Around 10 years ago (my god!) after trolling the internet, I found a group of individuals who had created their own arcade machines using basic PCs coupled with TVs/monitors/arcade screens. "I could do that!" I said (in my head) and set upon finding as much info as I could. That's when I stumbled upon this fantastic site and it's great community.
After lots of reading and asking a few questions I set my plan in motion; build my own full size arcade machine using cheap parts.
This is as far as I got;
Then the problems started. First off, my cat decided to crawl inside the PC I was going to use and it never seemed to work again (I knew I should've blanked out the CD-ROM bays!). Secondly, the TV I was planning on using started playing up and eventually died. The construction stopped dead and I never did finish it.
Cut to present day. My original BYOAC account was been deleted a long time ago and I'd all but forgotten about my old arcade CP. Then my housemate decides he's going to build a bar top machine to maintain his Street Fighter addiction. Inspired by his enthusiasm, I set about starting my own build. But where he had ordered a pre-cut kit, I decided to take the bull by the horns and start from scratch, building my own machine, using my own plans and artwork. But rather than carry on with the full size machine, I've gone the bar top route, purely for convenience.
So, this is the start of a project log to document my progress and hopefully provide some information to fellow first-time builders, as well as get some ideas and tips from you guys. It'll be a long road, and I'm sure I'll be making many, many mistakes along the way, but hey.
So far I've put together a plan that I'm pretty happy with. It's kinda styled after a PacMan-type machine with side panels that gradually slope from the marquee to the control panel. I'm a complete CAD noob, but Google was a great help in learning commands and getting everything to scale.
Based on the sizes of the various components that will be filling this thing, this is pretty much the smallest I think I can make the cab.
In terms of components, I got ahold of a cheap 15" LCD from work (which if you havn't figured already, will be mounted vertically) and have ordered a mobo/CPU/RAM combo from eBay (Core2Duo 2.2GHz, 2GB RAM). My original plan was to use one of the spare Raspberry Pis I've got kicking around, but it didn't take long to realise that they're only good for 70s and early 80s games (if that!). My next plan was to use a little Atom mobo/CPU combo I had, but again, it just wasn't powerful enough for what I've got planned. Luckily, the new C2D mobo isn't much bigger than the mini-ITX Atom board, so everything still fits ok, although I've had to rethink the placement of speakers etc due to the shear size of the heatsink.
In terms of other components, I scored some little 8cm speakers as well as a small audio amp circuit for free (again, from work!) and I'm using one of the Sanwa 8 way sticks from my old CP. I also bought a load of Happ buttons (controversial? I actually like Happ!). My housemate even gave me the PCB from the fight stick he gutted - just need to buy some stripboard and terminals so I can breakout the pins to something a little more manageable.
Whilst waiting for hardware to turn up, I've been playing with Illustrator/Photoshop and have come up with the following as a design for the control panel;
The red line/gradient was inspired by a pic of an old Nintendo multi game system I saw, with the rest of the graphics spewed from my semi-artistic little brain!
Google comes to the rescue again with some photos of real buttons, which will mean I can use the following image in combination with Johnny5 to display real-time button mappings in MaLa;
And that's all I've got so far. I'm waiting on the mobo to turn up so I can start cracking on with the software side of things, but actual construction won't start until mid september - I have a week off from work and I'm planning on visiting my folks with the hidden agenda of using my dads "workshop" (really, it's just an old stable full of power tools and a bench). I say "hidden agenda" but I need to ask him if his workplace can print up my plans on their giant plotter!
So, if this log is of any interest to you, stay tuned and I'll update as and when I make any progress.
Peace out!
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Topic: Unnamed bartop project... (Read 2494 times)
