"The Griffin" - Finished August 28, 2010!

[SephYuyX]

It's no fun if you dont make it yourself :3 Like I said, it's skippable; so on those days I want to get to playing quick, just press a button.

[BurgerKingDiamond]

that is almost exactly the same TV that I used for my cabinet. The only difference I can see is that it has RCA plugs on the front, and mine doesn't. They make awesome monitors. I love the picture on mine. In my opinion it is much more aesthetically pleasing than a flatscreen LCD.

[SephYuyX]

Primer on the base
 

Primer on the CP
 

2x Black on the base
 

2x Black on the CP.
 

2x Black on the cabinet. I let it dry for two weeks, and then I finally moved it inside of the house. It was slightly tackey to the touch, but most laytex paint will be for 30 days. Since it's inside of an airconditioned environment now, it feels nearly set
 

Black went on a lot easier thats for sure
 

I was surprized how well it covered, and theres no paint marks left anywhere. However there are a few touch ups ill need to do after everythings installed. The putty I used to cover the holes didnt come out completly flat.. but whatever, it's done
 

TV placed inside, so much effort to get this thing in and out lol, even with the back panels off, it's just a monster. I built the base of the cabinet, and tv stand extra strong, so it's not a problem, but yeah
 

26x24-3/4x1/4" Tempered Greylite #14 Glass. Not as dark as people were saying, I think itll be fine, I doubt ill have to turn the contrast up or anything. Just light enough for light to pass through, but dark enough to hide the things behind it
 

Also bought some framers matte to make a bezel out of. expensive @ 10$ but cheaper than buying it from ripoff Happ
 

This thing was kind of annoying. The material wasnt bad to work with, but trying to get all the cuts, dimensions and folds correct were
 

Folded the sides in, hopefully at the right angles
 

I cut out little triangles to fill the gaps of the corners, and hot glued them together. I took some landscaping fabric and covered the corners as well, just to make sure no light gets through.
 

Back side of the bezel
 

Front corner. Looks slightly rouch, but behind the glass.. it shouldnt be noticable
 

Front shot of it.
 

And just resting in the cabinet. I think it looks pretty good, I guess good enough for just winging it, and not making any real template
 

The next step was to get the control panel ready to go, so I put the TNuts in for the joysticks, and..
 

Started cutting out the holes in my overlay. Yup, orderd and got the graphics in last week, and im fairly happy with them, I thought the background was a bit darker.. but meh, good enough. Im just happy it's done with, and they all fit. That was my biggest concern
 

Here it is with the holes cut out, it gets rid of a lot of the white space which I planned on
 

So I took the overlay, and placed it on the CP, put the plexi on, put the buttons in, and tightened them down. The buttons keep the plexi on no problem. I think it looks prett good
 

The next step was to get them all wired up. I havent done a big wiring project like this in a few years, so my hands hated me for it. Wasnt too bad though, daisychained the negatives and ran it back on itself for a closed loop, and clamped it down in to the IPac board. 16 inputs x2 is how many I could have on this particular board. Each button and joystick movement has one wire running back to the board from the NO connection
 

I did the P2 side in green, and the P1 side in red just to make it a bit easier to tell the difference. I did P1 last because it involved a bit more work. I had to wire the P1 joystick along with the PACMAN middle joystick, nothing crazy hard, just an extra step. Just ran a wire from one joystick to the other back to the board
 

I also had to wire the two buttons next to the pacman joy to p1 buttons, and to the spinner to act as mousebuttons for the computer, so that involved a little extra wiring. As with the joystick, I had to wire the p1 and middle buttons together, but I also had to rig it to connect to a computer pin like terminal, which was a bit of a pain, but this is what I came up with
 

And here is it all wired up, nice and kind of clean.. Ill add zip ties and adhesive mounts to the thing once I connect it and make sure everythings working. It has a self test LED on it, and it seems everything is correct, but you never know
 

I then added these two boards which control the spinner and the trackbal
 

And here it is all finished from the back
 

Annnd from the front. Looks pretty good I think. Joystick just sitting in there at the moment, ill snap them in once everything is set.
 

I also screwed the coin door in finally, looks better than just the fram sitting in it. The kick plate as well. I decided to go against drilling in to it, so I just used double sided sticky tape, and thats working quite well.
 

The marquee retainer here is also just held on via sticky tape. I also cut it very tight, so it shouldnt go anywhere.
 

And here it is with the marquee in, yup yup, that looks good too. I made it so it would be slightly big, and ordered the plexi that way too, so I had to do a little snipping to it.
 

Pull back view of the three new things installed
 

Of course in order to light up the marquee, you need lights. LED lights. No cold tubs for this. These should last longer, and fit the bill fine.
 

Here it is installed, as well as with the speakers in with more double sided tape
 

The black stuff is some of my dads landscaping material he uses, and id figure it would be perfect to keep the light from coming out of the speaker grills, but also let the sound through no problem. Seems to work fine.
 

Here are the coin lights wired up in parallel, simple enough. I actually had to get new lights, the old ones looked fine, but they didnt light up. Luckily there is an arcade vendor not too far away, and ive used them to buy a couple of things, and they gave me 6 lights for free, was very pleased. The marquee and coins lights are hooked up to my PCs power supply via molex.
 

Here's the cabinet all lit up
 

Back of the marquee
 

Annnd.. doh, shadows. I had not taken in to account the casting of shadows from the furring, but uh, yeah. I half care, half dont, it looks good, but I guess I can shave down the inside a bit I guess.
 

Back of the coin door
 

Front of the coin door
 

Material List and Total Cost at the moment

[emphatic]

Wow, now that's what you call an update!  You'll need to take care of those shadows in the marquee, or it'll slowly make you crazy.

[Endaar]

With respect to the shadows, I had pretty much the same problem (for a different reason) and was able to fix it with a few strategically placed LEDs.

Endaar

EDIT: Fixed grammar.

[SephYuyX]

Yeah.. it is starting to drive me nuts already, any suggestions on fixing it?

Chipping away the furring isnt really an option for a few reasons.. but I can always move lighting around. With GroovyGamerGear's new LINX LED light, it should be pretty easy. I was originally thinking of arranging them in a U or V shape, hoping that may work, but I could Just take one of the sections on each side and face it in.. I dunno.

Suggestions are welcome.

[SephYuyX]

Minor addition today. So how to fix the shadow issue on the marquee? Well, A hammer and a chisel, thats how. I didnt really want to take out the support and replace them with L brackets, it would have caused more damage trying to get the things out, so I opted for this route.
 

It looks ugly, but gets the job done. Some screw exposure there, but the thing is also glued down tight as well, it's not going anywhere (or so I say now).
 

Pretty good I think, could make it look a bit better.. but not worth the trouble when it's barely this noticable now.
 

I also spent some time getting down to the software side of things. Ive been customizing the front end which makes all the emulators and games run seemlessly, and also getting proper working emulators for the games I have.
 
At the moment I have every game ever made for: Atari 2600, Atari 5200, Atari 7800, Atari 400/800/800XL, Atari Jaguar, Atari Lynx, Atari ST, ColecoVision, MAME, Mattel Intellivision, MSX, MSX2, NEC Turbo-Grafx-16 / NEC PC Engine, Nintendo Entertainment System, Nintendo Super NES, Nintendo 64, Nintendo Gameboy, Nintendo Gameboy Color, Nintendo Gameboy Advance, Sega Genesis, Sega 32X, Sega Game Gear, Sega Master System, and SNK Neo-Geo.
 
So those are out of the way. Ill also be getting Virtual Boy, Vectex, and Nintendo DS, as well as some pinball games.
 
What's left is 3D0, CD-i, TG-CD, Sega CD, Dreamcast, PS1, GameCube, Xbox, and PSP. However with these I wont be getting all the games. Their file sizes range roughly from 300~700mb+ and ive about 60gb left to spare, and dont really feel like getting another hdarddrive yet, even though theyre dirt cheap. I really dont want all those games anyway, as there are only about ~10 real good ones per each anyway.
 

By the way, for those who are still wondering, or asking me where I got the graphics from, who did them, etc.
 
I got the background off of google, it is a 3000x50000 pixel 16-century japanese handscroll entitled Hyakki Yakō ひゃっきやこのず 百鬼夜行図 by Tosa Mitsuoki. It roughly means "Night Parade of One Hundred Demons".
 
This scroll was horrid to work worth, very weathed, differential marks everywhere, etc, if I didnt know how to use PhotoShop (and the new content aware tool) I probably wouldnt have even bother trying to work with it. It looks completly different from the original now.
 
As far as the griffin goes, it's done by a German vector artist named Denis Zorin, whos only given it to about 10 other people, he was also nice enough to add the placard as well, so that I could have it in some pieces, and not in others. While it's not the best depiction of a griffin, I think it looks quite good.
 
So, with these two images in hand, I took about a week or so in photoshop and had at it. Made lots of different things, but finally ended up with the images you see. The fonts were found randomly on the web. So no, I didnt pay someone to make these for me, I did all the work (yes, moving and minipulating can be very hard), and then sent them to be printed out.
 
 
 
 
 
ETA on Completion? Cabinet: End of week. Software: End of next. Though ill be on vaction for the next few days here, I think it'll get done. Either way, I will be finished by the end of the month no problem.

[dawolv]

Hey Seph - I am considering those speakers for my cab...how do you like them? Would you have gone with something else? Have you taken apart the "Puck" or did you mount that somewhere?
I am on the fence between those Logictechs and the Altec Lansing VS2521's

[SephYuyX]

Cant say for sure yet, I plugged them in on my main PC to test them out initially and they sound fine. I hooked them up to my mame machine recently too, to see how my intro vid sounds on them, and again they sounded decent. Obiviously at only 10$ they arent the best.. but Ihavent really noticed anything bad about them, maybe some bad quaility if you turn them up all the way.

As far as the volume control knob thingy, I plan on just double side taping it to the back side of my cab, but I havent yet, so I may change it to somewhere else, maybe run it under in to my cp base.

[SephYuyX]

Got the TMolding in today, now I can finally put the side art on. Three 20ft coils, 3/4" thick, Black leather.
 

Close up of the 'leather'. It just has little grooves in it really, but better than plain. I was wavering between gray and this, and just decided to go with this.
 

Here is my CP all finished now since I have the tmolding on.
 

Close up of the P1 side
 

Close up of the P2 side.
 

Annnnnnd tada, it went on flawlessly, no bubbles, nothing. It looks great. I made it so it would be oversized, so I just lined everything up to look good, and then trimmed off the sides leaving a bit of overhang that I folded over and put the TMolding overtop.
 

Closer shot. The Tmolding was a bit of a pain to get on, but mstly the bottom part, but it looks very nice.

[dawolv]

Awesome! 

[XNIF]

Really looking great! Why was the t-molding a problem? Was it because you did not route it deep enough or something?

[SephYuyX]

It was deep enough, but a few spots the router lifted on my slightly, so I had to shift the TMolding spine a bit, or in some cases hot glue it down as it took a chunk of wood out when I was routing. I also forgot that the bottom would be tight since im using 2/4 molding, on 5/8 wood, so I had to shave some of it down to fit. But the molding cuts like butter with a sharp blade.

[SephYuyX]

Finally time to put the last pieces in, the glass and bezel. Went in fairly easy, fits snug against the molding, and four angle brackets hold it in place
 

Back view. Pretty simple installation
 

This is a shot with the TV in, looks jet black and cant see anything behind it. The tint hides everything behind it very well
 

However it's not tinted so much the screen cant be seen when it's on. This was one of my bigger worries when I ordered the glass, but it came out great. I didnt need to touch the contrast or anything. Pitch black when off, perfectly viewable when on
 

The bezel fits it fairly well too, ever so slightly off, but good enough for being home made
 

Ta da, almost finished. Just a few more touches to do on the cabinet itself, the rest will be all software which should take a day or two, but thats also a never ending aspect of a mame

[jimmy2x2x]

That is looking excellent!

Very tidy job

[push2reject]

Well done.  The bezel actually turned out nicely.  Don't worry about the stuff you can't see.

[SephYuyX]

I just uploaded this as a reference.
In most early 1990 and on Namco arcade machines, they would have a voice say something at the initial boot up. In the case of Tekken and a few others "Good Morning" was used.

This is a sound clip from Tekken 1 and 2, Tekken 3, and Tekken Tag. 

Uploading this since I couldnt find it anywhere when I wanted to add it to my arcade introduction, so i just recorded it myself



As far as the build goes: Im about 98% done at the moment; the cabinet is finished, just needs touching up, and my emulator list is over 40 with about 60,000 games, but need a couple more.

Finish pics and a video by next weekend hopefully.

Thanks for all your comments.

[shan1784]

Very impressive... How did you go about getting all the roms and setting up the emulators with your control panel?

[Rick]

I had no clue George Takei recorded the third "good morning"!

 

[SephYuyX]

It just needs his little 'aAaahhhH..' in there.

Very impressive... How did you go about getting all the roms and setting up the emulators with your control panel?

Just had to go to each emulator and set up the inputs. Since CPs use keyboard interface boards, all I have to do is click which key I wanted to use. For example SW5 corresponds with Z, so If I wanted to use SW5 I just told the emulator that when I press the letter Z, I want it to emulate the A button.

As far as the roms.. ive been playing with roms/emulation since dreamcast was found out that it could run emulators. So since then ive collected a good size rom base. The whole MAME thing was new to me though, and im still not finished learning all about the different stuff regarding that, most noteably the update process, but im almost there. Obtaining them was just a lot of googeling and torrenting.

[SephYuyX]

So, refocused on getting back to the software aspect of the arcade.. and I seriously underestimated the amount of effort and time needed to get things running.
 
44 consoles (3 of those being flash games, pc games (SF4 and BBCS), and arcade games (near half of the size and files come from mame), 52GB worth of files, and around 43,000 games, and will just keep growing at this point lol. For most of these systems I have all the games, but like I said earllier, some of the systems games are just too big to have all of them. Right now I just have 1 ps2 game, 1 ps1 game, a couple DC games, etc, just to get things working.
 
Ive been using emulators formany many years, so finding ways to obtain them wasnt an issue, and I thought getting them to work would be just as easy. Nintendo, Sony, and Sega systems were easy to set up, only a few minutes each, however the rest of these legacy consoles.. ouch. It was hard to find a good emulator to use for them, the bios files werent too bad, but getting things to all work properly together was a different issue.
 
Getting the emulator and games to work is one thing, but to get them to work smoothly and seemlessly with the arcade front end so that it looks and runs flawlessly is another thing. Some emulators arent too friendly being ran via frontend, and there was a lot of trial and error, but maximus arcade the front end im using, made it a bit more easy that it would have been.
 
So all in all.. getting the software side of things to work took much longer than I thought, it took at least 40hrs, and sadly im not completly done yet. While everything is running probably, I still have to do a bit of controller configuring, but that shouldnt be too bad.

[jimmy2x2x]

Hahaha!

Yeah I know exactly what you mean, then after you get it all working, you might want to setup favourites lists for each emu so you can find things a little easier, guests and youngsters will also benefit from this!

Its pretty much an ongoing thing, a refining process you will probably find that you remove certain emulators to make the master menu a little less cluttered.

[SephYuyX]

Yeah, I thought about doing that, I figure ill do it as I come along the games I play and add them then. Ive got a list of things to do, but none of them super important must get them done.

[SephYuyX]

Im finally finished!
 

Buttoned up the back. I think I mentioned earllier that I glued up the top board since I dont think Ill ever need to get in it. When the middle and lower boards were off it was easy enough to get to everything, adds more stability too. The middle board is mainly for support, I really didnt need it there, but it does help block the marquee light. The bottom board holds the TV from falling out
 

Yup, back of TV
 

Bottom of it; PC and woofer with the wires all ran and looking pretty. Need to find a good surge protector, but other than that
 

Full view of the back, hopefully never to be seen again for quite some time
 

Finished shot of the marquee
 

Finished shot of the bottom looking down
 

Finished shot of the control panel
 

Finished shot of the bottom half
 

Finished shot from the front
 

Finished shot of the side art.
 

Final cost sheet. I originally figured around $1k, so 1.25 isnt too bad. I dont forsee many more costs to it aside from some maint in the distant future. Aside from that I plan on buying a good surge protector, and probably a controller, so itll end up being $1.3k. Not bad I think.
 
I really wish I kept track of the time I worked on this thing. The building took me on and off over a year, because I didnt have a solid game plan, had to wait on parts/etc, couldnt work during some of the colder parts of the year, laziness, busy with other things, etc.. If I had everything together, materials, plans, etc.. It would probably have taken me two or three work weeks at most. No reason for the whole project to go over a month.
 
Im also a very meticulous person, so it was measure 50 times, mark a line, measure 20 times, start to cut, check 10 more times, then cut. I hadnt done a major woodworking project like this in many years, so I had to relearn a few things, redo a few things, etc. So if I had to do it again, it wouldnt be a problem at all.
 
But would I want to do it again? Not any time soon hahaha, and I would do pretty much everything differently.
 
I think the next time I do something like this itll be for my home theater/game room, and then I may build another, but building a room solely for a HT is huge project within itself.
 

Finished shot of it. Ignore the dog! Next to my dads juke box that he rebuilt from scrap many a year ago.
 

Close up final shot. Yup yup, finally all finished and done. Looks good. A love/hate project, but very happy with it in the end. Im glad I decided to build this
 

Cover shot.

[Silas (son of Silas)]

I really like the way this turned out. The artwork is excellent and really pulls the finished cab together. The CP is so cool. A cab to be proud of.

[JohnEDollar]

 
44 consoles (3 of those being flash games, pc games (SF4 and BBCS), and arcade games (near half of the size and files come from mame), 52GB worth of files, and around 43,000 games, and will just keep growing at this point lol.

What?? No Commodore 64, or Amiga games on the cab?   

But seriously, SephYuyX, congrats on an excellent cab!!!    The artwork truly makes it a unique "work of art".

So what if it took over a year to build....  You have a cab you can be proud of for YEARS to come!   


- John

[SephYuyX]

Thanks guys :p

I did look in to getting some Commodore stuff, but couldnt justify their file sizes lol. The day I put a new HD in to hold more games ill go back and rethink :p

[SephYuyX]

Walkthrough:


Slideshow:

[MriswitH]

Looooove the cab! Really great craftsmanship and I especially love the graphics!

[dawolv]

Congratulations!! Great Job 

[blueznl]

The artwork is very different, me like me like! :-)

[DeLuSioNal29]

Awesome, awesome job.  I finally had some time to read through your entire project.  At first glance it look like the UAII kit until I realized you built it from scratch BASED on them.  Kudos!

Care to share your Maximus Arcade skin with the community?  You can dump it to the file repository here on BYOAC and then post it in the Maximus Arcade section.

Again, great job!

DeLuSioNaL29

[yotsuya]

Awesome job there!

[SephYuyX]

Thanks guys, I really appreciate it.

Still a few software things I want to do, but lack of time prevents me from doing so, and I need a break from the thing, as im sure some of you scratch builders can understand haha.

Made a PDF of all the pictures/descriptions from those who are interested. It's just basically all the content from my posts in a nice PDF.
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=PXRIJAR6
Wait 60 Seconds
Click 'Regular Download'

[jipp]

looks great.  i built the same cab.  i found it interesting how two people can build the same cab totally d different.  i guess that goes to show you how that leaves the instructions to be interpreted when its just measurements.. and not much else.. great looking cab.. wish i would of used MDF instead of OSB..  proof is in the pudding, and your cab rocks.

chris.

[bubbles2578]

I love the build, Ive just started my own and I'm in the process of designing the control panel, Ive been trying to create a layout I like and cant seem to get it quite right. Ive just seen your control panel and Its exactly what Ive been trying to do (Apart from where the buttons are in relation to the 4 way stick and spinner)

In previous posts you said that you did your original design in Photoshop and then did it in Autocad. I was wondering if you still had those drawings and If you would be willing to share them.

Thanks

Sorry for posting in an oldish post, but for some reason I couldn't send you a private message.