Super Derpcade Part Deux: Chump-win Edition

[404]

Amazing what you can do with mostly scrap wood. 

I did this one for the lawls and its actually looking decent. With the exception of the plexi , paint and joystick, this unit is almost done. Only the joystick top speaker area and the back has any new wood.

Everything except for the darker MDF is just scraps i had laying around. the bottom is made out of some thick particle board that i found at the construction site a block or so away where they are building new houses.  Looks like it was used for some cheap laminate counter top. Last pic below shows the 'beauty' of the hoodrat countertop. The PC inside is that i worked on in my polishing the turd thread. I never thought this was actually going to pan out considering my terrible luck.

My original plan was to create a bartop that would allow me to slide the entire assembled PC point of sales unit into it without issues but that didn't pan out. I still have the monitor hanging by 4 wood screws. The monitor casing and glass weighs a ton so I'm going to have to use carriage bolts to hold that thing steady. I also have a bunch of temp screws on the outside that i need to remove and fill in those holes.

I really wanted to continue the theme of assembling the unit with scrap parts but i still need a few other bits and pieces. I found a pretty busted up chinese controller that i may use as an encoder. I may even make one of these IPP diode arrays just for the lawls/curiosity. I found some carriage bolts to hold the monitor assembly but I'm missing one. I have a spare joystick but its one of those old happ supers that has a pretty worn out gate. Still need plexi and I'm debating on what coating i should throw on this. If i could only find some cheap, durable vinyl, i'd throw it on there.

obligatory crappy cell phone pics.

[404]

doesn't seem to be any interest in seeing yet another weecade but just a small update anyway.

drilled out the holes in the speaker panels and got some cheapo usb powered speakers to put on it. when i finally managed to crack open the speaker cases i found some tiny 2 inch speakers inside. oh well. used them anyway.



I also had to make a custom molex harness for the hard drive. the board uses a floppy drive style connector with some of the connections swapped. in case i wanted to add a CF card and a hard drive at the same time, i opted to make a cable with 3 plugs. 2 molex and one floppy style connector.



my next dilema is that the power plug on this board sticks out quite a bit and will interfere with a joystick. I'm going to have to either relocate this or use a pretty slim form factor joystick like a sanwa.

[Louis Tully]

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[404]

No way! I'm "sub'd" as they say, for this one. You won the interesting tagline contest with your badass title. That is going on the marquee yeah? I mean, sure there are lots of weecades but at least you're building it. Threads based on kits make me think of Stuart from MadTV.

"Look what I can glue!"

MadTV was awesome. better than SNL IMO. 

Hard to blame people that opt for kits though. If there was a small, single player kit that wasn't so wide, I would probably buy it too.

I picked the tag line as just a joke. I honestly never thought of the design aspect of the arcade at all. I never thought i would never get this far.

The derp in derpcade is just for laughs. This is my second derpcade. The first one failed and is in a landfill somewhere.   The Chump-win is derived from wrestler The Iron Sheik who pronounces champion as chump-win. Put it all together and it sounds like some sort of street fighter parody. I've only now been thinking about a theme of some kind. If could only find some scraps of black vinyl and 1/2" t-molding, I'd put that on there as opposed to painting. Would look 100x cleaner and would probably look like it was made by someone competent.

  <---- Can you... Turn that sumbitch sideways?

Unfortunately no. The monitor and board come from an awkward shaped point of sale unit. The monitor on this unit is arguably the widest 15" 4:3 monitor i have ever seen. it's length of the board is almost as long as a ATX motherboard.  the power supply and hard drive must be mounted on the back panel of the monitor. There just isn't any space for them anywhere else. very very tight fit for everything. the space between the side panels of the cab and the monitor is just a 1/2" on each side.

I have an old happ super joystick and some buttons here. I was going to continue the tradition of this build by keeping everything from second hand parts and scrap but now I'm going to have to buy a slim balltop joystick and possibly short barrel buttons.

What kind of layout are you planning for the ole control panel? I used to think everything needed 6 buttons. Now I think 3... maybe 4 is the sweet spot.

The bartop will probably be 6 buttons. Mainly because the thing has issues with some games and works great with others.  It just barely plays cps games like street fighter II but lags on games you would normally think should work just fine (double dragon for example: ~20fps) You can read up on some of the strange issues i have had with this PC at the Polishing A Turd: Trying To Get A Old PC To Run Mame Faster thread. This entire project was a gag and was never really supposed to go anywhere. At the same time, I'm not just going to throw away the pc and monitor combo because it doesn't play some games even if it is old 1998 technology. I can't separate the monitor from the PC either because it uses some custom riser card for the video. I never thought much about using this on a regular basis either so if someone in the family or a friend can find some enjoyment from it, I'd be inclined to give it to them.

Those speaker holes are perfect btw. 

I used a dremel with a small bit and the router attachment to keep the bit level. I'm going to have to drill bigger holes the inner-most area as i noticed that the speaker sound is bouncing back into the cab quite a bit.

This build is kicking ass so far. I still think your cabaret cab wasn't a total loss.

I still have the cabaret and will work on it a bit more as soon as i can find someone that has a table saw capable of cutting good straight lines at angles. I want the monitor/control panel board cutout beveled so that everything is one continuous piece with a nice bevel leading into the monitor.

[Louis Tully]

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[blashyrk]

I really miss madTV,  and i couldn't agree more , madTv was so much better than snl.

[Drnick]

Can you not desolder the power connector and then move it 

[404]

MadTV was awesome. better than SNL IMO. 

PM me your address and I'll send you some 1/2 t-molding, it's black. I bought too much for my last project and I can spare a bit. How much do you need?

I really appreciate the generous offer but I think i'm starting to debate whether i should hold off on putting bells and whistles on this one now. Things didn't turn out as well as i had hoped yesterday.

A little update for yesterday. I removed the glass from the lcd yesterday. sliced up my finger good. Having the glass and then a piece of plexi would have forced me to push the joystick panel further out. There was also a strange white residue on the bottom right of the glass. You couldn't see it during gameplay but it was driving me nuts.

I also tried  to expand the speaker holes a bit because you can barely hear the sound through the small holes i drilled with the dremel. Bad idea, i mauled up the holes pretty badly using a drill and a brand new drill bit. Instead of cutting, the new bit really tore into this mdf. I tried repairing some portions of it with some water putty but i doubt this is going to look as decent as it did. 

I also carved out a hole for an IEC connector. It looked amazing. Then i realized i have no choice but to relocate the motherboard and it would interfere with the connector. So now i have this big hole in one piece of wood that i use for the bottom.

Can you not desolder the power connector and then move it 

I thought of it. but i wanted to do that as a last resort.  My idea is as follows:



I'm going to move the board over as far to the left and back as i can (red arrows), running the cable underneath the board. I may use the farthest left side of the joystick panel for some simple, small admin buttons if they don't interfere. Right now i just have the board sitting on cut shafts from a ballpoint pen so what I'm going to do is cut new ones so that it sits as low as it possibly can without the board touching the bottom wood panel. This should help some of the possible issues with a sanwa or zippy stick hitting the power connector. If it still interferes with the joystick than I will just rip the barrel connectors off and solder the power supply directly to the board and end this madness.

The rocker switch in green is actually the power button. I'm going to have to carefully remove it and solder a momentary switch on there.

[404]

The black cloud strikes again!

so i took the cab apart. painted the inside, got it all nice and neat to the point where i actually liked the way it came out.

Reassembled the cab and fired it on. Now i get this




Can't really do anything about the monitor as the connector for the board and monitor are custom. The cab was build around the odd specs of both the monitor and board so the whole thing is now trash.

So another one bites the dust. I'm now officially 0-4 in making a mame cab. I'm done with this for now.

[amendonz]

Mad tv was awful. 10 second jokes stretched into 5 minute sketches. "he look like a man, he look like a man, he look ....... Like a man" repeat x 100. Terrible ---steaming pile of meadow muffin---.


Sweet cab btw.

[404]

Mad tv was awful. 10 second jokes stretched into 5 minute sketches. "he look like a man, he look like a man, he look ....... Like a man" repeat x 100. Terrible ---steaming pile of meadow muffin---.


Sweet cab btw.

when you see this on white hipster SNL, please let me know

[jdbailey1206]

The black cloud strikes again!

so i took the cab apart. painted the inside, got it all nice and neat to the point where i actually liked the way it came out.

Reassembled the cab and fired it on. Now i get this




Can't really do anything about the monitor as the connector for the board and monitor are custom. The cab was build around the odd specs of both the monitor and board so the whole thing is now trash.

So another one bites the dust. I'm now officially 0-4 in making a mame cab. I'm done with this for now.

Awesome!  Glad you see you back at it 404!  MadTV was great.  After the 90's I gave up on SNL.  Still can't get back into it. 

It almost looks like you dropped your monitor.  You also said you used wood screws on the monitor.  I'm thinking you might have ruptured something internally.  It would be awesome if we could get a shot of where you placed the screws. 

Hope to see more in the future.   

[404]

Awesome!  Glad you see you back at it 404!  MadTV was great.  After the 90's I gave up on SNL.  Still can't get back into it. 

It almost looks like you dropped your monitor.  You also said you used wood screws on the monitor.  I'm thinking you might have ruptured something internally.  It would be awesome if we could get a shot of where you placed the screws. 

Hope to see more in the future.   

The monitor couldn't have been dropped because there was no way to remove it once i actually mounted it. It was in the cab the whole time. I literally had to wrap up the monitor in paper when i painted the sides.

I'll get some pics of the mount tomorrow when there is a bit more sunlight here. It will give you a much better idea of why and how i mounted it the way i did. Basically the mount that is used is a metal shielding that separated the monitor from the motherboard that was originally mounted behind it.

I did one last check on the motherboard today before i ripped everything apart. there seems to be an asic on the board that is scolding hot. It only gets hot when i have the monitor riser card attached. Still have no idea how that shorted out. I literally tested the rig out just a few days before i painted it.

I have some small itx boards here but i don't have a spare monitor. Don't really think its worth getting one just for a crappy looking cab made of scrap.

[jaharr01]

Hey buddy I got a spare 17" 4:3 sitting here I'll throw at you cheap and I have a p4 hyper thread HP small form factor with like a gig of ram.I'll sell you one or the other or both. i'll take 25 plus $10 shipping for the monitor with no stand. I 'll like $60 shipped for the computer. Probably a little cheaper if I can not ship the case and take it all apart.

[404]

Hey buddy I got a spare 17" 4:3 sitting here I'll throw at you cheap and I have a p4 hyper thread HP small form factor with like a gig of ram.I'll sell you one or the other or both. i'll take 25 plus $10 shipping for the monitor with no stand. I 'll like $60 shipped for the computer. Probably a little cheaper if I can not ship the case and take it all apart.

thanks but I have tons of PC's laying around here already. most of them dual core units. Just no monitors. The only reason why i even bothered with this project was because i just didn't want to see this old PC just sit here and die a slow death. Instead, i killed it quickly. 

Don't think its worth continuing. The cab is made purely of scrap and its less than perfect.

[Louis Tully]

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[404]

Damn, man. Sorry to hear about you bad luck again. That sucks. Don't throw it in just yet. Maybe 3rd time's the charm?

Lucky. I've got a bunch of PCs lying around but their old single core P4s near or right at the 3GHz area. 

I'm already 0-4 on building a cab.  5th times a charm?

do any of those units support socket 775 pentium D processors?

[Louis Tully]

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[404]

both of them look like they run standard ddr1 so the likelyhood of them running a pentium D is slim to none. I may have some celeron D units (64 bit single core as opposed to the 64 bit dual core Pentium D) and i have tons of sticks of 512mb ddr1 if you want to fill up those units with ram. If you want them, just pm me your shipping address.