Project PacMame with Pics. 56k beware

[92greenyj]

Thought I should go ahead and get a project thread going, even though I'm still in the early stages of this project.

I have an original 1980 Pac Man cabinet with the Ms. Pacman daughter board and Marquee. the monitor gave up the ghost a few years ago and it hasn't been touched since. Recently my Mom decided she wanted to get it working again. Of course, after I did some research I came across MAME. being a child of the 80's I love the idea of having all my classics and favorites available. So the idea for this project was born.

Obviously I don't want to tarnish the cabinet if I decide we want to sell it down the road. So this is going to be a resto mod. The paint on the cabinet is a bit rough and faded and a poor touch up job was done in a few places with the wrong yellow. My idea is to remove the stock CP, Marquee, Monitor, and Bezel and save them someplace safe.

I have an Acer x193W monitor, a used HP Compaq tower that I loaded with XP, a 120 Gig Hard Drive and a 160 Gig Hard Drive. 2ghz processor. I am going to add a bit more memory as it only has a 256MB stick in it at the moment. I also am going to add a wireless card with an antenna on the cab so I can download stuff straight to it whenever I want.

New CP will attach like stock, house 2 8 way joys and a 4 way. 6 buttons per player on the 8 ways and 2 to 3 on the 4 way, 3 admin buttons, and will have a hidden drawer with keyboard and mouse underneath it. It will only stick out about 3"s further than stock. Paint plans will be to mirror the original CPO. Ipac2 will be used for the interface.

I will also be restoring the paint and artwork on the cabinet.

So far I have gutted the monitor, marquee, bezel, and CP. I also relocated the boards inside the cabinet to make room for the PC and such. I will post pictures of my progress on Tuesday.

Almost forgot. Planned front end currently is Mala. If i ever get this damn PC working right I am going to download a few different front ends and play around to see what I like while I work on the cabinet

[severdhed]

i'm looking forward to seeing how you get all of those controls on a pacman cabinet and keep it looking good.  good luck and take lots of pics

[opt2not]

http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=87614.0
If you haven't read this thread yet, I recommend you you do.
Great restoration, and really inspiring.

Looking forward to your end-product.

[92greenyj]

thanks guys. I'll see if i can get some pics up tomorow night. Havent done too much to the cab itself yet. I'm in the VERY tedious process of masking the lettering with 5/16" an 3/32" fine line masking tape. Its taking a LONG time to do all the little details.

[92greenyj]

Sorry for the delay. Been banging my head against the wall trying to get the PC for this project working the way I want it too. I'm still having issues getting MAME and MESS running. Post about that in the software forum.

Anyway, heres some pics. Unfortunately I didn't take any prior to gutting the cabinet and starting.
So heres the cab:


First thing I did was pull the CP, bezel, Bad Monitor, Marquee, and the coin door. The coin door is all masked up and is being sprayed. No pics of that at the moment. I also went ahead and put a fresh coat of black paint in the screen area and the speaker shelf behind the marquee.



Its a good thing I went and moved the boards to make room for the PC tower. My little supervisor was curious what I was spending so much time on


And the thing I have been working on for the last few days. Masking the graphics for a fresh coat of paint. I have black on hand so I am starting with that. I was doing a small section here and a small section there.
Herre you can see how bad the paint is, the left side I have already re-painted, the right is not


Some of my masking work. this has taken me a LOT of time. again i'm using a few different types and sizes of different masks for this. Blue vinyl 5/16" fineline for the rounded parts as it curves nice and easy. beige 5'16" fineline tape for the straight ends as its easy to see thru and runs straight lines nicely. beige 3/32" fine line tape for the really small details. and of course the standard blue and green masking tape in various sizes.



This is really tedious and time consuming. but my plan is to mask everything off in one shot and do all the black paint. then go thru and peel it and re-mask for the next colors. I had thought about taking some transfer paper and just covering the whole side and cutting with an exacto knife, but my hands just aren't steady enough. The rest of the pics can be found here:
http://s30.photobucket.com/albums/c313/92greenyj/PacMAME%20Project/

And I will be updating this thread as I move forward with this project. It will take a while to complete though. I welcome and appreciate any and all thoughts and comments.

[CapriRS302]

Wouldn't it be easier to just have some graphics printed up, paint the whole thing yellow and stick'em on?   I know it wouldn't be "original" but it would look much better than paint.  Besides that, the pac-man machine isn't really worth a fortune anyway.

Juat my 2 cents (I would rather spend more time on other parts of the cab instead of doing the tedious painting)

And does anybody use 56k anymore?

[HaRuMaN]

Wouldn't it be easier to just have some graphics printed up, paint the whole thing yellow and stick'em on?   I know it wouldn't be "original" but it would look much better than paint.  Besides that, the pac-man machine isn't really worth a fortune anyway.

Juat my 2 cents (I would rather spend more time on other parts of the cab instead of doing the tedious painting)

Sacrilege!

And does anybody use 56k anymore?

A few of the weirdos here still do...   

[opt2not]

Wouldn't it be easier to just have some graphics printed up, paint the whole thing yellow and stick'em on?   I know it wouldn't be "original" but it would look much better than paint.  

Blasphemy!

First, printing up side-art will probably cost about $100-150 for each side. Most arcade places stock stencils rather than printed artwork for pacman. Secondly, prints are not as durable as painted wood. One scratch, your whole print is fubar'd...with wood you can at least patch it up. Not only that, prints look less authentic...why bother getting an original pacman machine in the first place if you're just going to slap artwork prints on it. He's already maming the poor thing, there's no need to be entirely vicious.

Besides that, the pac-man machine isn't really worth a fortune anyway.

Do a search on pacman machines for sale. You'll notice that restored machines go for about $2000+. New machines over $2500'ish...

And does anybody use 56k anymore?

It's a figure of speech. It's a warning that there are going to be a lot of pictures.

92greenyj, nice looking cabinet. Looks like there's only paint wearing...is there any wood damage at all? From the pictures I can't see any. It's commendable that you're taping and painting, that is pretty time consuming for sure...but have you considered doing a striping and full stenciling?  Spyridon did it and his cabinet turned out amazing. Like new.

Your monitor is wide-screen isn't it? I'm not sure how the aspect ratio will turn out for most games, as arcade games back in the day was a 4:3 ratio. Do a search, I'm sure someone has brought up this issue before.

I'm a big fan of restorations/renovation projects, but I'm kinda sad to see a classic cabinet like this get mame'd

[rablack97]

  at the blasphemy & sacrilege line.......Forum doesn't allow shortcuts........

you've been rebuked and scorned.....Back you knave, back....

sure sure, take some twigs for the j-stiks, a still painting with pacman on it for the monitor, cans for speakers, and pez dispensers for the buttons........finalize with a gerbil wired on caffeine for the guts..........

Definately a mutiny afoot.........

[javeryh]

Wouldn't it be easier to just have some graphics printed up, paint the whole thing yellow and stick'em on?   I know it wouldn't be "original" but it would look much better than paint.  Besides that, the pac-man machine isn't really worth a fortune anyway.

I would buy some stencils and repaint the entire thing instead of doing all of that tedious taping.

[DaOld Man]

I cannot say which method of restoring the graphics is best, but I can say that I admire your idea to restore this cabinet.
Good luck with your project, I, for one, will be watching.

[92greenyj]

opt2not, no. there is really no wood damage at all. We've had this since 93ish as I recall. its always lived inside and out of the sun for the mos part. it really is mostly cosmetic issues. I did consider striping and stenciling. However Namco is very gaurded about repro graphics for this stuff. From my research they only authorized one company to make and sell reproduction artwork for it, and A its expensive and B its only a decal set, not a stencil set. So this really is my best option to keep the budget down.

Yes my monitor is a widescreen. I was considering flipping it and mounting it vertical, but I stil haven't made the final ecision on that yet. the monitor was free though, so I'd like to use it.

As for Mameing it, as stated, my goal is to do a very tasteful resto-mod on this cab. I left all the internals in tact, I just relocated a few of the components inside the cabinet to make room for the tower. All the original Pacman/Ms. pacman boards and parts are still there. The idea being that down the road, should we want to, it can easily be converted back to an original Pacman wih a Ms. Pac conversion on it with no signs of it ever having been a MAME cabinet.

Anyway, yesterday I finished re-painting the black on the lettering and the grphics on the top part of the cabinet side. However I do need to figure out what to do about the improper yellow on the leading edge. when it was done it was painted on over part of the "P" and some of the graphics. My plan today is to go in and re-mask and paint the red in.

[opt2not]

I did consider striping and stenciling. However Namco is very gaurded about repro graphics for this stuff. From my research they only authorized one company to make and sell reproduction artwork for it, and A its expensive and B its only a decal set, not a stencil set. So this really is my best option to keep the budget down.

Well, if you're worried about pissing off Namco, I think they'd have more of an issue with you pirating their actual software more-so than their artwork. Just sayin'. 

[HaRuMaN]

PacMan is meant to be painted, and not a decal, so  .

 

[92greenyj]

I did consider striping and stenciling. However Namco is very gaurded about repro graphics for this stuff. From my research they only authorized one company to make and sell reproduction artwork for it, and A its expensive and B its only a decal set, not a stencil set. So this really is my best option to keep the budget down.

Well, if you're worried about pissing off Namco, I think they'd have more of an issue with you pirating their actual software more-so than their artwork. Just sayin'. 

you'd be suprised. Whn i was originally researching just what to do with this cabinet, I was originally looking at doing a full restoration. Everything I found said that Namco has a serous problem with people doing repro stencils for it. Quite a few people were hit by cease and desist orders from Namcos legal department

[opt2not]

Not surprised at all, this topic has been brought up plenty of times before...but my point was, if you're already maming the cabinet and throwing pirated roms onto it anyways, then acquiring stenciled artwork isn't much of a stretch is it?
Besides, you don't have to worry about legal issues, the sellers do.

Regardless, in the end I'm sure the cabinet will look great.

[92greenyj]

no new pics at the moment, but a progress report:

With the help of some fantastic members in the software forum I finally got the PC up and running the way I want it. Got MAME v .116 running. Installed the following emulators:
Mame v.116 - Arcade games
MESS v.137 - Atari, TurboGrafix 16
NEStopia - NES games
Project 64 -  Nintendo 64
KEGA Fusion - Sega Genesis, Master System, CD, Game Gear, 32X
BSNES - SNES games
GameBatte - Game Boy and Gameboy color

For front ends I am currently toying with MALA version 104 and I am about to download Atomic FE to play with that as well.

For the PC, i grabbed another 512MB of ram and its running nice and fast now.

For the cabinet, I got a new flourescent light fixture and got it installed. Also picked up a cheap pair of Cyber accoustic powered PC speakers for the cabinet. Still trying to work out the best way and place to install those. I also got a 6 outlet power strip and extended the wiring for the power switch so I can mount the switch wherever I want for turning the whole ball of wax on and off easily

[92greenyj]

So after playing with Atomic FE for a while last night, I decided I will be using that for my front end instead of Mala. I like Atomic much better and there are a lot of cool customizable options and things to play with.

Past that, I modified my cheap PC speakers yesterday. I decided I didn't want them behind the marquee. So I removed the speakers and i will use the little built in amp to run the original Pac Man 6x9. I also put a piece of plastic over where the speaker was in the control speaker housing (the one with the power and volume knob) and mounted my switch for my power strip then mounted the assembly inside the coin door. I'll take and post pics later tonight

[rablack97]

Don't forget Hyperspin.......Takes some effort to setup but the end result is nice....