My first (nearly) completed mame cab

[Minions]

I've been working on this since march and had posted my updates on another (non arcade) forums so a large amount of status updates are going to be posted. I would try to consolidate it into one post, however it passed the maximum character limit. So to bring this thread up to speed.

So after much debate I found myself for quite a bit of time on my hands, and a tax return coming to me down the line. I had followed Seph making his cabinet and thought I could probably do it myself given enough time and research. That's not to say his help so far has not been essential. Pretty much any question's I've had he's been able to answer in a relatively timely manor (as he's been super busy with his new-ish job).

I figured despite being quite a bit in on the project (I wanted to convince myself I was going to finish/have something functional before I was going to make one of these threads), that I would post it to motivate other people that also want to do this/don't think they can do it.

SOFTWARE
I started toying with the front end/emulator software right off the bat. This had no overhead/cost involved as I already had the old P4 radeon9800 pc sitting in my closet from long ago. This took the better part of a week on and off to get functioning properly. Many of the old emulators require a bios file which locating a proper one can be a task in itself. There is a lot of trial and error involved especially with MESS. Other emulators had to be changed for one reason or another. Some you would open the rom and the video would play with no sound. I figured out this is because, for whatever reason, the window was not the targeted window, if you clicked the mouse, or alt tabed, you would then have sound. That means it would not run seamlessly and would have to be replaced with another emulator.

MESS is a PITA, seems random to get it to find the bios

After a week or so of that, and locating the games for each of the emulators, I was relatively certain I wanted to undertake the actual building of the cabinet, and my journey began shortly after that. I actually happened to find a 27" Sony Trinitron (just like Seph's), on craigslist for $20. Couldn't believe how lucky I was to find one with such little effort on my part, it all just fell into place.


MATERIALS:
I contacted seph and he sent me his measurements he used for the side boards of the cab. Then the fun began of figuring out what material I wanted to build the cabinet out of. Many people said MDF (a pressed fiber board), Plywood, or MDO (the best choice of the 3, though extremely expensive and hard to find). I ended up going with plywood, while it is almost twice the price of MDF, it is however stronger and lighter. It is a bigger pain in the ass to paint, but we'll get to that when we get to that point.

Construction:

















Was really surprised how flush I got the bottom boards to be. I cut the tops at angles so that they could fit flush, but I was not sure how accurate I would be able to be. Looks like it all turned out great. This is as far as I've gotten so far, but my controls have come in the mail:


Button Nutts


White/Red/1/2player push buttons


Cables


Horizontal Push Switches (for buttons)


Spinner, Spinner Top, Spinner Weight, Galaga/Packman Joystick, IPAC 2


Black Competition Buttons


Competition Joystick x2


Track ball

Cut the top board(s), two of them anyway. One is now mounted, the other is not (speaker grills need to be cut in it, and my marquee retainer needs to get here. I'm still waiting on a quote for the retainer... a little unhappy with this vendor currently as he sent me the wrong track ball as well. Guess we'll see how that pans out. Shot the people that do the plexiglass a request for a quote, hopefully I will have that on it's way soon too.

The coin door/T molding was paid for this weekend and was said it was going to be shipped Monday, and will hopefully arrive by Friday.



With the top board attached



With the TV placed inside (seems to be about 1/2"~ of clearance on both sides. A little larger than it being "perfect" but I played the "better safe than sorry card" and gave myself an extra 1.5-2" when I started (than that of the TV in order to be sure it would fit. I believe the full width of the cab side to side is 30"



Another Picture with the TV in.

Cut the board for the bottom of the control panel and the front and back sides. I think it sits a little lower than I want it to (did 4.5 and 3") so I may raise it to 5.5" and 4". It seems like with the 4.5" up there, there is still a reasonable gap viewable before the shelf inside. A few things to mess with when I get some time to work on the cab again.

The current cab itself, weighs around 50-60 lbs. I think once everything is in it (-computer, -tv, -control panel) it should be no more than 80-90 lbs. Much more reasonable than the 150-200 using MDF.

As I said in the last post I finished the bottom part of the control panel (essentially a box). Didn't take too long, and I believe I made a little more of a angle than Seph did in his original cabinet.






You can see the angle a bit in this picture. I made the box a little bit higher to account for a gap I had between where the TV will rest and the control panel top/plexiglass. Hopefully it all fits right, though it won't take much effort to change this box if it has to be changed. We'll see how this works and make changes as needed.





I also added part of the back to the cabinet. I'm going to leave the rest of it open, other than adding a back board toward the top to cover half of the back of the tv. I also added a small board on top of my 2x4's to rest the computer on. I did not put in a full floor like Seph did in his cab, in order to reduce weight, and when I move the cabinet more than a few feet I will not have anything that needs to rest on a full floor still in the cabinet.



Next up was my coin door. After a failed attempt at removing the paint with a sander (my original idea was sand blasting but I figured I'd try my options available to me before I went that far). That failed so I went with this paint stripper. It worked pretty well, and showed me just how much rust was under all that paint. The door looked pretty good when I got it, but there was quite a bit of hidden surface rust. Couple pictures half way and the nearly finished product which is nearly ready for painting, just needs a little sanding.









Much better with most of the paint off. Have to go purchase some paint for this tomorrow after work. Hopefully I will have it painted tomorrow night. We'll see how it turns out. Still need to spend some time sanding this down to make sure it is all gone. (This whole process of removing the paint took a couple hours to get it all off. The process was not hard, it was just scraping all the paint off, wiping it down, and repeating over and over till it was all off). Overall I'm pretty happy with my progress.

The bad news however is the Plexi place apparently wants $200~ plus shipping for a overlay for the control panel. That's crazy (apparently you can only order a minimum of 4 sheets now?). I've contacted some other places, but otherwise I'm going to have to find an alternative as I really don't want to cut the plexi myself. (All of the places returned similar prices)

However I got lucky and someone at the original place worked some magic and got me a piece sent out for an extremely reasonable rate. Thank's to Scott at OCIP for helping me resolve my plexiglass issues. Hopefully it arrives in the next day or two.

Here is the cab with some of the slot's cut for T-Molding



I repainted the coin door, and while it does not have the same paint texture as it did, which had some blobiness to it, I think it looks much better now. I replaced the reject buttons with new ones with the 25 cent decals (turns out I could have probably used the ones I had, but they were pretty scratched to hell, so I still stick by my purchase), and got new 7/8" cam locks which are keyed alike.



Cut the hole in the cabinet to fit this in, the coin door itself is pretty big, more-so than you might expect. It fit nicely on the front of the cab with little issues. I have put it in the front to make sure it al fits, with coin mechs and coin bucket, but have not left it mounted as I will be painting it soon.



Last but not least is the T-molding I ordered. It came in as described, I have tested putting it in some of the slots I cut and have had a few issues where I have had to run the router over the spots again. I think the main issue is some trapped saw dust being left after the router cuts. I have not cut it to size at all, I am going to deal with all of that in it's entirety once the cabinet is painted.



Saw a couple of these barstool/chair things that I've been monitoring them every few days at Target. I originally wanted full wood ones, but they sold at 30% off clearance. However, today that 30% jumped to 75% off. So I got lucky and snagged a couple of these bad boys for about $33/ea+ tax, but after my discount and target debit card, I walked out the door with 2 for $60.12 (reg $119.99/ea) After sitting in the chairs in front of the cabinet, I think they will be at the perfect height.



My Control Panel PlexiGlass overlay also came in. Looks good, so glad I didn't have to try to cut this thing by hand. Today I am just working with sanding/wood putty and such and prepping for priming/painting. Tomorrow I hope to cut the control panel top, and drill the holes, as well as routing out the back of the control panel in order to mount the joysticks/track ball. If I get all this done tomorrow I will get to mounting and wiring everything up, which could be fun (I guess)

[Minions]

A couple things I ordered came in the mail. I received the Marquee Retainers cut to 29" (I think my actual width is 28"~ but I ordered it big in order to give me the ability to size it myself), and the Marquee Backlight LED's.



I ordered the normal 6 sets (LINX) of leds, as well as an additional 2 LINX. I also ordered the optional power splitter which uses molex and splits off a 12v, 5v, and two grounds, as well as an additional molex connector. This will allow me to power the LED's for the marquee as well as the coin door lights. (12v marquee, 5v coin door).

As far as working on the cab, I put wood filler over all the screw holes on the control panel, and prepped it for priming/painting which I plan to do tomorrow. Used wood filler on the back, where I had some tear out, (just because it slightly bothered me, it wouldn't get seen by anyone else), and now it looks much better. I'm sure if you compare this picture to the one in the last post you can see the difference wood filler can make.
1
I also got around to routing out the bottom of the control panel to mount the joysticks. I routed out a considerable amount, at least half of my 3/4" plywood. I found some metal plates that line up with the bottom of the joysticks which I plan to attach to add some extra support. The pacman 4 way stick however is a little short (the base) so it is much lower in the hole than the competition joysticks. A little oversight on my part (I thought they were all the same thickness), however I'm sure I will remedy this pretty soon. Here is what the bottom looks like after all the routing. a little mess up on 1 of the 3 holes, not too bad though, it still fits snug in all of them.



I also got around to slot cutting the CP/CP top for T-molding. This is slightly annoying in some cases as you have to take screws out in order to cut for T-molding. This also means I have to either notch the T-molding around screws, or screw through the T-molding. If I do screw through it, it means I will have to then putty the screw(s) again and paint the cab with the t-molding on. I think I am going to just notch the t-molding as it won't be that big a deal, and I would rather paint the cab then put the molding on. I guess another option would be put the screws through the molding after painting the cab/cp everywhere except the screw holes. I guess I will think about it, I have time.

The last couple things that I did were finally cutting/putting the top board on the cab. I also cut the speaker board. I also removed the back board, and installed a small oak board on both sides of the inside of the cabinet. This will allow me to putty over the screws (on the sides of the cab) while keeping the screws uncovered on the very back of the cabinet. Doing this will allow me to open and remove the back of the cab without taking away from the overall look.



The last of my time spent today was spent figuring out how big a circle, and how big a router bit to use to make the speaker grills. I spent a good 45 minutes figuring this out, and have it drawn out on the board. I plan to route those holes out some time tomorrow hopefully, and would like to mount it too. The edge of the speaker board is at an angle (to make it flat like the top board) so that the marquee will be pinched between the marquee retainer and the board properly. All in all it always seems like you think you can get more done than you actually do, but that is part of the fun.


Painting takes forever.... at least when you do 2 coats of primer, and 2 coats of paint on everything. (Though it is likely I just lack patience.... though Houston's humidity does not help) Just painting the box/control panel top that way took a good 6 hours or so between painting and drying. Given I did use a paint brush as I didn't want to waste a roller on such a small area.

I think they look good, painted the CP top completely, and the CP base on the outside of it and the top of the walls.




I also started cutting the speaker grills in the speaker board. I also figured out after all this painting that I need to take one of the boards off and resize it, to account for the hinge being on top of the board. I thought about just routing out part of the board which would resolve this problem, but in the end I think resizing the whole board will look better and painted wood wears out router bits really fast.



Ran out of time tonight, will have to finish routing out the speakers another day. Have been using clamps and a strait edge with my router and a drilled hole to route them out. Takes a couple passes to clear it, (I set the bit lower on the second pass to cut all the way through), this takes quite a bit of time which is the reason I have not completed it. But it gives me the results I want so I can't complain.

Got a little more work done of the cab today. It always seems like an estimate of what you actually will get done can be found by the following equation.

What you think you can get done / 2 = what will actually get done

Anyways, I got around to finishing the routing of the speaker board. Overall I think it turned out pretty well. It's not perfect by any means but that's one of the main things I learned while doing this project. Pretty much no matter how much you overlook (I overlooked the height on the front of my CP base, and had to take it apart and remove the wood putty, which will cause me to repaint quite a bit), you can fix it. It may just take a lot more work to make it work, or fix your problems. (Unless you cut the boards too small, in which case you fix that error with more $). I also got the speaker shelf installed now.



I was thinking of materials I could use to block the holes from the inside (in order to block light from coming through) and found some cheap felt which seems like it may do the job. I have 4 sheets (2 per hole) so I can double layer it if needed. Pretty much the cheapest solution I can think of (20 cents a sheet).



After finishing that I moved on to fixing the base of the CP. Disassembled the front of the box and cut it down by 1/8" or so. This was needed to allow the piano hinge to rest on top of the board. Otherwise not only would all the weight of the CP top be on the hinge itself, it would also decrease the angle the CP is going at. Once that was fixed I went through the fun of mounting the hinge itself. I screwed it first to the box (directly in the middle as to keep it centered), and figured out that the hinge itself needed to be further forward in order for it to open completely. (good thing I tested by screwing 2 screws in, instead of all of them) Upon fixing this it was pretty annoying keeping the CP top centered properly and screwing hinge into the top. It eventually got done and it looks good. (despite my hinge being a little bent from when I bought it)



The last thing I did was install some roller catches. I messed around with them for a good 45 minutes and only seem to have gotten one to work properly. The other does not seem to catch for some reason. It seems these are very picky about hitting strait in the center. A little above or below and it has little to no resistance when you pull on the catch itself. The one catch that is working properly seems to be more than enough to keep the lid closed on the Control panel, but it may annoy me enough down the road that I will keep messing with the other catch till it works.



You can see the rollers on the side of the box, and the other part attached to the bottom of the control panel top. Tomorrow I think I will be filling in holes on the CP with wood putty and repainting the damage I've done making this hinge work. I think I only need to cut 1 more board (the back) and fill in a few holes with putty, then I'll be ready to start painting the actual cab.

Painting is probably the thing I like worst about doing this project. The prep work with wood filler and such, rollers making you touch up most corners and such because they leave a line due to it hitting another board and such. Also had to use a paint brush to paint the bottom of the cab. Spent quite a few hours today doing this, and in all honesty the worst part is the waiting for things to dry (wood filler, primer, paint).

First up I put on the first coat of primer. The first coat was a pain in the ass, much worse than any other coats I've put on the cabinet today. The primer is pretty sticky, and it takes quite a bit of effort to completely cover the area you want.



Once I got it on i waited an hour or two and started on the second coat of primer. This coat went on half as hard as the first coat. This coat looked great, which the exception of a couple spots. After this coat dried I sanded a couple spots and had something under the paint for whatever reason. This caused the primer not to adhere well, and part of it came off. Tack on another hour or so of priming that area, sanding by hand, and applying another coat of primer and it was fixed. (Just a unexpected pain/delay).



Finally about midnight, I started painting the cab with my Onyx black paint. This coat went on pretty easily, and it was very easy to tell where it needed more paint. (black paint on white, makes unpainted spots super obvious) Going to give this 8-12 hours to dry (more than likely 12+) and then put the second coat on.



Lastly, while the second coat of primer was drying I started working on installing the track ball to the top of the control panel. Ran into a little issue (bolts were too long), and were pulling the threaded thing you hammer/push into a hole you drill. I had only drilled the depth of that part, not checking to see if the size of the bolt was longer... which it was. I added a couple washers and that fixed the bolt length issue.



I put the second coat of paint on the cabinet and it looks good. (a few spots where the paint ran, due to humidity I think, and will need to be sanded down and repainted in those spots) I did the first coat of paint in the speaker grills, which was more of a pain in the butt than I thought it would be. I can still see spots where the black paint did not cover inside the speaker grills, and will have to put a second coat in there.

Today after work I headed out to pick up some supplies I needed to continue the project. I picked up some black matte material to make the bezel out of (from hobby lobby, 10.99+tax) and 75 ft of wire from radio shack (25 ft red, 25 ft green, 25 ft black, 22 gauge stranded $7.39+tax) and heat shrink (for $4.19+tax).



I used this wire + heat shrink to extend the wire from my marquee lights to my computer. I may end up having to buy more wire, I went with 22 gauge because 22-18 gauge fit the quick disconnects that I purchased (as well as the ones that came with the marquee lights). I mathematically figured out what I thought would be the best spacing for the distance (height and width) of the marquee. I decided on starting the first one 2.5" from the side, and each one after that 3 1/8", with the last one being 2.5" from the other side. Working confined to the marquee hole was a little annoying, and I did not have a small enough bit for the screws which complicated things a little bit. I started marking where I thought the top of the lights should be (by holding them up), and measured the distances. After that I used a little larger bit (the same size as the screw) to start a little hole and screwed in the screws by hand from that point. I think it looks good.



I brought my PC down stairs and plugged the molex adapter into the power supply and tested it out.





Since I don't have a marquee yet, I held up a piece of paper the size of the marquee and it seems to have universal lighting across. I really need to think of what to decorate the machine with, and find someone to photoshop the stuff. (I'm a programmer, I don't do artwork!). I ended up calling some glass places today for quotes on greylite #14 glass, tempered to 29"x23" (ish), I don't think the front of my cab is exactly square.... so we may need to get the glass cut a little wonky (I think for example one side the glass height may be 23", then the bottom right side it may be 22 7/8" or something.


Picture of the quarter round.



Took 3 pieces of felt to show 0% light through the speaker grills. I cut them in half so it took 3 sheets to cover 2 speaker grills. Tested putting the speakers on top of the speaker grills. The angle that the board comes down is sharp enough that I can put the speakers directly on the grills and not have them interfere with the marquee. Pretty awesome. Still need an idea for the control panel/marquee.... and sideart some time down the line (least essential for functionality, but will have side art at some point)

I also ordered a Belkin Smart Powerstrip/surge protector for $30. When using this, when I power on the PC, it will turn the TV on and the speakers. This reminds me, I do need to figure out where I want to run the switch to turn the pc on, on the cab. I'm sure I'll find a way to hide it somewhere on the control panel, as I really don't want to open the coin door every time I want to play.

[Minions]

 It's been quite annoying attempting to get the glass I want. Apparently there is some remaining but it's going to cost me a lot more than I want to spend to get that kind of glass. (Apparently they have half a sheet left and they have a minimum $100 order requirement since they normally don't sell to individuals, then tack on the shipping which is 20+). I alternatively could go with darker glass they sell which I got a quote for $60 from a local glass place that would order it through that same vendor. Look's like I'm going to be trying to find an other alternative for glass, perhaps some self tinting stuff, or call some local tinting places that do car windows and see what their prices would be for a single piece.

As far as work on the cab as gone, I added a couple blocks of wood on the black of the speaker shelf to hold the speakers. I will also be adding some velcro to them to keep them in place. I just need to go purchase the velcro.



I also added the T-Molding to the edges of the cab, and to the top, and bottom, of the control panel.



Most of my time however, has been spent wiring the buttons and joysticks. Really makes me wish I bought some better wire strippers (I definitely felt it the next morning) mainly the crimping. It was rather painless.... er should I say, easy to do and pretty strait forward. Here is half way through the wiring process.



The whole process took a few hours. Ended up running out of wire or I would have had it done. Luckily we had some other wire on hand (a lot larger, still worked out) and finished wiring the next day.

After finishing wiring



As you can see the trackball and spinner are still not installed. They are usb and don't need to be wired so I can install them at any time. I still have to remove all of these when I finally get a control panel overlay made. It will be annoying but really won't be that bad. I can just pop off the switches, remove the buttons, add the overlay/plexiglass, pop the buttons back in and pop the switches back on. The wires are basically labeled as you can read on the ipac where they go to.

After wiring all of this up (and daisy chaining the grounds) I wanted to wire up the coin door. Went out and checked some automotive places (at the recomendation of some old threads on byoac.com) but found only one of the automotive places carried the LED's I wanted, and it was a huge 15~ led (or 4 led) ones and were about $16 for 2 bulbs. In addition to that they wanted another $10 for the socket for the thing..... that means it would have cost me $36 to light up the coin door. I said **** that and went online to http://www.superbrightleds.com and ordered a couple red 6 led wedge lights which cost me $8.79 shipped. Ebayed a socket which would work (worked perfect actually) and it cost me $4.86 shipped for 2. So I got them for roughly $14 online. The socet had a V bracket which slipped over a metal piece above the hole for the light. The lights were small enough (I measured before I ordered) and they actually go inside the reject button. The outcome is....





Here is the top of the CP, you can see the reject buttons when they are not lit for comparison



Pictures don't really do it justice, but yeah it looks great. These I wired to the extra molex added from the marquee adapter. I actually pulled the pins out of the molex, fit the wire inside those pins, then pushed them back into the plastic piece of the molex connector. Doing this allows me to still use the molex connector if needed.

I also spliced into the coin button wires I had run on the control panel, and soldered the wires so I could run a wire to the switch on the coin door on each side. I also spliced into one of the ground wires and ran a wire down to ground that switch as well.



As you can see the wiring up top is for the lights, and the bottom is the switches that trigger a credit when a quarter passes. I had wondered why the prongs on the back of one of my coin mechs was bent up. Found the answer for why that was today. When I added the quick disconnects (which I had to bum from my dad, these are actually much larger than the ones needed for the regular buttons) they would not clear the door of the cab. The prong on the switches barely clear the door. So the solution for this is to bend the prong up, and put the quick disconnect on vertically. Pretty funny, I guess the actually cab these mechs came from had the same issue, perhaps it is a common thing.

You can see the bent prong/vertical quick disconnect in this picture



Also turns out the size of the prongs for the quick disconnects was not the only difference. After wiring all of these up and testing all the buttons (which worked fine) I started up maximus arcade for some arcade action. And..... nothing. Maximus would not do anything. Joystick movements did not do anything, none of the buttons did anything. So I hit the keyboard arrows. This did nothing as well. So I'm going what the hell? I tested all the buttons in Winipac (a program to test ipac/button mappings) and it tested fine. (part way through the wiring it worked fine as well), so I threw a quarter in the coin door. This caused the coin button to light up.... and..... stay lit. I checked which prong I wired and it was the same as all the other buttons. I swapped it with the other prong that none of the other switches used.... and it worked. Turns out the prongs are switched on the coin doors older switch. Once I changed this, Maximus arcade worked fine. Pretty weird that pretty much disabled maximus arcade, but it told me I had a problem. Glad it got remedied, cause I was worried for a few minutes.

Overall quite a bit done, moreso I played a few games on my computer screen I put in the cab temporarily. (I can't carry that TV up on my own... its seriously like 90 lbs + bulky) plus I need to move the cab around to mess with wiring and such. Once I get everything situated I can add the TV and finally cut the bezel. (Hopefully I don't mess it up, not exactly sure what to do/expect)

I also need to wire up a power switch for the computer to somewhere (likely under the control panel, or perhaps somewhere else, to turn the PC on. I also want to install some switches on the coin buttons on the CP, so I can enable/disable them when I want. Lot's of work still to do, I really need to figure out what I want to decorate this cab with, at least for a marquee/control panel. Side art can be delayed, those other two need to be done/printed/made soon.

This post is what I got done the past few days, the other two were from 3-27-11 through today. Still lots of work to do.

[DaOld Man]

Looking good!
Just a note: You can get hammered paint (I think Walmart has it), that will make your coin door look like the original paint.

[Minions]

Thanks for the tip, I will look into that.

[scream1973]

Looking good.. I built a similar style UAII but with the drawer ( i do like without better however) .. oh well.
I picked up a piece of Graylight 14 tempered glass at 26 7/8 x 24 at a local glass shop for 25.00

[Minions]

All my local shops, and calling the vendor, told me Graylite#14 is no longer being made due to lack of demand/economic conditions. So I'm currently trying to find an alternative.