Build Your Own Arcade Controls Forum
Main => Project Announcements => Topic started by: Linux Chick Cathy on March 19, 2012, 10:01:52 pm
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(http://mama.indstate.edu/users/garrett/projects/1_dollar_MAME_cabinet/banner_before.jpg) The $1 MAME Cabinet
On March 12, 2012, I happened into the opportunity to grab a MAME Cabinet project build that was never completed for the bargain basement price of one measly U.S. Dollar.
http://mama.indstate.edu/users/garrett/projects/1_dollar_MAME_cabinet/ (http://mama.indstate.edu/users/garrett/projects/1_dollar_MAME_cabinet/)
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That is a heck of a deal. The buttons alone are worth 30-40$
Congrats!
Is it really that dirty or is that just the camera and lighting?
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I read the story. What jerks are at that auction house!
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It was really dirty, but I've since wiped down the outside. It still has a musty smell, so I might have to pop open the other rear panel, vacuum out the interior and spray a fungicide/mildewcide.
My next step should prolly be creating a measured drawing of the side panels. They look to be made of single sheets of 3/4" particle board, but it's 49" front to back and 76" tall, so they couldn't possibly be made of standard 48" x 96" sheet stock. Still, measured drawings will be the first step toward creating new artwork to replace the crappy black plastic laminate.
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Flush mount the trackball plate, it will look better that way. Nice find!
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Ah. Thanks. Good catch. I noted that the trackball was mounted with a spacer plate to make it flush with the top of its mounting plate, but the thought never occurred to me to flush mount the mounting plate too. Will have to wait until I have a plan for the wood veneer.
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I didn't read the entire story in the link but assuming the monitor works + the controls you're off to a great start for a dollar!
I'd be tempted to create a cutting template from the dismantled cabinet and cut new panels altogether. Laminate is a good choice for a clean pro look which ever way you decide to go.
:cheers:
Ond
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http://www.flickr.com/photos/32337669@N07/6844747172/#in/set-72157629241568324 (http://www.flickr.com/photos/32337669@N07/6844747172/#in/set-72157629241568324)
No. I don't think the monitor works.
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What a shame they smashed the monitor! Wankers. Isn't the Wells Gardner D9200 a really good one? Tri-Sync?
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man i think i would of pursuded more legal matters agaist the auction house. all things concidering. yes you only paid a dollar. but its an auction house. people have bought houses for a dollar. they also said it was fine that you couldnt pick it up till friday and you asked twice. going off the monitor size and the wood and buttons i would say that it cost over a grand to put that togethere maybe more. there is the base amount to sue the auction house for. you could win, look at the woman who sued mcdonalds cause she spilled her fresh coffee in her own lap.
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True, but that McDonald's had a documented history of health code violations vis-a-vis the temp of their coffee machine. I don't know that these jackholes have any kind of history, documented or otherwise. Also, personal injury and destruction of property are two completely different fields of law. The most I could sue them for is the amount I'm into it for, a buck. My lawyer would charge me $175/hr.
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It was really dirty, but I've since wiped down the outside. It still has a musty smell, so I might have to pop open the other rear panel, vacuum out the interior and spray a fungicide/mildewcide.
yeah, i used to be in the mold removal business. Try your best to get something specifically for mold. While bleach can kill mold, it has corrosive properties that can damage the wood. If you still have a funky smell after cleaning, try renting a small negative air machine, commonly called an ozone machine. Should get rid of the smell.
Even with the mold and busted monitor, this is still a great find. Best of luck with this cabinet.
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Congrats on your find, with or without monitor, $1 is a sweet deal. :applaud:
With the vandalism of your property from the Auction house...that crap just gets my blood boiling. I would have no problem writing that incident up on every review site I could find, as well the BBB. If anything so that they think twice before trying to smash up the property of the next person to come along and finds a deal they deem to be "too good".
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Congrats on your find, with or without monitor, $1 is a sweet deal. :applaud:
With the vandalism of your property from the Auction house...that crap just gets my blood boiling. I would have no problem writing that incident up on every review site I could find, as well the BBB. If anything so that they think twice before trying to smash up the property of the next person to come along and finds a deal they deem to be "too good".
This :angry:
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My dad used to tell me about stuff like that happening at the gov't car auctions he went to (most of our cars were ex-police cars, etc), with smashed windows and stuff. Thankfully the amusement auctions I have been to, everyone has been cool.
Nontheless, spending little to nothing on a cabinet is a great way to start a project- I look forward to seeing what you do with it!
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I drive an ex-police car myself. Where else can you get a three year old V-8 with a 140 MPH top end for $2,800? At that auction, I had to leave it until Friday from a Monday auction as well, but I had no problems with it when I picked it up. Of course, being an ex-police car, it's got its own problems, nearly bald tires, the radiator fan died soon due to excessive idling, etc., but nothing unexpected.
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I drive an ex-police car myself. Where else can you get a three year old V-8 with a 140 MPH top end for $2,800? At that auction, I had to leave it until Friday from a Monday auction as well, but I had no problems with it when I picked it up. Of course, being an ex-police car, it's got its own problems, nearly bald tires, the radiator fan died soon due to excessive idling, etc., but nothing unexpected.
Exactly. They were always heavily used, and of course stripped of all exterior police stuff (except for the spotlight ;D), but driving a car with the police upgrades on the cheap was always pretty cool. :cheers:
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UPDATE: 3/22/2012 11:11 P.M.
Just finished a measured drawing of the side of the cabinet. I don't know how my math skills failed me, but it's not 49” front to back. It's 46” front to back, so a single side CAN be made out of a single piece of 48” x 96” sheet stock.
(http://mama.indstate.edu/users/garrett/projects/1_dollar_MAME_cabinet/side_measurements.png)
LibreOffice Draw file: side_measurements.odg (http://mama.indstate.edu/users/garrett/projects/1_dollar_MAME_cabinet/side_measurements.odg)
Frankly, I would still have preferred it to have been made of 3/4” plywood than 3/4” particle board. I've also visitted the lawn & garden center and obtained a bottle of fungicide. It's gonna be rainy until Sunday, so that's the earliest I'll be able to take it back out onto the front porch, take the back off, vacuum out the interior, and then spritz it down with a dilute solution of fungicide and leave it to dry for about 12 hours.
I also got a 10' 14-2 power cord to attach to my twist-lock plug. The cord only boasts 15 A capacity, but honestly, even loaded down, I don't think this cabinet can suck 15 A of juice, let alone 20. Eyeballed various bits of rope and cord to see what I might want to take the core out of and slip the sheath, mostly made of nylon, over the cord. Haven't made any decisions on that front. With the pre-made cord (tinned conductors), the cloth sheath will just have to be zip-tied to the wall-plug end.
The control panel is exactly 48" wide, but it's about 22" deep, so it would not be possible to make one side panel PLUS the control panel out of a single 4'x8' sheet of material. I'll measure up all of the other panels to create a plan to strip the old laminate off and apply new veneer at a later date. I got an oscillating saw with, among other blades, a rigid scraper blade to help me with this project as well as innumerable others.
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Thats a killer deal congrats on your new purchase. With monitor too very nice. I'd go plywood also its 10.00 more the MDF. for brich shop grade.
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@gbeef -The monitor was busted, but even so it is a good deal.
@Linux Chick Cathy - you've gone to the trouble of measuring up and documenting the dimensions of the cabinet. If I understand it right, you intend on cleaning up the existing cabinet and the building a new cabinet fresh? (You mention making a new side). While it's good to have the dimensions for future reference, if you can get your hands on a router you'll only need to trace around a side panel onto fresh MDF or Ply sheet, rough saw that out using the saw and then flush trim with a router using the existing side panel as a template. If the side panel has a rough edge or isn't suited to making a new side panel straight up then I'd still trace it onto 1/4" sheet and make a cutting template using a router and straight edge's (scrap timber). Save your self a lot of measuring out etc. Or is that your plan of action anyway? :) If you intend the measurements for new veneer or laminate, again the same approach of rough sawing the shape around a pencil line and then flush trim with a router could be used. I'm watching with interest.
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UPDATE: 3/22/2012 11:11 P.M.
Just finished a measured drawing of the side of the cabinet. I don't know how my math skills failed me, but it's not 49” front to back. It's 46” front to back, so a single side CAN be made out of a single piece of 48” x 96” sheet stock.
(http://mama.indstate.edu/users/garrett/projects/1_dollar_MAME_cabinet/side_measurements.png)
LibreOffice Draw file: side_measurements.odg (http://mama.indstate.edu/users/garrett/projects/1_dollar_MAME_cabinet/side_measurements.odg)
If that were mine, I would take that last 12" off of the back side and save some real estate!
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@ Ond:
Yeah, yeah. I know how to use a router with a ball-bearing and a flush cutting bit, and if I were to simply strip the existing plain laminate and replace it with another plain external covering, gluing down a rough-cut sheet of it and then trimming it to fit, that would definitely be the way to go. The point of doing this measured drawing is that I can now look for/modify/create custom side art and then make it fit the actual dimensions of the sides before blowing it up to full size only to find that it then doesn't look right.
Specificly, I'm looking to use multiple species of wood veneers to form a wood in-lay/mosaic rather than using plastics and stickers. Field gluing a framing sheet down and then re-removing the areas to be replaced by other bits of veneer may, ultimately, be the way to go, but that's an implementation detail. Between here and implementation lays the design process. For that, the measured drawing is a useful tool.
And no, I don't imagine using this cabinet as a model to build my own from scratch. The wood is solid, modulo a bit of mildew, which will be knocked down with a fungicide, and a bit of water damage to the bottom inch or two, which will be far, far simpler to repair than to build an entire cabinet anew.
And yea, this thing is a large beast in my living room ATM, but I like the extra volume. I'm already planning to add a lot more hardware inside than just a 1 TB HD with GNU/Linux/MAME and a nano-ITX mobo driving an LCD. This thing screams out to be pimped out inside and out. And with god as my witness. I. Am. That. Pimp!
I guess this would be a good time for an update as well...
I've got the power cable and plugs. Now to drill out the power pass-through on the lower-right-rear and glue and screw in the mounting blocks for the cabinet socket. I've also ordered several Kenwood KFC-6972ie's, mostly for a HT project, but two of them are destined for the speaker panel on this beast. I'm having to spend the good weather days cutting down trash trees in the back yard, but once that's done, the next good weather day will be spent on this cabinet.
I'm really falling in love with the idea of a pair of booms holding a pair of rear speakers behind the player positions. With that 6" bump-in in the lower-rear, I really want to make it so the booms can fold to place those rear speakers in that space without the need to remove the speakers themselves.
I've realized that the three of four front player joysticks that the CP has are, in fact, Happ Competition units, but I can't find anyplace that sells JUST the batts and associated hardware, which, modulo the one that's missing entirely, is all that I'm missing for the front players. Still, $50 will get me all new Happ Competition joysticks in red, green, blue, and yellow oval bats, and having these existing units in the parts bin would not be a total waste. I'm also of the opinion that for my tastes, I would rather reorder the four player hardware to be, from L-R: player 4, red; player 2, green; player 1, blue; and player 3, yellow. Is there a compelling reason not to implement that arrangement/color scheme?
A friend of mine who used to be on here said there's a sort of out-of-control-control-panel Hall of Shame thread somewhere showcasing control panels that tried to cram too much stuff in. I can't seem to find it by searching, though. Can someone please link me to any such threads?
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Be forewarned, pimpin' ain't easy! :lol
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Specificly, I'm looking to use multiple species of wood veneers to form a wood in-lay/mosaic rather than using plastics and stickers. Field gluing a framing sheet down and then re-removing the areas to be replaced by other bits of veneer may, ultimately, be the way to go, but that's an implementation detail. Between here and implementation lays the design process. For that, the measured drawing is a useful tool.
Thanks for clearing that up, I couldn't quite understand from your last post what you were intending to do with the cab.
A friend of mine who used to be on here said there's a sort of out-of-control-control-panel Hall of Shame thread somewhere showcasing control panels that tried to cram too much stuff in. I can't seem to find it by searching, though. Can someone please link me to any such threads?
The site you are referring to can be found Here (http://www.wickedretarded.com/~crapmame/).
BTW, I'm all for the design process and planning and interested in projects like this where found items or bargains are reborn creatively. Good luck with it.