SpeakersIt was time for some electronics. Let's start with the speakers. We got i-trigue speakers from craigslist for a very cheap price. We wanted to put a grill but we couldn't find a decent one. So as a temporary solution (that finaly became permanent), we routed 3 holes for each speaker so it finally looks like that :
Control PanelFor the control panel, we ordered the components from divemaster (
http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=47066.0) 2 joysticks sanwa JLW8 and chrome illuminated push buttons of Ultralux. Divemaster was very nice and replies very quickly (within the 15 next minutes sometime). For the layout, we chose the standard japanese one :
http://slagcoin.com/joystick/layout.html with 6 buttons. It feels very confortable and i don't regret this choice.
For the surface of the control panel, we put laminate, made 2 holes for the jack connectors, and we put envirotex on it. Envirotex is a product that you can spread and becomes hard like glass. It is a toxic product and you need to apply it in 20 minutes, so you have to be careful when you do that.
http://eti-usa.com/consum/envtex/envlite.htm We made the hole for the buttons. But by drilling the envirotex a white mark could appear around, probably because some air could go between the laminate and the layer of envirotex. So we had to drill carefully using different bit sizes. If i had to do it again , i would drill all the holes before applying the envirotex.
The controls are 2 wired xbox 360 controllers that i hacked, so the arcade would be xbox360 compatible. One is an official xbox controller and the other one is a joytech pad. For the joytech i couldn't find any information on internet, so i had to find where to connect my wires without having 2 wires per buttons. Unfortunately none of them has a common ground so each pad has 20 wires.
Marquee and finitionsOur theme is nintendo. We wanted to have a nice theme but discrete. We made the following marquee :
We printed it on a local print shop. The result is very nice.
For the marquee retainer, we use this T-molding :
http://www.t-molding.com/store/product.php?productid=15&cat=5&page=1 This is a T-molding with an offset. By using this one, we have a perfect continuity between the molding and the board. We had to screw small pieces in metal behind the marquee so it stays in position.
Glass & other finishWe bought a square of glass grey tinted 6mm thick, in a local company. We got some black edge borders on an old desk some guy in our building was throwing away. We glued them with a glue gun. So after putting everything together :
SoftwareFor the frontend we chose Gamex. It provides a lot of functionnalities even i found strange behaviors and bugs in the setup (its no big deal but made me lose some time).
In order to use my xbox 360 controller, i use the XBCD driver. You can for instance affect the D-Pad(pov) to the analog joysticks etc.
To have a correct profile for each game and emulator , we use xpadder with different profiles that i select by launching "xpadder.exe Pad1.profile Pad2.profile" before the game.
For mame, i use MameUiFX that supports hiscore and have nice fonts.
As an intoduction video, we made this one (with blender) that is launched at the beginning :