Well Guys,
I have been a long time lurker of these forums and have learned a lot about building a arcade cab from you all. about 10 years ago I restored a old NBA Jam cabinet with a MAME system in it. It came out good but was just too big for what I wanted. So last month after getting back from the middle east for over a year I decided to finally try a new build. Something much smaller scale but a replica of the old cabinets and games I loved as a kid. I looked around for a long time and finally decided on a flat pack kit as I just don't have the room or time to build a cabinet from scratch. My experience is in electronics and not woodworking so for me, buying a kit I can build and then adding my electronics was the best option.
Hence after much searching I finally found Haruman's kits. These seemed perfect for what I wanted to do. Already finished in black melamine, as well as a nice tab and pocket design, all cnc cut as well. I decided to buy the vertical Golden Age cab from him. I have to tell you all that I was and am still thoroughly impressed with the quality of the kit, all the way from the cuts, finish, to packaging as well as communication and support. The kits are amazing and I am very pleased. If you are looking for a nice finished kit that you can put together yourself, This is the one. I am also sure all his other designed go together and are just as nice as this one. I will be ordering a horizontal kit in the future.
Inside I am running a all in one asrock MOBO with a celeron processor and Intel HD video, standard power supply a 60 GB SSD and a Dell 17 inch monitor mounted vertically of course.
As for controls, I am utilizing standard Happ buttons and a Mag Stik Plus to switch between 4 and 8 way on the fly and a IPac 2 controller. The CP is held down by clams under the CP so its very solid (but very hard to get too). The artwork was purchased through Haruman as well as he has a printer that he works with. I am very pleased with the art too. The black monitor bezel was done by a framing store and the glass bezel as well as marquee bezel is actual tempered glass.
The 3 white admin buttons are utilized for game start, game exit, coin and pause. after much fiddling with how I wanted to use these buttons I came up with what I believe to be a solid configuration utilizing the IPac shift feature. The first button on the left starts a game when pressed. The middle one adds coins, the right button pauses the game and pressing the left and right outer buttons together ends the game and takes you back to the main menu. this was there is no way you can accidentally exit the game. You have to press the two outer buttons together to exit the game. I like this design and works flawless.
Speaking of the main menu. I am utilizing MALA as you can see. I grabbed the template from the nanocade, which I really liked and redesigned it to fit a vertical monitor as well as re sized it for my resolution. It works and I think it looks pretty good. When scrolling through the menu of games you get information on manufacturer as well as date of origin. You also get info on whether it utilizes a 4 way joystick or a 8 way, so you can change the Mag Stik before you play.
I am running all this on a highly modified version of Windows 7. When the system boots you really have no indication it is running windows. I utilized several programs to achieve this and I also made some changes to the registry. The only thing I could not figure out how to do is to completely remove the taskbar at the bottom of the screen, I have it hidden, however you still see a thin gray line when the machine boots. Oh well, no biggie there I guess. I also have the system booting directly into Galaga as this is a Galaga themed machine. Then from there you can go to the MALA menu if you like. I have about 190 games on the system. Only vertical ones of course and a good mix of shooters and platformers. As far as windows and Mala go, I have about 30 hours of testing, trial and configuration wrapped up in it but I finally feel like I have a solid build with a good mix of games and ease of use. Also, for cabinet volume I did not want to use a actual volume control protruding from the machine so I used a program called cabvol which worked like a charm. If you hold down the player two start button and move the joystick up for higher volume or down for lower volume it works as advertised. This volume control, can be used in either the Mala menu or during actual game play. It works well!
For speakers I used a 15 dollar pair of computer speakers I purchased from best buy. Took them apart and installed them in the cabinet. I'm very pleased with how they work and sound for the old arcade games.
As for the monitor you can see that I mounted it a little bit father back into the cab. This is because I wanted a affect of the cabinet being much deeper and bigger that it is. By mounting the monitor deeper inside the cabinet it really brings out this affect well I feel, however there are a few design considerations when doing this that I had to make but all in all it came out good.
Thoughts and considerations for my next project.
Well I learned a lot during this buil and it was a lot of fun. I learned how to use and work with Mala, as this was certiunaly a point of contention of awhile and trial and error taught me a lot about how this front end works.
There are however a few things I would do differently for my next build. One is that I wanted to use HLSL for the scan line affect through mame., however I found that the MOBO, processor and video system that I purchased could not handle running this effect. It just was not powerful enough to do it without frame skipping, even at a native 640x480 resolution. So then I decided to buy the SLG. Well the SLG would not play nice with the on board Intel HD video chip or drivers. It would only work when I went to a native 640x480 resolution, but the problem there is that my Mala menu utilizes a higher resolution so by going native 640x480 then mala would not display properly. So I decided to keep the SLG and use it in my next build which will probably be utilizing a different board and video system, as I really do like the effect.
And I am fan of a solid CP so I didn't want to use velcro or anything like that since it just didn't work well for what I wanted. However after much thought and design after redesign, I utilized clamps under the panel to hold it down. The problem with this is that if I ever need to get under the CP I have to take the glass bezel out and dig my hands under the CP from the front to undo the clamps. It works and is functional, just not very user friendly. I have a few redesigns I am thinking about for my next project. One is to install a screw type mechanism from the bottom of the cabinet that I can just undo with my hand that will allow the CP to become free, if I wanted., This will utilize a long bolt with some type of T handle similar to a wingnut on the bottom of the cabinet. I am still in the design phase of this but I think it would work for a bartop since it is easy to get to the underside of the cab.
But all in all it was a fun build and I am very happy with the outcome. Thanks for reading and let me know if you have any questions.
T
you can see the video here on my channel.
Video here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=us2Q4lcV_fo&feature=youtu.be
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Topic: Galaga Themed Vertical Arcade Cabinet Finished! (Read 6296 times)
