Generic Driving Cabinet

[NiN^_^NiN]

Hi All

Just thought id throw up some pictures of a second hand arcade cabinet I just got pretty cheap.

I've only recently moved into my own house and have had quite a few issues so this project will take quite a while to be completed. Excuse all the mess in the garage as the doors broken I can't move stuff out right now to clean up and make it easier to work on.

Here is the Cabinet disassembled.




I had a nice flastscreen CRT but sadly it's too bog to fit into the cabinet so i went for a smaller one which i think will work with a nice surround and bezel.

I also had a old VGA to Composite converter laying around which should work perfectly for this.


I've installed the TV and ran the wires etc to the back and installed a power board and lead and used a spare laptop to test the screen.






The cabinet came with a 270 happs wheel and a 2 way and 4 way shifter and a badly melted face plate of a coin mech with no actual mech.




And a Hornet seat as well which is in great condition just needs a little scrub.


Over all i think it's not a bad start to have my own driving cabinet if i had the money there is a lot of things id change (Worked out a possible way to make a 360 wheel turn into a 270 wheel based on the game and a rotating shifter housing that went from 2 speed Hi-Low games to 4 speed shifter games)

[gbeef]

very nice start indeed what was the original cabinet?

[NiN^_^NiN]

I believe it is a generic cabinet that was used for a small company down here in australia called Midnight Amusement hence the generic in the title (Can kinda see the midnight amusement logo above the steering wheel)

If someone can actually tell me if it's from a game that would be great but i was told it's generic and i've looked and haven't found any markings.

[gbeef]

It looks like a GTI club cab.

[NiN^_^NiN]

Looking at some on google it's kinda close but I don't think it is the workmans ship on the backside isn't what id see on a proper cabinet.

[Funnel]

You said you're using a composite connection? That actually looks pretty nice! Good start on the cab, I too am interested in waht type of cab it was before.

[NiN^_^NiN]

Well i said it would be slow for this project and money issues have arrived so this will take a while

But I can start repainting some of the coin doors and pedals and soon get some paint for the cabinet

Wish i had the money to make it great like all the other driving cabs being done at the moment but i can upgrade it all later on so that's cool 

I stripped out the pedals and coin door and will be painting them shortly

Looking at the decase JVC Flat panel crt i was originally gonna use i decided to recheck the measurements (Couldn't measure accurately the first time) and it looked like it was going to just fit.

It took some time but i got it in and lifted the back upright (God this thing is heavy) and temporally have it in (Need to make a bracket) and wow what a difference the screen make being that much bigger and being flat screen really makes it look quite nice



Still using a composite connection and it looks fantastic


Just a quick peek at what it looks like with the control panel on


And i must say if i had the money id make a minecraft arcade bartop it be great fun


More updates will probably be a few weeks away or more now sadly but im quite pleased with how the monitor looks so much nicer than the other tv

[emphatic]

That screen looks so sweet. Is composite the only choice you have?

[Martijn]

That jvc tv is just perfect for your cab, good job trying to fit it. Excellent cab - > monitor ratio 

And please find a different way to connect the screen, composite doest fit in this picture. S-video or even scart is beter, of better yet go arcadevga
you can also make your own vga - scart cable and using soft15khz as a program to support all those arcade resolutions

[eds1275]

I dunno guys that looks pretty good to me!

[NiN^_^NiN]

The best connection the JVC tv can do is component no scart and when i tried S-Video it was horrible (Might be to do with my vga to composite/svideo adapter)

The ratio is much better now it does look like it was made for this cabinet i'm real pleased with the outcome.

Composite looks great honestly i know it's the lowest connection people would use (Well technically RF would be but i don't think anyone has used RF for their cabs in the past few years) but when compared to the laptop screen running daytona you don't really see much of a difference.

I may go component once i have more money and time to read up on the display options for it but currently it's use what i've got and i think the quality is pretty good so far 

[AlienInferno]

Looks good.  Nice looking juke you have hiding in the corner too.

[NiN^_^NiN]

Looks good.  Nice looking juke you have hiding in the corner too.

Thanks  I wanted a wurlitzer style juke and found one of them 10 cd changer ones that was dead so i slapped in a pc, speakers and touchscreen with the original neons working and bam nice touchscreen juke which i should finish off just 2 small things left.

[mebronx2000]

this cab looks great !! can you do a post of the jukebox you did with the pc ? thanks
 

[NiN^_^NiN]

this cab looks great !! can you do a post of the jukebox you did with the pc ? thanks
 

I have a really old thread with pictures still
http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=84797.0

I really should finish off the juke and make the insides cleaner.

[mebronx2000]

i saw that post a while ago ...that is what inspired me to do mine !!! thanks   

[NiN^_^NiN]

Wow didn't know I inspired anyone on here I saw your jukes and you have done a much better job than me congrats  

So I was thinking how I could make the cab look better on the sides without spending to much money.

After thinking about what I'd play I realised it would mostly be Sega games (Daytona, sega rally, outrun etc) and i've always been a sega fan and I thought a sega logo on each side would look great.

Now because the side of the cab is blue I thought I should use the blue background and get the white sega logo outline cut instead of the all white one.

Thanks to cotmm68030 who converted the logo into vector (Even if it was just vector magic)

So being sunday nothing was open but i remembered there was a decal guy down at the local market on sundays.

I scraped together some loose change and got two sega logo's printed for $20

I've stuck one onto the side what do you guys thing?



Close up


I think its worked well I'm not sure if i want to keep the TM at the end of sega or not.

Any other ideas?

[BadMouth]

I like the tm on it.  Makes it look official.

Painting stripes of a couple different colors on the sides would look good and not cost a whole lot.
(google muscle car stripes)
or maybe something like leapinlew's cab:


(of course the sides of my driving cab are still plain black    )

I really like how that tv fills out the cab!

[gbeef]

I would add some white stripes  You could go yellow also unless your planning on changing the CP.
So far this looks like a solid build. nice work

[NiN^_^NiN]

Well I know it's been a while and I said it would take quite a while for progress.

Sadly a few things have happened since the last post and I don't seem to be having much luck.

The laptop and a few other parts (Including the vga to composite device) were stolen from my garage.

I finally managed to purchase a cheap desktop for the project and got a video card that supports S-Video out and more bad luck happened and the videocard sadly popped out of the desktop and shorted out the motherboard 

So updates will take longer but I will start repainting the front and back of the cabinet but for the mean time I wanted to see how much better S-Video would be using my main PC as the test subject.





There is an improvement but I kinda like how composite softened the edges actually but still S-Video is a good medium for the cabinet so I will go with that.

Just thought id give a small update as nothing else has happened for quite a while.

[ScottoKong]

G'day

I'm about to decase a tv and jam it in my Crusin USA cabinet.

Any tips you can give me?
I'm fairly certain it's gonna be a tight squeeze like yours.
Gonna go with the S-video also.

What controls you gonna use?
Any plans to do a logitech hack with the servo amp?

Scott

[NiN^_^NiN]

I found it was easiest to lay the cabinet on it's side and slide the TV into the cabinet as it's way to heavy to lift and make sure it sits into the cab and doesn't fall back just make sure it's all secured before lifting back up.

Money is an issue so i'm just using the Happs wheel hooked up to the PC there won't be any force feedback but I might go that route later down the track.

Goodluck with your project can't wait to see the progress

[racecar]

loving it so far!

[wizkid32]

And i must say if i had the money id make a minecraft arcade bartop it be great fun

+1

BTW, What emulator(s) are you running?

[NiN^_^NiN]

I haven't compiled a list but it will be most of the ones in MAME and the ones in M2 i'm not sure if I want to use supermodel for M3 games. Other than that I will be hand selected a few car games from consoles up to n64/ps1 and that's about it I may try some PC games too but not sure yet but this is mainly for M2.

[wizkid32]

I haven't compiled a list but it will be most of the ones in MAME and the ones in M2 i'm not sure if I want to use supermodel for M3 games. Other than that I will be hand selected a few car games from consoles up to n64/ps1 and that's about it I may try some PC games too but not sure yet but this is mainly for M2.

There are a lot of great racers for the N64: Mario Cart 64, Off Road Challenge,  Star Wars Racer, and loads more!