LeapinLew: Bartop Cabinet - Completed!

[leapinlew]

Hey Leap,

You should rotate your joysticks 90 degrees. It will give a little bit more room to spread the buttons out and means you can bring the reverse button a little closer to the joystick.

Look vey nice!

Thanks for the tips spacies - I appreciate it. I played around with the joystick both ways and settled on the format - hopefully it works. The good news is with these CP's being so small - it's not that big of a deal to have to rework it.

[leapinlew]

I finally finished painting. It's proving to be my least favorite aspect of working on cabinets. I'm happy with this paint job overall, it just takes so long. It would take me approximately 30 minutes to paint the cabinet (including clean up) and I'd have to wait a full day to do anything else on it.

Now on to the electrical work! I purchased a 13" flourescent at Wal-mart for $8, I hacked some existing speakers I had, and I installed an exhaust fan. Here are some pictures of the tight fit in the marquee area:


I secured the bulbs with some velcro and a couple screws. I secured the speakers with some screws. There is some black cloth that will hopefully filter some of the light coming through the speaker holes.

Here is a shot of the back and the exhaust fan:

I actually had to install this fan twice. I installed it incorrectly the first time and it was pulling air in instead of pulling it out. I thought I could switch the ground/positive and have it work in reverse but it didn't work. I had to disassemble the top portion of the cab to fix it. It's working now. The fan has 4 LED's in it and glows red, but you can hardly see it since the light from the flourescent lights up the marquee compartment.

Here is a shot of the cabinet partially installed with everything. You'll see the laptop on the base. I've removed as much from it as I can. I've pulled the battery, most of the case, and the screen. Knocked out about 3lbs.


I had some of these disco LED's leftover from my jukebox project. For the hell of it, I attached them to the bottom of this cabinet.

They create a glowing effect under the cabinet. It may be something that gets on my nerves later and I disable, but it has a pretty cool wow factor...

And here is a shot of the back. I attached it with some hinges and I'm trying to decide how I intend to lock it shut.


I probably won't get to work on it tomorrow. None of my controls came in this weekend.    I'll try to have it done by thanksgiving so I can focus on the move.

[theCoder]

Great progress.  This project is cruz'n along.

[javeryh]

Awesome progress!!  You are flying through this one.  I wish I had the ability to take apart a laptop like that (and have it still work  ).  I do have a small suggestion though - I would take those hinges off of the back and spraypaint them black to match.  It will take about 30 seconds to paint on each side (plus drying time) and I think it would be worth it.

Keep up the great work!!

[Donkey_Kong]

Looking sweet lew!   

I'm gonna make one of these someday and urs will probably be my model. I might have to up-size just a hair though to compensate for my fat fingered clumsiness.

[leapinlew]

Thanks for the kind words Donkey_Kong!

Javeryh: The hinges.... now you have me staring at them. I'm thinking I'm going to keep them metal though - I'm going to add some metal accents and hopefully it turns out. The handles on the side are keeping their metal look. Thanks for the suggestions though!

[leapinlew]

Not too much to report - waiting on DiveMaster to send me the Ipac. I installed the kickplate (which looks really cool) and the marquee.

The whole idea of painting it apart and putting it all together isn't without it's drawbacks. Just adding the thickness of the paint makes it a pain in the ass to put back together at some points. So, I'll probably add the rest of the t-molding once I do touch up paint. It's really hard not to put the t-molding on though! It cleans up the machine so much - you just want to put it on as soon as you can!

Some of the tedious crap I've done and didn't document:
Mount sound controls
Install Marquee
setup computer
soldered new power button on the laptop

Here are a few shots of where I am. I think I'll have to put it down till after the holidays. I need to give it a good cleaning and a final installation.


Overview shot of it with the overlay just laying on it.


Not a real clear shot - but check out the kickplate! It turned out real nice. You can just barely see the red glow underneath from the LED's.


The T-molding is on the top back (I couldn't stand not having any t-molding on. As for the handles.... while I can carry it around fine with the handles - I'm not sure that they are doing it for me asthetically. They are staying on the machine at this point, but I'm wondering how it'll all look said and done.

Have a good Thanksgiving, and thanks for reading!

[theCoder]

Why not just put one of the handles on the back, top, center.

Do me a favor and weigh it when you are done.  Hopefully it will be light enough to carry with just one handle.

[quarterback]

That's looking sweet LLew!     

[leapinlew]

Why not just put one of the handles on the back, top, center.

Do me a favor and weigh it when you are done.  Hopefully it will be light enough to carry with just one handle.

No problem. I plan on weighing it. It'll definetly be heavier than the party box....

I'm hoping to be able to comfortable move it to the car and in and out of the house by myself. This cabinet is going to Virginia with me. I also want it to be heavy enough to stay put while playing a game of Robotron. That game has a way of pissing me off - this machine will also need to be able to take a punch.

The handles.... yeah, I'm not sure what to think about them. On the back would've been more asthetically pleasing. The handles looked good on the jukebox, so I thought they might look good on the arcade. At this point, I'm not going to remove them because I'd have to fill holes.

[mlyday]

Hey  LeapinLew,

Im starting a bartop soon and am having a hard time figuring out how big I should make it.  I like the size of yours,  what are the dimensions?

Mark

[leapinlew]

Hey  LeapinLew,

Im starting a bartop soon and am having a hard time figuring out how big I should make it.  I like the size of yours,  what are the dimensions?

Mark

Hi Mark,

First off - get your equipment together. Your monitor, computer and controls. Decide what games you want to play. If you want to play 2 players simultaneously - you'll need at least a 24" wide cabinet (and thats still a little tight for 2 adults. I can give you the measurements to my machine when I get home, but it's made specifically for my computer and monitor. I'm using a 17" LCD. The control panel is 16" x 7" with 16" x 6" usable. So, I know the unit is only 17.5" wide (including the 3/4" MDF). The depth is probably around 22", but I'll double check.

Let me know if you want more specific measurements.

[mlyday]

LeapinLew,

I was kinda looking for the hieght and Depth.  It is going to be just a one player CP and will be using and 14.1" laptop as the guts.

I have tried a few cardboard cut outs to try and get the dimmensions right, but something just seems "Off".  I cant seem to put my finger on it.

I had allready decided on on control panel width of 16, and that seems "right".   It looks like from the picture with the template sitting on the 2x4 sheet of MDF that its about 24" high.

I know a couple of other people have expressed interest in your design so maybe all the mesurment might be nice.

Its looking pretty good.

Mark

[spacies]

Hey Lew,

Looking great.

I would ditch the handles. Wouldn't you be able to carry from the rear and put your hands here:



Just a thought?

Totally dig the shape!

[leapinlew]

Yeah, I'm starting to regret the handles too...

If I end up having to retouch up the paint - I'll probably pull the handles. Let me see how it all comes together. Thanks for the suggestion...

[theCoder]

From the picture on the previous post, it looks like you marquee is going to restrict your view of the top of the LCD.  Tell me this is just an illusion.

Regarding weight, my guess would be somewhere between 30 - 33 pounds.

If you are considering taking the handles off, I would recommend doing it this weekend.  You still have all the supplies handy.  Doing it 6 months from now will be a major pain.

Looks nice.

[leapinlew]

From the picture on the previous post, it looks like you marquee is going to restrict your view of the top of the LCD.  Tell me this is just an illusion.

Regarding weight, my guess would be somewhere between 30 - 33 pounds.

If you are considering taking the handles off, I would recommend doing it this weekend.  You still have all the supplies handy.  Doing it 6 months from now will be a major pain.

Looks nice.

Not an illusion... I said something about it almost a week ago:

"in reviewing my design I think I may have made 1 error that could be a happy accident.

You have to be looking at the screen head on or the marquee blocks a portion of the screen. This could be a condition of the marquee not slanting upwards, or perhaps I could've used a 15" LCD, but the only way to see the whole screen is to be eye level with the bartop. You sort of want to be looking directly at a LCD to get the best picture, so it's not all bad - but it's worth considering if you decide to make a bartop. "

it's a design flaw and I wanted others to be aware of it if they wish to copy this design. I don't know what impact this will have on my use of it, but I wanted everyone to be aware of it.

[theCoder]

Not an illusion... I said something about it almost a week ago:

I knew it sounded familiar when I wrote it.  Sorry. 

All you have to do is (I hate hearing recommendations that start off this way) hack off about 3-4 inches of the marquee and move it back; maybe move the fan & repair the hole, and re-cut the t-slot; then a little paint touch up.  How much time could that take?  Sure, you could do it when you move the handles, yea, thats it.  I love this arm chair quarterback stuff.  Easier said than done I know...   

[leapinlew]

Not an illusion... I said something about it almost a week ago:

I knew it sounded familiar when I wrote it.  Sorry. 

All you have to do is (I hate hearing recommendations that start off this way) hack off about 3-4 inches of the marquee and move it back; maybe move the fan & repair the hole, and re-cut the t-slot; then a little paint touch up.  How much time could that take?  Sure, you could do it when you move the handles, yea, thats it.  I love this arm chair quarterback stuff.  Easier said than done I know...   

Your making good sense. Maybe the pictures are worse than how it really will be, or maybe not. I have a potential solution that involves using a 15" LCD if needed to help with the angle. Unfortunately, I don't know if I have the time for this, if I could redo it - I surely would move the marquee back a bit. It has a bit of extra overhang. Honestly, all I could give it is another 2 inches before the fan butts up to the speakers. Best bet would be to create new sides with a higher marquee sloping upwards.

Let me see how this works out.... hopefully it'll work for me for the next couple years.

[leapinlew]

it looks like you marquee is going to restrict your view of the top of the LCD. 

To clarify - it restricts your view if your standing above it. If your looking directly at it - you see everything fine.

Not the ideal situation really.

[theCoder]

Let me see how this works out.... hopefully it'll work for me for the next couple years.

And if not, you have, what, 3 weeks into this?  Very nice & fast build.  Think about how much faster and better the next one will be.  I am already thinking of ways to make my current project even better if I were to ever make another driving cab.  Oh, the important lessons of life.

[leapinlew]

Moving on!

I installed some excess plexi over the kickplate. I like the kickplate area so much - I wanted to protect it and it really matches the CP. I cut the artwork for the CP and put plexi over it. I have temporary buttons in it for now - the final buttons will be all red. There is one last peice of t-molding to install across the bottom of the CP.


There will be red balltop joysticks where the holes are now.



TheCoder: If you look at this pic - this will be the angle you will have to play this box at. Not ideal, as I would like to be standing above it looking downward, but not something I want to fix now.

[leapinlew]

I did a few things today.

First thing was I decided to switch computers. I have a spare 1.4ghz p4 that I decided to use instead of the laptop. The laptop worked fine for the classics, but since I have such a nice Neo Geo layout - I wanted to play those games. Also, the desktop had a much larger hard drive in it to hold dragons lair and some other emulators (if I can get them to work).

So, I configured the new computer and added Neo Geo games to the game list. I setup XP to hide as much as possible.

I removed the computer and tried several mounting methods. What seems to work best is to mount the power supply and hard drive on the base and the motherboard on the back panel. Here is what it looks like:


You can see from this shot that the Power Supply doesn't reach to the power connector on the motherboard. This is as low as I can mount the motherboard, so I'm going to recut a new back panel tomorrow and hinge it on the side instead of the top.

The viewing angle of the monitor has been slightly bothering me and I found what I think is a good fix for it. I lowered the monitor mount about 2.5" and it allows a much better viewing of the monitor. Here is a shot from my eye level looking down at the arcade as I would use it:


As you can see.... much better. I think this is very playable. I thought the monitor sitting lower in the cab would be more of an issue, but it works out very well.

After tomorrow - I should be able to order my dark plexi and by next weekend my ipac should be in and I can get all the controls in and mark this project complete...

[leapinlew]

Holy crap - fitting everything in this cabinet is proving to be a nightmare. I'm getting concerned about heat at this point... I'm going to pop another fan in the floor to vent air into the cab. That combined with the fan venting air out of the cab and hopefully I'll be ok.

I started to put it all together. Holy cow - lots of excess wire making things tight in here:


I squished everything inside. Even once I clean it up - it'll be a mess. Here I am making sure everything works after I mounted the motherboard:


And here is where I'm at today - everything is working ok except (and there is always something isn't there?) the computer wants a keyboard attached before it will boot up. Looking in the bios I see no way to not halt on erros. I'll do some more digging, but I may have to strap a keyboard on the back if it doesn't work.

I'm using GameCreatures Blue layout he created for Mala. It looks great. I don't know where he's been - but he is a great artist.

Check out the red ball top joysticks! They are from Tornado Terry. They are awesome. They mount right in my supers and have a great feel to him. I sent him a few emails back and forth. He's a really great guy to work with - I recommend you check him out if your needing anything he's selling.

I'm putting it up for today. I just need to wire up the CP and clean up the wiring.

[theCoder]

The problem you are having with the keyboard should go away when you plug in an IPac.  It looks like a keyboard to the operating system.

I can relate to the tight spot you are in cramming in all the components into your box.  Remember the fun I had on the Partybox project.  I hope I never have a switch or LED go out!

Looks like you are going to finish this think before your move.  Great job.

[leapinlew]

Cleaned up the wiring today -

I ordered a 1 foot SVGA and two 1 foot power cables from www.national-tech.com to remove about 15 foot of cabling from inside. Hopefully both the cables and the ipac and buttons show up sometime this week so I can finish it!

I created a bezel out of some left over construction paper. My actual viewing surface is 16" x 13.25".

I also mounted the speaker grills.

As for the weight - I'm thinking it'll weigh in around 50lbs. I've carried around and it can't be too far off from 50lbs.

[javeryh]

WOW!!! This thing is amazing.  I can't believe you put it all together so fast.  I'm also glad you were able to fix the monitor viewing problem you seemed to be having. 

How does the Dell LCD look?  I'm ordering a 19" one this week or my vertical cab - I've never used an LCD for an arcade monitor and I'm a little worried it won't look "authentic."  I'm not a perfectionist or anything and no one who plays will ever notice but I'd still like it to look arcade-like.

Also, what do the 4 face buttons do?

Looks great!!  I hope the rest of the parts get there soon...

[leapinlew]

The keyboard issue has been resolved! The Ipac uses USB and the computer wants a PS2 keyboard or it won't boot. The computer is a compaq and compaq has a service pack available here: http://forums1.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/bizsupport/questionanswer.do?threadId=1013669&admit=-682735245+1164843609917+28353475. Install that from a boot disc and it bypasses the press F1 keyboard error.

I got the ipac/joysticks today. I will take pictures shortly of the completed project.

[theCoder]

I created a bezel out of some left over construction paper...

Did you take any pictures?  How does it look?

[Donkey_Kong]

The keyboard issue has been resolved! The Ipac uses USB and the computer wants a PS2 keyboard or it won't boot. The computer is a compaq and compaq has a service pack available here: http://forums1.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/bizsupport/questionanswer.do?threadId=1013669&admit=-682735245+1164843609917+28353475. Install that from a boot disc and it bypasses the press F1 keyboard error.

I got the ipac/joysticks today. I will take pictures shortly of the completed project.

How's she runnin' Lew?

Oh and what do ya mean your sticks are coming? don't you have sticks or are you trying something else?

[Neilyboy]

im interested in more pics from this project as well since im thinking my next project will be a bar-top!!
Neil

[leapinlew]

It's done. Been done for a while, but the move and the holidays really put a damper on picture taking. Not to mention the freak snowstorm that hit the midwest in Decemeber and knocked our power out for a week.

I'm out of town this week, but I'll post some up as soon as I can.

The joysticks I had coming were replacement tops for my supers. I went with some red balltops on my supers - they look really good.

[Neilyboy]

awesome! so you must live around me here in central il too hehe.. we got hit with the powerouttages as well.. anyway glad to hear its complete I love bartops.. I need to finish my upright so I can start on a bartop.

Neil

[leapinlew]

Ta Da! All done!

I finished this a while back. Normally these projects are real fun, but I have to admit this one was more of a race against the clock. I highly recommend not building a cab on a tight deadline with tons of things going on in your life!

I didn't officially weigh it, but it has to weigh around 50-60lbs. It's heavy, but manageable. This cabinet will be travelling with me across the country to my new job. Here are some shots:






The smoked plexi does such a great job. I recommend it for almost every arcade.


Here is a shot of the CP. I placed the reverse button a little further than normal because it felt right during mockup. While it's still very playable, I wish I listened to spacies and put it as close as possible to the joystick. Minor regret, but I think it's worth mentioning if you plan on building a defender layout.


These speaker covers are really just 120mm fan grills.


round supers from Tornado Terry. Very nice!




The kickplate turned out real nice. You can also see the red LED's underneath.

Thanks for looking!

[theCoder]

Now that you've had some time with it, how does it play?  The CP turned out nice.  Does it work well with stargate?

Nice job.

[leapinlew]

Now that you've had some time with it, how does it play?  The CP turned out nice.  Does it work well with stargate?

Nice job.

It plays great.... it's me who can't play stargate! I'm really liking the balltop supers, they seem to respond better than my bat top supers.

[MameMaster!]

Really nice job!......I like how you kept the depth down.

I had considered cutting down my bar top to make it less deep.....but I really wanted to have my subwoofer enclosed in my DK bartop.

Enjoy your new toy! 

[Donkey_Kong]

Awesome job Lew! Fire off a round of Robotron for me eh? 

Don't ditch the handles man. It gives it a custom built character that I like myself!!

[markrvp]

I just now saw this Lew.  Great job!!

[arcadefever]

nice great looking cab...
how difficult it is to hack a flat screen like that ?