Out with the old

[Nerd Time]

Hi everybody.
A couple of years ago I was searching craigslist for a used liquor cabinet when I stumbled across someone selling their Mameroom kit cabinet. I immediately dove into the research of building my own. I wanted to document the whole build, but didn’t really feel like I was covering any new ground, so it wasn’t a priority. I took the route of buying an old original cabinet and filling it with parts. The first pic is of the original shooter cabinet. Sorry, I'm not hip enough to the forums to incorporate my pics into the text.

The second pic is a semifinal version of the cabinet. I made a quick marquee with spray paint and poster board and called the project Nerd Time (hence the tag) because of the ball-busting tone my wife would take when I’d head out to the garage to work on the project.
“Where ya going?”
“Out to the garage”
“Oh, is it nerd time already?”

Eventually, I found an oversized marquee to fit both the cabinet and the color scheme, threw a fishtank light behind it and my system felt complete.
   
Anyway, here’s a run down of the guts:

CPU: Dell optiplex 260 with a mildly upgraded video card

Monitor: 25” TV with S-video. It has channel return and power return, but not both together, which means I have to manually power the TV with a remote. It isn’t as annoying as I thought it would be.

Sound: Some generic soundcard with computer speakers/ sub

Frontend: Maximus arcade with the acidius skin (to match the green) running 3 versions of mame (classics, fighters, and trackball lists), daphne  and snes.

Controls:
Competion joysticks with 7 happ-buttons each running to a 2 player, PS/2 ipac.
4way green-ball joystick from tornado terry
x-arcade trackball
vinyl decaled cent, pause, and settings buttons


Other:
The main attractions of the control panel are the 2 cup holders. The machine has mostly been used as a party piece (like a pool table) so the cup holders have been used about as often as the machine itself. If you’re interested I got them from pokerstore.com. The cupholders also double as access to the control panel latches.

I know it doesn’t have a lot of graphics, but I did make some nifty Street fighter 3 removable instruction cards to fit the sides of the bezel.  See image 7.

The coin mechanism doesn’t work, but the lower door has the volume control  knob velcroed to the back.

I rebuilt the floor of the cabinet with new MDF and industrial casters.

So now that I’ve introduced you to my fun side project of the last 2 years, I am puting her out to pasture. The aging PC has taken a crap and I’ve reached a cross roads of maintaining this project or starting a new one. At first I wanted to gut this project and use the good components for a new cabinet while selling everything else al-a-carte. But that limits my color scheme to the current white and green buttons, t-molding, and PS/2 ipac. Instead, I’m going to get the PC back on its feet, polish the plexi-glass, and sell this old friend on craigslist. I’ll never get the money back that I spent on this project, but the experience is well worth the difference.

So what’s next?
A bartop cabinet. I loved having the full upright arcade experience, but I need a little more floor space and my arcade gaming doesn’t really require as many knobs and levers as I’d previously thought. All I really need is a 2 player layout with 6 buttons each plus the usual utility buttons. I’ve also grown to dislike standing 2 feet away from a 25” screen and am looking forward to something smaller. I have an old 15.4” sony vaio laptop that I’ll be using as the brain, but instead of disassembling it, I want the cab to be more like a dock. Now that I know how much time is spent working out the kinks in the emulators/ frontends, I look forward to being able to pull out the PC and work on it in my living room.  I’ll be posting updates about this new project as I make progress, but in the mean time I’ll need all the bartop pointers I can get.

My current questions include:
How important are fans vs. natural ventilalation?
½” or 5/8” on the MDF? (Ill be using ¾ for the CP top regardless)
Suggestions for feet?
If you’ve built a bartop, what are your suggestions for screen and CP angles?

I’m sure I’ll have more questions as the project commences, but I’d appreciate any advice you guys have in the mean time. I really want to make this project a full BYOAC experience.

[DaOld Man]

Looks like you did a good job on your first time cab, and I love the name!

Good luck with your new project, and it would be nice if you started a thread on the build, even though most of the projects on here are basically built the the same way, someone always puts a personal twist or idea on it that makes me say, "man thats not a bad idea at all!"

I also like the cup holders, and I dont think Ive seen anyone else hide the CP latches under them like you did. Now thats a very good idea.
 

[tho]

Great job on the cabinet.  I've been looking around for cupholders myself.  How deep are those? Or better yet, how stable are the bottles/cups when they're in the holders.

As for fan/ventilation, I ended up buying a special 3 plug outlet(that plugs into my power strip) that has a thermostat(sort of) built into it.  When the temperature in my cabinet reaches 78 F it turns on a fan inside my cabinet, when the temp reaches 70 F it turns it off.  It works pretty good for the most part.  Although now that it's summer, it's on most of the time.  They sell higher temp ones as well.  I can post pics/info if you're interested.

TD

[Nerd Time]

The cup holders are 2.25" deep and 3" wide. You can see a beer bottle sticking out of the first player holder in the nerd time picture to give you an idea of how they sit. They're made of metal and used to "klang" when setting a bottle in them, so I cut a circle out of a thin rubber mat to go in the bottom.

[Corbo]

Bring back the "Nerd Time" marquee!!!

Good job!

[HaRuMaN]

Wow... that marquee area is so big, you should throw an LCD up there and program it to display the marquee of whatever game you are playing.   

[Corbo]

+1 to this!

[gbeef]

Very nice conversion

[Malenko]

This:

Bring back the "Nerd Time" marquee!!!

Good job!

Or this:

Wow... that marquee area is so big, you should throw an LCD up there and program it to display the marquee of whatever game you are playing.   

Ive never seen a Super SFII/Xmen Capcom deluxe cab turned into an Area 5 cab before