts as soon as next week.

[Ryglore]

"What are you doing, sir?"

Well, isn't it obvious? I'm making a weapon out of office supplies.... moron. 

[Yvan256]

I've finally completed the sides of the cabinet. They've also been routed for the T-molding, so from now on I can work on the other panels (bottom, back, top, etc).

[Bender]

I have some 1/8" smoked plexi scraps that I think might work for you. If your interested PM me and I'll send some out
if that's too thick you can try neutral density gel filters for photography (the come in different degrees of darkness)

[Yvan256]

I have some 1/8" smoked plexi scraps that I think might work for you. If your interested PM me and I'll send some out
if that's too thick you can try neutral density gel filters for photography (the come in different degrees of darkness)

Thanks for the smoked plexi offer and the tip, I'll check with the local photography store later this week about those. A very thin filter would be easier to fit than 1/8" thick plexi, so I'll try that first.

[Yvan256]

Long weekend equals a lot of coding. A huge total of 49 lines of assembler code (not counting blank lines, constants, labels and comments)! 

I also cleaned the circuit a bit, it looks a bit better and (most of) the resistors aren't all over the place anymore.

"I did all this coding and all I got was this lousy T-sh... I mean number."

Behold, the answer to life, the universe, and everything!



The red paper over the 7-segment display is used to diffuse the LEDs otherwise my webcam would explode or something.

The next big step will be to read from the coin mech switch and increment the displayed value, from 0 to 99. I also want to scroll "1990-2009" on start-up, 1990 being the year the MVS was released and 2009 being the year for MVS-99-6 (or "1990-2010" if I can't get it done within the next four months or so). 

[Yvan256]

I forgot that I also worked on the control panel front/bottom panel, which was glued yesterday. I'll need to strengthen it with brackets before doing the rounded edge because I used my test control panel jig as a stress test and while the glue held the wood itself didn't. 



Also, I want to thank javeryh for the bolts, I couldn't find such small ones locally. These will hold the plexiglass of the CP, so I had to get really tiny bolts.



Much appreciated javeryh, thanks! 

[HaRuMaN]

Why do you need bolts to hold your plexi?

[Yvan256]

Why do you need bolts to hold your plexi?

The real MVS cabs were built this way and I'm trying to copy as much details as I can while still doing a single-player mini-bartop cabinet. I think four bolts should be enough but I might use six anyway for that authentic look. Javeryh sent me eight bolts so I do have enough to do that.

There's also the fact that I can't use the buttons to hold the plexi since my panel is made from 5/8" thick MDF and the buttons are for metal panels. I will probably end up clipping the buttons to the plexi and use the bolts to hold the plexi to the MDF.

[javeryh]

Those bolts are looking good!   

Man this thing is going to be nice when it is finished.  You are like Batman or something making that circuit yourself. 

 

[Yvan256]

Man this thing is going to be nice when it is finished.  You are like Batman or something making that circuit yourself. 

There's so much work to do that I try to simply do one sub-part at a time. Right now I'm working on the coin switch/credit display part, which is part of the control panel.

The PIC microcontrollers are really not that complicated, at least not the entry models. Here is an easy-to-follow tutorial, though I did see a lot of errors in there. The PICs only have 35 instructions and a very simple internal architecture (RISC) so it's easy to learn how to use them. They're also very low-cost and require inexpensive programmers so that's also two good things going for them.

edit: the 16F84 is obsolete and has been replaced by the newer 16F88 which costs even less and is a much, much better chip.

[clickhea]

can you give us the measurements for this project?

i dont want the rotating screen or anything

[Yvan256]

can you give us the measurements for this project?

i dont want the rotating screen or anything

You mean the overall cabinet size or actual details plans?

[clickhea]

actual detail plans if possible

id like to make one for my room really like your shape

[Yvan256]

actual detail plans if possible

id like to make one for my room really like your shape

Well all I did was take the shape of a real MVS cab and then I cut the bottom. 

As for detailed plans, well, I'd rather not do that until I've actually completed the cab. There might be errors that I will only see while I'm building the cab.

Here's a four-pages Letter-size PDF that you can use to cut the sides, though.

edit: I'm getting an error when trying to view an attached PDF or ZIP file... anyone know why?

[Yvan256]

I worked a bit on the control panel, attaching it to the bottom panel with a small piano hinge. Yes I know the screws and bolts are poking through, I'll cut them later.



I also worked on the marquee area, the top and bottom are holding only by friction/compression on the plexiglass. It's only a black and white print for now, I'll get the marquee printed on photo paper for the final version. It's not going to be backlit but the LCD screen for the mini-marquee does light up. The plastic retainers will also be black for the final version. I can't seem to find any in black locally. 

[vrf]

Nice work! What did you use for your marquee retainer? I might switch to that... 

[Yvan256]

Nice work! What did you use for your marquee retainer? I might switch to that... 

It's a simple L-shaped plastic molding, except I cut one side to the thickness of the MDF. I need to remake it with a black molding since it will probably cost a lot less to buy a new black one than try to paint or dye the white one. In the meantime I'm using the white retainers however, so my project isn't stopped by a part being the wrong color (I'm looking at you Sanwa SDM-20!).

[emphatic]

Wow, that control panel is very nice. With the white buttons on there, and the color CPO it'll look awesome.

[javeryh]

It's only a black and white print for now, I'll get the marquee printed on photo paper for the final version. It's not going to be backlit but the LCD screen for the mini-marquee does light up.

Why not?  Backlighting the marquee is extremely easy to do and it makes a cabinet pop when you see it all lit up.  Do it!

Looking great by the way.   

[Yvan256]

Why not?  Backlighting the marquee is extremely easy to do and it makes a cabinet pop when you see it all lit up.  Do it!

The problem is the LCD mini-marquee. This thing is a small motherboard that's quite a bit bigger than the visible area. If I were to try and backlight the rest of the marquee I would get a dark rectangle area around the mini-marquee. I also can't remember if the real Neo-Geo MVS cabs had a backlit marquee, or if it differed from model to model (ex: 1-slot MVS could be backlit, 2 and 4-slots not backlit, 6-slots backlit, etc) because of the different designs of their marquee/mini-marquee(s) area.

Looking great by the way.   

Thanks! It's going much slower than I expected, especially for such a small cab. What is slowing me down is the coin mech, the coin counter 7-segment display and the LCD mini-marquee. I've also never done a motorized rotating monitor but at least I shouldn't have weight problems with that part. 

[Yvan256]

Well, the scrolling of "1990-2009" didn't turn out as impressive as I thought.



The problem is the double "9" in 1990 and the double "0" in 2009. I also made a mistake in the last "frame" of the animation, where it ends with "0 " instead of "9 ", which doesn't help the whole thing.

Since the whole "scroll 1990-2009 on start-up" idea isn't working, does anyone has ideas on what I could scroll instead? Keep in mind that I need to avoid similar double-digits or double-letters (so "HELLO" wouldn't work either, not to mention the mess of uppercase-lowercase on a regular 7-segment display).

I could also be an animation with the segments of the two digits, etc. Any ideas?

[Yvan256]

I know a simple 7-segment display isn't as fun as pictures of a whole cabinet, but... no comments? I'm sad. 

I might try to scroll "1 9 9 0 - 2 0 0 9" instead of "1990-2009", it should be much easier to read!

[emphatic]

Don't be sad, just post some hotter pics! 

[Yvan256]

One at a time, they just seem to bounce around....

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OzHFr2R1mh8[/youtube]


Two at a time, I lose the scrolling effect but it's much easier to understand.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfPPGfRfUN8[/youtube]


I might try one at a time, with a blank between digits. Or I might just give up and do a moving pattern of a few segments moving around the two digits, like a snake, before entering into "credits" mode.

[emphatic]

Wow, that's much cooler. Sorry, I never understood I had to click the .gif to see the animation before. 

[Epyx]

The two at a time seems to work fine as the brain comprehends pairing pretty easy.

[Yvan256]

Third time's the charm?

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EzJoBnrH8fk[/youtube]

Looks much better IMHO.

edit: wow, YouTube didn't like my "optimize for server" setting on this one. 

Not really a problem though since I recorded two "loops" of the animation...

So, what's better? This one or the one which shows two digits at once? (19, 90, --, 20, 09)

[Bender]

not to rain on your parade

It's obvious you put a lot of work into the animations, but I still just looks like flashing random numbers to me

I don't think two digits is enough to create an intelligible scroll (of words or numbers)

What is the significance of the dates?

what about a little animation that outlines the square then maybe flows around and through the frame like a snake?

[Yvan256]

not to rain on your parade

It's obvious you put a lot of work into the animations, but I still just looks like flashing random numbers to me

I don't think two digits is enough to create an intelligible scroll (of words or numbers)

What is the significance of the dates?

what about a little animation that outlines the square then maybe flows around and through the frame like a snake?

Most of the work was to display the two digits at once (they're multiplexed) and hook the whole thing on an timed interrupt. Doing the animations after that is a piece of cake.

Yeah I know two digits isn't enough for readable scroller, but I had to try a few tricks anyway.

The dates are: 1990 for the launch date of the SNK MVS Neo-Geo system (according to Wikipedia anyway), and 2009 for the year of MVS-99-6 (unless I can't finish in the next 3.5 months). 

I also think it's going to end up with a snake-like animation made up of 3 segments going around the two digits... perhaps "enter" from the right side, go around the digits, then "exit" to the left side.

[Ryglore]

Those videos of the display animating make my head hurt. Nice work, but I agree with Bender, it's prolly best to do the snake animation with it...

[Bender]

It's true, you just don't know till you try

[Yvan256]

They're finally here!



Here they are, neatly packed, to prevent scratches at the top.




What some people call over-packaging I call protect the products you are shipping to prevent damage. What good is it if you receive an under-packaged product that is damaged during shipping and needs to be replaced?




Finally, no more body-of-a-different-color-than-the-plunger madness!




And here's three of the white buttons, finally in their place at the top of the control panel. Believe me, it was worth the wait!




Here they are from another angle, forgive me for the crappy black and white paper overlay. It's temporary you can be sure of that!




Close-up of the "Pause Game" button at the top right of the CP.




And just for kicks, here's a shot from under the control panel, opened up for access. The mini-PAC will be located "under" the main buttons, left of the metal bracket. You can also see that the credit display pcboard will have to be thin enough for the joystick cable to pass on top of it. Shouldn't be a problem, however.

[emphatic]

Looking good. I know you must be happy now.

[Yvan256]

Looking good. I know you must be happy now.

Not having all-white buttons was one of the things that bugged me. But now it's back to the 7-segment display and PIC for the credit counter, which means a lack of updates and pretty photos for the next few days.

And after that... back to that LCD6610 for the mini-marquee display. I still haven't been able to really make that thing work. 

The good news is, the sides are ready and fixed with the bottom, as you can see in the last picture the control panel is also almost finished (need to route the edge to make it round), the marquee/header is also ready to be fixed and its back plexi sheet is cut to make room for the LCD, so the next photos will be more than a few buttons on a desk... 

[vrf]

looks great! I love how you're passionate about making it look as authentic as possible.

[Yvan256]

looks great! I love how you're passionate about making it look as authentic as possible.

The way I see it, it's my own custom design since it's a micro-bartop and SNK never did something like this, but it's also a restoration/copy project in the sense that I need to follow some guidelines from the full-sized SNK cabs. Otherwise it just won't "look right".

To be honest I should have used white 24mm buttons since the real cabs have the same size of buttons for the control and the gameplay, but there was just not enough room horizontally.

I would have needed to reduce the size of the text labels, the 7-segment display would also have needed to be bigger because of the size ratio relative to the buttons size, etc. There was no way around using those white SDM-20 IMHO. I'll probably post some drawings later to better explain the whole problem...

[Yvan256]

Here's what I'm talking about. I kept the same size for the font and the 7-segment dual-digit display, the only thing that changes is the white buttons.



Real Neo-Geo MVS control panel. (photo credit: driph.com)




My control panel with white Sanwa SDM-20. I'll need to increase the black area around the 7-segment display but otherwise it looks close enough.




My control panel with white Sanwa OBSF-24.


As you can see the one with the SDM-20 looks right, with spacing between each button + label. The credit display also looks right when compared to a real MVS cab.

The one with the OBSF-24 looks cramped, has no breathing space between elements, and I would need a bigger 7-segment display but that would mean even less horizontal space making things even worst.

[Yvan256]

Okay... small update yet again. As I said, the sides are up, so here's a side-by-side shot of what I like to call...



MDF vs Cardboard... 3... 2... 1... FIGHT! 

Why is the marquee on top of a metal ruler? Because I haven't installed it yet!
Why does the MDF cab seem a bit taller? Because the cardboard cab doesn't have rubber feet underneath.




A shot of the profile minus the silly floating marquee.




A shot of the silly floating marquee itself. Low-resolution image printed on photo paper, red is a bit too dark, etc. 




Close-up of the controls, with photo paper overlay. Red seems spot-on for some reason. I still need to route that edge to make it round.




Back plexi with a rectangle-ish hole in it. Doesn't matter if the cut is ugly because the printed marquee will hide it.




Why an ugly rectangle-ish hole in the back plexi? Well, for the 1.5", 128x128 pixels LCD for the mini-marquee of course!




And here's a view from the front without the printed marquee. The printed white rectangle is the wrong size, it would look silly. But that's not a problem that was only a test anyway.

Total cost for the test photo-paper-printed marquee and control panel overlay: about 5$CAD. Who knows, since I'm putting plexi over the CP overlay, I might go 100% photo paper for the final prints too.

[emphatic]

 

Awesome. It's really cute.

[vrf]

yee gads that's hot. This is turning into an awesome little cab.

Thanks for the note about the buttons. Let me think about it a bit. I really need to finish project A before looking ahead to B. (Though I am very tempted...)

[Ryglore]

Awesome!! I really dig the CP for sure. That 7 Seg is going to so bad ass once it's all said and done.

[Gatsu]

That is an awesome mini-cab man.

I'm gonna have to build one of these eventually to take on trips.

[Yvan256]

First 7-segment animation pattern... the idea seemed good "on paper" but now that I see it, I'm not so sure. Then again it would not loop endlessly, probably only three or four times before going into display credits mode (" 0"), which is missing here.




Another idea I had, making the middle segment "fall" to the bottom. It's just... plain annoying. 




Anyone has a real Neo-Geo MVS cabinet? Is there an animation in the 7-segment displays when you power up the cabinet?

[Benevolance]

I think the first animation would be very cool, as long as it didn't cycle continuously.

[Yvan256]

Another small update. Three steps forward, one step backward...



First, I rounded up the front edge of the control panel. This was long overdue. Let's just say I was extremely nervous when I did that, this was the third (fourth?) control panel that I have made and I sure didn't want to re-do it again because of a screw-up with the routing table. But everything went fine, as you can see. But now I see another problem: I'll need to cut the front edge of the side panels a bit, it's way more than 0.25" at the front. Oh well, let's just add that to the "to do" list.




I also worked on the two back panels. They're not installed yet, but the picture above shows where they will be when viewing the inside of the cab. Just imagine there's brackets screwed to hold the bottom angled panel, the vertical panel is held in place with a piano hinge.




That back panel is where the mini-ITX motherboard will be located. Pictured here is an Intel D201GLY board, however it only has a VGA output and my LCD requires a composite video signal. Either I'll use a different motherboard or I'll use a VGA-to-composite converter. Given the choice, I'd rather not use yet another board which requires yet another power supply...




Here you see how I attached the bottom marquee panel to the speakers panel. Of course I could have simply glued the whole thing to the inside of the walls of the cab, but I don't want to glue anything until all panels are cut and tested for fit. The speakers grills can be seen here, the speakers will go on top. I traced the contour of the speakers to be sure the brackets wouldn't be in the way.

Funny thing is, I put the two small speakers somewhere so I wouldn't damage them before it was time to install them, but now I can't remember where I put them...  




And here is the step backward. I had already glued the whole marquee "box", however the height was too close to the edges of the marquee area of the side panels. A bit hard to explain in words... I want to have 0.25" all around the edges so that the T-molding won't be flush with the horizontal panels. So I had to cut about 0.125" in the height of the marquee box. The height is now fine, and I did make sure the mini-marquee LCD display would still fit.  

It does changes the aspect ratio of the marquee, but since it's a custom design based on the original Neo-Geo single-game cabinet, most of the marquee is red, so all I need to do is play around with the size and location of the text until it looks right. No aspect ratio or cropping to take care about. As a bonus, the mini-marquee LCD will now appear to be bigger, relative to the marquee.


Next step will probably be to install that marquee box, then the back panel, then the top panel with air vents (and fan? not sure yet), add control panel support blocks on the sides... Etc, etc.

When building such a small cabinet, 0.25" makes all the difference in the world. So I'd rather build slowly but surely. Rushing things isn't a good idea when your tools are bigger than your cab.  

[Ryglore]

Excellent work Yvan, btw. I think I Maybe if you slowed the 1st of the two new animations a little, maybe it would be better. Or maybe have them both spin in the same direction rather than opposing?

[Bender]

I too like the first animation, though I think both are good if they only cycle through a few times

Great work!

[Ryglore]

Oooor... what about morse coding MVS 99 6 onto the 7 segment?

M - -
V . . . -
S . . .
9 - - - - .
9 - - - - .
6 . . . . -

Of course ,

. = short blink and - = long blink and no one would know what it was actually doing. But it would be a nice trivia piece. 

[emphatic]

Perhaps the animation could be running "through" the two displays, treating them as one. Running like a frame sorta.

[Yvan256]

Not much of an update, but a small update is better than nothing I guess.


I found my speakers! So I celebrated the occasion by installing them! For those who are wondering, they're 55 mm in diameter, 8 ohms, 1 watt. That means TWO whole watts of stereo sound power! Yeah! I probably won't even need an external amplifier, the on-board audio will probably be powerful enough.




I do need to fill some holes and repaint the whole thing, but we can already see the speakers through the slots



Okay, so we can't see them, they're the black in the black slots. But that was the goal, after all!  

Next step is probably going to be cutting the two marquee plexi to the new height. I'll also probably trim the front edges of the marquee retainer, to gain back some height for the marquee so that it doesn't look too horizontal.

[Ryglore]

Sweet, those speaker holes look great! Any progress with the 7-seg?

[Yvan256]

Ryglore: nope, I haven't touched the 7-segment display since the last time.


Yet another small update for today: I installed my Ultimarc Mini-PAC (link to PDF manual, since this product is discontinued).




I recycled old mounting hardware I had laying around, including isolating pads (the thin brownish discs) on each side for each of the four risers and screws.




As you can see it's getting pretty cramped in there, and it's still missing the 7-segment display board and the wiring.  The mini-PAC is positioned so that the "PC" cable will pass between the yellow and green buttons.

Getting the plexi screws to line up in spaces between all these things will probably be a huge challenge... if it's at all possible. 

[Ryglore]

Oh wow. Seeing the insides of the CP totally shows just how tiny this thing is going to be. 

[Sledgehammer]

When was the Mini-Pac cancelled? I have installed two and my most recent was purchased only about two months ago.

What would be Ultimarcs replacement if it is in fact cancelled? Just a regular Ipac?

Jason

[Yvan256]

When was the Mini-Pac cancelled? I have installed two and my most recent was purchased only about two months ago.

What would be Ultimarcs replacement if it is in fact cancelled? Just a regular Ipac?

Jason

Well the mini-PAC still exists, but if you check the current product vs the one I have, they're not the same physical size, connectors, etc. The new one is USB while mine is PS/2.

I did write them, asking where I could get the manual because the version of the product I have is different, they told me the new USB version replaces the old PS/2 version. But if I recall correctly, both versions are dual PS/2 + USB, but each require an adapter/cable to use the other connector type. Given my limited space, I'm not sure I could fit the new model of mini-PAC into MVS-99-6.

[Chicken McNobody]

I have both Minipacs, i have the old one like you have in my DK cab, and the new one I got when I ordered for my Classics cab.  The new one is only USB, using a standard mini to regular USB cord.  It only has the one plug, so you would use a separate keyboard rather than tethering it like the older version.  The board itself is the same size 2 1/4" X 1 1/2" but it feels smaller because it only has the one micro plug on the end rather that the, significantly larger by scale, double PS/2 ports.  I think it would possibly give you a little more room, especially where the buttons are, since you wouldn't have the port directly against it.



Also if you need the wiring diagram for the OG version, here it is.

[emphatic]

Getting the plexi screws to line up in spaces between all these things will probably be a huge challenge... if it's at all possible. 

Do you really need them, or are they just to make it look more like the real deal? You could just glue some faux bolts (cut off bolt heads) to your plexi glass if that's the case, right?

Very nice layout on this panel IMHO. I'm a big fan of cramming stuff into small spaces myself. 

[Yvan256]

Getting the plexi screws to line up in spaces between all these things will probably be a huge challenge... if it's at all possible. 

Do you really need them, or are they just to make it look more like the real deal? You could just glue some faux bolts (cut off bolt heads) to your plexi glass if that's the case, right?

Very nice layout on this panel IMHO. I'm a big fan of cramming stuff into small spaces myself. 

Yes, the bolts are really needed since all the buttons are snap buttons meant to be installed in metal panels. So I'm going to install the buttons into the CP plexi (since it's a smaller cab I'll probably use thinner plexi so that it doesn't look too thick in relation to the whole thing) and then bolt the plexi to the CP wood.

Thanks, I also like the layout of this 4th remake of the CP too. 

And cramming stuff into small spaces is what this project is all about. 

[Bender]

you could countersink holes a little wider and as deep as the nuts into the MDF then cut the bolts down, and not have them get in the way at all

[Yvan256]

you could countersink holes a little wider and as deep as the nuts into the MDF then cut the bolts down, and not have them get in the way at all

Those are snap-in buttons, there's no nut. Also, it's 3/8" MDF so I really don't want to countersink anything as it's already thin enough IMHO.

It will work, the only problem is going to be the physical location of the small bolts. I want to have them in the same places they would be on a real Neo-Geo CP (four corners and middle), but the hardware underneath might prevent me from doing that. I forgot that part when I made the design and I don't feel like checking that just yet... too depressing.  

Edit: oh, you were talking about the bolts... I feel stupid now. Yeah that would have been another solution, I'll keep that in mind!

[emphatic]

Could you not use some sort of retainer (like how marquees are held in place) over the front of the CP? And the bezel would be on top of the top part of it?



(Ignore the color and the shape of that thing, it's very rough sketch work at play here)

[Yvan256]

Could you not use some sort of retainer (like how marquees are held in place) over the front of the CP? And the bezel would be on top of the top part of it?

Well, since that's not how real Neo-Geo cabs are built, it's not really an option. There's things where I do deviate from the original design (the size being the first thing), but other than that I do try to keep it as stock-looking as possible.



The bolts won't be a problem, but their position is going to be. I just checked, and the top row and the middle bottom bolts are going to be okay. The problem comes from the bottom corner bolts. They would need to go through the metal brackets. That's not a problem in itself, except the position they would go through is partly where the bracket screws are.

But just talking about it made me think about the solution: cut the bolts length and use threaded inserts on the CP (or bolt directly into the MDF, like all the other bolts so far)!  




Another problem cropped up when I rounded the corner: I didn't plan for the CP artwork to go around the corner... And since the bolts are supposed to be in the artwork area, and that I sure don't plan on curving a piece of plexi (even as small as this), I'll have to fix the artwork a bit at the bottom. I'm afraid the "Neo-Geo MVS SNK" logo will have to be removed.  :'(

[Ryglore]

Could you just omit the center bolt? I think a missing bolt would be less noticeable than the logo not being there.

[Yvan256]

Could you just omit the center bolt? I think a missing bolt would be less noticeable than the logo not being there.

I would need to omit both the top and bottom middle bolts or otherwise it would look weird. The plexi isn't going to be that large (7-1/4" ~ 7-1/2"), I guess only four bolts in the corners will suffice. It's not like pushing the buttons will pull up the plexi after all.




After a bit of research, however, it seems that SNK only put bolts into the corners and two bolts at the bottom (none at the top), except for the curved buttons layout panel (fourth photo above) which also has a non-centered logo... whole thing looks like a mess IMHO. That way the small logo at the bottom can stay. And with threaded inserts, the hardware behind the CP doesn't matter. It's win-win, all I need to do is correct the artwork so it stops before the rounded front edge.

[Ryglore]

"After a bit of"

Of what? 

[Yvan256]

"After a bit of"

Of what? 

Hehe, I hit the Post button instead of Preview while I was still in the middle of editing my post.

[Ryglore]

Yup... hate that. Figured that's what was up.  

The whole thing is pretty sweet, too bad you have to modify the CP art though. This project has me almost wanting to make a bartop.

[Yvan256]

Yup... hate that. Figured that's what was up.  

The whole thing is pretty sweet, too bad you have to modify the CP art though. This project has me almost wanting to make a bartop.

Almost, eh? Here's an idea for you: mini-Shmup!   

[Ryglore]

Yup... hate that. Figured that's what was up.  

The whole thing is pretty sweet, too bad you have to modify the CP art though. This project has me almost wanting to make a bartop.

Almost, eh? Here's an idea for you: mini-Shmup!   

Actually... I was thinking that at work!

[jeffhlewis]

Haven't been back here in a while - but I gotta say this is incredible.

I wanted to use the credit counter LED's so bad on my Neo Geo Mini custom build (I had two originals laying around at one point), but that would have been massively over my head from an electronics wiring/programming standpoint. Hell I was already over my head building it in the first place!

Good luck with the rest of the project, can't wait to see the final.

[Yvan256]

I got tired of trying new startup animations... I tried to move "1990-2009" via half-digits, but the hole/missing horizontal segments in the middle made the whole thing worst than everything I tried so far. I also tried to make the animation use the two digits, but it seemed to "jump" in the middle because of that same hole/missing horizontal segments.

So, instead of wasting any more time on that, I finalized my "display the current number of credits" routine. So far it's a dumb counter but at least it does display the internal register value properly. I went the lazy way out for my BCD routine (think 100 opcodes look-up table).  

Next step will be to add a switch to make the credits add up instead of being internal on a timer. That switch will be the one from the token mech, of course.

Click on the image below to start the animation.

[jtslade]

Awesome, absolutely fantastic work. I have been trying to find a solution for MVS credit LED's for a year now.

[Ryglore]

Excellent! Can't wait to see it in place and working!

[Yvan256]

Awesome, absolutely fantastic work. I have been trying to find a solution for MVS credit LED's for a year now.

Do you mean a real MVS cab? I don't want to disappoint you but my final board won't have the same pinout as the original MVS-LED boards... nor will it provide exactly the same functions. I don't want to create a credit display board that goes against the spirit of MAME, so it's not going to be complete enough to be used in a commercial setting.

The way it's going to work is "increase credit total by one when token is inserted, decrease credit total by one when player start button is pressed while at the same time send the player1 button command to the computer". The board won't care if MAME is started or not, nor will it be able to carry over credits when switching games. Just so it doesn't go all weird with the credit count I'll probably reset it to zero when I start a new game in MAME (via a parallel port pin).

I hope my explanation makes sense.

Real enough that it seems to work like a real one when in a game, but fake enough so that it can't be used in commercial settings. 

[jtslade]

No sorry I should of been more detailed. I realize that it won't interface with a real mvs LED. I was wanting to go toward the PIC controller route as well. Maybe use the LED's from a real board and de-solder them.

It's just good to have someone make so much progress on this front.

Keep posting the pics of your terrific work!

[Yvan256]

Once again, not much of an update, but it's some of the last few wood pieces to do on the cab...




The angled back bottom and the vertical hinged back panels are now in place! And so are the marquee and speakers!




Another shot from the side to better appreciate the MVS shape of the cab.




Eight screws currently hold the angled back bottom, once all parts are cut and fitted, it's also going to be glued using carpenter's glue. This panel isn't going anywhere.




I tried to take a close-up of the marquee and speakers, but the speakers panel is already painted black. And since all I currently have to take pictures  is a crappy webcam, we can't see much. Sorry about that. 

The top panel, which is going to be attached to the vertical hinged back panel, is almost ready too, I just need to cut it at an angle where it meets the top panel of the marquee holder. After that, monitor and CP supports and the rest is electronics, laminate/paint, artwork, etc. I'm almost done with the woodworking and I'm very happy with the results so far.   

[Ryglore]

Nice! Bet it feels good to take a break from the electronics and actually do a bit of the woodworking again! 

[jeffhlewis]

Real enough that it seems to work like a real one when in a game, but fake enough so that it can't be used in commercial settings. 

I've always thought it'd be awesome if Mame could emulate a 2 or 4 slot cab - i.e. the ability to specify 2-4 roms populating the slots on an MVS board. Like does the software or hardware control the credit counter between games?

[Yvan256]

I've always thought it'd be awesome if Mame could emulate a 2 or 4 slot cab - i.e. the ability to specify 2-4 roms populating the slots on an MVS board. Like does the software or hardware control the credit counter between games?

That would be nice indeed if MAME could emulate a two, four or six-slot cab, with the ability to output to external hardware to light up the mini-marquees.

As for the credits, you mean in my setup? There won't be any connection for the credit counter between games... The best I'll be able to do, I guess, is reset the credit counter between games. But other than that, the credit counter will show the number of token inserted and probably be connected to the "player start" button to decrease the counter.

[Bender]

Yvan

I was just looking for some black plastic corner guards to use for a marquee retainer and I rembered you were still looking
I found this and ordered some, though it might work for you too

[Yvan256]

I was just looking for some black plastic corner guards to use for a marquee retainer and I rembered you were still looking
I found this and ordered some, though it might work for you too

And it's 0.75" just like I need! Awesome, thanks for the info!

[Yvan256]

Okay, a lot has happened since the last time I wrote about MVS-99-6, one being that I dumped the Microchip PIC micro-controllers. Their weird bank system, their lack of registers, the accumulator (or whatever it's called) being the only place to do any real processing... it's too complex and was tired of messing around with all that cr*p.

So now I'm using the AVR chips from Atmel. I got a development kit and was able to not only start from scratch, but go beyond the point I was with the PIC in under four hours, and that includes rewiring the whole thing to the new chip.

I now have the counter that displays the number of credits AND it can be wired to a coin mech to count the coins. I'm still having small problems with the debouncing of the switch, I tried inserting 100 tokens and three or four times it registered two tokens instead of one.

The final plan is probably going to be:
1. insert coin
2. increase dual 7-segment display to show the new total credit
3. when the user presses [start], the total credit counts down by one credit if it's not zero

That way it's going to be a "real" MV-LED-look-alike in both look and function, up to a point. The [start] button doesn't know if MAME (or any other emulator) is ready to receive a [start] command, so the whole system is kind of "external" and completely independant of MAME/etc.

No photos or videos for now, I need to clean up the wiring first. I get hungry for spaghetti just looking at it. Besides, it's still the same LB-302VF dual 7-segment display, the only exciting part would be a video of me inserting a coin and showing the counter go up.


P.S.: I also ordered a big 0.56", red dual-digit display to make a prototype for life-size MVS MAME cab owners. I'll keep you informed on that, when the time comes it's going to be announced as a separate project ("MAME-MVS-LED" or something). The pcboard for that project will probably NOT fit a real MVS cab on purpose, as a first step to prevent usage in a commercial environment. Feel free to send me a private message if you are interested/opposed to this MAME-MVS-LED thing.

[Yvan256]

Ok, forget video, I can't shoot both the coin mech and the protoboard at the same time. So for now, here's a crappy photo montage of me inserting tokens into the coin door with a cropped 7-segment display pasted unto the cardboard next to the player start button.



Photos, from left to right:
1. Inserting a token
2. Token has been registered by the AVR and the credit display is now at " 1"
3. Inserting another token
4. Token has been registered by the AVR and the credit display is now at " 2"
5. "Player Start" button pressed twice, AVR has deducted two credits and now displays " 0"

Any further pressing of the "Player Start" button is useless since the AVR knows there is no available credit. The AVR will be connected to the "Player Start" button on the i-Pac, making the whole system act more like a real MVS cab (i.e. player start is useless unless there is available credits).

[Yvan256]

The ATtiny84 has 12 I/O pins, and I needed four for the coin and player start switches (input and output for both), so I was one pin short of controlling the two 7-segment digits. So with the help of a few users on the SparkFun forums I was able to save one I/O pin to control my dual 7-segments display. It may seem insignificant, but I already have ATtiny84 chips and since my space is limited I couldn't really go with a higher pin count chip (such as the ATtiny2313).

I added a transistor inverter, so bit 7 now controls the two digits instead of requiring on bit per digit. Since I don't use the decimal point, only one 8-bit port is required to control the 14 segments of the two digits.

The schematic below is a composite of two drawings I found on two different websites:
- http://www.kpsec.freeuk.com/trancirc.htm, "A transistor inverter (NOT gate)"
- http://www.picbasic.com/resources/articles/ledart.htm, "Figure 6"

[Yvan256]

I hit a small problem with the ATtiny84... I forgot to reserve the /RESET pin so that in-system-programming would still work. So I'm actually one pin short, even with the transistor trick I mentionned earlier.

So... long story short, I switched to the ATtiny861. The rewiring is already done and the circuit is working once again. And this time I have a working ISP header just in case I want to modify the code. Since the ATtiny861 has 16 I/O pins (minus one for /RESET) compared to the ATtiny84's 12 I/O pins (minus one for /RESET), I was also able to drop the 3rd transistor. I even have two I/O pins left in case I think of something else.

The C code compiles to 514 bytes, so yes I am wasting code space by using an ATtiny861 AVR instead of going for a cheaper ATtiny261. But since the price difference is only 26 cents, I said why not. You never know when you'll need more code space.


On another node, I was also finally able to get the LCD6610 working and can display bitmap graphics now. It's currently connected to the ATtiny84 (See? It will be used after all!) and displays a 132x46 mini-marquee of Rygar. I'll have to get the whole thing working with a 2MiB flash, DIP-8 IC since I've decided it would be easier to just ask the front-end to send a binary value through the parallel port (from 1 to 99, it is called MVS-99-6 after all), to tell the ATtiny84 which stored mini-marquee to display. If I ever decide to add more than 99 games I'll have to write the new mini-marquees into the small Flash IC, but 2 MiB is a very limited amount of storage space and I'm guessing I'll even have trouble storing 99 graphics, even accounting for the fact that non-Neo-Geo games have roughly 132x64 marquees at the most (ex: Rygar is 132x46).

[polaris]

fairplay man youre doing some incredible work here on the tiny details, great stuff. 

[Yvan256]

Attached are the two best pictures of the LCD I was able to take. In real life the display is very sharp and very bright. Disconnecting the LED backlight doesn't help as it only makes the whole thing completely black. People weren't kidding when they said "photos doesn't do it justice". I'm still wondering how they were able to take pictures at all. Maybe not using a crappy webcam would lead to better results.

Also attached is the picture the LCD is displaying in the first two photos (hint: no need to click on this one, it's displayed full-size already - 132x46 really is that small). The fourth photo is the new circuit of the credit display with the ATtiny861. That 6-wire flat cable on the right is connected to the ISP header which allows to reprogram the micro-controller in-circuit. To the right of that, out of the picture, are temporary buttons connected to the "coin mech" and "player start" inputs of the ATtiny861. Also missing are the two wires that will go out from the ATtiny861 to the i-PAC "credit" and "player 1 start" inputs.

[Yvan256]

MVS owners: I need your help!

If you have a Neo-Geo cabinet with a working MV-LED board I'd like you to take pictures of 6 credits, 7 credits and 9 credits being displayed. Also say if it's from a MV-LED or a MV-LED2 board (horizontal or vertical one).

The reason I'm asking for photos of the digits being displayed is because of the different ways of making the numbers 6, 7 and 9 on a 7-segment display. It's a small detail, but why bother making a credit display board if it doesn't show the same thing as a real MVS cabinet.  

[CheffoJeffo]

There are no serifs -- the numbers appear as in the lower picture.

[Yvan256]

There are no serifs -- the numbers appear as in the lower picture.

Great, it had to be the ugly ones. 

Oh well, if that's how the real MVS cabinets displayed credits, then that's how MVS-99-6 will display its credits too.

[Ryglore]

How goes the MVS-99-06?

[Yvan256]

How goes the MVS-99-06?

It's in standby for now, though I did make this about three months ago. I know, the top edge isn't cut properly, but I was in a rush when I made this.

The components are on one side and the 7-segment display is on the other side. This way the pcboard can be screwed flat into the MDF and I used the length of the pins of the 7-segment so that its top surface is flush with the other side of the MDF.

[emphatic]

  That looks great!

[Ryglore]

Awesome display. I envy your PCB building skills. 

[Yvan256]

Awesome display. I envy your PCB building skills. 

Actually the PCB was made by ExpressPCB (MiniBoardPro service).

[Ryglore]

Well in that case... they are awesome.

[WhereEaglesDare]

 

[Kman-Sweden]

Update?

[Yvan256]

No update to do since last time. No money and no time means the project is on standby.

[WhereEaglesDare]

  What is the foot print of your cabinet?  How wide and deep is the base of it?  How tall is it?

[Yvan256]

  What is the foot print of your cabinet?  How wide and deep is the base of it?  How tall is it?

The cabinet is 23.4 cm wide, 31.8 cm deep x 35.8 cm tall (9.21 x 12.52 x 14.09 inches), without the rubber feet and without the T-molding.

[WhereEaglesDare]

WOW, that IS tiny!  Im thinking about building a similar one.  but its going to be 25 inches high, because I dont have a MiniITX... its going to be a little less than double.  20 inches wide x 17 inches deep, and 25 inches tall.  Its going to be wider than the proportions allow, but I think it'll be manageable.

[Yvan256]

WOW, that IS tiny!  Im thinking about building a similar one.  but its going to be 25 inches high, because I dont have a MiniITX... its going to be a little less than double.  20 inches wide x 17 inches deep, and 25 inches tall.  Its going to be wider than the proportions allow, but I think it'll be manageable.

Similar one, as in another small Neo-Geo MVS cabinet? Can't wait to see that!

[WhereEaglesDare]

Well I just got back from Lowes with some wood, fresh new saw blades, and a new set of ear pro, got 4-5 hours left til dinner time so I should be able to get a good bit of cutting done today.

http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=104764.0

[WhereEaglesDare]

WHat did you use to round off the front of the CP?  I read your mote about it and it does look scary, especially when you already have all the holes cut.



Any tips?

[Yvan256]

WHat did you use to round off the front of the CP?  I read your mote about it and it does look scary, especially when you already have all the holes cut.



Any tips?

I used my father's router table with a round corner bit. I was afraid the corner of my control panel would not hold, but there was no problem. Then again, I used metal brackets, screwed with pilot holes, and all panels glued with carpenter glue. If it had broken apart, it would have surprised me.

[WhereEaglesDare]

You are putting plexi over the CP, are your rounding off the edge of it?

[Yvan256]

You are putting plexi over the CP, are your rounding off the edge of it?

As you can see in reply #151, the original Neo-Geo MVS cabinets only had a flat plexi over their CP. It stops before the round corner.

Since I try to follow the original design as much as possible that's how mine is going to be too. And thanks to javeryh, I have 6 very small bolts to complete the effect. I'm not sure if I'm going to paint them black or not yet, but at least they're the right size for this miniature version of the cab.

Unless you actually meant rounding off the edges as in remove the sharp corner in the thickness, then I'm not sure. I can't remember if the originals were like that either. To keep things in scale, I'm going to use 1/16" plexi. I'm not sure it's worth rounding off the edges of such a thin material.

[Yvan256]

It's been a few months since the last update... Time flies.

The viewing angle of the LCD for the mini-marquees isn't good enough, not to mention that the backlight of the LCD makes it look more fake that it has to be. I know Neo-Geo mini-marquees were backlit, but it's a transparency lightning, they do not emit light themselves. There's also the aspect ratio of the current LCD (nearly square) which doesn't quite fit the Neo-Geo mini-marquees. And it's just a bit too small.

So I'm going to replace it with an OLED display. I was able to get 50$ from SparkFun's Free Day, so it means I was able to buy this 1.7" OLED module for much cheaper. Vertically, it's almost the perfect aspect ratio of mini-marquees, it's a bit bigger, it fits physically in the space I have and the built-in controller and microSD slot means displaying and adding new pictures will be much, much easier.

[Bender]

can't wait to see the New OLED

[Yvan256]

After reading the datasheet, I learned that:
- it doesn't support a file system (no FAT32, it uses direct block addressing... what's the point? Requires Windows software to load/convert the images, too)
- it doesn't support standard file formats (well, the Windows software does, but what's the point)
- you shouldn't display the same static image for "lengthy periods of time"... never mind that they don't even specify an actual recommended maximum time, it's a marquee!

I'll keep my current 128x128 LCD display. The ideal solution would be a color e-ink display. Maybe one day.

[Kman-Sweden]

How about placing the minimarquee behind a "smoked" screen? Maybe a piece of "DIY-Car-window-tint-kit" or something similar..?

[Yvan256]

How about placing the minimarquee behind a "smoked" screen? Maybe a piece of "DIY-Car-window-tint-kit" or something similar..?

The main problem is the viewing angle of the LCD display. I can probably control the brightness via PWM.

The ideal solution would be a small color e-ink display. At the size I need, one from a cellphone will probably do the job just fine. All I need is for a company like SparkFun to sell a ready-to-use solution.

[shanghaiguide]

Whats the physical size you need?

I can get  spi driven lcd displays for relatively cheap here in China.  
eg

http://item.taobao.com/item.htm?id=4820742069
http://item.taobao.com/item.htm?id=3811184896

They use SPI for output, so you'd need to know how to talk to them - Arduino or similar PIC based would be good,and it looks like you have experience with that.

I'm in China, so I can buy, and post if you need...
PM me, and we can talk

[Yvan256]

Whats the physical size you need?

I can get  spi driven lcd displays for relatively cheap here in China.  
eg

http://item.taobao.com/item.htm?id=4820742069
http://item.taobao.com/item.htm?id=3811184896

They use SPI for output, so you'd need to know how to talk to them - Arduino or similar PIC based would be good,and it looks like you have experience with that.

I'm in China, so I can buy, and post if you need...
PM me, and we can talk

Hi,

thanks for the offer, but as you can see in reply #14 of this thread, I already have a small LCD, bought on eBay (http://www.gravitech.us/13secogrlcd.html).

Unless you're talking about a small, color e-ink display that can be driven by SPI/etc?

Also, if you can find a source for VGA/DVI/HDMI (at least one of those connectors), from 6 to 8 inches, in 4:3 aspect ratio (not 16:9 or 16:10), TFT (not STN), LED-backlit (hopefully) then a lot of people building small-sized cabinets will be interested, that's for sure.

[shanghaiguide]

I've done some work on driving LCD stuff before - mostly  related to projectors (as in building my own).
Most LCD's use LVDS or TTL + an interface board to drive from a VGA source.

LED is more expensive, but only marginally. Non LCD, but cheaper panels will have to be driven with an inverter too so you can light up the fluorescent tube.

So you'd just need to look for a suitable panel for the size you need, and a controller.
Controllers are dirt cheap here though - 20-30rmb for cheap ones, 10-15rmb for lvds cables.
eg
http://item.taobao.com/item.htm?id=8806496700 / http://item.taobao.com/item.htm?id=6817300996 / http://item.taobao.com/item.htm?id=8456636918
http://item.taobao.com/item.htm?id=6694686250

Example of board+display+cable set = http://item.taobao.com/item.htm?id=4755654021

Suitable panels with LED - typically around 300rmb ish
LS080HT111
AT080TN42
A080SN01

Just need to download the data sheets, see what they need to drive them, then choose an appropriate board.
Also need to get appropriate cables, and driver board (the above listed should be fine, although need to program them for the LCD panel you'll use).
Suitable programmer for the 乐华 (Le Hua) boards - http://item.taobao.com/item.htm?id=8480680405

This place has most of whats needed - http://xinyida168.taobao.com/

Possibly cheaper to buy an MP4 player and disassemble though, they're in the same ballpark pricewise as a raw panel.

Eg TenMoon DPF87M
http://www.10moons.net/showpro.asp?SproID=433



Any possibility of getting dimensions of your sides?  I'm contemplating making a small one as I just bought myself a Neo Geo and about 10 games..

[Yvan256]

Any possibility of getting dimensions of your sides?  I'm contemplating making a small one as I just bought myself a Neo Geo and about 10 games..

One of my posts has a ZIP file which contains four PDF pages that you can print to cut the sides. For the width, just use what is required for the Neo-Geo system.

[Yvan256]

Hello everyone,

sorry to resurrect an old thread on a project that's on stand-by, but since I'm building a CNC to help me with these other projects, I've started thinking about them again.

For MVS99-6, I need a list of 99 games, both arcade and Neo-Geo MVS. I don't have any particular arcade vs MVS ratio in mind, so here's my list so far:

Arcade
- A.L.C.O.N. (aka Slap Fight)
- Asteroids
- Bagman
- Black Tiger
- Bomb Jack
- Bubble Bobble
- Bump N Jump
- BurgerTime
- Contra
- Defender
- Dig Dug
- Donkey Kong
- Donkey Kong Jr.
- Frogger
- Galaga
- Galaxian
- Ghost 'n Boblins
- Golden Axe
- Gradius
- Gunsmoke
- Joust
- Lady Bug
- Life Force
- Mario Bros.
- Moon Patrol
- Mortal Kombat
- Mr. Do!
- Mr. Do!'s Castle
- Ms. Pac-Man
- Pac-Man
- Popeye
- Punch-Out!!
- Q*bert
- Qix
- Rally-X
- Rampage
- Rastan
- Robotron: 2084
- R-Type
- Rygar
- Snow Bros
- Space Invaders
- Super Cobra
- Terra Cresta
- Time Pilot
- Tutankham
- Twin Cobra
- Xevious
- Zaxxon



MVS
- Art of Fighting
- Fatal Fury
- King of Fighters
- Blazing Star
- Crossed Swords
- Metal Slug
- Pulstar
- Magical Drop
- Puzzle Bobble
- Samurai Shodown
- Waku Waku 7

Of course, some fighting games have dozens if not hundreds of sequels and variations, so I'm not listing them. I'm not a fan of Street Fighter, for example.

My question is, from all the "historic/classic" arcade games (2D-only, ROM only, joystick-only, i.e. no Hard drive, Laserdisc, trackball, spinner, driving wheel or yoke) , which ones do you think I'm missing on my list?

[Nephasth]

Gorf and Satan's Hollow. Love those games!

[emphatic]

I'm listing horizontal games only here:

1000 Miglia: Great 1000 Miles Rally
Cabal
Chelnov
Elevator Action Returns
Get Star
Great Miglia Rally
Gunforce
Gunforce 2
Indiana Jones
New Zealand Story
P-47
Pang
Penguin Kun-Wars
Progear
Rastan
Rolling Thunder
Psyco-Nics O.S.C.A.R.
Shinobi
Silk Worm
Solomon's Key
Strikers 1945+
Toki
Twinkle Star Sprites
Thrash Rally

[javeryh]

There are tons missing!  Off the top of my head...

Juno First
Jungle King
Pac & Pal
Tapper
Super Pac-man
Jr. Pac-man
Zookeeper
1942/43/44
Tetris

There are lots of other but I'll let other people chime in.

[Yvan256]

Here's the artwork that I've done so far. The task is long, I have to search for good quality artwork (good color, contrast, not cropped, etc) then reduce it for the small 132x132 pixels LCD used for the MVS mini-marquee.

Arcade marquees are 132 pixels wide and the height respects the aspect ratio of the marquee, so it varies quite a bit. They will have the rest of the LCD filled with black or white (or some other color if it fits the design, such as Bubble Bobble).

The Neo-Geo MVS marquees are 108x132 pixels, since all mini-marquees have a fixed aspect ratio. The left and right will be filled with black or white, depending on what looks best on the real LCD with the white border printed on the whole marquee. I'm having a hard time finding 50 Neo-Geo MVS games that I really like to play, and I'm also having a hard time limiting myself to 49 classic non-MVS games. It the end it could be 75 arcade+24 MVS games, as long as the total is 99 I don't really care.  

Warning for users with slow connections: the first full-size graphic is 786 KB, second one is 102 KB.

Note: I'm already planning a future version of this machine, with of those ultra-wide sunshade LCD displays (most are 800x256 but I've seen one which was 1024x320), so that arcade marquees will look better (horizontal, no printed Neo-Geo marquee around it) and the MVS marquees will be inserted into the generic 1-cart Neo-Geo marquee (see second graphic). With an 800x256 pixels LCD, the MVS mini-marquees would also be 160x192 pixels, which is still a bit bigger than 110x132.

[Yvan256]

The more I looked at the marquees and the more I had a weird feeling about it. Something just wasn't right.

It's like all the marquees had a faint white bezel around them for some reason... Turns out, there's a bug or a limitation in the bicubic resizing method of the software I'm using.

You can see the bug in the first extremely zoomed screenshot. There is transparency in the last pixels around the image (since those zoomed screenshots are cropped, it's only in the last row and column of pixels). The solution was easy: I simply copied the image four times on four layers and merged them all. No more alpha, problem fixed.

It was a bit annoying to have to re-do all the marquees, however. I'm not even finished with the Neo-Geo mini-marquees in that updated grid but all the other non-MVS marquees are fixed.

[Nephasth]

Have you started on your monitor rotation on this?

[Yvan256]

Have you started on your monitor rotation on this?

No, for now I'm concentrating on completing the mini-marquee LCD display, including images and the microcontroller code. I'm also planning on trying to read the graphic files from an SD card to make it easier to update them.

I'll probably have to add some code to MAME but I plan to make that addition quite generic by sending the game name to a serial port.

That way, any external peripheral only has to get the game name and act accordingly with data from an internal list of games for their own use:
- screen orientation
- dynamic marquee display
- RGB lighted buttons to fit the original machine scheme
- 8/4/2-way electronic/mechanical joystick restrictor to fit the game

An example would be MAME sending "rygar" on the serial port:
- an arcade cabinet with an automatic screen rotation mechanism would set the display horizontally.
- an arcade cabinet with a dynamic marquee would display the Rygar marquee.
- an arcade cabinet with lighted buttons would only light up the first two buttons (first button red, second button blue - or was it yellow?).
- an arcade cabinet with a dynamic joystick would put the restrictor in 8-way mode.

Of course, each peripheral would need its own internal storage, but IMHO it makes the whole thing easier overall, especially for the marquee. A standard XML database could be kept so that global data is kept for each kind of module, people could start from the XML and write their custom data to their own hardware as needed.

Unless of course someone can tell me that such an extension to MAME already exists?

After reading what I just wrote, I think I'm going to make a custom restrictor plate for my Sanwa joystick, for no special reason...

Yes, I'm thinking of adding an automatic 4/8-way restrictor plate and I already know how I'm going to implement it. It won't take much room either and will be 100% stable and reliable even when powered off. Small question... does anyone know of a game list where the restrictors are also listed? Which games required a vertical 2-way setup?

[Yvan256]

(reply to Unstupid's comment from his bartop Neo-Geo cab thread)
You know when I first read your post I just thought you were a NeoGeo fan... I didn't realize you were currently in the process of building your own mini NeoGeo cab!  I just read through your entire project thread!  What you are doing with the 7 segment credit counter and the LCD marquee is awesome!  I'm definitely going to follow your build because I want to see how that turns out!  I noticed that you have a working coin slot.  Mind if I ask what kind of coin slot you are using?  I can't find a working one that fits my design and my cab is twice the size of yours!

BTW I though my build was going to be a "long process" because I'm expecting it to take a couple of months.... You are going on a couple of years!  That is hardcore!  

Thanks for the comment!

Ah, the coin mech... as you say, my cabinet is so small that it has to be a custom home-made one. I'm also not going to make it really complex, it's going to accept anything round and heavy, i.e. a so-called universal coin mech, though I'm not sure if people from Alpha Centauri still use flat metal discs as currency.

I'm planning to put the coin slot+path on the right of the marquee engraved as a path in the thickness of the right panel itself with a switch and coin box at the back/bottom right inside the cabinet. Since the back panel is hinged, I will have easy access to the tokens from there. I just have to enclose the whole coin path and box to be 100% sure that a coin won't be able to fall onto anything electrical inside.  

The delay is mostly due to the fact that I'm not 100% happy with the precision of the panels so far, especially the sides. That's why I started to build my own CNC mill. And now with my dynamic joystick idea, that's yet another delay, though I'm sure I probably already have almost all the parts for that one. I just need to fit them together.

[Vidiot]

I was gonna suggest using one of those visor monitors from eBay for a marquee then I saw where you already had that idea. 
That would be awesome though. I hope to try something like that in the future.

[Unstupid]

Thanks for the comment!

Ah, the coin mech... as you say, my cabinet is so small that it has to be a custom home-made one. I'm also not going to make it really complex, it's going to accept anything round and heavy, i.e. a so-called universal coin mech, though I'm not sure if people from Alpha Centauri still use flat metal discs as currency.

I'm planning to put the coin slot+path on the right of the marquee engraved as a path in the thickness of the right panel itself with a switch and coin box at the back/bottom right inside the cabinet. Since the back panel is hinged, I will have easy access to the tokens from there. I just have to enclose the whole coin path and box to be 100% sure that a coin won't be able to fall onto anything electrical inside.  

The delay is mostly due to the fact that I'm not 100% happy with the precision of the panels so far, especially the sides. That's why I started to build my own CNC mill. And now with my dynamic joystick idea, that's yet another delay, though I'm sure I probably already have almost all the parts for that one. I just need to fit them together.

You will need to elaborate on the "dynamic joystick idea"!

On another note if you'd like I can cut your panels for you if it will help you get back on track!  I have a router 

[Yvan256]

You will need to elaborate on the "dynamic joystick idea"!

On another note if you'd like I can cut your panels for you if it will help you get back on track!  I have a router  

Dynamic joystick = automatic restrictor. I can't find the link, but I saw someone who did something similar with an actuator (I think). I'm planning on going with a sliding restrictor similar to those use on the Seimitsu joysticks. Powered by a small DC motor, a threaded rod and some switches to detect the position, all under the control of a small ATtiny85. Just tell the microcontroller what type of joystick you want and it'll push/pull the restrictor plate in the right position.

When you say router, do you mean a full CNC milling table?

[Unstupid]

When you say router, do you mean a full CNC milling table?

Yea... Something like that!  I have access to (infact I'm the sole operator) a Thermwood Model-90 5 axis router.  It has a 5'x10' cutting area and a 3' z axis stroke.  It also has a vacuum table with a 15hp pump that would suck the green off a dollar bill.  We only use it maybe 20 days a year, so the rest of the time she is all mine!  I only have one video of her in action.  I dont have any videos of her cutting but If you look up on YouTube "drawing straight lines on a curved surface" you can see her when I used it to stripe a boat hull with a sharpie.

[Yvan256]

When you say router, do you mean a full CNC milling table?

Yea... Something like that!  I have access to (infact I'm the sole operator) a Thermwood Model-90 5 axis router.  It has a 5'x10' cutting area and a 3' z axis stroke.  It also has a vacuum table with a 15hp pump that would suck the green off a dollar bill.  We only use it maybe 20 days a year, so the rest of the time she is all mine!  I only have one video of her in action.  I dont have any videos of her cutting but If you look up on YouTube "drawing straight lines on a curved surface" you can see her when I used it to stripe a boat hull with a sharpie.

I just watched a few videos of Thermwood machines in action.  

However, one of the reasons I'm building my own CNC machine is so that I can work on my projects by myself, learning things as I go. Thank you for the kind offer but in any case I wouldn't be able to afford the cost of the panels + machining + shipping.

Even if we skip the machining cost, the shipping alone would be more than I can pay, especially if you're in the USA. UPS and FedEx add expensive brokerage fees, on top of the shipping cost and the customs fees and taxes. Even if you're willing to make and ship all of this for free, I would still end up paying anywhere from 20 to 50$. 

So the question is... are you located in Canada?

[Unstupid]

I just watched a few videos of Thermwood machines in action.  

However, one of the reasons I'm building my own CNC machine is so that I can work on my projects by myself, learning things as I go. Thank you for the kind offer but in any case I wouldn't be able to afford the cost of the panels + machining + shipping.

Even if we skip the machining cost, the shipping alone would be more than I can pay, especially if you're in the USA. UPS and FedEx add expensive brokerage fees, on top of the shipping cost and the customs fees and taxes. Even if you're willing to make and ship all of this for free, I would still end up paying anywhere from 20 to 50$. 

So the question is... are you located in Canada?

Nope not in Canada, Hawaii... Didn't realize they charge all kinds of brokerage fees going into canada...  It must be expensive to live there!

[Yvan256]

Nope not in Canada, Hawaii... Didn't realize they charge all kinds of brokerage fees going into canada...  It must be expensive to live there!

It's no more expensive than living in the USA, but only if you don't order things from the USA all the time. 

Actually, I know a lot of Americans don't like the USPS, but here in Canada we much prefer to use Canada Post. It's usually from 20 to 50% cheaper and there's no rip-off on the charges. Their Xpress services are quite fast, too.

[Nephasth]

It's no more expensive than living in the USA, but only if you don't order things from the USA all the time. 

Or drive much, those gas prices hurt just looking at them. Ouch.

[Yvan256]

There are tons missing!  Off the top of my head...

Juno First
Jungle King
Pac & Pal
Tapper
Super Pac-man
Jr. Pac-man
Zookeeper
1942/43/44
Tetris

There are lots of other but I'll let other people chime in.

I'm slowing going through some lists, including those you guys listed here. I stumbled upon an old detail I had completely forgotten...

Are you talking about Root Beer Tapper or the Budweiser-branded Tapper? Which one is the original and/or was the most popular/common?

edit: never mind, a quick search told me the original was the Budweiser-themed Tapper and Root Beer Tapper was created for the benefit of concerned parents.   (the cheers should be in a sarcasm tag)

edit #2: also removed Robotron: 2084 from my list since it requires two joysticks.

[Yvan256]

Dumb question about Punch-Out!!

Can this game be used on a single-monitor system? Even if using split screen on a vertical monitor I don't think the aspect ratio is going to be correct. 

[Nephasth]

From Malenko's 32" vertical cab he had:

Thanks to Cheffo, I had to see how well punch out looked, 2 monitor outputs spanned across a 32" vertical monitor dont look too bad!







Also works pretty good with Playchoice 10:

Might not be perfect, but I don't think it looks bad at all. Tough to say how it would look on a small screen.

[yotsuya]

I play it on my 19 inch horizontal LCD with no issues.

[Yvan256]

From Malenko's 32" vertical cab he had:

...

Might not be perfect, but I don't think it looks bad at all. Tough to say how it would look on a small screen.

His monitor is widescreen, however. Mine is indeed already very small, low resolution and has a 4:3 aspect ratio. I guess I'll have to try before dismissing it completely. Was Punch-Out!! a PlayChoice-10 title or was it a dedicated motherboard?

I already had to filter out all the spinner, trackball, racing and dual-stick games... would be a shame to drop Punch-Out!! too.

I play it on my 19 inch horizontal LCD with no issues.

My display is an old Sharp LQ064A5CG01. It's a 6.4" TFT LCD with a resolution of 480x234 and a composite video input only.

[Nephasth]

His monitor is widescreen, however.

It was a 4:3 32" TV mounted vertically.

[Yvan256]

His monitor is widescreen, however.

It was a 4:3 32" TV mounted vertically.

Wow, you're right. It's weird but it seemed widescreen to me. 

I guess there's still hope for Punch-Out!! on my small cabinet then. It's not like you need incredibly high resolution to play that game, there's no 2x2 pixels bullets to dodge or anything. The only two characters take nearly 33% of the screen. 

edit: (see attached picture)

I guess it's going to be okay for Punch-Out!! after all (it's a simulated picture, the screen capture from Wikimedia resized to 234x320).

[Yvan256]

I'm sorry for everyone who's following this thread. Slow doesn't even begin to describe it. However, there is so many parts involved that I hope you understand.

Here's a small update about the LCD mini-marquee. Since the last update I've decided to go with an SD card instead of two 8-pin DIP flash memory ICs.

Apart from the computer, the LCD mini-marquee display will be the most complex part of this cabinet.
List of parts required for the marquee display controller:

• Microcontroller: Atmel ATtiny861 (8-bit, 20MHz, 8192 bytes of code space)
• Small color display: ET-LCD6610 (132x132 pixels, 4096 colors)
• SD Card socket: SparkFun (BOB-00204)
• Serial port level converter: MAX232 (don't have one, will need to order it)

I'm also using the AVR Programming Adapter from SparkFun (BOB-08508) but this will be part of the custom PCB I'll be making.

Why so many parts? Well, here is a list of all the things this module must do:

• Communicate with the computer to know which marquee to display. I will have to add something to either the front-end or to MAME. Ex: I select Black Tiger. The front-end needs to send "blktiger" via the serial port to the marquee display microcontroller.
• Convert voltage levels between the computer and the microcontroller (MAX232)
• Access the graphic files on the SD card (SD Card socket + software I'm writing for the ATtiny861)
• Output the graphic data to the LCD display (again, my own software that's going to reside in the ATtiny861)

At last count the ATtiny861 had enough I/O pins to do all of this.

To simplify the graphics decoding and SD card reading parts of the project I will only support very specific, erm, specifications:

• I didn't want to mess around with saving raw data files and I wanted something supported under Mac OS X's Preview program. So my choice ended up with uncompressed TIFF files. I don't need to write specifications-compliant TIFF decoding routines since I know where the graphic data is located inside my files. Another reason to use TIFF is because I didn't want to use Microsoft's BMP format.  
• FAT16: I don't need to support FAT32 and long filenames. MAME ROM filenames are "8.3" and FAT16 allows up to 2GiB partitions. The marquees are 132x132 pixels in 24-bit color (RGB), so 132x132x3 equals 52272 bytes. The files as written by Preview end up at 52494 bytes because of the TIFF header and other various data. And 52494 bytes multiplied by 99 games equals ~4.96 MiB (5196906 bytes) so the 2GiB maximum of FAT16 is more than enough. An old 32MB SD Card would still have been overkill but unfortunately the only spare SD card I have for this project is 1GB.

And since I know you all like drawings, pictures and photos when reading about an update, here it is (and yes, only the AVR Programming Adapter is wired up so far, the spaghetti-like wire mess will come soon enough):



Going clockwise, on the outside, starting from the LCD:

• LCD, of course
• SD card socket
• AVR Programming Adapter
• Atmel ATtiny861 (20-pins IC in the middle)

I'll probably start with outputting pixels on the display by embedding a tiny graphic directly inside the code of a test program.

The "MVS Neo-Geo" mini-marquee with a white background can be cropped as two graphics on an all-white background. Using the 108x132 graphic I've already done, it seems it would require 80x28 pixels for the top "MVS Multi-Video System" part and 65x64 pixels for the yellow/blue "Neo-Geo" part. Reducing to 256 colors doesn't do much impact to the quality, so (80x28)+(65x64) = 6400 bytes, leaving only 1792 bytes for the test program itself. If it fits, there won't be much room left.  

Worst case scenario, I'll only use the yellow/blue "Neo-Geo" part of the graphic for the test. Stay tuned.

[Yvan256]

I found a problem with the way I wanted to install my LCD mini-marquee... installed sideways, you can barely see what's displayed because it looks all washed-out. The viewing angles weren't designed for that orientation.  

So my only hope was to try and install it vertically, but would I even have enough space to do that? The PCB of the LCD is much taller than the LCD itself and it just wouldn't fit between the top and bottom panels of the marquee holder.

But it does fit in the overall height, if I cut the top panel...

After about 2 hours of cutting away the MDF with a small utility knife*, I was finally able to install the LCD vertically. The hole at the top will be hidden by the marquee holder. My cutout is mis-shaped because I had to clear room for two surface-mount components on the back of the PCB.

I also tried to take a photo of the LCD, once again displaying the Rygar marquee, but it's nearly impossible because the backlight seems to overpower the camera.

* no fingers were cut during the production of this update.

[Yvan256]

Two updates and over 400 additional views later and still no comments?  

I know I'm not as good as Ond, Pixelhugger and others, but... I like comments too!

[yotsuya]

After about 2 hours of cutting away the MDF with a small utility knife*, I was finally able to install the LCD vertically. The hole at the top will be hidden by the marquee holder. My cutout is mis-shaped because I had to clear room for two surface-mount components on the back of the PCB.

* no fingers were cut during the production of this update.

You're a better man than I am!

[Malenko]

it looks really good. I was kinda shocked to see my old MAME cab in your thread. Wait until you see what Im working on now.  I'm pretty sure my niche is going to be putting giant CRTs in cabinets that they shouldn't fit in.


I love NeoGeo ( i miss my neogeo cabs) and now thanks to your thread I miss my MAME cab too :p

[HaRuMaN]

Wait until you see what Im working on now.  I'm pretty sure my niche is going to be putting giant CRTs in cabinets that they shouldn't fit in.

   Ooh Ooh!  I know <raises hand>

[emphatic]

Very cool. 

[NiN^_^NiN]

Two updates and over 400 additional views later and still no comments?  

I know I'm not as good as Ond, Pixelhugger and others, but... I like comments too.

It's looking great man I do love the idea of the screen in the marquee I always thought of 7" Digital photo frames on a fullsized neogeo cab just changing pictures would be cool.

I need to see the whole cab in action to see the lcd in use as currently cause it's close up it looks a tad small and i can't get a feel for the size of the lcd with the whole of the cab but still fantastic work can't wait to see more

[Yvan256]

It's looking great man I do love the idea of the screen in the marquee I always thought of 7" Digital photo frames on a fullsized neogeo cab just changing pictures would be cool.

I need to see the whole cab in action to see the lcd in use as currently cause it's close up it looks a tad small and i can't get a feel for the size of the lcd with the whole of the cab but still fantastic work can't wait to see more

I remember seeing a Neo-Geo cabinet with exactly that, but I think it was semi-fixed marquee that the guy had to change manually by pressing a button or something. My LCD will change automatically, even within the menu system.

As for an idea of the overall size, you can see it in this post. It's only a Sketchup render but it should give you a good idea of the LCD/marquee ratio. The idea is that the LCD replaces the Neo-Geo mini-marquee, except that it's square instead of a vertical rectangle.

[Yvan256]

Oh boy, I knew I should have tested this earlier. After all the trouble communicating with that small LCD and the viewing angle problem that required a modification to the top marquee panel...

The datasheet says 132x132 pixels but after a quick test I just found out that only 130x130 pixels are visible.

This means I have to start over on all the marquee graphics. As small as they are, I can't just cut off 1 pixel on each side.

Oh well, here's two photos of my test grid, I left a border of one pixel before my lines to make sure I could see the top, bottom, left and rightmost rows/columns of pixels. I also tested by moving these borders by one pixel and they are indeed the last visible ones. I don't want to remake those marquees a third time.  

It seems I also finally learned how to take photos of this LCD. Just make it a close-up so that the camera will use the LCD as the light source for the calibration! (or whatever it's called - sorry, I'm not a professional photographer)

Also included is the Neo-Geo logo, displayed improperly due to the fact that I'm still trying to set that stupid LCD in 4096 colors mode. But hey, at least it's already half-working, right?

[Yvan256]

Two steps forward, one step back...

I found another LCD which should have much better colors, larger viewing angles and also nearly perfectly fits the aspect ratio of a Neo-Geo mini marquee. The worst part is, I paid more for my current LCD. So my current LCD will go back on eBay to fund the purchase of this new LCD.

I just did a paper-printed test with this LCD with the datasheets and yes it does fit in my cabinet. That is, once I have made another hole in the MDF, this time in the bottom panel of the marquee holder.

So instead of going with 130x130 for the marquees graphics I will do 128x160. The good thing is that, worst case scenario, I will still be able to use the horizontal graphics for the current LCD display if I can't find a buyer for it.

With the new LCD the marquee area of my cabinet will have a vertical mini-marquee like a real Neo-Geo cabinet, goodbye square LCD!  

Other bonuses with this PCB:
- the command/data is a separate pin, so I will be able to use the native SPI interface of the ATtiny861 (easier and faster)
- built-in microSD card connector
- Both the LCD and microSD talk via SPI and there is a "chip select" pin for both, reducing the number of pins required on the ATtiny861

("Photoshopped" Samurai Shodown photo on the LCD)

[Yvan256]

Here's the difference between the two Neo-Geo "1-slot" marquees, the first one with the square so-called 132x132 LCD and the second one with the 128x160 LCD that I still need to order from Adafruit Industries.

Also attached is a real Neo-Geo marquee for comparison (photo taken from QuarterArcade.com, where the marquee is up for sale).

[Yvan256]

I will be ordering that Adafruit 1.8" LCD from Solarbotics in a few weeks.

I'm also half-way done (again!) with re-doing all the marquees graphics, this time in 128x160 pixels. A few games have been removed (mostly sequels), others have been added. It's incomplete, most missing games will be back on the list (especially the Neo-Geo games), it's changing every day. The goal is to cover all the classics that can be played with one 2/4/8-way stick with four buttons.

As you can see I'm having trouble because it seems there was two common "colors sets" for Donkey Kong Jr. and Frogger. Not to mention the two different Galaga marquees, though the black one was the most common AFAIK.

Which DK Jr. and Frogger marquees are the most common ones? The "light" or "dark" ones?

[Nephasth]

Hmm... I think darker on the frogger and lighter on the DK Jr.

[Mister Hat]

Hmm... I think darker on the frogger and lighter on the DK Jr.

I'm thinking the exact opposite.

[Bender]

Hmm... I think darker on the frogger and lighter on the DK Jr.

+1 on that

never seen a DK jr. that dark, but actually the other one looks a little too light, but better
Don't remember frogger that well but the dark one looks better

Plus I'd go for the Galaga with the Black surround that's the classic one me

[Yvan256]

I was able to find a Donkey Kong Jr. marquee in EPS format, the colors seem indeed much better IMHO.

[Yvan256]

I need funds to help buy parts such as that 1.8" LCD, so I've listed my 6-slot MVS board for sale on eBay.

I also have Samurai Shodown with mini-marquee, Samurai Shodown II with mini-marquee and Crossed Sword (cart only) for sale, though I would like to at least keep the Samurai Shodown or Crossed Sword cart until this project is over to make a "comparison photo" for the size reference.

edit: 1.8" LCD ordered with the help of one of my best friend.

edit 2: package left Solarbotics in Calgary.

edit 3: package is supposed to be on its way.

[Yvan256]

The new 1.8", rectangular TFT LCD for the mini-marquee has arrived, along with some other parts.  

You can see the footprint of the two PCBs are nearly identical in height but the new LCD display is taller.

Included is a comparison between a Neo-Geo marquee displayed at 130x130 vs 128x160. Less black = better Neo-Geo mini-marquee ratio.

[Yvan256]

After a bit of research, I've decided that TIFF is way too complex for the code space and RAM available in the ATtiny861.

So after some reading I've decided to go with the TGA file format for the marquees. It's a fixed 18-bytes header followed by the pixel data itself (for 24-bit color images anyway). Couldn't be any simpler, even BMP is more complicated. Even if there's variations, I don't care since it's a closed system where I control which images are used.

Preview, on Mac OS X 10.5, can save TGA but only with RLE compression, meaning it's quite simple to de-compress on the fly and doesn't require huge amounts of buffering to decode either. Worst case scenario, the TGA format also supports uncompressed images so all I'll have to do is find software to save them as uncompressed TGA.*

I'm currently wiring and coding for the new LCD and compressed TGA graphics, I should have photos in a few hours days.

* I did some tests on a web page with PHP and I was able to decode RLE-compresed TGA graphics with no problems. Apart from the graphic data itself it only takes eight 8-bit variables for the whole thing if I limit the decoding logic to the size of my new LCD display.  

Attached is a picture of the Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong Jr. and Bubble Bobble marquees:

• Left picture: RLE-compressed pixels
• Middle picture: non-compressed pixels
• Right picture: all pixels, resulting in the final graphic

Of course, it's all done in one pass when it's decoded but I thought some graphics might help understand RLE compression for non-coders.

[Yvan256]

I'm not even done with initializing the LCD and I'm almost running out of code space.  

Never mind accessing a microSD card via FAT16 and communicating with the computer via the serial port.  

So... long story short, I've switch to another microcontroller I already had laying around, ATmega644P. This one has eight times more code space and RAM than the ATtiny861, it should be enough for everything. As a bonus, I'm gaining a real UART (for the serial port connection) and two more SPI ports (if I use another SD-card interface I got here, I should be able to both read from the SD card and write to the LCD at the same time).

I could even have enough code space left at the end to store the MVS logo as a "boot screen" (currently takes 14162 bytes as an RLE-compresed TGA file).

Below is the obligatory photo of the current setup. For those into electronics, you might be wondering how many rows of pins are free on the breadboard. There's none. It's a 30 rows breadboard, the ATmega644P takes 20 and the LCD takes 10.

[Yvan256]

Stage 1 Complete: Display bitmap from internal memory

 

I'll need to work a bit on the display routines to make it faster (takes about 1/4 of a second right now) but otherwise it's working fine.

The viewing angle is also better from a bit below the connector, so I'll simply invert the image display routine and install it upside-down inside the marquee holder of the cabinet.

The photos really don't do it justice, it's as clean as the LCD monitor you're probably using right now to view this web page. There's no moiré pattern in real life, it's probably due to the grids of the LCD pixels and the CCD of the camera.

I had a bit of space left*, that's why I added the "Apple boot screen" image.

* actually the code space is only 27.3% full even with these two RLE-compressed TGA files embedded inside the code.


Stages:
- Stage 1A: Write pixels on LCD
- Stage 1B: Hardware SPI communication with the LCD/microSD
- Stage 1C: Functions to write ASCII characters on the LCD
- Stage 2: microSD raw blocks card access
- Stage 3: FAT16 microSD card access
- Stage 4: Serial communication with a computer

[Nephasth]

Good stuff! Can't wait to see it in action in the marquee!

[Yvan256]

I can't wait either, in the meantime here's a crappy black and white laser printed marquee on top of the LCD.  

Here's an update on my LCD mini-marquee progress (one of the most complex part of the build):
- Write pixels on LCD in 18-bit mode
- Hardware SPI communication with the LCD/microSD (success - it's a lot faster than software SPI)
- Decode and display compressed 24-bit TGA graphics (still need to add a bit of error-checking for size, format, etc)
- Functions to write ASCII characters on the LCD (to display error messages such as "TGA file dimensions too big", "no microSD card present", etc and to help debug the microSD raw/FAT16 access and the serial communication later)
- microSD raw blocks card access
- FAT16 microSD card access
- Serial communication with a computer

[Yvan256]

I hit another tiny problem: the LCD for the mini-marquee is going to be "trapped" inside the marquee holder at the top and bottom so I won't have access to its built-in microSD card socket.

No problem, since I already had ordered an SD card breakout board from Sparkfun, so I'll be able to have the SD card socket exactly where I want it behind the printed part of the marquee. It's also going to make it easier to find a smaller capacity, lower cost SD card because 1GB would be a waste. 100 marquees (99 games marquees + generic MVS marquee) will require at most 6MB. Hopefully I'll be able to find a 32MB card, 32MB being the smallest capacity allowed for FAT16 if I remember correctly.

But that tiny protoboard you've seen in the previous photo was too tiny to add anything else. So, I've transfered the whole thing to a bigger protoboard (see first photo).

I've also added a 3.3V regulator since the whole thing is going to be powered by 5V but the SD cards requires 3.3V only. Yes, I know, the wiring is a bit messy at the moment. The weird thing is, the ATmega644P is powered at 3.3V but still clocked at 20MHz. According to the datasheet it shouldn't even work. Not sure if it's damaging it but so far it's working fine.

Since this SD card socket has a "card detect" pin I've also added a routine for that. My error messages are on a black background with a 1-character margin all around it, centered in the display. It looks better this way IMHO.

Other error messages are going to be about wrong TGA files ("TGA image is bigger than display", "TGA image is in the wrong format", etc).

edit: small note, I just did a test with a "pattern" image like on my previous LCD and this new one is indeed 128x160 pixels, no rows or columns missing (previous one was listed as 132x132 but was actually only 130x130 visible pixels).

[Nephasth]

WOW. That SD card next to the LCD really puts the size into perspective. TINY!

[Martijn]

WOW. That SD card next to the LCD really puts the size into perspective. TINY!

Yeah, great job. That screen can also be used for a watch sized cab 

[Yvan256]

WOW. That SD card next to the LCD really puts the size into perspective. TINY!

Yeah, great job. That screen can also be used for a watch sized cab  

If you're willing to go a little bit bigger than a huge watch, this LCD display has a resolution of 320x240 which is perfect for older arcade games, from Pac-Man up to Neo-Geo. I'm just not sure if the interface and the LCD are fast enough for the job. You would also need a way to convert the video signal of your system to digital information for the LCD.

At that point it's easier to do what Bender did and use an open handheld system like the GP2X Wiz.

[Yvan256]

Another small step completed: communication with a computer via the serial port.

The way it will work is that I'm going to send the rom name via the serial port with a start character, such as "*dkong   " (three spaces after "dkong"). It has to be 8 characters, padding the end with spaces as required, because otherwise sending it "dkongjr" it would display the marquee for Donkey Kong (dkong) first before showing the marquee for Donkey Kong Jr. (dkongjr). Using "dkong..." vs "dkongjr." solves the problem (I used periods instead of spaces to make it easier to read).

When the microcontroller receives a complete 8-character string for the rom filename (since "*" is an invalid MS-DOS filename character, it's safe to use as a start character), it will look on the SD card to see if such a file exists and display it on the LCD.

So for now the "received strings via the USART" is complete.

The text you see on the LCD, in the second photo, was typed via HyperTerminal on Windows XP inside VMWare Fusion on Mac OS X, while connected via a USB port from my Mac mini, converted to serial via an FTDI USB-to-Serial adapter, connected to the STK500, converted by a MAX202 chip, connected to the USART pins of the ATmega644p via the red and black wires in the first photo. It can get a little bit confusing.  

And since I'm using the MAX IC of the Atmel STK500 board for now, I'll have to wire my own converter on the final pcboard later.

[BobA]

Great work to date.  The larger screen really looks good.  Looking forward to seeing the results. 

[emphatic]

Cool! 

[Yvan256]

Topic: MVS-99-6  (Read 18000 times) 

[Unstupid]

Topic: MVS-99-6  (Read 18000 times) 

I probably account for half those... I keep checking for status updates!   

[HaRuMaN]

I'm up to 95,000...

http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=64050.0

I gotta talk to saint about profit-sharing...   

[shanghaiguide]

Ironically looks like you're using the LCD I suggested in the first place

Wouldn't mind a copy of the code and a circuit diagram if you're up for sharing.
If you're feeling really ambitious, I could get some pcb's made up and you could sell some of these ready made.

PM / Email if this is something thats interesting.

[Nephasth]

Any progress on this one?

[Yvan256]

Any progress on this one?

A lack of time and money have put this project on stand-by. But the LCD prototype for the mini-marquee is still on my desk. 

[404]

nice to see someone working on some avr stuff for use in arcade projects. friend of mine sent me some avr dev stuff and I've been slowly tinkering with a few things when time permits.

Could have also used the avr to control your joystick and buttons, making it into a generic usb stick using the LUFA library. That's sort of what i'm tinkering with right now. 

[Yvan256]

nice to see someone working on some avr stuff for use in arcade projects. friend of mine sent me some avr dev stuff and I've been slowly tinkering with a few things when time permits.

Could have also used the avr to control your joystick and buttons, making it into a generic usb stick using the LUFA library. That's sort of what i'm tinkering with right now. 

AFAIK I'm not using an USB-enabled AVR, not to mention that I already have an interface for the buttons and joysticks.

And since the cabinet is going to run either Linux+MAME or FreeDOS+MAME, USB may not be an option depending on my choice.

One thing that I remember on my to-do list is to replace the level shifter on the back of the LCD for a faster one or just bypass it, as it is right now I have to slow down the output or else the LCD doesn't receive the data.

[404]

nice to see someone working on some avr stuff for use in arcade projects. friend of mine sent me some avr dev stuff and I've been slowly tinkering with a few things when time permits.

Could have also used the avr to control your joystick and buttons, making it into a generic usb stick using the LUFA library. That's sort of what i'm tinkering with right now. 

AFAIK I'm not using an USB-enabled AVR, not to mention that I already have an interface for the buttons and joysticks.

And since the cabinet is going to run either Linux+MAME or FreeDOS+MAME, USB may not be an option depending on my choice.

One thing that I remember on my to-do list is to replace the level shifter on the back of the LCD for a faster one or just bypass it, as it is right now I have to slow down the output or else the LCD doesn't receive the data.

yeah, saw your mini pac shortly after my original post. Just as small and useful.

I also have a box full of minimus avr dev units here so I've been slowly learning and tinkering around with the LUFA libraries; Quite fun. Jamie Lentin did manage to finish a usb arcade stick using the minimus32

http://jamie.lentin.co.uk/embedded/arcade-joystick/

Unfortunately, using his diffs on a standard minimus with 16kb doesn't give me the same effect. Pretty sure there are some other changes between the two besides the memory size. Just need to take some more time to tinker and read up on some docs, I'm quite the AVR n00b.

Anyway, you project is going by great. Your Neo Geo project and that of Unstupid are by far my two favorite projects on this site. Hoping one day i can make something as nice as what you guys have.

[saloonstudios]

Back from the grave. What ever happened with this? Good news I hope?

[Yvan256]

Back from the grave. What ever happened with this? Good news I hope?

No good news but no bad news either. It's still on hold for the time being, I plan on cutting all panels again more precisely using CNC256, which I need to build using CNC64, which I'm close to completing. 

[Yvan256]

Alright, the title of my post probably requires a bit of explanation. 

MVS-99-6 is the name I have given to my desktop-sized MVS cabinet.

Frankenstein-style is because this version will be made from 148x97mm (maximum) panels, so all parts of the cabinet will require plates to assemble them, resulting in a Frankenstein-style monster with patches and bolts everywhere. The more I work with the design in Sketchup, however, the more I think it looks kinda like a plastic version of steampunk in some strange way.

MDX3-cut because the panels are currently being cut by my Roland MDX-3 (CNC64 isn't up and running yet, but it's almost finished).

PVC version because frankly, I've had it with MDF. I can't stand that stuff anymore. I may use birch plywood in the future if I can find any locally. But in the meantime, I get free PVC panels so I'm going to use them!

2013-12-03 is the date in ISO 8601 format. 

MVS cabinets are usually black with red sides, however since I don't want to paint the PVC I'm going with a reversed-colors theme for this one. Everything red will be white and everything white will be red, except maybe the marquee and control panel overlay. I'm still testing things out with Sketchup.

[Yvan256]

Here's a tiny update for those of you still following this years-old project.

The speakers panel for the CNC-cut PVC version is completed. Small change on the assembly plates, I will be using 10 mm PVC for the interior plates since I'm don't have much 3 mm PVC. A side effect is stronger assembly and the ability to add things to them, such as the restrainer for the speakers cable.

[Malenko]

thats pretty awesome

[Yvan256]

I thought I was done with the top marquee panel, but something seemed strange once assembled. Turns out that I need to be more careful since there's different thicknesses in my PVC offcuts. I'm guessing it's because of different suppliers for the local sign shop.

The right part is 10.04mm and the left part is 10.30mm. It doesn't sound like much of a difference until you assemble the two parts side-by-side.

The MDX-3 is busy cutting the left part once again, this time in 10.04mm PVC.

edit: problem fixed.

[Yvan256]

My Roland MDX-3 needs to be repaired (again), I need to rebuild the Z-axis with a new metal bracket and bronze bushings, the original design is so weak that I'm shocked it lasted this long (i.e. for the right rod, there was a single bronze bushing at the top, an HDPE hole at the bottom and three small HDPE fingers for the left rod).

[Typefighter01]

Sorry to hear Yvan, things where coming along nicely.

Do you source regular bronze sleeves for your bushings, or do you use oil impregnated bronze like Oilite?

[Yvan256]

Sorry to hear Yvan, things where coming along nicely.

Do you source regular bronze sleeves for your bushings, or do you use oil impregnated bronze like Oilite?

I think the MDX-3 has regular bronze sleeves like printers and scanners, so I'm trying to find the same thing from old printers, scanners, CD-ROM and floppy drives, however 6mm rods aren't exactly a popular design choice for these devices.

[Yvan256]

Just a small update, the MDX-3 is "kinda fixed", I got 6mm bronze bushings from China and I hot-glued one in place for the time being. The plan is to use the MDX-3 to cut a new Z-axis assembly for itself, I also plan on making that assembly compatible with the Black & Decker RTX mount I already have. It will offset the work area of the MDX-3 but I should be able to work around that easily enough.