Build Your Own Arcade Controls Forum
Main => Project Announcements => Topic started by: apfelanni on August 21, 2010, 04:19:33 pm
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here i am , a long time lurker , born in the mid sixties and allways looking for new ideas or tech advise . i have to admit , this forum is the best resource on videoarcade related stuff in the world. now i guess its about time to show some of the projects i finished in the recent past. lets start with the rebuild of a astro fighter ( donkey kong modded ) lowboy a buddy from a german forum bought some time ago . since this type of cabs are really rare in europe and theres nearly no chance of aquiring one ,i decided to build one from scratch . i found the style of this thing very appealing . fortunately the owner measured all essential parts and drawed the sides on some sandwich paper , so templating the sides was easy going.
i recycled a lot of crap electronic parts dumped in my garage ( 10 euro ebay tv ,old poker panel ,scrapwood ,broken usb pad , old dell p4 barbone, old cab speaker, sticks n buttons , plexi ), coz i didnt want it to break the barrier of a few hundred bucks. the expensive part was the aluminum frame , usually used for a bird aviary . i tried it for a cocktail table and was very satisfied with the outcome, coz its rock solid . the 1 inch aluminum square tubes plus the plastic connectors came out around 5o euro . the beechwood parts were painted with acrylic ebony paint (3 times ). the artworks were ordered in a local electronic market ( 7 euro ) and the dell comp is running mame with soft 15 k and mamescart cable . in the future i plan to replace it with a mak and a genuine arcade pcb. the building process took a while but was fun . the gameplay on this style of cabinet is better than 99 % of all cocktail arcades i encountered. i will never understand why so many people choose the road of a pacman style table arcade with all its disadvantages.
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i forgot to mention : i choosed the phoenix style coz it was one of my favorite games during the golden age and i really hated dk.
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more pics
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more pics
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finally up n running .. the next patient is waiting ( namco consolette ) . maybe i m developing a fetish for mini arcades . wonna have a mvs mini ( guess i ll have to build a shrinked version or a mvs cocktail ) .
ps.: added a pic what the cab original looked like .
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I love that! :cheers:
So cool the way the marquee art flows right into the bezel. Nice work!
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Very interesting design!
Whats the height at the front and back of the unit?
Thanks
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the height is 92 cm on the rear side and 57 on the paneltop , the depth is 60 cm and its 52 cm wide . the original is a few cm wider . the screen is a 14 inch philips tube. there is some space left inside , so maybe a 19 inch tv inch could be adapted. in the planning phase i thought about a bigger screen horizontal mounted with a 2 player panel (stick + 2-3 buttons ).
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Looks great! Nice to see Garegga in there as well. :applaud:
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You have done a really cool design!.
Is it comfortable to play sitting down? or may be uncomfortable for the knees.
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That is a really cool cabinet design.
I love the Phoenix theme. It was never a popular amongst my friends back in the day but I love it.
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Phoenix eh?
The sound doesn't drive you nuts? Sounds like fingernails on a chalkboard to me.
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One of the things I like about Phoenix are the odd sounds :dunno
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i love this type of cabinet. it occupys little space and plays out very comfortable. it has a nice viewing angle , controls in a reasonable position and enough room inside for pcb or pc installations. in december i had a few weeks off and to decide what to do with an old universal woody cab. the 20 inch arcade screen was beyond repair and the shell in a bad shape. looking for inspiration i stumbled upon the old minicade template and came up with the idea of a " double chop " aka upright to microlowboy conversion to reanimate the old hellomat. the broken / missing arcade monitor would be replaced with a common 20 inch tv set and the pokerpanel refurbed with a new overlay . my first thought was to paint it 3-4 color camouflage desert or snow style , but finally i decided to go with unicolor sheme ral 6014 , which is a standard color for german army vehicles from 1950-1980 . a few arcadebuddys find the style a little offensive and called it nazicade , but i give a dam .. the cade is housing a playstation 2 driven by network mod. its almost 99% done , so far the marquees is missing , coz i hadnt found fitting artworks / photos yet. i d also love to add some decoration stuff like the 1:72 dragon armor models , a plastic hand grenade or rifle bullets to the scenery .
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some more pics
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the final shots .. i like to point out that i find it a lot more pleasing to renew this old arcade stuff or build it from scratch than just buying cabinets in good condition.
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Nazicade?? Seriously?? Dude that thing is farking awesome. Nice work.
Is it the same size as the other one?
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the clone cab is the same height and width , but adds a few cm in depth. the camoucab thing isnt dead , but skipped to a future project. i have to practice with air brush or compressor painting first. i want it spraypainted something like this . an alternative would be using car wrapping foil .
@tapule .. im 192 cm height , no probs at all with my knees , but i do have serious probs with most of the cocktail tables.
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my current work in progress is named volksvewlix . its supposed to be a lowcost conversion of a universal 28 inch crt metal monstercab into a decent next gen console cabinet. naturally i m a crt guy , but when it come to xbox 36o u ll notice the use of a full hd screen has some benefits. i own one of these beasts ( 2-5 mm steel and aluminum ) in near mint condition and use it for mame vertikal gaming and a few more in not working condition. so why not transform one of em into something more useful. i cant afford 3-4 k for a new vewlix , so the idea is to gain highend flatscreen gamin without the price . so far i dismantled the beauty , cleaned and sanded all parts , drilled a metal paneloverlay plate ( coz there are no new and clean panels available ) and picked up a sony bravia 32 inch full hd flat from a local electronic store. it was 3-4 month used in a videowall but came with a 150 euro discount and 2 year warranty. the panel quality looks very good and input delay is low . the control panel will be equipped with seimitsu parts + 2 xbox padhacks ( datel or alibaba nippon pcb version with terminal screws ) . i had to revise the screen mounting for the flatscreen purpose including the rotating option. i assume i ll play 9x % horizontal oriented , but who knows what kinda shooter titels with hd option will be released in the future . next week i ll check for a vehicle painter who resprays it satin black for affordable money.
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more pics
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here we go
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and ...
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finally .. i ll post more in a few weeks when its done .
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Apfelanni, your Camoucab has fascinated me.
Now I'm working in my first cab, but I think the next must be like yours, it is fantastic.
Please, please, please, can you give me some measures?
(http://img517.imageshack.us/img517/1594/measuresa.jpg) (http://img517.imageshack.us/i/measuresa.jpg/)
(http://img97.imageshack.us/img97/610/measuresb.jpg) (http://img97.imageshack.us/i/measuresb.jpg/)
Thank you for this awesome cabs and keep the good work you are doing.
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Nice work on that next gen cabinet cab! :applaud:
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cab 1 , first copy :
a. 90 (adds 2 cm height with mounted feet )
b. 12
c. 60
d+e. 58
f. 52
g. 11
h. 53
i. 41
cab 2 , hellomat army style
a. 90
b. 12
c. 67
d. 19
e. 37
f. 52
g. 14
h. 53
i. 48
everything measured in > cm < . i still have the wooden multiplex side template and think of recopy it to paper and scan it in a copyshop, because there are no plans for this available . cab 1 houses a vertical 14 inch 37 cm tv and cab 2 a horizontal 50 cm 2o inch . cab 2 was an adaption so i could keep the monitor mounting frame and the aluminum panel . the curves of cab 1 were a little annoying when it came to building the frontdoors. a mix of the panelcurvature of cab 1 and the straight down front of cab 2 would some save building time .
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Thank you very much Apfelanni. :applaud:
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Wow! I really like the small cab. Looks great!
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i retemplated the sides of the first cab back from wood to paper. i will scan it tomorrow and make the plan available for dl. maybe someone can vectorize it or transform it into cadformat , pdf or whatever. any hints regarding resolution or format i should ask for ?
if anyone wonders what the original cab2 looks like , here is a shot . 53 cm wide and a height of 160 cm combined with classic style appearence and 100 % 2 player functional. i love em . they would fit in doghouse. 3 weeks ago i could have picked up 10 of this type for free in good condition because a dealer had to clear his store , but i only put one in my car . its a strictly one in and one out policy here or i will get shot by the family .
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I had to kill the last post in this thread to fix whatever was corrupting it....
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hm .. i only added the sidepart scans of the microlowboy in pdf and jpg format . i uploaded them , 20 kb each in pdf and tif .
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=YC267SCV (http://www.megaupload.com/?d=YC267SCV)
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Apfelanni, thank you for take the time to scan the sidepart and share it.
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For the hell of it I converted those cm to fractional measurements for us weird new worlders. ;D (to the closest sixteenth of an inch)
Cab 1:
A. 35 3/8
B. 4 1/16
C. 23 5/8
D+E. 22 13/16
F. 22 1/2
G. 4 5/16
H. 20 7/8
I. 16 1/8
Cab 2:
A. 35 3/8
B. 4 11/16
C. 26 3/8
D. 7 1/2
E. 14 5/8
F. 20 1/2
G. 5 1/2
H. 20 7/8
I. 18 7/8
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finally i finished my crt to lcd cab conversion last week . here are some pics of the work in progress , if anyone is interested.
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some more ..
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some more
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and ..
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and ..
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Awesome design! Love that big rotating monitor! But to regurgitate your own words...
in my opinion any screen bigger than 25 inch is completley nonsens for a vertikal setup , no matter what style the cab is . the only cabinets providing accurate distance between gamer and 30 inch +x screens are showcases . but why in gods name would anyone play verti on a showcase !? 29 inch candy cabinets in vertikal mode are highly uncomfortable , no matter if its lowres or vga . sometimes the bigger is better mentality makes me laugh .
And...
29 inch vertikal gaming on candy cabs suck compared to a kickass 25 inch candy . no matter if its vga or 15 k , a crappy weiya , samsung or a highly praised nanao screen .
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all done .. i m happy with the outcome . the hacked 360 datel controller are working perfekt . i enjoy the home button for starting and shutting down the box . on the front i mounted a neutrik usb plug . this is useful´for any more usb devices like a third controller pad , a harddrive or usb stick . the sony bravia is a wonderful 1080 p screen . once u find out how to manage the stupid osd its a perfekt nextgenarcadescreen with a nice protective glas on the front. it can be tated vertically , but i guess i wont do it . for shootergames i prefer the vertical set crt cabs . the paintjob with car acrylic is far from perfect , but ok for a first timer. all my other cabs were brushed or rolled , some sprayed with a spray can , but i never used 2k carpaint with hardener . this was a completely new experience to me , i had some issues with low pressure , a cheap paintgun , wind , dirt, whatever.. u name it .. but in the end it was fun . my first idea was to buy a quality tent for future compressor painting , but it turned out to be expensive , so i tried the homemade tubby tent . this beauty wasnt 100 % weaterproofed , to say the truth it wasnt doin so well during the first storm .. but i got the job done in time .
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i took advantage of the premade rotating mechanism , but i still think its nonsens to play 32 inch vertical . the screensize set to horizontal is more than enough on this short distance. btw. a 4:3 shooter on a 16:9 screen with black bars on top and bottom wont top a 25 inch 4:3 crt .
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Well, you still did a great job with it!
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Apfelanni great job!!
You have a really nice collection of arcade cabinets
Greetings
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my lcd project took a little longer than expected , coz i had to finish the paintjob on another rustbucket first. usually we dont experience storms or tornados here in central europe like you us-guys , but after 2 weeks my selfmade tent couldnt take any more beating . so i decided to delay the lcd project for some time .
about 1 year ago i purchased a namco 19 on ebay ger for around 1xx bucks . it was in rough shape , still working with some monitor problems ( burns , hor coil damaged etc.) , rusty , handpainted monitortop . i dumped it it in my garage for some time , but while its not getting better in years i deciced to refurb it now . after dismantling and cleaning it got spraypainted in black and orange. my first thought was candywhite + red or blue , but i had about 1 litre satin black left from the felixcab . so i ordered 0,25 litre for the orange cabinet parts . its called " jägermeister " orange , no ral or us standard colour . the sticks were ok , only the buttons and balls had to be replaced. the mitsubishi tube / nanao chassis was replaced by a grundig tv set with philips tube . it doesnt´fit in 100 % , coz its 1 inch smaller, so i build some cheap mounting frame . the idea was to use a mak with jamma harness to play jamma pcbs , but in the end i decided to mame it and take on of my other cabinets for the jamma stuff. i ordered an ipac controller and the sanwa stuff from arcadeshop.de and took a dell optiplex p4 out of another mame cab and soldered a mamescart cable ( quality one with coax rgb wires and additional audio connectors ) from roline . the 5/12 volt connection to scart pin 8 wasnt necessary , coz the screen autostarts with av rgb when powerd on.
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more pics ..
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Nice looking collection of cabs. Some very innovative designs. :applaud: :applaud:
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i had to move the little fellas a little closer , but finally it fits in. unfortunately my arcade apartment cannot compete with the peter hirschberg shed . lets say its getting crowded here ..
next thing i like to start is a mvs 13-2 repro or a 70 % shrink of the phantastic mission control cabinet.
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apfelanni, do you have any plans for your lowboy camo cab??, i want to make a similar cab but to house a 25" monitor, what size monitor is housed inside your cab?
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my 3 lowboystyle minis are housing a 13 inch vertical , a 20 inch and a 21 inch horizontal screen . all 3 of them are very small , around 5x cm wide , 6x deep and 1 m high. u can adapt the lowboy concept for a 25 inch crt without probs , check hardmvs.com / pics / pacific . if its of some use i can upload some more pics . u may also search for lowboy arcade here in forum or google images.
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Thanks for the info. If you could upload some more pics of of your lowboys that would be great, im mainly interested in your red neo-geo lowboy