The FRAME (Fundamental Retro Arcade Machine Emulator)

[Zilog]

BYOAC Elder Arcade Master Ond wants to see more project posts.  I wasn't going to bother because it's small and hack-y, but we should respect our elders.  Will anybody be interested in my project?  I guess we'll find out.  I'd also like to use this initial post to solicit name ideas.  A project should have a good name, right?  But I haven't come up with a good one yet, maybe you can.

Ten years ago, I thought it would be cool to have a desktop MAME machine, similar to my old Vectrex.  But so much of it was out of my league that I moved on to other stuff after a while.  I recently got the itch again but now I have some tools and a smattering of skills.  Still, I didn’t want to set myself up for failure by reaching too far too soon, so I made a goal of creating a dedicated spinner control panel to play some of my arcade favorites like Tempest or Omega Race on any MAME equipped machine.  The plan is to make other control panels in the future, like a fight stick, tracball controller, etc.  I have an earlier post about spinners here http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php/topic,160738.0.html. (It's under a different name. I got permission to abandon that one-post account and start this one because I didn't like the account name I originally chose (don't ask.)  But see?  This is why I need your help with naming my project.   )

While I was researching spinners and stuff, I stumbled on a highly configurable PC chassis kit called DreamBox by AeroCool.  It consists mostly of extruded aluminum "tubes" and connector pieces.  And I said, "Aha! I bet I could use some components I already have and make a hacked together Vectrex-style MAME machine like I had imagined ten years ago.

So now I'm working on both the spinner control panel, which will use more standard arcade materials and techniques, and my desktop box using the DreamBox chassis kit. (Well, two kits. A single kit doesn't come with enough connectors for anything complicated.)

Anyway, this introduction post is a celebration for finally getting the monitor mount (almost) done (more on that later), and to ask for project name ideas.  So far, the only one I've come with is KludgeCade which, though perhaps accurate, is unsatisfying.

Here's the chassis, next to its inspiration.


Here it is from the side.


And here, with the monitor in landscape orientation.

[Laythe]

Interesting and different.  Interested to see where it goes! 

Naming it, hmm...  in it's current shape, my first thought is:

  Throne of Games

but it probably won't look like that when further along with a panel and all that.  Other alternatives, worth what you paid for them:

  Space Frame
  Skeletrex
  ARU-01 Auxillary Recreational Unit
 

[Nephasth]

The Lawn Chair

[Mike A]

Will there be any kind of artwork on the cab?

That would help determine a name.

[Zilog]

No artwork, other than a Mighty Marquee attached to the top (with various transparencies for different games).
It definitely will be a minimal/industrial aesthetic.
Throne of Games is very clever (and The Lawn Chair is funny) but I hope it isn't too chair-like when it's done.  ARU-01 got me thinking in terms of acronyms, which I hadn't considered before.  I came up with some interesting ones, the best one i think might be:
C.A.G.E.D. - Classic Arcade Game Emulation Device, and it looks like a cage too - so that all works nicely.
A variant on that theme could be "Caged R.A.G.E." (Retro Arcade Game Emulator), but I feel like the simpler styles of something like CAGED-01 or C.A.G.E.D. work better.  Although Caged RAGE certainly sounds more badass.
Any opinions? Other ideas?
Skeletrex (I see what you did there) and Space Frame are good ideas too, thanks for all of them. 
Hmm... based on Space Frame, I just came up with FRAME (Faraday's Retro Arcade Machine Emulator) - Michael Faraday, the 19th century scientist, most famous for the wire mesh that bears his name, the Faraday cage. <-- too clever?
Or, "The FRAME" (Fundamental Retro Arcade Machine Emulator) - that's not bad.  Frame referring to its structure and Fundamental being a nod to its minimalism.

This is what happens to me.  I go down a rabbit hole and spend way too much time there.  I have, I think, 14 different pushbuttons that I've been testing to see which one I like best before I build my first CP.  Don't get me wrong, I'm having a lot of fun doing it, but in other areas of life, it can be an annoying and problematic personality trait to have... <sigh>
I think The FRAME is in the lead now.  Thoughts?

[opt2not]

Un Tit Led  (put together for Untitled)
The Benchpress (it looks like something you'd see in a gym)
Do you even Game Bro??

[Titchgamer]

Well thats certainly going to be unique!
No idea on names but I look forward to seeing how you roll with that.

[Mike A]

ErectorCADE

[Titchgamer]

ErectorCADE

[Mike A]

No. That would be ErectionCADE.

I said ErectorCADE.

[Titchgamer]

No. That would be ErectionCADE.

I said ErectorCADE.

[Zilog]

Thanks for all the ideas and Quagmires.  I'm going to go with The FRAME (Fundamental Retro Arcade Machine Emulator) for now.  It fits, I like it, and hey, if that changes, the name can change later if needed.  A tip of the hat to Laythe for the assist.

The Monitor
Even though I was originally focused on building a control panel and not a cabinet, I was still thinking about what form a desktop Vectrex-style cabinet might take.  I knew I would prefer a 4:3 high-resolution monitor both for better scaling of different low resolution games and for sharp vector graphics.  My arcade era is pretty much the original golden age of 1978 to 1984+, and all the vector games were from that period.  I like quite a few of them.  I also wanted a monitor that I could rotate for portrait and landscape oriented games.

The main source of 4:3 LCD monitors seems to be used ones, but a lot of older monitors, with their bad off-axis viewing angles, look ghastly when rotated.  Some manufacturers still make new, business oriented 5:4 monitors (Dell P1917S for instance), but they seemed to only be in 17" or 19" which I felt would be too big for my desktop mini-cade. (And not 4:3, but still, better than 16:9).

I had seen this 12" 1600x1200 4:3 monitor on Amazon.  (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07P9CVY47/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1) (Is there an affiliate link for BYOAC that I could use so the site could get a cut should anyone order one?)  This exact same monitor seems to be available through different sellers on Amazon using different brand names.  It's probably available through Alibaba or something and you can have your own branding put on the packaging.

At first I thought 12" might be too small (insert meme of Michael Scott and his catch phrase), but after some modeling with cardboard and then, duh, why didn't I think of this first, just resizing a MAME window on my main PC display to 12", I realized it was actually pretty good for my usage.  Especially because, when rotated, a game could use the entire monitor and NOT have letterboxing for either orientation.  So I bought it for some future build, which turned out to be right around the corner.



The monitor is all aluminum and feels pretty solid and looks good.  The shroud covering the jacks is drilled with holes in a 75x75 VESA pattern, but there are no threaded inserts inside, so you have to remove the shroud and attach the VESA plate to it first with nuts and bolts and then reattach the shroud.  Easy enough, but you have to take into account that two of the holes have limited depth underneath as they are right above the 12V and VGA ports, so a thin bolt head and washer are required.

[Laythe]

Glad to be of assistance.   

[Zilog]

Mounting the monitor
My goal with the build was to avoid modifying the DreamBox components if at all possible for several reasons. 1.) I haven’t worked much with metal before and 2.) I suspected that I would be reconfiguring the chassis multiple times before finding the one that would work, and if I was cutting and modifying the pieces, I might run out of parts if I hacked them apart too much.  And I was definitely right about that.  It took me 3 major versions before I was able to arrive at the design pictured at the start of the thread.

As mentioned before, I wanted a rotating monitor.  Nothing fancy, just the ability to turn it by hand.  I tried really hard to find a TV or monitor mount that I could just attach to my chassis.  Easier said than done. With my third monitor mount, I at least had a solution that only required me to drill one hole in one of the DreamBox aluminum extrusions.

Before I get to that, some things I learned about monitor mounts.
If it has any kind of hydraulic strut or springs, pay attention to the weight limits, INCLUDING the lower weight limits.  If your monitor isn't heavy enough, it won't be able to keep the arm in any position other than fully retracted (or extended or whatever).
Pay attention to monitor size requirements too.  Even if there isn't any issue like above, if it says it supports 22" to 43" TVs and you put on a dinky little 12" thing (Michael Scott), you might not be able to easily rotate or tilt the monitor, as those mechanisms seem to use friction to keep the TV in the position you put it. And they tune it for those big TVs.  You can apply a lot more torque to the point of rotation by grabbing onto the edges of a 22" monitor than you can on a 12 incher.  I found that with this kind of mount I had to apply more force to break the friction and get it to rotate, and then when it did it would break free quickly and I couldn't control the final position very accurately.  So you have to keep rotating back and forth and hope it stops at a level position.

The Right Tool For The Job
1.) I tried using a portable "drill press" which is just a chuck sliding up and down on 2 rails.  You attach the chuck to your hand drill's chuck.  Did not work.  Not even close.
2.) Then I tried taking it to a mechanic I know. He had a dusty drill press out back that drilled through it smoothly, but when I got it home, the hole was not perfectly perpendicular to the aluminum tube, so the monitor sat crooked.
3.) Drove an hour to buy a Craigslist 25 year old 8" drill press for $50, rather than buy a Harbor Freight "special" for $55 (with the usual 20% coupon).  If you don't know why, you've never bought a power tool from Harbor Freight. (I do buy other stuff there.)  Tried drilling one while just holding the piece on the press table with my fingers.  Because of the shape of the piece and the size of the bit, it vibrated quite a bit on entry.  Didn’t get a good hole.
4.) Tried using woodworking clamps to hold the piece to the table.  Still, it wiggled.  Didn't get a good hole.
5.) Bought a tiny $17 drill press vise on amazon, and lo and behold, after doing everything I could possibly do to not have or use the right tools, I got a good mounting hole.  Funny how that works.  It's not the first time I've learned this lesson, and it won't be the last.  Not as long as tools cost money and/or I have the desire to get it done "Right Now™".




Another thing I needed was to keep the monitor vertical and not tilt down. I knew putting a bumper of some sort on the bottom of the mounting plate should do the trick, the monitor would not be able to tilt down at all.  After experimenting with several things including rubber washers, the best solution was to use small pieces of engraving plastic (phenolic) with 3M double sided tape stuck between the pieces, built up to the right thickness to keep the monitor plumb.  Two 1/8" pieces ended up doing the trick, but I had 1/16" and 1/32" thick plastic too, so I could have built to almost any thickness.



Last piece was dealing with the extra ~1/16" width of the mounting prongs compared to the effectively slightly less than 1" thick aluminum extrusion it's mounted to.  Rubber washers were too thick, so I made 2 washers, or I guess, really they are spacers, out of 1/32" plastic.  My first attempt using a hole saw with the plastic on a piece of scrap wood did the job of preventing tear-out but it still failed.



The pilot bit was too big and pulled the plastic up and tore it.  I tried easing up to it by drilling smaller holes first but it still wasn't working.  So I made a plastic sandwich - my target layer of 1/32" plastic sticky-taped between two 1/8" layers of plastic.  There was no way for the thin layer to tear-out below or get lifted up and torn and it worked just fine.



It took a long time to get there, but I finally have a solid feeling rotating monitor mount.

[Zilog]

Mounting the Marquee

I had a Mighty Marquee laying around - a 9"x3"x2" plastic LED light box with exchangeable transparencies - and it was pretty much the perfect size to fit my build.  But it took me quite a while to figure out how I wanted to mount it.  This is where I figure the experienced DIYers could look at it, devise a solution in a few minutes, and implement it in a few more.  I finally decided that I could attach the marquee to the plastic end caps, and then attach the end caps to the FRAME - it should be secure enough to work, and look good too. (As opposed to using zip-ties or velcro or some other lesser hack.)

First, I  chewed up the ribs in the end caps so I could fit a #8 screw head in the opening rather than a #4.  Since the  marquee was being secured by only two screws, I figured bigger was better.  I held each cap in the drill press vice and lowered a 5/16" bit up and down to to kind of eat away at the ribs. Had to reposition the cap a few times to get it all out.  Just occurred to me that my Dremel with a skinny grinding attachment would have done a more accurate job. Oh well.



To mark where to drill into the marquee I decided against trying to measure and mark as I wasn't sure I would be able to get everything lined up properly.  So, I drilled the holes through the plastic caps that I would need for the screws, then I put some double-sided 3M tape on the top of the caps.  I mounted the caps to The FRAME, peeled off the backing on the sticky tape and tried to align the marquee on the caps as best I could.  I was able to reposition it a few times as the plastic marquee material was more sticky-tape phobic than the cap material.  Once I was satisfied with the position, I removed the marquee with the caps attached and used a scribe to dig a little mark in the marquee plastic through the center of the cap.



Then on to the tiny $50 Craigslist drill press I bought two weekends ago to drill the monitor mount.  Luckily it had just enough height to drill the holes I needed.  I started with a 1/16" bit to gauge how hard the plastic was.  My only other experience drilling plastic did not go well.  I used a cordless drill (too fast), did not secure the workpiece, and started with a big bit.  It was brittle plastic, the drill bit caught, the piece torqued out my hand and cracked (not from any impact, just from the force of the bit seizing up) - all in one smoothly orchestratd screw-up.
Running at 700RPM (the slowest my press goes) and with the marquee secured in a vise, it drilled like butter.  The plastic was not brittle at all.



(The thing in the middle of the bottom of the marquee is a threaded insert so it could be attached to a camera tripod.  Don't ask me why someone would want to do that.  I considered it for attaching the marquee to my chassis somehow, but among other reasons, I didn't think one point of attachment would be sufficient.) 

A brief pants-wetting moment when I tried to put it on the chassis.  The caps were not lining up with their connecting prongs.  What did I screw up?  I wondered if it mattered which cap was left or right and swapped them and the caps slid onto the prongs nice and smooth. (There were also 4 possible rotational orientations, but that was easy as there were already screw marks from when the caps were fastened to the prongs for the initial steps.  But the same marks could work on the left or right side, which is how I got them backwards.)  Turns out that maybe going with the non-measuring method was the right way to go here.



From the side you can see I also added a functional carrying handle.  It also evens out the height a bit with the marquee now attached to the front.



That's probably way more detail (about a simple thing) than anyone would ever care about  But to any other noobs out there, this is how it goes.  Measure twice, think of a better approach, try to figure out how to implement the better approach, do some research on the web, think about it some more, buy (or borrow) a new tool, measure a few more times, and finally, cross your fingers and cut once.

[Zilog]

Speakers - the Quest begins

There is an electronics question a couple paragraphs down that I'd appreciate ideas on.

The monitor I'm using has teeny, tiny speakers in it, but they are profoundly unsatisfying.  So I planned originally to just use a pair of cheap cube-shaped speakers with USB power (to eliminate an extra power adapter - as it stands, I'll have two, one for the PC and one for the monitor - but I'm okay with that.)



But I couldn’t figure out an attractive way to mount them, and I also didn't care for having to route two cables (one USB (rear of the PC) and one audio (front of PC)).  So I ended up deciding that I would build a custom speaker cabinet, even though my original goal was that my only wood working would be to build a controller box. I would then stuff said box with the guts of a true USB speaker (USB power & USB audio - 1 cable only).  I chose the Dell AC511 USB Wired Soundbar.  Here it is after disemboweling.



Now, I hope to incorporate the volume control in my cabinet, but I have no use for the two 3.5mm jacks (headphone out and audio in.)
Question: rather than just have it rattle around inside the speaker enclosure, can I just snip all the wires at their connection on the mainboard?  These types of connections are normally open, right?  No circuit is completed until a plug is inserted.  So if the wires were snipped flush, the mainboard shouldn't be thrown off by a missing circuit, yes? (Also shouldn't be much opportunity for a short either, I think.) Thoughts?  I'm definitely not an expert on this stuff.