My arcade cabinet (unorigional title)

[romshark]

Like many that dwell within these forums, I have long dreamed of owning my own arcade machine. I've owned the Project Arcade book for nearly four years, pouring over all the information lots of times. I've collected some odds and ends, like a trackball, with no real intent. I have a Hotrod joystick. I even bought a TMNT jamma board, and aside from a little testing with what I have, it gathered dust in my closet (figuratively speaking, since it was in a protective box.)
Finally, the opportunity presented itself. With vacation time that had to be taken (if I didn't, I'd lose that vacation time!) but nowhere to really go, I decided the time was right to plan and build one. I once again studied the Project Arcade book. I studied the Crap Mame web site. I studied real arcade machines (I'm lucky enough to live about 10 minutes from a good arcade. Flipper McCoys for those familiar with the Virginia Beach, Virginia, USA area.)
I used the Hotrod, along with a table, boxes, and books to determine the perfect hight for my control panel for comfortable gaming. Same thing with my LCD monitor, once it arrived.
Finally, construction began back in February. I never really followed any plans, but still used tips from the Project Arcade book. For example, before, I would have tried screwing one panel directly into another, like some sort of DIY furniture kit. After reading, I used wood glue, and both pieces are actually screwed/glued to another inside piece of wood. I feel better knowing my cabinet won't collapse in on itself.
I posted this on sega-naomi.com before, so maybe some of you have seen it. Post is here.





This cabinet is based on...I'm not sure. I guess a generic cabinet. Is this called a Dynamo cabinet? Someone tell me what I built.
Notice I never referred to it as a MAME cabinet. While it does have a PC with MAME and other various emulators and programs, it also features:
-A JAMMA connector and power supply. A CGA to VGA circuit board makes the video possible.
-Sega NAOMI. Marvel VS Capcom 2, Guilty Gear X, and a few others. All without emulation!
- S-Video and component. I can play any of my console systems easily. I wired the input selector on the monitor to a switch on the back of the cabinet, so I don't need to remove the plexiglass and the bezel to change it.
-Wii Sensor bar built in. Because some Wii games work better standing up. And it's easier to play games standing up if the screen is actually at eye level (unlike my console setup).

Power is controlled by a PC power switcher (not sure what they're really called). Video is selected via VGA switchbox I got for cheap from eBay, and audio is selected by pushbutton AV switchbox (from my Console setup, before I bought automatic switches).

In the end, I'm pretty happy about how it turned out. There are some issues with the control panel (plexiglass not really lined up with edges and sits above some of the T-Molding, odd start putton placement, found out when I play Golden Tee, my hand hits the pause button), and the top half is not a perfect rectangle (spent a good deal of time with a mototool shaping various edges of the plexiglass), and the front cabinet door still doesn't fit correctly. I might build a new control panel eventually, but I think I can live with the rest.

I'll post more as I think of what else to say (and get some sleep), and as I take and upload more pictures, including my recent upgrades and rewiring.

[GaryMcT]

Good job!!

[dungbeetle46]

well done, looks good

[javeryh]

Nice job!  You can't go wrong with a 2P-7 button/trackball layout.

[romshark]

Thanks for the good words!

Nice job!  You can't go wrong with a 2P-7 button/trackball layout.

I modeled it after my Hotrod joystick, except with room for the trackball in the middle. Perfect for Street Fighter style games, and the Neo-Geo button arrangement too.
Anywho, some more on the building process.


The results of day 1 of the build. Pretty solid, and with castors on the bottom. In fact, I even sat inside and rolled around the garage floor! (Video NOT coming to youtube.)



A good nights sleep, and back to cabinet work. Actually, I think this is a couple days of work later. Testing my monitor angle using the NAOMI (no controls just yet!) I designed it so the monitor can be installed horizontally or vertically. I know that I can rotate MAME, but I want to be ready in case I ever score a Ms. Pacman PCB or Ikaruga for the NAOMI. Plus, being an LCD screen, I can easily pick it up to rotate it.
Also, this is where it started to feel like an arcade machine.  A wonderful feeling I'm sure many have had on their first build.


My control panel, contruction. I don't know why, but plexiglass gave me the hardest time. I cracked a few pieces while drilling, and when I cut it (with the plexiglass-cutting tool I bought), it didn't come off clean. I had to use a moto-tool to smooth it up. A friend of mine said he had the same problem, and that was when he worked for an actual arcade!


Here's the top half, during the painting phase. This was actually a month or so later. I was spending most of the time setting up software and playing games!
There were some holes below the monitor area, and another set above. These were for the NAOMI gun IO Sensors (really, just IR emmiters.) These were for the gun games like House of the Dead 2 and Confidential Mission. I never could get it to work even halfway right, though. So I plugged up the holes with Quickwood and painted over them. I'll have to build a dedicated cab to play those games.
In some of the pictures, you may have noticed two holes in the front below the control panel. Those were origionally going to be for the NAOMI guns. I'm still deciding if I should close them up, try installing my LCD Topgun for MAME and use one of the holes, or something else.

On the PC end of things, I bought an eMachines for cheap. Flushed Vista and put on XP. Tweaked a few things, and now it boots to the front end in less that 30 seconds! That's about as fast as the NAOMI carts.

My front-ends are MALA and 3D-Arcade. Wait, two front-ends? MALA is the primary front-end, and 3D-Arcade is actually launched from a list in MALA. I also have other programs, like WinCab, and even stuff like the old DOS game Jazz Jackrabbit! I still have to set up MUGEN eventually, once I figure out my desired character list. Of course, I have emulators, too. Mame Plus, Fusion, NEStopia, and ZSNES.

I'll take some more pics, and post more info. Even thinking of making a Youtube video.

[drventure]

What kind of tweaks did you make to boot in 30 secs?

Just curious. Mine's down right now, so I can't time it but I'm thinking it takes about a minute.

[romshark]

I turned off some of the stuff from MSCONFIG (Start->Run.) Stuff like Themes, most of the networking stuff, maybe Windows Security Center (I think I do have that running again, since it might have been complaining about not running.) Since the cabinet lacks any network connections, I don't need that stuff. Mostly deselecting stuff I thought wouldn't affect any of the stuff I need to run. As long as I had video, sound, controls, DVD software, and video codecs, and Windows didn't crash, everything else was fair game.
I did sit down with another PC and Googled what some of the services do, and determined what I could safely turn off.
Also, it was a fresh install, so there's no Office loaders, Symantec stuff, iTunes helpers, or other stuff that causes slowdown. Plus, while the system isn't top of the line, it does have decent power, 1024MB of L2 cache (I think), and a decent hard drive.
Saint probably explains it better than I could in the Project Arcade book. Page 308. Actually, looking at those pages now, I realized I never installed Tweak UI. Maybe I can squeeze out a few more seconds...

[romshark]

Just measured it. It does take about 55 seconds! I need to check my settings. I think I messed with something when I couldn't get the DVD software to work (which turned out to be caused by something completely different.) It was about 30 seconds at one time...

Anyway, did a video (with my first crappy "live" commentary). You can even see one of my robots (my other hobby) at the beginning, doing my intro for me.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5FykTew_CY[/youtube]

[drventure]

Cool robot.

You +really+ need to integrate that robot (or some robotics) into that arcade cab!

I really wish the cab I used had more room in it. My initial plans was to actually have it fold in and out via linear actuators ala transformers.

May get there but it'll be in another cab.

[Ond]

That video goes for over 10 mins! - yes I watched the whole thing.  Love the 'Rick'  lock out feature, jeez I need that on all the pc's in my house full of curious kids.  I'm not sure I understood the button mapping though maybe you could explain that here, it sounded like a good setup. Oh yeah very cool robot.

[GaryMcT]

You are further inspiring me to make mine Jamma-capable. . the main reason I want it is to put a JROK Williams board in there.

[romshark]

Cool robot.
You +really+ need to integrate that robot (or some robotics) into that arcade cab!

Something I'd like to do. However, I don't see it working on a video arcade machine. Maybe on a pinball table, or some sort of redemption machine. I did a previous "show" where the robot did an underhanded thow movement I thought came out nice. Maybe it can sit on thatpurplestuff's "That's How I Roll!" Skeeball machine.
"Come on up, folks! Just roll the ball like this [makes movement]."
Heh, maybe I should program up a demo for fun. Need to brush up on my animatronic skills.

Realistically, while it may work for videos and such, the type of motors wouldn't handle being powered and moving all day. I've actually burned out the torso motors (two of them, actually, at $55 a piece! ) Disney and such use hydraulics and Pneumatics for their stuff. That's why they work so well. They have a little bigger budget, too. 

A great arcade I used to frequent in the next city (gone now  ), used to have some sort of target or skeeball machine, or something that gave tickets for hitting certain targets. In the back of the machine was an animatronic green alien. I think it tuants people to play, and says stuff during play. Wish I knew what made the alien move, but I bet it was a heavy duty DC motors and positioning sensors, kinda like an oversized Furby.

EDIT: Now that I think about it, I think the "alien" only had flashing light patterns in it's eyes. It had a voice, but the mouth didn't move, nor did any other part of it's body. Oh well.

That video goes for over 10 mins! - yes I watched the whole thing.  Love the 'Rick'  lock out feature, jeez I need that on all the pc's in my house full of curious kids.  I'm not sure I understood the button mapping though maybe you could explain that here, it sounded like a good setup. Oh yeah very cool robot.

Video was a bit longer before! Had to trim stuff out, but managed to keep the good stuff. For most uploaders (excluding directors), videos can be up to 11 minutes.

The Rick Astley video plays using Media Player Classic. There's a special copy (saves to it's own .ini file, so it doesn't interfere with any other installed copies) that plays at full screen, and has every button except quit (mapped to F2) turned off, even the right click mouse button menu. Make a shortcut to the player, putting the video and -fullscreen in the command path, and put the shortcut where Mala can load it. Mala filters out the other controls that I couldn't disable. Took some time to configure everything, but the outcome was great.

About the control, do you mean about the layout mimicking the Hanaho Hotrod joystick, my shift key / pause stuff, or the 15 pin connectors under the panel?

You are further inspiring me to make mine Jamma-capable. . the main reason I want it is to put a JROK Williams board in there.

I think being JAMMA compatible (or at least having one cabinet that is) is a good thing. You can play stuff that doesn't work quite right in MAME, and legally play your favorite games (if you can find the boards!)
At least you have your eye on an easy to get board. Try buying the boards for Bubble Bobble (not JAMMA, but I can get an adapter) or TMNT Turtles in Time. They're either hard to find or can be crazy expensive. I'm looking for both, but don't want to spend a whole lot.

[Ond]

About the control, do you mean about the layout mimicking the Hanaho Hotrod joystick, my shift key / pause stuff, or the 15 pin connectors under the panel?

I was asking about the shift / key pause setup, can you explain how that works? I know you described it in the video but I'm not sure I understand.  I'm getting ready to start planning my own two player button config mapped through Mala so I'm interested.

[romshark]

I'm using an Ultimarc I-Pac as the controller interface. This has a nice feature called a shift button, where a button (normally P1 Start) can be pressed along with another button to send a completely separate key command. For example, normally, holding down P1 Start and pressing P2 Start sends ESC (escape) to the computer. Keeps the admin buttons down to a minimum (only 1 for me, really. In fact, using P1 Start as the shift, you don't need any admin buttons at all! Good for MAMEing a real cab, but making restoration super easy.)

I'm not sure if I explained it well enough, but Ultimarc goes into detail here (bottom half of the page).

On my cabinet, I wanted to use one button as Pause / Shift button. Why? The shift button only sends it's regular code when you let go of it. I'd rather have my start button send "1" as long as I have it held down. Just a nitpick, really. Or maybe I'm just being too anal. So I decided that if there was going to be one admin button, might as well be a pause button. Everyone needs a drink, use the bathroom, answer the phone, ect.

This page says how to change which key is the shift key (towards the end of the page).

[drventure]

I'll second romshark on the ipac shift feature. It's VERY cool.

Configure it right, and if you ever drop to windows explore from Mala, you can setup desktop shortcuts with hotkeys to logout, poweroff, or even restart mala or start some other frontend.

So even if you do drop to windows every once in a while it's trivial to get things rolling again (no reaching for the keyboard).

[romshark]

Time for an update!
Besides playing and software tweaks, I've made a few incremental improvements. Changed internal video to an ATI Radeon card. Redid some of the cabling inside to be neater, mounted the Naomi on an easy-to-remove board, and so on.

After a year, I decided to make a new control panel. There were a few things I didn't like about the old one. I didn't have a router until close to the end of the cab build, so I used a moto-tool to dig out the wood to make my trackball plate flush (end result = really bad). Somehow, part of one side swelled up (probably paint in the t-molding groove that wasn't primed first). The Start buttons were kinda space odd (I prefer equal distance from the center of the panel.)


During this time, I'm upgrading to J-Stick ball-top joysticks from Ultimarc. Here's a test-panel I used to see how the feel is. I like the ball-tops, and like the ability to go true 4-way. I know people like the fancy sticks like the Ultimarc 360, but I need something that works with Jamma and the Naomi.


I got the wood, planed and drilled holes, counter-sunk the mounting holes for my joysticks, routed the area for the joysticks and trackball plates (perfect depth this time), and even drilled the button holes in the plexiglass.
By the way, except for the removed trackball (for use in the new CP), my old panel is still usable. So if I can't work on my new panel (say, in case of rain), I can still play.

I couldn't find 5/8 inch wood anywhere, so I did something crazy / stupid / insane. I took the time to route all the wood that's exposed on the bottom half to make it look like a 5/8 wood. I think it'll look good in the end.

Still thinking what my art should be. I'm thinking of doing the same thing again, but I've found the "lightning pattern with illuminated trackball as it's source" has been done even before me a few times. Perhaps a nice [url =http://www.gameongrafix.com/products/grid-purple-control-panel-from]grid pattern?[/url] Also thinking of finally adding some sideart. Any thoughts / ideas? (I'm sure someone will say "it's your cab, do as you wish". Just looking for ideas, people)

With the ATI Radeon, my MAME computer (a lowly eMachines, nonetheless) is the fastest computer we have. I can play Left 4 Dead 2 and actually have rain on the Heavy Rain map on default settings. So I also started building a special control panel. This is merely a flat board that'll be painted and t-molded (maybe add some CPO art?). I can then use a keyboard and mouse with my Half-Life style games, on the only system that doesn't have a framerate bad enough to make me sick (it actually happens to me!)


Just FYI, here's what it looks like under my control panel. Each pair of gray 15-min cables goes to a system (Naomi, PC, and Jamma), and connects to the controls. To the right is a molex connector for the coin door inputs, as well as test and service buttons (so whatever system the controls are connected to, the coin door stuff is also hooked up to.) To the right is the wireless keyboard / mouse unit, and the connectors for the trackball (USB and power for the light).