I Can't Believe It's Not a Tempest Cabaret! - Project Status: Appyling Formica

[dmckean]

This is my first real project and I've been planning this off and on for years but finally took the plunge. I've always wanted a Tempest cabaret but never really wanted to deal with the finicky circuit board and vector monitor so I'm building an all new one. I waited to announce until I had most of the parts in my possession. I plan to document everything because it's always awesome to read threads where people do that.

Any and all feedback is welcome. 

Highlights:
-CNC cut 3/4" MDO cabinet and CP and plexi sourced from HaRuMaN (Thank you Lee!!!)
-Tough polycarbonate laminated CPO
-Reproduction acrylic marquee
-Matte black painted finish
-Wood grained Formica sides with crystal matte finish
-Reproduction manuals, manufacturing labels and back door sheet
-Windows 8.1, MAME and custom MaLa theme
-Matching Atari logo stool

Hardware and Controls:
-No retro parts* - All current production or reproduction controls/coin doors/mechs/marquee/CPO/speakers/etc...
-Turbo Twist 2 spinner, ClassX True Leaf Pro pushbuttons, EAO switches and lenses under reproduction Atari cones.
-Acer 25" G257HU IPS monitor mounted vertically to give a bright 18.75" 1440x1920 display
-Asus H81T/CSM motherboard, 4GB RAM, i3-4330T CPU, 64GB mSATA drive
-LED-Wiz controller
-Happ O/U coin door
-Mono audio - Lepai amplifier, GRS 6x9 speaker

Games:
-Tempest/Tempest Tubes
-Arkanoid/RoD/Tournament Arkanoid
-Tac/Scan
-Gee Bee/Bomb Bee/Cutie Q
-Super Breakout
-Quester
-Riddle of Pythagoras
-Free Kick/Super Free Kick
-GoinDol
-Gigas
-Galaxian
-Vs. Hot Smash
-Razzmatazz
-PuzzLoop (Horizontal)
-Cameltry (Horizontal)
-Major Havoc (Horizontal)

Small list because not too many games really fit with Tempest controls. It still has a few of my favourites though and should be enough to mix it up every once in a while. I'm limiting the horizontal games to just a few even if they fit the controls since the horizontal screen size will be only 14-ish inches.

Steps:
1. Planning, sourcing, materials (DONE!)
2. Purchase of materials (DONE!)
3. Assemble and Paint cab (DONE)
4. Apply Formica and T-molding IN PROGRESS
5. Software config (IN PROGRESS)
6. Component/controls installation

Possible roadblocks:
-Formica Application (I've watched a video or two but I'm still very nervous, that would be expensive to mess up)
-Need to figure out a monitor bezel (my origami skills aren't much better than my woodworking skills)

*I don’t want to compete with people here and on KLOV doing real classic cabinet restorations. Those threads have always been the highlight of both forums.

[dmckean]

This is what I have so far:








Waiting to arrive:
Formica laminate
tinted plexi from HaRuMaN
monitor
aluminum stickers
t-molding samples
speaker grill material
wire and quick disconnects
t-molding
 
Left to buy:
paint and primer
spray adhesive
CPO
t-molding
screws
router bit

[yotsuya]

HaRuMaN does great work. Be keepin my eye on this one! 

[vwalbridge]

This will be fun to watch. It's amazing seeing all the parts laid out that go into making an arcade.

[dmckean]

Thanks guys. 

I did a little quick test fit with the buttons and spinner. Everything seems to fit really well. Routing out a pocket for the volcano buttons worked great. I plan to do some test prints of the overlay early on in this process so I'm not waiting an extra month after everything else is done like I see all the time on here.

[vwalbridge]

-Need to figure out a monitor bezel (my origami skills aren't much better than my woodworking skills)

Aparently this is a popular bezel tutorial. But I'm not sure how that works for every cabinet. I'm curious what you come up with. I'm thinking about how I'm going to do the one for my mini Qbert as well.

[dmckean]

-Need to figure out a monitor bezel (my origami skills aren't much better than my woodworking skills)

Aparently this is a popular bezel tutorial. But I'm not sure how that works for every cabinet. I'm curious what you come up with. I'm thinking about how I'm going to do the one for my mini Qbert as well.

Thanks for that, I asked my wife if it looks like something she could do and she says no problem. She scrapbooks a lot and has all the paper cutting tools to attempt it. I'll be sure to document it all.

[Nephasth]

A cool project, such as this, deserves an equally cool name.

[Vidiot]

Watching this one! I really wanna build one of these someday. Is Haruman going to start offering this as a kit?

[leapinlew]

Good build! When I built my bartop (in my sig) I had a compiled version of Mame which allowed Time Pilot and Gyruss to the game list.

[dmckean]

Watching this one! I really wanna build one of these someday. Is Haruman going to start offering this as a kit?

Thanks! He offers them but just doesn't seem to advertise them. Just send him a PM about it.

Good build! When I built my bartop (in my sig) I had a compiled version of Mame which allowed Time Pilot and Gyruss to the game list.

Thanks man, I love your build. I was thinking about adding those hacks to my gamelist but I haven't had time to mess with it and see how well they work.

[dmckean]

I don't really have much to update.  I laid all the pieces of my cabinet out to get a good idea of what goes where.

Yesterday I tried to print Atari inserts for my coin door buttons but the dimensions differ from the original and I can't find a high enough resolution scan to modify them. I decided just to re-make them from scratch in the size I need so I've been working on that. I might have to end up changing the design a little because the Atari logo lands right at the pole in the middle of the button and is impossible to read.

Also, my monitor showed up this morning (how does Amazon get the post office to deliver on Sunday for free shipping) and I've been messing with it and working on software all day. It's going to work out nice and the viewable size actually closer to 20 inches. I can't wait to see what it looks like behind tinted plexi.

[HaRuMaN]

 

I'm glad I finally to get to see one of these go together. 

[mgb]

Thats a big pile of parts there
really looking forward to see how you're gonna use the baby in there.

looking forward to see how this project goes down

good luck

[nexusmtz]

...really looking forward to see how you're gonna use the baby in there.

I thought I was the only one. It looked like one of those "Share when you see it" posts.

[dmckean]

...really looking forward to see how you're gonna use the baby in there.

I thought I was the only one. It looked like one of those "Share when you see it" posts.

That's my new doorstop...



Thanks for noticing! 

[dmckean]

So progress has been slow. More pieces have come in and I'm not really waiting on much of anything any more. Just me.

I started painting one cabinet piece on Thursday but it really didn't go so well. I bought nice paint from Sherwin Williams but it went on too thick and looked awful with a ton of brush strokes. So I read a lot and decided to sand smooth with 120 grit sandpaper and then I used Floetrol to thin out the paint. It went on smooooooove after that. At least good enough for me. I'll start priming and painting the rest tomorrow.



Also, my wood grained Formica showed up. It's looks more matte in person, the camera makes it look shiny:


Had a custom theme made for MaLa. I love it, the colors are awesome and match the marquee perfectly. It's rad!


Speaking of which, I've been working really hard on software. I've compiled Mame144 with VectorDiff and Mame163. I've been trying to compile Mame105 to check out the spinner hacks for Gyruss and Time Pilot but haven't had much luck. The front end is pretty much set up and I've been working on getting the button LEDs to light in Mame from the LEDwiz. It all takes a lot of time and I only have so much.

[vwalbridge]

used Floetrol to thin out the paint.

+1 on the Floetrol. When combined with a dense foam roller, it's about as smooth as spraying it.

Looking good so far. Nice to see someone who spends just as much time on the software. It really annoys me when people just throw the FE together at the very end. 

[dmckean]

used Floetrol to thin out the paint.

+1 on the Floetrol. When combined with a dense foam roller, it's about as smooth as spraying it.

Looking good so far. Nice to see someone who spends just as much time on the software. It really annoys me when people just throw the FE together at the very end. 

Yeah, the paint doesn't layer the same way anymore and it might take an extra coat for my other pieces but I'm OK with that.

I actually thought the software would be easy with only 20-ish games on this cabinet but I'm picky about the way things are displayed and researching minor display issues is time consuming.

[dmckean]

Still painting... and painting.

I'm putting on a fourth coat of black in the morning and will also glue in the batons. I should be assembling the cab on Sunday. I'll be sure to post a bunch of pics then.

On the software side I've been setting the analog sensitivity settings for all the games. Some games are in the wiki and it's easy to set but there's a bunch more I just have to guess. I'm sure I'll be tweaking this even after the cabinet is done. I wish I had all the arcade cabinets I'm emulating in front of me, this process would take about 10 minutes.

For some reason Tac/Scan crashes MAME with vector diff. It happens after about 2-3 hours every time. I have no idea what causes it and every other version of MAME does just fine running Tac/Scan. I'll probably have to end up using HLSL for Tac/Scan and I don't think I can use that on integrated graphics without frame skipping. Ugh, I'll have to play around.
 
I still can't' get MAME .105 with the spinner hacks to compile. I've tried about everything now. I'll probably try again on my main Desktop and see if I can get it to go there. Maybe I should try applying the diff against something like ArcadeMAME which I know will compile with modern compilers.

[dmckean]

Still painting... just going to keep sanding and painting certain pieces until I'm happy. I need to buy more paint tomorrow.

I got MAME .105 to compile tonight finally. I spent about 45 minutes play testing Gyruss, Galaxian and Time Pilot with the spinner hack. I've decided to leave Gyruss and Time Pilot off. Those games are just boring, too slow and lack any sort of strategy when played with a spinner. Galaxian was a blast to play with a spinner and I'm adding it to my game list.

It's amazing how quick it was to set up MAME .105 and get great results with no sound stuttering and smooth scrolling. It was literally 5 minutes. Setting up Groovymame properly with the lottes shader and my LCD took a couple days.

I'm going to use HLSL and MAME .163 to run Tac/Scan. While the Tempest won't run full speed with HLSL and the Intel 4600, for some reason Tac/Scan does. I wish it would work with .144 w/ vector diff, I kind of consider Tac/Scan one of the main games on this cabinet after Tempest and Arkanoid.

[mike boss]

Super cool project !
I really like the cabaret style.

[dmckean]

Super cool project !
I really like the cabaret style.

Thanks Mike! 

[dmckean]

When HaRuMaN shipped me the cabinet he warned me that the batons on one side fit too loose and the CNC guy caught it and tightened the other side up. Well... it turns out too loose is a lot easier to deal with than too tight. I'll need to get my hands on a planer to fix this, it's way too tight to fix by sanding.

Also, my marquee I bought from Phoenix Arcade is too large for the hole that's been cut out. It's too long, and wide and the hole cut out for it isn't deep enough so I'll have to figure out how to use my router. Does anyone know what kind of bit I need to route the current cut-out deeper?

[vwalbridge]

I might be doing some wood laminating myself and I have a question for you:

So it looks like your material is 3/4. When you go to laminate the sides, are you worried the laminate will increase the thickness too much? Too much that common 3/4 t-molding will not cover it?

[dmckean]

I bought wider t-molding and plan to trim it to fit using the method described here:



http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php/topic,86699.msg911119.html#msg911119

[vwalbridge]

I bought wider t-molding and plan to trim it to fit using the method described here:



http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php/topic,86699.msg911119.html#msg911119

What size are you going with?

7/8" ?

[dmckean]

I ordered samples and test fitted them and 13/16" worked best for this particular project. I'll only have to trim the inside half.

[vwalbridge]

I ordered samples and test fitted them and 13/16" worked best for this particular project. I'll only have to trim the inside half.

Thanks dmckean. What vendor did you use? for 13/16"?

I'm tempted to use 3M wood grain Vinyl but unless the paint is super smooth, I'm scared it will not adhere well.

EDIT: Never mind, I see that t-molding.com has that size.

Thanks again! Looking forward to seeing how your laminate turns out.

[HaRuMaN]

Need more updates! 

[dmckean]

I've gotten sidetracked with some projects to improve the backyard. I'll probably get back to this before Thanksgiving.

[dmckean]

I'm going to borrow my buddy's impact driver this weekend and get this thing standing and laminated. That will motivate me to get it finished. Everything is bought now except the control panel overlay.

[dmckean]

So the cabinet is assembled now. Whew!

I'll snap a few pictures and get them up sometime tomorrow.

I'll be applying the formica this weekend. It's buried flat up against the wall behind a lot of furniture in my daughter's room and it's going to be a project in itself it get it out.

[HaRuMaN]

killin me smalls

[dmckean]

Here it is standing finally. Just put the coin door, CP and speaker grill in place for the pictures.

[vwalbridge]

Looking good. Now go beg empty your wallet for some real Atari volcano buttons. 

[yotsuya]

Looking good. Now go beg empty your wallet for some real Atari volcano buttons. 

I almost feel sorry enough to dig into my stash of 'em....

[dmckean]

I have real reproduction cones and the EAO buttons that fit them. You can see one in this pic:



Cost me too much but they work.

[tomstewdevine]

Cabaret's are always cool. Nice work so far.

[yotsuya]

Whew. Crisis averted.

[dmckean]

Cabaret's are always cool. Nice work so far.

Thanks!

I've always loved the Atari cabarets like this because they have full sized monitors. Compact, but you still get the full experience.

[dmckean]

Whew. Crisis averted.

I wouldn't have taken them from you anyway, save them for real restorations.