My 1st Arcade Machine Project - Run via Xbox - Custom Control Panel Layout

[ace9094]

The following steps are from when I bought it to now...

This is the eBay pic, I wanted the cab due to the 5ft size as I live in a small flat.



Its actually not a Pang cabinet, it is an early 80's poker cabinet with 3 button control panel added to it.
If you look closely at the ebay picture above you can see the screen burn of 5 cards

The cabinet was painted in white gloss paint, and was a mission to remove.





All jamma wiring was AWFUL and needed to be removed also and the plastic 80's T-Moulding had been GLUED in to place by the previous owner. Iw wasn't rubber like todays T-Moulding... Very hard to remove

Notice the tatty blue coindoor in the first 2 pictures and position of the buttons on the old control panel below.



This needed amending as you will see later...

To remove the T-Moulding I had to use a hammer and chisel to get the T-mould off (yep thats right a chisel) Then I used a craft knife to get the edge as flush as possible before using filler to smother edges.





It was impossible to make a new groove for the T-Moulding as it would of caused serious damage to the wood so I needed to think of another solution. I used the chrome trim used on cars and boats and a heat gun and glue.

You can just see the marquee cover is cracked so I had another made for me. YOu can also see where I have chistelethe T-Mould off and filed the gaps.

BEFORE WITH T-MOULD & CRACK                   
       

AFTER WITHOUT T-MOULD & NEW MARQUEE PLASTIC


I then drilled holes for a credit button and player 1 and 2 buttons (I made a HUGE mistake here and did not account for the micro switch position)




I designed the control panel to fit all xbox buttons on it (without start and back).
These woulbe be run via 2 hacked xbox pads which Garimack hacked for me. He done an amazing job (THANKS AGAIN MATE)




I wanted the button colours A,B,X,Y to match the xbox pad colour layout, I bought the buttons and sticks from ArcadeWorldUK on ebay.



I roughly fit them into the un painted steel panel for a test fit.

I had the control panel made from the template I designed. I had only a 19" space to fit all these buttons. I considered making it a 1 player unit but

decided 2 player would be more fun.

I needed to make sure buttons and sticks fit ok before spraying the control panel, a little filing here and there was needed.



I sprayed the control panel in metallic silver and lackerd it to give a shiney smooth finish. I then roughly fitted the buttons to see how it looked painted.

(I was rather pleased to be honest)





I sanded the coindoor back to the metal base then primed and sprayed it. Once it was sprayed I lackered it to give that shiney finish. I got new locks too

and the finish was quite nice. I decided not to wire a coinmech to the coindoor and just have the coindoor for show due to the limited space in the cabinet.



I primed the cab in white giving 6 coats of spray primer and then sprayed it with 6 coats of black spray, flatting between coats.
1 coat was roughly about 1 can of spray.



These pictures were taken with a nokia (I just found them on my old phone)










I fitted the coindoor on and the control panel for a quick "test fit".

The buttons and sticks are only resting in place, the sticks are not fixed with bolts. This was the first time it started to look a bit like a real arcade

machine.





Phillips desktop speakers were fitted internally and connected to the headphones socked on the TV. These had there own power supply plus bass and treble

controls.



A small marquee light was also fitted inside the machine and a new Bezel custom made from plexi glass then fitted.

Due to the T-Mould issue I ordered chrome trim used on boats and cars with an adhesive back to replace the T-mould. This soloution works OK, but does not

stick as well as I would of liked. I bought a Heat Glue gun to secure it as mentioned earlier.

I bought an old 4:3 TV from a carboot sale and thankfully it stayed on the correct channel and powered on automaticcly without the remote when pugged it

A shelf was fitted at an angle to hold the TV using short length big head screws. A power breaker was then fitted inside the machine for the 4 plugs (xbox,

TV, speakers and marquee).

The TV was green and can be seen from some angles, however the green frame of the TV is not visible when stood or sat playing the machine.

http://i52.tinypic.com/20p8x1u.jpg[/IMG]

A new bottom panel was made and new locks all round were fitted to the machine, all the old screw holes inside the machine were filled with hardener and

sanded. I was going to spray the inside of the cab but then decided not to bother.


The custom marquee was made based on a bezel i seen a couple of years ago, it had controls around the bezel for all machines.

Here is the marquee (I am happy to share it if any one wants the marquee its 3MB)



Here is a video taken with a regular digital camera, better video as soon as I can



I hpoe you all like it, please comment what you do or dont like about it

thanks

PS - Making a Cabinet is very rewarding, BUT very hard work You change your mind and have new idea's all the time.
I bought an X-Arcade stick, Gamester Stick, replica sanwa buttons and other stuff I never used... I estimated 2-3 months to
finish the cab... Boy was I wrong... It took 18 months from Idea to finish.

CoinOPS is the PERFECT platform for a cabinet, all the best games in one place, no messing with options, no booting a PC, No crazy config for stuff, simple

to update...

Thanks BP coinops was the reason I built my cab... KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK !

[ace9094]

SORRY DOUBLE POST 

[Nephasth]

Can't see the pics...

[ace9094]

Strange, they were there earlier and there was a you tube video

[Yvan256]

Host your pictures directly on ArcadeControls.com

Not only will they load faster (less DNS look-ups) but I lost count of the number of projects who lost all their pictures because they got deleted by an external hosting service or that external service just ceased to exist.

[drventure]

Anyone know if it's possible to make it any easier to upload pics for display directly in forum posts? You can use the "attachments" feature, but that's not near as nice as the image being directly in the post, and the only way I know to do that is to make use of that special thread for posting images, then go back to your real thread and use the links from the image thread to include pics. Kinda roundabout.

I did a little poking around the SMF website and it appears that there are plugins available to make it easier. Maybe that's not something Saint wants to do for other specific reasons though?

Just wondering.

But I second the thought of hosting the images here, linking to remote sites is likely to end up with broken links eventually.

[Nephasth]

One thing I noticed, when constructing a post in a text editor like note pad or word and paste it in the post text box and preview it, it will look fine, but once you post it, the img code changes and tries to throw in a link with it and it will make the pics unviewable until you edit the post to make the img code right.

[ace9094]

Pictures appear to now be fixed

EDIT:

I HATE COMPUTERS

I did not copy n paste this time, wrote it all again, still the same

any ideas?

[emphatic]

It looks like the site hosting doesn't like you hotlinking the images. Here are the image links at least:

http://lookpic.com/c1/i2/2338/hqlkXSYh.jpeg

http://lookpic.com/c1/i2/2773/awlXmxaY.jpeg

http://lookpic.com/c1/i2/3765/60cKv8v.jpeg

http://lookpic.com/c1/i2/3987/SVF1sqV.jpeg

http://lookpic.com/c1/i2/1934/0j9JmDt3.jpeg

http://lookpic.com/c1/i2/3992/ox26yogk.jpeg

http://lookpic.com/c1/i2/3983/q92xi3ko.jpeg

http://lookpic.com/c1/i2/3286/tPOXEYWd.jpeg

http://lookpic.com/c1/i2/140/Z1m8SX19.jpeg

http://lookpic.com/c1/i2/3289/gSciG3uE.jpeg

http://lookpic.com/c1/i2/3613/mmbQciKC.jpeg

http://lookpic.com/c1/i2/3728/2vq8Gp3y.jpeg

[drventure]

Weird. I can't click the link, I get a forbidden error, but if I copy the link and paste it into the address bar, it works.
Probably some weird redirection rules that site has in place. Lots of places don't want you directly referencing images on their site from another site. It's essentially "stealing" bandwidth.

But, I've never seen the restrictions work like this before. Interesting.

[ace9094]

redone using lookpic... should now work ok

[emphatic]

All pictures are showing correctly. Nice work. 

[ace9094]

Thanks emphatic appreciate it

[ace9094]

Few extra pictures added that I found on my old phone..

[ark_ader]

You might want to wire up the power on button on the Xbox to a admin button on your cab.

Also a good idea is to fire up the Xbox directly to CoinOPS.  XBMC is great but it looks more professional jumping straight into the CoinOPS Menu.

You might also want to get a bigger TV with component in there later on, to view in HD.

Otherwise nice Job!

[ace9094]

You might want to wire up the power on button on the Xbox to a admin button on your cab.

Also a good idea is to fire up the Xbox directly to CoinOPS.  XBMC is great but it looks more professional jumping straight into the CoinOPS Menu.

You might also want to get a bigger TV with component in there later on, to view in HD.

Otherwise nice Job!

Agreed, unsure how to do the power button thing


However the coinops direct boot I am looking into...  I have an xbox with a 250GB HDD and I am working with some other guys to add more roms with videos.

The author BP is VERY helphul when it comes to adding features and new titles... He will hopefully be adding an FTP feature in the future that will allow me to boot direct to coinops as a dash

My current version has 2000 games but the new version will have 8000 titles with NO duplicate !

Thanks for commenting