Mameroom UA2 Part Deux

[jlfreund]

In 2006, a friend and I built a pair of UA2 cabinets http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=57847.0 Old and busted picture below.  I added a few extras such as a two player headphone harness, master power switch, volume control, and coin door, but otherwise the design was pretty standard.

The machine always had a lot of problems, and basically went off line after about 2-3 years of service.  First, the minipac would always lose the USB connection to my Win2K machine.  It started off slightly flaky and got worse over time.  The Happ 3" trackball part never really engaged all the axes of movement.  I tried to clean it, but never got it working any better.  The ultimarc joysticks were really bad for Robotron (hard to hit diagonals) and felt kind of tight overall.  The old Dell 21" CRT started to fade.  And the PC became flakier over time until eventually it would not run more than a few minutes.  Other than that, the UA2 cabinet itself still basically looks brand new!

I gutted the cabinet and plan to replace everything with better stuff: new panel, controller IC, new computer, Happ rotaries, push-pull spinner, arcade guns, Ultimarc trackball, dedicated 4way, and a Makvision 29" trisync.  The refurb is going to cost more than the original

[jlfreund]

I spent a little time researching how to maximize graphics but minimize power consumption and fans, and ended up picking this Zotac GeForce 9300 ITX Wifi motherboard.  I read some reviews and it seems this one has the best onboard graphics for a mini and it should let you take your pick of Socket 775 CPU's (I got an Intel E6500 dual core 2.93, 65W).  

For power, I have a slim Apema ITX AP250W that fits in a Shuttle case I got at WierdStuff.  That plus the CPU fan are the only two fans in the box, and I plan to leave the cover off for better airflow.  

Laptop drives are a great choice for mame machines since they're designed for tougher environments, use much less power, and produce less noise.

The computer is setup with XP and I finished installing all the software, including the latest MAME, Daphne stuff, Mala, a PC game, and settings and other data from my old hard drive.  During the setup, I had a good opportunity to burn in the computer and it's very solid.  I'm happy with the features and performance of the Zotac.  I haven't stressed the graphics too much yet, but I've been able to run everything from my old computer with no problem.

[drventure]

The refurb is going to cost more than the original

Isn't that the way it always is! 

The list looks pretty good to me. What kind of Ultimarc sticks did you have that were flaky? Other than a little sticking sometimes, my u360's have worked great. Just wondering.

[patm95]

I enjoyed reading your original post on how you built the cabinet.  Did u decide to use XP because you basically already had it configured the way you wanted it?  Is there other advantages to using XP with mame?

[jlfreund]

I enjoyed reading your original post on how you built the cabinet.  Did u decide to use XP because you basically already had it configured the way you wanted it?  Is there other advantages to using XP with mame?

The list looks pretty good to me. What kind of Ultimarc sticks did you have that were flaky? Other than a little sticking sometimes, my u360's have worked great. Just wondering.

Magstick Plus (4/8 switchable from top) which uses a circular restrictor.  I guess the only way to get good diagonals is to use a square restrictor or use the analog ultrastick which somehow downloads a "map" to the stick (when you switch games?) to program the directions.

Regarding XP: I don't think the version of Windows should make much difference.  I actually tried Vista first but had a lot of problems with my network and doing windows update on that one.  The only other option (from my library of Windows CD's) was XP and it works great.

[jlfreund]

I have 2 layers of plywood for a template and drill subsurface, a sheet of 1/8" acrylic cut to size, and the rest of the material and controls ready to go, so this weekend I worked on the CP layout.

After wasting a lot of time searching for printable joystick and button templates, and finding lots of obsolete VSD files (incompatible with modern viewers) and JPG images that don't scale to my printer from any print program, I finally found a word doc (attached) that prints perfectly to scale to my HP printer with no adjustments.

My new design is basically the same as the old design except:
1) Top row of buttons spread out more since the new UA2 CP is (unfortunately) seemingly unnecessarily about 4" wider than the old design from 4 years ago.
2) Added a dedicated 4 way in the center of the panel.  It probably doesn't need it's own dedicated action buttons since I can reuse P2 action buttons relatively easily.  Actually, I think most games that use 4 way + buttons should work great with 8 way.
3) Sticks are about 15" apart instead of 14" from old panel.

I'm pretty happy with the old CP layout, but on the new one, I'm a little unhappy about the extra unused space on the left and right sides.  I'm reluctant to spread out the sticks anymore to take advantage of the extra space because I want to optimize for dual stick games (robotron).   Feedback is welcome!

[jlfreund]

MOUNTING MONITOR

It seems like the only option for a nice 4:3 aspect monitor is to go with the Makvision 29".  You can still buy old, used 19" or 20" CRT monitors that are 4:3, but the quality will vary.  That's actually what I was using before, but it was a getting a little burnt in and it was very small by today's standards.  Everything else out there is 16:9 aspect which I presume will look like crap for most arcade games -- especially portrait oriented ones.

I received the Makvision 29" from XArcade.com (excellent service BTW), but had to wait a couple weeks before attempting to install it because it's a two man job to hoist it in place.  My main problem was that my 6 year old UA2 cabinet did not come with holes for the monitor mounting kit.  The Mameroom guys were nice enough to email me a diagram showing where the holes belong, that was easy enough to follow, but because of the precision required and the fact that my cabinet was already assembled, it was very difficult to drill the holes by hand. 

It took me and a buddy 3 hours to measure and drill out the holes and another hour to install the monitor.  Each hole's approximate location was marked with white out, then the exact location pinpointed with an ink pen crosshair on top of that.  Then I would use a succession of smaller to larger drill bits on the hand drill to prevent slippage.  It all worked out pretty well, except one hole was 1/16 outside the tolerance, so I had to dremel a piece of the fastener away to get it to fit.  There is no margin for error because once you drill the hole, I don't think it would be possible to make a correction.

The good news is that the Makvision 29" monitor, the Mameroom UA2 cabinet, and Mameroom monitor mounting kit do indeed fit together perfectly. 

The bad news is that the bezel I ordered from XArcade was inexplicably about 3/4" too narrow for the UA2 cabinet.  Even though it's custom made for XArcade, I find it strange they did not design it to accommodate the popular UA2 cabinet width.  You can always trim it back with an exacto knife, but in my case, I will have to use some kind of black painted plexi or something to fill in the gaps on the left and right side.

The lessons learned are:
1) I think the combination of UA2 and XArcade parts I ordered is as close as you can get to building a nice cabinet from parts on the market, but it's not a perfect solution because a proper bezel does not exist.
2) Make sure your UA2 cabinet has the holes drilled on the inside of the monitor enclosure area, if you ever want to install a Makvision monitor.

I still haven't turned on the beast yet -- I'm afraid once the enclosure is charged, I won't be able to go back there and work anymore.  The safety instructions that come with the manual and even the online YouTube video explaining safety precautions are don't even begin to cover it, in my opinion.  I'm not going to tinker with the monitor until I find proper safety instructions or I'm completely done working on the monitor area of the cabinet.

[jlfreund]

CP BUILD

I'm collapsing a few steps into this one post: drilling the CP top and assembling the pieces, wiring and testing, assembling the CP box, and some preliminary comments about the new controls.

Drilling the CP top was again much more difficult than I anticipated.  My first 1/8" plexi sheet cracked when attempting to use the 1 1/8" hole saw.  In retrospect, I think my problems were:
(a) trying to drill through two layers (plexi+CP top MDF) at once.  This made it difficult to apply the right amount of pressure for each layer and difficult to pull the donut holes out of the hole saw each time
(b) Too much pressure on the plexi caused the crack. 
I ended up asking the professionals (Tap Plastics) to cut the holes for me on the second round and it came out great.

But what I really should have done is figured out how to use the CP layout application provided by MameRoom guys and ordered the CP top + plexi to be pre-cut to my design.  But I didn't trust the layout tool to match the mix of Happ and Ultimarc controls I would be ordering.

Anyway, after routing out the beds for the 3 joysticks, spinner, and trackball, and using an x-acto knife to cut holes in the 17"x35" space scene I printed at the local printer, I had my sandwich of layers and installed the components. 

Wiring also took much longer than expected.  I lost the instructions for the spinner and the Ultimarc  rotary interface didn't come with instructions, so there was a lot of trial and error. 

I also had a lot of problems with the Minipac.  One of the wires is hooked up to TAB which is useless for Mala FE.  Three of the wires just plain did not work.  One more seemed to only output a key on button release (not press).  So that's about 5 keys that didn't work from the Minipac, and I was already behind by 1 key to begin with.  Also, the Ultimarc wiring harness was too short to reach the edges of the UA2 control panel.  It was easy enough to double up some keys that did not need to be used concurrently, but all in all, I had to do a couple dozen solders to lengthen wires and make many of the keys work with more than one control. 

The last two cabinets I built both had problems with the Minipac (losing USB connection and key repeat problems).  The fact that this Minipac is having a different set of problems out of the gate isn't a great sign, but we'll see if it ends up having problems down the road, like the previous ones.

I've spent some time configuring the controls in Mame and so far they all seem to work pretty well, but I haven't tried to do any serious games yet.  My first impression is that the twisting rotaries will be distracting during normal gameplay and the push/pull operation of the GGG spinner is a little difficult to operate.  But I've heard good things about the sensitivity of the spinner for Arkanoid, and I'm looking forward to trying the controls out more, after everything is 100% done.

The next step will be to mod the CP mounting hardware to make it more sturdy (see my other thread on that: http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=72579.msg748113#msg748113)