Bartop - Capcom ITX (Complete)

[Pitman]

Looking to make a single player bartop to play some of the old classics without using a joypad on the pc. Usually pretty ok at anything DIY but with wood my limit is probably cutting out space to fit a sink in so  this will be a bit of a challenge, especially the sides so don't expect perfection








Wood Starting:



The sides came out ok dispite the blunt blade on my jigsaw but whatever jaggies got sorted out with sandpaper.


Computer stuff:






I plan to run xp with hyperspin as the fe, mainly because xp is easy to shell and lite and couple that with the 42GB archive of Hyperspin I have  which is already sorted as all the artwork, lists, videos etc is a pain to sort out.

 The Atom is a dual core 1.6 so hopefully will be ok for most mame up to the 3D stuff as well as browsing hyperspin at lowish res.

Using ITX should also keep the heat and noise well down as well as give me quite a lot of room to manoeuvre inside.

The speakers were a bit of an ebuyer bargain for the money and as they're usb powered also save a bit of space and make hacking them pretty simple.

The cathode is another cheapo ebuyer special, not sure how it will look though at this point.



Couple art Mockups:







Question - Anyone have any tips on getting a gloss fridge like finish off of MDF? i'm pretty ok at the priming and prep but not sure which way to apply the paint, idealy decent sprayer but they cost crazy money.

Also, for the bezel, i just though i'd get some cardboard and score out a square in the middle but i've read some people spray it, is there an easy way to get a square finish using spray on plexi?

[EvilNuff]

I have a dual core atom cpu that I use as a media center pc and hyperspin is too sluggish to use.  I have mala on mine.  Runs most older mame games just fine though.

[Pitman]

oh noes.

I had a little test of hyperspin on it and it seemed fine, 90% of the time and I just turned off a couple of the 'special' options and now it's fine. Were you running a high res?(i.e. above 720p)

[DCsegaDH]

Nice artwork

[Latubi]

Question - Anyone have any tips on getting a gloss fridge like finish off of MDF? i'm pretty ok at the priming and prep but not sure which way to apply the paint, idealy decent sprayer but they cost crazy money.

Maybe check on this page for glossy finish.
http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/construction-tips/83141-how-high-gloss-finishing.html
It used to have pictures few weeks ago 

[Pitman]

Question - Anyone have any tips on getting a gloss fridge like finish off of MDF? i'm pretty ok at the priming and prep but not sure which way to apply the paint, ideally decent sprayer but they cost crazy money.

Maybe check on this page for glossy finish.
http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/construction-tips/83141-how-high-gloss-finishing.html
It used to have pictures few weeks ago 

thanks, in fact that has given me a quite a few idea even without the pics.


Minor update.

Have the Computer stuff now and properly setup.

HyperSpin runs fine on this ITX setup however you have to tweak HS quite a bit to get it to be really smooth:

app quality: Medium
Image smoothing: off
animated artworks: off
animated backgrounds: off
use a lower resolution intro video
lowish res helps also.

A big mame list of all roms will also make it chug however I use a list with around 1000 games on it which it's fine with.

got the mouldings on, just hope the dimension match everything else:




the joys of xp x64 installations (btw, I bought a Laptop drive in the end. Smaller and less power usage):



hoping the insides will be quite roomy once it's clunked together.

[njay]

Hi ,

i am also starting a bartop project but my wood skills suck.. would you mind measuring your cut outs in MM or CM so i can give it my local woodshop to cut out?

Thanks ! 

[abispac]

i notice that  if you use hyperspin, you need to have every single wheel image for the games you have, cus if you dont, then hyperspin has to draw the names of the wheels you dont have and it gets a little slow,having the wheels complete helps hyperspin to run OK

[Pitman]

The yellow t-molding arrived today... but they sent the wrong width somehow, it's far too big

Hi ,

i am also starting a bartop project but my wood skills suck.. would you mind measuring your cut outs in MM or CM so i can give it my local woodshop to cut out?

Thanks ! 

http://www.koenigs.dk/mame/eng/drawweecade.htm

those are the plans there. I will warn you a little, certain variables like monitor depth and width will come into play somewhat, if I were you i'd have the dimensions of your monitor ready and also if you're using regular atx stuff then make sure you have enough space.

i notice that  if you use hyperspin, you need to have every single wheel image for the games you have, cus if you dont, then hyperspin has to draw the names of the wheels you dont have and it gets a little slow,having the wheels complete helps hyperspin to run OK

That's good to know, I keep 'only show items with wheel art' checked, kinda looks a little cack with the white text.

Currently just trying to tweak all the emulators right. The lists in Hyperspin are still a bit of a pain really, one slight difference in a rom name means the "game not found" error box shows up which kinda sucks on an arcade machine. So far the HS directory is around 18GB and I still have to add Mame 139 roms at 25GB (to replace my old ass 119 set) and join emuvideos to get some videos for nintendo etc. Once HS is sorted, videos added, emulaters setup and everything is running perfectly i'm going to back up c:\HyperSpin and post it to off to my dad to put in his gun cabinet.

[njay]

Thanks for the reply, im going to follow your build closely.

I am going to hand over the plans saturday to my local woodshop guy hopefully he has everything he needs
I am using mini itx stuff so it should fit.
And a 15 inch monitor.

[Pitman]

I would think you'd be fine then with that,

[Jefferson]

Awesome design and art!

But a 1P fighter cab?!  Its kind of a tease, no?

[Pitman]

Awesome design and art!

But a 1P fighter cab?!  Its kind of a tease, no?

I always think of bartops as a novelty thing anyway so thought it would be a bit over the top with 2 x 6 button layouts etc

[njay]

Well i am getting my bartop kit in november

could you tell me what type of psu your are using? part number? it looks really small so pretty cool for the bartop

[Pitman]

Well i am getting my bartop kit in november

could you tell me what type of psu your are using? part number? it looks really small so pretty cool for the bartop

ITX FSP180-50PLA1 180 WATT

I got it off ebay in the end for under £15. It doesn't come with any sata power connectors but they can be made pretty easily or bought from ebay for a couple quid. It is pretty small and quiet even next to laptop hdd in the picture.

Update:





debating whether to take it all to a spray shop once primed and prepped. I would think they would have surplus gloss white so hopefully wouldn't cost the earth for this wee cab.

[njay]

Good skills  ! 

[Pitman]

did a little rom testing to see the limitations of the board:

hyperspin - is fine, as long as you turn a lot of the options down (as mentioned earlier) and use a lower res intro video

• classic roms - eg pang, bubble bobble etc - fine
• street fighter 2 series - fine
• street fighter 3 - fine, was hoping 3rd strike would play good and it does, if I hit the accelerate key it's max speed is +250%.
• killer instinct 2 - it plays though it's not really playable, if I hit the accelerate key it's max speed is +70%.

i've not tried the other 3d games but it's probably safe to say that it's pretty much 2d only on this board.


Anyone know a way of increasing the initial startup time of roms that use NVRAM? perhaps some ram storage?

[njay]

Strange I ran Ki2 on my old PIV 3.0 GHZ with 2GB ram fine

Mame loves Ram also how much you did you add? also try to use if you have 64 bit installation mame64

[Pitman]

a 3ghz p3 would beat it, higher clock and in mame the multithreading doesn't really do too much.

I've not seen the ram usage go over 330mb on xp x64 yet using mame64

[njay]

isn't there some special mame versions for dual core cpu's?

you can try this

Enable -multithread (aka -mt).

[gaijinking]

Cool! looks good so far. I've had a micro bartop project on the drawing board for awhile now, still a long ways off, but somewhere between the size of the Wee Cade and the Pixelbox- http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=50248.0
I did a lot of research on the dual Atom mobos, and while I'm sure it can handle most of the 80's classics, I'd be worried that there just isn't enough horsepower to handle 90's games and Daphne on top of running Hyperspin (since it runs in the background even when you've loaded your emulator). Then I found this:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128448
it's roughly the same size as the smallest mini-itx motherboards, but it supports an i5-650 Clarkdale Dual-Core 3.2GHz with integrated graphics!
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115220
But I still like the low power consumption and low $ on the Atom, have you tried Daphne with your setup?

[njay]

i still don't get it why my old PIV 3.0 GHZ runs KI2 fine and a dual core won't

[Pitman]

i still don't get it why my old PIV 3.0 GHZ runs KI2 fine and a dual core won't

I'm pretty sure 3.0 GHZ > 2x1.6ghz in MAME because it's not fully threaded.

[njay]

did you try the multithread option yet?

Other fix could be use u64emu it's an emulator for KI KI2 and that will run it full speed has some issues with video but's it's ok to use

[Pitman]

it's already on multithreaded.

I can't actually think of any 3D games I care about so it's not really a great lose.


cracked the speakers open and after all my careful efforts I broke a connector of so will have to bust out the solder




Taking shape:

[njay]

are those speakers somesort of ipod speakers or so?

wow your cab is supporting itself now nice work 

[Pitman]

just some ex-display £4 ones from ebuyer. They're USB powered, which is quite useful as well in small cab.

[Pitman]

bit of testing

[emphatic]

Mmmmm, DoDonpachi.... 

[Pitman]

haha, could only be the font that gave it away surely(?)

[Jigenjuke]

Hey there, looking good so far.  If you haven't started on tying to get the high gloss finish, I have some tips for ya. 

1st.  Be sure to start by using about a 600 grit sand paper on the unit after painting it with primer (two to three coats is best) This is to remove the orange peel effect.  I would sand to remove all the bumps and dimples that make the surface look like an orange peel, then go onto your black gloss paint.  I typically air brush it on so that I can get a smooth result, but foam brushes should work as well.  I would also recommend using a wet sanding technique.  If you do a search on this in youtube you should come up with quite a few tutorials on this.  Wet sand with the 2000 and repeat with maybe three coats.  I know that this is a pain in the as* but you will be very happy with the results.  Then it's time to move onto the cutting compound.  The tutorial above is pretty good and if you follow this as well as taking a look at youtube for visual help you should be ok.  Let us know how things come out.   

Good luck and remember drinking and power tools don't mix!

Jigenjuke   

[emphatic]

haha, could only be the font that gave it away surely(?)

Mostly that green laser and the craters with yellow stars. 

[Pitman]

well after a 6 month break i got round my dads house and into his garage to finish it off. Being that my dads garage is a complete tip with more dust than a desert there was a quite a few f**k moments when things went wrong, heh. Made a few little mistakes and there's a few scratches etc but overall it's come out pretty well so far and look forward to actually playing it.

My advice... don't go for white unless you've A: got a clean workshop B: are a sprayer. C: have the patience of a saint with sanding etc.

Still a few things to do but the wood is pretty much done and painted, t-molding on and hyperspin and all games, themes, art, videos etc are working.

Next thing is a bit of cleaning of the wood (there's a bit of bloody on it still, polishing and light sanding, artwork, plexiglass (sprayed), control panel buttons and joystick, speakers and knocking a bezel up.

[LeedsFan]

Very nice!  How is Hyperspin running on that system? I also have a mini-ITX Atom 1.6 GHz board in a bartop but I just dismissed Hyperspin thinking it would be way too slow. What are your settings?

[Pitman]

Runs fine as long as you compromise a bit of the eye candy. The only slight annoyance when entering the mame menu is a one second pause which is nothing really but noticeable as the other menus are pretty much instant.

The intro video needs to be scaled down a bit to run smoothly, I've got a copy I made I ould upload if you needed it.

I’ve ditched xp 64 also, too many issues with getting things like getting it shelled and after a couple Winuae issues it was gone.

The settings I use:

800 x 600 res and:



I also turn pretty much everything off windows wise

[JBBOPT]

could you upload the lower rez video? Thanks

[Pitman]

could you upload the lower rez video? Thanks

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2681459/arcade/Intro.zip

[Pitman]

Art printed and nothing left to buy or sort out.

Bit of plexi cutting and plexi spraying tomorrow then she's pretty much done.

Created the jig for the joystick earlier and it fits snug which is lucky as I only had one spare bolt to hold it in with.

[Pitman]

She's done... well almost, just gotta add the back door, clean up some of the scratches add cut a bit of plexi to the bottom (where the black button is) and add the network socket at the rear.








I'm pretty happy with it but could have improved it in a few areas, this being my first cab i'm overall pleased with how it turned out.

[Pitman]

Couple useful things I found that may help people:

quick sheller - works great.

a network port at the back - really useful, saves taking a usb pen over and you can shell one account and use another account just for remote desktop if you have to go in and change something.

As nice as White is, it gets dirty easily and scratches are to make when slotting control panels in etc.

ITX (at least this one) is quite a nice solution, they're small, generate little heat and leave  you a lot of space. As I said earlier, 3d games are pretty much out.

A mains splitter cable, saved more space in the case.

Cold cathode, I got one from ebuyer for a few quid, they generate no heat and give out a good amount of light

usb powered speakers, again saves space.

if adding a front facing sticker, make sure you apply it slowly making sure to get rid of the air bubbles

even clear superglue is visible.

cutting plexi - careful not to heat it too much when using power tools. I went for a stanley knife in the end.

plexi scratches sooo easily, be careful.

--

Right, time for a bit of Pang now