Star Wars mini - Finished! With pics

[LeedsFan]

I maybe jumping the gun a bit here... so apologies for this. I have an embryo idea in my head for a Star Wars bartop. I just wondered if anyone had done this kind of thing before. I just lurve bartops! Last year at the R3play expo in Blackpool I won a bartop kit from Turnarcades in their King Of Kong tournament and I still haven't used it. Mainly because I was busy working on my Neo-Geo style Mame-in-a-box at the time.

I also bought a Star Wars yoke from RAM controls which I did intend to be used in a dedicated panel on the aforementioned Neo-Geo project. But now I've thought I may be best making a dedicated Atari yoke controlled bartop for Star Wars, Empire Strikes back etc. This project wouldn't be a scale replica or anything because the kit is not designed as such. It's designed for a TFT screen in landscape mode but I'm not too sure if a full size yoke would look good on a 19" screen bartop. I'd be worried about yanking back on the controls and pulling the bartop over!     Those yokes are quality, heavy duty controls. I dunno....   what you guys reckon?

[ark_ader]

If it looks anything like your Donkey Kong Cab, then I'm 100% for it.

I would want to put some weight inside it or maybe latch it to a small table or that cheap desk you can get at Argos, as it is the perfect (no seriously) height to sit them on.

Counter top, I don't know as the yoke is a heavy controller.  That Turnarcade bartop was a little light....

[LeedsFan]

One of the first things I've done is try to get Star Wars looking nice on the LCD monitor I intend to use. Now I'd always heard people say not to use LCDs for vector games, so I was a bit worried. But I got it looking pretty damn nice! I had to tweak some settings in Mame and made up a starwars.ini file just for this game. I set both Contrast and Gamma to 2 and set the Beam to 1.2. The beam setting just gave the lines a tad more thickness without straying from the original look. I tried it at higher settings but then it starts to not look like a vector game at all.   

Before making these changes I have to say that vector games did look a bit poo. They were a bit dark. Everything now looks crisp and bright. How it compares to a genuine vector monitor I don't know as I know nothing about them to be honest. Do they have a "glow" about the vector lines?

[leapinlew]

I have been toying with the idea for some time.

I've been keeping my eye out for a yoke, but so far no luck.

[LeedsFan]

Well I've been tossing ideas around in my head and decided what the hell... I will try to build a bartop half size replica of the stand up cabinet. All the artwork is available at Classicarcadegraphix but it is gonna be a bit more of an undertaking what with the plastic bezel shroud that was on the original. Here's a pic....

http://www.arcade-museum.com/images/108/1087339258.jpg

Now I reckon with a bit of patience and time that bezel could be reproduced closely out of wood. Fabricating those turret style pieces on each side out of bits of wood seems the trickiest part. Would take some doing, but it should look pretty faithful. The rest of the cabinet seems pretty straight forward to build. Only thing I need though is some measurements to go on. If someone has an original stand up cabinet could they copy that image above and insert some measurements in? Other than that I may need to wait till R3play2 event and hope the Star Wars standup makes a return appearance. I dunno who owned it either.

[leapinlew]

Well I've been tossing ideas around in my head and decided what the hell... I will try to build a bartop half size replica of the stand up cabinet. All the artwork is available at Classicarcadegraphix but it is gonna be a bit more of an undertaking what with the plastic bezel shroud that was on the original. Here's a pic....

http://www.arcade-museum.com/images/108/1087339258.jpg

Now I reckon with a bit of patience and time that bezel could be reproduced closely out of wood. Fabricating those turret style pieces on each side out of bits of wood seems the trickiest part. Would take some doing, but it should look pretty faithful. The rest of the cabinet seems pretty straight forward to build. Only thing I need though is some measurements to go on. If someone has an original stand up cabinet could they copy that image above and insert some measurements in? Other than that I may need to wait till R3play2 event and hope the Star Wars standup makes a return appearance. I dunno who owned it either.

Agreed, the bezel will be a challenge. I've thought a good idea would be to build the cabinet around the bezel, but finding a bezel is more difficult than finding a yoke. I'd probably take some shortcuts on the bezel, and maybe go full artwork. If you do decide to build a bezel, shoot me a PM.

[LeedsFan]

Looking at that bezel image I'd say the bast way to go about it would be to make the "flat" base part first with the cutout for monitor etc. and just route the chamfered edges to get the slopes at the bottom. Then build up the back part of the bezel separately. The upper part of each turret section just rests against an upright flat part of stage 2. Then the turret parts just being glued in piece by piece after painting etc. (I call them "turrets" I just can't think of a better word... fluted bits   lol). The other little bits can be added at the end. I don't think it's too difficult, just needs some patience. I can see myself in B&Q looking at all the beading and trim pieces etc. that they have there.  

I've decided the best thing to do is get the artwork first. I dunno the exact dimensions of the original artwork so I would be relying on them to supply 50% sized pieces. Then I can build the cabinet around the art to ensure a perfect fit. I'm waiting on a reply from Classicarcadegraphix to see if they can supply what I need. I realise the yoke won't fit the CPO art correctly but this is obviously a compromise I'm forced to accept.

[Jigenjuke]

Great idea.  The bezel should be pretty easy to replicate.  I would suggest using PVC pipe cut to size and modeling clay that can be baked to get the rounded edges.  After getting the basic shape you could make a plastic resin mold of the bezel.  I think that it would turn out great. 

Jigenjuke

[LeedsFan]

Installing a full size yoke on half size artwork is gonna need more compromise in the design of the cab. The original cabinet CPO bends in three different places. Going from the front panel it bends twice to sit flat for a short bit before bending again at 45 degrees to go up the slope where the yoke sits.

On half size artwork I already knew the yoke would be larger than the square "aperture" provided in the CPO. But I also need to take into account that the yoke going through full travel in either direction needs about 28mm clearance below the mounting plate. On half size artwork that would mean it would hardly move before hitting the flat part of the CPO. So I think I'm gonna need to have the CPO (and the cabinet itself) bend just once at the front before entering its 45 degree slope. Doing this means I can mount the yoke lower down in the artwork and therefore be more central and allows full travel in each direction. It's another compromise which moves away from the original design, but I can't see any way round it.

(Mounted at 45 degrees the yoke needs 70mm vertical clearance directly below the base of the mounting plate to ensure the end mechanism of the yoke does not foul the cabinet base inside.)

[LeedsFan]

Hmmmm.... I'm contemplating another change of plan now. A mate of mine suggested building the full cabinet at half size instead of just a bartop. At first I instantly dismissed the idea because I don't have room for a full cabinet... but it's growing on me now. The full side art would need cutting on a bartop and that would be a shame. At half size the cabinet would be just three feet tall, which means it's still pretty portable around the house (albeit on wheels) and could still sit on the back seat of the car if I needed to take it anywhere. Could sit on a stool to play it.

I have the artwork on order now (though I may need to add the front kick panel for full cabinet) and I've been very lucky to find that an arcade dealer near me has an upright Star Wars in their warehouse! They very kindly have allowed me to go and take pics/notes next week.

[LeedsFan]

Last year just before Christmas I bought the yoke and the artwork.  That was the bulk of the expenditure.  So now it's time to get on with this project and start the actual build.

Here are pics of the yoke and artwork:




And here's the first panel so far with the coin door/parts that I'm repainting:




I got the coin door for a tenner with working coin mechs (for old 10p coins!) but I'm not fussed about the coin mechs actually being fitted. I just want the door to look nice for that arcade look with perhaps the plastic coin entry buttons being illuminated. By the way... does anyone know where you can buy those new? I see Gremlin Solutions sell the full door sets with the exact red plastic inserts that I need so they must still be being manufactured.

[yotsuya]

Last year just before Christmas I bought the yoke and the artwork.  That was the bulk of the expenditure.  So now it's time to get on with this project and start the actual build.

Here are pics of the yoke and artwork:




And here's the first panel so far with the coin door/parts that I'm repainting:




I got the coin door for a tenner with working coin mechs (for old 10p coins!) but I'm not fussed about the coin mechs actually being fitted. I just want the door to look nice for that arcade look with perhaps the plastic coin entry buttons being illuminated. By the way... does anyone know where you can buy those new? I see Gremlin Solutions sell the full door sets with the exact red plastic inserts that I need so they must still be being manufactured.

Looks good! I just won the control panel on eBay. Like you, slowly but surely!

And Lizard Lick sells the stuff you need for coin doors. I bought them from LL last fall and was very satisfied.

[LeedsFan]

Managed to get quite a bit done these last two days. Here is the finished control panel section...







It's looks a bit rough and ready I know. No matter how accurate and neat I try to work I can never get these sections to look as good as what other people on here manage to make. I just concentrated on making the 5mm aluminium plate sit flush after routing out the area. Then I filled in the little gaps with wood putty and sanded smooth. The yoke itself will be bolted directly to the plate as the welded bolt sections on the yoke are only about 12mm long. It is designed to sit in a metal panel in all fairness.








Here's test fitting the yoke for where it sits. It's not bolted in here at the moment.





I trimmed down one of the side art pieces and got ready to make the first side panel. I had no cabinet dimensions to work from so with this project I decided to get the 50% artwork first and then I could work from that using photos I get from Googling about. It may not be the most accurate way of doing things but it's the best I can do. It shouldn't be too far off though (I hope!)





Once I was happy with one side piece I then roughly cut the second just a few mm oversize. Then I squared off the bottom and sides (which matched anyway) and clamped them together. Then I ran my router round the other edges with a flush trim bit...





... which results in two perfectly matched side panels. I've since cut the small triangle sections from the bottom of each piece which you don't see in this pic. (Where the castor wheels sit when you tilt it to move it about)

I'm using marine ply here and you can see at the edges where there are some small areas that need attention with the wood putty. I've applied that already and tomorrow will sand all the little imperfections smooth. I've already cut the bottom panels and back panel and can start to assemble this together. I intend to put it together and them dismantle it so i can paint and apply artwork and then re-assemble. I've tried painting cabs before while assembled and I just hate trying to get into the edges and corners. I just want to paint flat surfaces and then assemble later. Of course if I need to fill any gaps with wood putty to hide my imperfect build techniques then I may need to reconsider this step.  

[Corbo]

Looking good, I'll be following this one with interest.

[Drunkraccoons]

same here looks like its going to be a nice build good luck   

[LeedsFan]

Managed to get more done today.....

















I'm really pleased with how this is going so far. It took me all day to get this far because I was making sure everything was as square as possible and all the measurements were the same around the cab. My build techniques are sucky but there are no gaps between any of the panels. Well... there is one bad on at the rear of the cab where the lower back piece will sit (not on the cab yet) but I can hide it easily with a well glued in piece of black plastic. I will show this later on how to bodge and hide a bad mistake 

I also got the castor wheels in place for test fitting and made sure it wheelded about fine. But then I removed them so I could paint the panel later.

Remember earlier when I said I wanted to assemble and then dis-assemble in order to paint the sections separately? Well bollocks to that now! This took me bloody ages and I'm not splitting it down now that I'm happy with it. I will just paint the edge sections with a foam pad or similar. (I hate brushes because I suck at painting too. I always leave brush marks and bristles behind).

Next part is to put in the power feed and power button and then work on the marquee section. I have an idea of how to confront that but not sure how it will turn out in practice.

[Woodshop Flunky]

I love the size of this!  It's looking awsome! 

[Corbo]

Remember earlier when I said I wanted to assemble and then dis-assemble in order to paint the sections separately? Well bollocks to that now! This took me bloody ages and I'm not splitting it down now that I'm happy with it. I will just paint the edge sections with a foam pad or similar. (I hate brushes because I suck at painting too. I always leave brush marks and bristles behind).

I painted my mini cab recently and got some good advice on these boards.  Take a look at the link in my signature to see the results.  Being a fellow Brit I bought my painting supplies from B&Q.  Definately use a Mohair (or mohair substitute) roller, not a foam one.  I rollered on 3 layers of Dulux trade multi surface primer, sanding with a wet 180 grit paper between coats, then 2 layers of outdoor black gloss sanding with a wet 320 grit between coats.

I don't know if you're planning on putting T-Moulding in.  I used MDF for my build so I was scared to take a slot cutter to it after I had put it all together.  Instead I painted over the black gloss on the t-mould sections with 3 coats of clear satin gloss.  This made it look dull like plastic compared to the rest of the glossy paint.

Hope that helps you a bit!

By the way, who in the UK are you using to print your artwork?

[LeedsFan]

Remember earlier when I said I wanted to assemble and then dis-assemble in order to paint the sections separately? Well bollocks to that now! This took me bloody ages and I'm not splitting it down now that I'm happy with it. I will just paint the edge sections with a foam pad or similar. (I hate brushes because I suck at painting too. I always leave brush marks and bristles behind).

I painted my mini cab recently and got some good advice on these boards.  Take a look at the link in my signature to see the results.  Being a fellow Brit I bought my painting supplies from B&Q.  Definately use a Mohair (or mohair substitute) roller, not a foam one.  I rollered on 3 layers of Dulux trade multi surface primer, sanding with a wet 180 grit paper between coats, then 2 layers of outdoor black gloss sanding with a wet 320 grit between coats.

I don't know if you're planning on putting T-Moulding in.  I used MDF for my build so I was scared to take a slot cutter to it after I had put it all together.  Instead I painted over the black gloss on the t-mould sections with 3 coats of clear satin gloss.  This made it look dull like plastic compared to the rest of the glossy paint.

Hope that helps you a bit!

By the way, who in the UK are you using to print your artwork?

I will be using 11/16" black t-molding. That should be almost a perfect fit to this plywood. I already have the slot cutter.

There shouldn't be that much painting in all fairness. The top panels and of course the back panels and base will get most of it. Thanks for the tip on the roller. I will look out for that later at the painting stage. My intention was to only paint the outer edges of each side panel because the art covers 90% of it. But then I got thinking about how well the art would stick to the bare wood. Would it be better to prime the whole surface for a better adhesion?

The art was from Classicarcadegraffix in the States. They were very good with quick contacts and fast delivery. If only I knew a reputable art printer here in the UK. 

Trouble with the Star Wars art is that it can be hard to come by. Gameongraffix (used to me Mame Marquees) and also EMD-Kay do not have it in their library. I'm really pleased with the art. I think the front kick panel is a little dark becasue it looks lighter on all the cabinets I see on the internet. But the marquee and side art in particular look excellent. I'm not sure how well the marquee will light up as it's not the traditional style of marqee. Star Wars had a permanent vinyl marquee that was rolled around part of the top panel. It doesn't look like light would shine easily through it. To get to the bulb inside you had to access the back panel I believe. The marquee itself is set in place and not removable like most other machines.


Oh and thank you Yotsuya for the info on LizardLick stocking those coin entry parts for the coin door. However, I did manage to find those new in the UK from a company called Swallow Amusements and they arrived yesterday.

[Bender]

This is Awesome!
Can't wait to see it done
*whip,WHIP* back to work!

[LeedsFan]

Managed to complete the marquee section today. But this was a real pain to construct. I actually started to construct it and then half way through realised that the bezel artwork that sits on the inside would not fit... so I had to remove what I'd made and have a rethink.




I started by trimming the side art piece and loosely stuck it on the inside just about where it would finally be. Not having any measurements to go by I need to trust the art dimensions to get me by. Just wish I'd done this first before wasting lots of time.... oh well.  




From the back looking down.







And this is what it's ended up like. The angled lower piece of the marquee you see here is 5mm hardboard, but there will be some perforated metal sheet going over it just like the arcade original. I'm not sure exactly what diameter and pitch the original was though. I have found some that has 3mm holes with 5mm distances to each centre. How close is this?

I want to get 95% of the cabinet built before I decide what speakers I'm going to use. I want to use a 2.1 sound system in here as I reckon I will have room for a small sub. But I need to look at the speakers themselves and decide exactly where I'm going to mount them. I could sit them directly on the flat panel just above the monitor and then just have cutouts on the 5mm hardboard. Sound would easily get through then and would save having the speakers mounted directly to this board. It's only lightweight board and I want to be able to remove it easily anyway to have access to the marquee bulb.

[Corbo]

Good work.

For speakers consider the Logitech Z205 USB Speaker.

It's a great size, surprisingly good quality and if you put a T section behind the marquee you can just clip the speaker right in.  I added a couple of cable ties just to make sure.

Only downside is that you won't get a sub with it, but they are really great without one.  I picked some up for £16 on Ebay.

[LeedsFan]

Manged to get the top of the cabinet complete today. I tried to replicate the profile of the original cab at the top. The marquee artwork wraps around the rounded part and from there backwards it's normal black painted panels. The holes and screw heads will be puttied over and sanded prior to painting.







Here's the back door just wedged into place for test fitting. It's a large door yes, but I want to have full access to everything inside. You can see more areas here that need wood putty treatment.





Shot of the inside of the cab with the mains extension fitted. You can see the awful gap to the right which is the mistake I made earlier in the build. But it's easily hidden on the outside with a well placed straight piece of black adhesive floor tiling.  





Let there be light!  But there's not much of it.  

I'm wondering if I made the wrong choice of marquee light here. It's a pygmy fitting with 2x 15W bulbs. I'm not sure they are gonna be bright enough to penetrate the marquee artwork. The next size fitting up was a 6W fluorescent lamp but it was just too wide to fit in the cabinet. Can anyone suggest replacement bulbs for the pygmy fitting I bought?

[opt2not]

Oh boy oh boy oh boy, this is going to turn out so rad. 

[Corbo]

Looking awesome, you're gonna need to clamp that down when you're hooning around with your yoke!

Maybe the marquee would be helped if you lined behind the lights with something reflective, like tin foil!  Might be a cheap solution!

[Jigenjuke]

Heh heh lately it looks like the mini cabinet makers are flooding the forum.     I would suggest something like the LED Strips that I am using for the marquee in my projects.  They are really bright and more than enough to penetrate the marquee art.  Here is a link, I think it is even the same seller that I bought from...

http://cgi.ebay.com/Flexible-Car-Strip-Bulb-Light-White-Waterproof-24-LED-N-/370387476918?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item563cd061b6

That should make your life easier.

Jigenjuke

[LeedsFan]

Small update for what's gone on over this last weekend....





I decided to change the marquee lights to this pair of Akasa cold cathode white light tubes. They are powered with 12V from the PC supply. I saw a pic of these tubes lit up in Vast's bartop thread...  http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=110343.0

I was so impressed with that pic that I decided that they just had to be better than the 15W pygmy lamps I'd bought. I've not been able to test them out yet as I still need to get a PC in there to hook them up. Only problem I had with them is that the packaging clearly states that these are 300mm lamps. But that's bollocks! The gap between my side walls is exactly 301mm and yet I had to chisel out a good 10-12mm in one side to get these to fit. Even if you took the clear plastic blocks off each end (which you're not supposed to) the bulb itself is easily still over 300mm. That's annoying!  






I finally decided on the speakers for this project. I went with the Logitech Z313 2.1 channel setup.
http://www.logitech.com/en-us/speakers-audio/home-pc-speakers/devices/5872
They are 25W RMS so they should provide a decent sound. The speakers and subwoofer fit nicely in the spaces I have but the speakers were an awkward shape to get a grip of. You see in the pic I basically strapped them down to a piece of hardboard with tie-wraps and then screwed the board to the shelf behind the marquee lights. It doesn't look that great workmanship really but it's solid and you won't see any of this when it's completed of course. The volume control module will be screwed to the back of the cabinet somewhere to allow easy volume setting and use of headphones if required.






Here is the coin door put back together after the parts were painted. I'm waiting on new door locks to arrive (one for the back door).






Here is a close up of the micro-switch setup I made at the rear of the coin door. I basically need two buttons on this cabinet... one for inputting credits and one to exit a game back to the front end. The original cabinet had no buttons at all except for what's on the yoke ofc. So I decided to use the coin reject buttons to act as credit and exit buttons. A small nudge on each reject button actuates the microswitch. But now I need to hack an old keyboard (something I've tried and failed at in the past) as buying an I-PAC for just two inputs is a bit overkill.

EDIT:  I just had a thought. I could hack an old mouse for the left and right buttons. The Windows mouse settings shouldn't be affected by the Yoke plugged in should it?

[LeedsFan]

A few more updates....






Got the marquee plexi glued in place and putty sanded down around the curved edges. It's really starting to take shape now. But one of the tubes was not working when I plugged it into my PC. I didn't test these bulbs prior to installing them in the cab so I don't know if it was faulty out of the box or if I damaged it squeezing it into it's tight spot. Either way I will get a replacement soon as they are cheap enough. It's definitely the bulb as I swapped the plugs around in the little black box thingy and the same bulb didn't work.






Got the PC installed. It's just built out of spare bits I had lying around. I had to buy a CPU cooler and fan and I've still to get a stick of RAM (I whipped out the RAM from my DK bartop to get this going).  Specs are:  Windows XP    Athlon XP3200+   80GB drive   Radeon 9800 Pro   512Mb RAM
Wiring will get tidied up later on when things get finalised. I just wanna make sure everyhting works and fits into place first.






Here's a shot through the coin door. I put a shelf in over the top of the sub-woofer and mounted the PSU and hard drive onto that. I've made sure there is clearance to close the coin door properly with the coin mech installations hanging of the back of the door. Sub-woofer is also screwed to the base.






Here we have the game running on the Xerox monitor. The monitor sits flush with the front control panel so that the bezel can slide into place later on as a one-piece fitting. Eagle eye spotters can see that I cut out the speaker holes.... and made a bit of a bollocks of it!     How I got those holes mis-aligned I do not know. But you won't see them anyway when the grille goes over them. I'm running an older version of Mame here and need a more up to date one that has the slider controls in the TAB settings. Then I can shrink the screen a little and manoeuvre it into position to fit the bezel aperture.






And here we have the start of the bezel. All I've done so far is cut out the bit around the top of the CPO and bevelled the edges off 45 degrees. This bezel isn't gonna be a 100% accurate replica. But I will do my best to get it as close as I possibly can. Slight compromises will have to be made here or there, but we shall see how this goes.

[Woodshop Flunky]

Looking good!

[cw]

nice job... really coming along!

[Corbo]

Looks great.

Did you try running it using the onboard VGA port rather than the Radeon?  I can't imagine StarWars needs a dedicated GPU to run, and it could be one less part/heat generator in your cab.

[ChadTower]

Yeah, pretty nice.  I like this project.   

How does the game look on that display vs a real 6100? 

[LeedsFan]

Yeah, pretty nice.  I like this project.  

How does the game look on that display vs a real 6100?  

Do you mean the original Amplifone vector monitor?  Well in all honesty you cannot beat those. But you just can't hold of them. I believe they did do a 13" colour vector monitor but they are like rocking horse ---steaming pile of meadow muffin---. Standard Mame settings are really poor for vector games. You gotta tweak stuff. Off the top of my head (I would need to check and confirm this) I think I set gamma to 2 or 3 and had the Beam setting at 1.2. It just brightens the whole thing up in mame for vector games.

I was messing with Mala frontend and setting up a small list with videos. The standard videos look really bad. You can't see anything because they've been recorded on standard settings. I might just make a simple three title list you scroll through without any graphics or videos at all. Just keep it as simple as possible. The original frontend I wanted to use simply will not work in portrait mode. I keep getting a VPU error and Windows locks up. So I've had to bin that idea.


@ Corbo   I may try this to be honest. This PC is made from bits I had from a desktop box that went wonky on me. I had graphical artifacts all over the screen and ended up buying a new PC. I've put this back together with some other new bits and it seems OK so far... except I still get graphical artifacts on the Windows logo boot up screen. But when the desktop loads up everytrhing is fine and mame displays fine etc. I've got 2x Radeon 9800 Pro and the first one was really bad. Then I swapped it out and it's got better as I say, but not perfect on the boot up. It could be a MB fault as I can't see both 9800 Pros being faulty. For now it runs OK but it's niggling away at the back of my mind that it could just go wrong again.

I'm all for recycling old computer stuff that's been lying around as we all know Mame doesn't need anything special to run classics. But when I think of the time and effort it's taken to get the cab as it is so far and the money spent on the artwork and yoke... I start thinking that anything even remotely unreliable on the PC front needs to be booted out.

[ChadTower]

Do you mean the original Amplifone vector monitor? 

Often you'll find the WG6100 in a Star Wars upright.  There are only so many of them with the Amplifones in them and yeah the Amp is the gold standard.  That's why I didn't even ask about that one.     I have a whole row of Atari vector games and none of them have an Amplifone.

I'm looking forward to a couple videos of this thing in action when it's done.  One of the only Atari vectors I have left to get is Star Wars but honestly I'm sort of thinking of going this route at least in the interim.

[shrunkenmaster]

Looking forward to the next stages of this. I think I'll have to steal your recessed metal plate idea to secure my yoke...

[LeedsFan]

Progress has slowed somewhat due to working on the bezel while I await the delivery of my T-molding. I also had a problem with the original PC I installed as I was getting graphical artifacts on the screen. I tried swapping out the Radeon 9800 Pro for another but it was exactly the same. I wasn't gonna bother wasting loads of time trying to pinpoint the problem so I whipped out the motherboard and processor and replaced it with another, this time a Sempron 1.99 GHz. It meant another install of Windows XP to make sure all the drivers were good etc. but now the PC is flawless and the game runs great even with the onboard Radeon Xpress 200 graphics. No sound stutters on the Death Star sequence.

Anyway... here's where I'm at with the bezel...






It's not finished yet but it's almost there. I'm really pleased with how this has turned out as I wasn't sure how accurate I could get it. I had to compromise with the side flutings or pipes or whatever you wanna call them. On the original arcade they are more semi-circular but I had to go with more flat looking ones. They are actually sections of "D" beading from my local B&Q. I had to go with this because I only had 8mm clearance at the front where the top/front of the bezel meets underside of the lower marquee panel. Anything more than 8mm would have stuck out under the speaker panel and looked a bit iffy.

This will eventually get a few coats of primer to try and hide any small imperfections (though I've spent ages rubbing wood putty down to get things looking as nice as possible) and then it will get painted in satin black. Although you can't tell from the pic I've also routed out the underside to take 3mm plexi which will sit over the glass of the monitor. I was gonna use smoked plexi just like the original but decided to stick with clear as I want the graphics to look as bright and clear as possible.

[shrunkenmaster]

Great work with the bezel my man. I'm kinda sorry I didn't go down the same route for mine, as I would have enjoyed (endured?) making it.

[Woodshop Flunky]

I couldn't see it before, but now that you have the bezel, its clear what you are doing with the monitor.

This is going to look so slick.  Good job! 

[LeedsFan]

I couldn't see it before, but now that you have the bezel, its clear what you are doing with the monitor.

I did have a small problem with the monitor though. As I was moving the image around with the TAB settings I found that I could only move the image down so far before it began to disappear from the screen. There's a limit to how far you can go. So I had to set it to as far as I could and then use the actual monitor settings to get it to move a bit further. Even now the aperture is set a little higher than I would have liked, but needs must. When you go on the Windows desktop now the "Start" button is half off the screen with a black bar down the right hand side. But the game is positioned exactly where I want it now when Mame fires up.

I did think about buying one of those 10.2" touchscreen monitors that are on eBay for around £125.
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Touch-Screen-PC-monitor-10-4inch-Monitor-VGA-XGA-USB-TF-/320657709376?pt=UK_Audio_TV_Electronics_In_Car_Entertainment_GPS_In_Car_Audio_Players_PP&hash=item4aa8b05940

But the seller is in Hong Kong and I can find no reviews about them what-so-ever. Also that resolution spec confuses me. Monitors like that from UK sources are around double that price. With a monitor such as that I could just place it in there normally and then use the excellent frontend by Urbaninteractive.com. But I don't want to take a chance on paying that much to find that the image isn't as nice as how I have it now. Unfortunately the frontend from Urbaninteractive will not work for me in portrait mode. It crashes and freezes every time so I've had to go with Mala. If I ever find a monitor that physically fits in landscape mode with a decent enough resolution and viewing angle then I will pull this one in a heartbeat.

The original aperture measures 420 x 350mm (ignoring the angled corners) which isn't a 4:3 ratio. So I was unsure how they placed the 19" monitor in there. I decided to place the screen image so that when you move the cross-hairs around to their limits the gap between the cross-hairs and the aperture edge is the same up/down and left/right. So in a way it looks like it's bang in the centre even though in reality it isn't. You can tell this when you play Retrun of the Jedi (raster game) as the screen image it set more to the top, but I cannot bring it any lower down or I start to cut off the bottom of the image.    Not sure if that game will get much play anyway.

[Corbo]

Great work on the bezel.  If you can afford to try it it's worth getting some 10% plexi to compare with a clear plexi/glass.  The smoking can bring out the contrast in the picture rather than hamper it.

Also I bought a monitor from here with no problems:  http://www.securitycamera2000.com/categories/CCTV-Monitors/Middle-Screen-Size-%288%22-to-15%22%29/
Worth a browse.