Author Topic: My cabinet - updated 11/07 w/pic of LCD in CPO (Read 7797 times)

maraxle · « **on:** February 11, 2004, 07:49:31 am »

Here's a link to my page of pictures of my unfinished, unnamed cabinet. I'm using an old Aqua Jack cabinet that had been converted to Time Killers (a winning combination). Anyway, here's the link.

Stingray · « **Reply #1 on:** February 11, 2004, 08:30:49 am »

Quote

So now I have two options - mount the TV on a level shelf, and have it really close to the plexiglas shield, or mount it on an angle with some of it sticking out the back of the cabinet. I could take the TV out of its case, but it looks like that would only save me about half an inch. I'll have to ask around on the Build Your Own Arcade Controls message board and see what they suggest.

In my opinion an arcade cabinet just feels right with the monitor at an angle. If it were me I'd at least make an attempt at getting it in there angled.

I said this before in your other thread, but that is one great looking cabinet. Great basis for a MAME project. I love the way the control panel slides out. I'd make at least two or three reproductions of that and use them for swapable panels. One with sticks, one with TB & spinner and one with a steering wheel. That pull out panel is just begging to be made swapable.

Enjoy your project!

-S

menace · « **Reply #2 on:** February 11, 2004, 12:11:40 pm »

yeah, I'm looking forward to see what designs come out of this--unique to say the least!

maraxle · « **Reply #3 on:** February 16, 2004, 07:41:32 am »

I have some updates on my page. I have the TV mounted and a few controls working. My cat also caused a little delay in the process...

PS - I decided against the swapable control panels for one reason: space concerns. This slide out drawer is BIG, and I have no idea where I would store extra ones.

Wienerdog · « **Reply #4 on:** February 16, 2004, 02:07:53 pm »

Quote from: menace on February 11, 2004, 12:11:40 pm

yeah, I'm looking forward to see what designs come out of this--unique to say the least!

Well, I think there are alot of minds thinking alike. I've been working on a cab since last summer that has some of the same ideas.

maraxle · « **Reply #5 on:** February 27, 2004, 12:12:54 am »

I've updated my site with new pictures and such. I'm almost done painting the cabinet and am starting on some of the other finishing touches.

Generic Eric · « **Reply #6 on:** February 27, 2004, 01:11:44 am »

I like the pull out drawer/Cp action you got on that cabinet. How does that secure? Any chance you can post more picks?

maraxle · « **Reply #7 on:** February 27, 2004, 07:34:15 am »

Sure, I'll post some more pics tonight. The drawer is really cool. There's basically a rail on each side of the cabinet that it sits on. If you reach up inside the coin door, there's two little metal pieces that you can turn to lock the drawer in place. That way it can't be opened from the outside. The control panel is hinged and flips forward if you take out two screws on each side of the drawer. That makes it easy to get to the button/joystick wiring.

maraxle · « **Reply #8 on:** March 04, 2004, 08:04:10 am »

I've finally updated my site again. I have been working on a really cool addition for my cabinet - an LCD screen that displays instructions for each game... Check out my page for more info (but alas, no pictures yet).

maraxle · « **Reply #9 on:** March 20, 2004, 12:12:56 am »

I updated the page with info about my fun little LCD screen that displays the game instructions. There's also a drawing of my proposed control panel layout on there. Check it out!

Also, if you have any questions about my LCD setup, feel free to ask. I can even point you to where I got mine (for only about $20), and send you some sample text files that you can output to it.

teetu · « **Reply #10 on:** March 20, 2004, 11:40:14 am »

that LCD that displays the buttons is amaaaaaaaaazing!

froggerman · « **Reply #11 on:** March 20, 2004, 07:45:22 pm »

Quote from: maraxle on March 20, 2004, 12:12:56 am

I updated the page with info about my fun little LCD screen that displays the game instructions. There's also a drawing of my proposed control panel layout on there. Check it out!

Also, if you have any questions about my LCD setup, feel free to ask. I can even point you to where I got mine (for only about $20), and send you some sample text files that you can output to it.

I am very interested in your LCD project and I think that a number of other people here would be could. Could you post some more information about it? Perhaps a picture or 2. Thanks!

maraxle · « **Reply #12 on:** March 20, 2004, 11:25:56 pm »

OK. I'll post some pics soon. For now, here's the lowdown...

I purchased one of these LCDs. That's not my auction, by the way, but that's the same guy I bought mine from. After studying the commands that are built in to the controller chip on the LCD, I wrote myself a quick and dirty little program that compares the controls.dat file to an XML file generated by the -listxml command in AdvanceMAME and my current ROMs directory. That program generated little text files that contain the commands to display the controller settings for the games in my ROMs directory. If there was no controls.dat entry for a particular game, it simply looked at the number of buttons that MAME's -listxml command reported that a game used and marked them Unknown. Then I wrote the little batch file that you can see on my project page. I configured my frontend (in my case, AdvanceMenu) to launch the batch file instead of the actual executable file when launching a game.

Due to my personal setup, I had to build a custom serial cable to run the LCD, but in most instances that would be unnecessary. It's only necessary in the case of DOS/Win9x based systems. XP & Linux shoudln't need it.

froggerman · « **Reply #13 on:** March 21, 2004, 12:02:56 am »

Would you be willing to share that program with us? I should be able to produce the same list that you produced using AdvanceMAME...once I get past my little configuration problem I am having with it.

maraxle · « **Reply #14 on:** March 21, 2004, 08:05:39 am »

Sure, I'll put the program on my website later this week. Keep in mind that it's not exactly "production ready", and was built in about 10 minutes with no error checking or anything like that. I'll try to clean it up a little before I put it out there, but don't be shocked if it's ugly and possibly crashes on you. Also, the output is designed to work with the PJRC LCD control set and would produce garbage output on other LCD types.

It does have a few neat features, though. It sets up all of the instruction sheets to look the same, with the title of the game on the top line in bold lettering, an empty line, and then a line for each of the buttons. The LCD is only 8 lines tall, so using this format, effectively you could only display 6 buttons with no other instructions, but this is fine for most setups (including mine since I only have 4 buttons). Also, if the title of the game is too long (over 24 characters - the width of the screen), it will automatically scroll the title. Finally, if it's a trackball game, it will place the word "Trackball" below the button assignments. For example, the Centipede screen would look something like this:

Centipede

Button 1: Shoot

Trackball

froggerman · « **Reply #15 on:** March 21, 2004, 03:09:40 pm »

This sounds very cool. I had a look at the e-bay link that you posted and he still has these displays available. I look forward to seeing how this works.

maraxle · « **Reply #16 on:** March 24, 2004, 10:30:15 pm »

I updated my site with pictures of my newly installed custom marquee. Here's one of the pics. Go to the site for a couple more.

froggerman · « **Reply #17 on:** March 27, 2004, 12:08:13 am »

Any update on the program for the LCD display or has the artwork taken up all of your time. By the way I really liked your black background artwork for the cabinet.

maraxle · « **Reply #18 on:** March 27, 2004, 01:40:41 am »

Ok, I have packaged an EARLY alpha version of the program and put it out on my website. It's available here as a 1.47mb download. The instructions are fairly simple. Specify the location of your listinfo XML file, your controls.dat XML file, and your ROM directory. Then, choose a directory to which you want the program to output your LCD data files. It should be an existing, empty directory. This program won't create the directory for you. Then click Generate Files. It will take a little while depending on how many roms you have, but once it's done you will have a directory filled with files named ROMNAME.lcd. ROMNAME is, of course, the name of the ROM. So, for instance, Gladiator would produce a file called gladiatr.lcd.

Remember, this is an ALPHA. That means it's still in production, and isn't even Beta quality yet. There's very little error checking done, and it could crash and potentially mess things up. Don't use it unless you're willing to accept the risk.

froggerman · « **Reply #19 on:** March 27, 2004, 03:38:36 pm »

Although I haven't received my LCD displays yet I downloaded your program and installed it. I had a bit a trouble getting the most recent controls.dat file but once I got that resolved your program worked great!

Just don't try to stop it before it is finished. I am really looking forward to trying this with the LCD display. Thanks again for the great contribution.

froggerman · « **Reply #20 on:** March 27, 2004, 08:48:42 pm »

I have had some time to look through the LCD files and I was sure I had discovered a bug. But it turns out that I was wrong! $:-\$ Looking at the files for Robotron and Puckmand there was nothing in the LCD file except the name of the game. I had a looked through the Controls.dat file and discovered that these games only use joysticks for input, Robotron 2 and Puckman 1. The definition for the joysticks are not displayed in the panel which I can understand. It might be nice to put some indication of what joysticks are used however. Robotron uses 2 8-way joysticks and Puckman uses 1 4-way joystick. I don't know how much effort that would be to add to your program but I think it would be a nice feature. For a 0.1 Alpha release it worked very well.

maraxle · « **Reply #21 on:** March 27, 2004, 09:27:55 pm »

Ok, I think I can add that in. As long as it's either in the controls.dat or the listinfo.xml, I can display it. As the program gets a little more complete, you'll probably see an options screen that will let you configure how you want stuff displayed. Like if you want it to say the title of the game and the year in parentheses, or the title and the company, or all three, etc. Also, instead of it always saying "Button 1:", "Button 2:", etc, I plan to make those customizable.

froggerman · « **Reply #22 on:** March 27, 2004, 09:39:47 pm »

Well if you are looking for a Beta tester I would be more than willing to give you a hand.

The Joystick informaiton is in the controls.dat file. It is located <controls> section.

SkateDetroit · « **Reply #23 on:** March 28, 2004, 07:43:22 am »

Cab is looking sweet! Have any pics of this LCD screen madness in action?

maraxle · « **Reply #24 on:** March 28, 2004, 09:05:17 am »

Quote from: SkateDetroit on March 28, 2004, 07:43:22 am

Cab is looking sweet! Have any pics of this LCD screen madness in action?

No pics of that part yet, as I am waiting for some stuff from Ultimarc before I can mount anything on my control panel, and the LCD looks pretty unimpressive just sitting in a tangle of cables.

maraxle · « **Reply #25 on:** April 04, 2004, 05:52:00 pm »

I now have a pic of my working control panel up on my site. I ended up moving the LCD to the bezel area, and have yet to mount it though.

maraxle · « **Reply #26 on:** April 04, 2004, 07:42:17 pm »

Here's a pic of the LCD on its temporary mount. The LCD still has a protective film over it which is why the surface looks irregular.

Witchboard · « **Reply #27 on:** April 05, 2004, 09:32:15 am »

Smooth.

pathdoc2 · « **Reply #28 on:** April 05, 2004, 09:59:47 am »

Very cool concept. If this is easy to set up software wise I'd love to try it.

maraxle · « **Reply #29 on:** April 05, 2004, 06:21:23 pm »

Quote from: pathdoc2 on April 05, 2004, 09:59:47 am

Very cool concept. If this is easy to set up software wise I'd love to try it.

The software portion is easy. There's a little bit of tedium involved in getting all the button labels the way you want them, but it's not difficult. For me, the hardest part of the whole project was probably figuring out that serial communications in DOS work differently than XP, requiring me to build my own cable.

walls83 · « **Reply #30 on:** April 05, 2004, 08:58:00 pm »

maraxle you should sell kits for XP you know all the wiring done and the software with the LCD, and things along that line..

Ill take one

walls83 · « **Reply #31 on:** April 06, 2004, 12:10:08 am »

what about using the USB LCD screens?

maraxle · « **Reply #32 on:** April 06, 2004, 12:36:58 am »

Quote from: walls83 on April 06, 2004, 12:10:08 am

what about using the USB LCD screens?

Not sure about the USB LCDs. It should work basically the same way, though I don't know how the command line would look for writing to USB. For a regular serial port, you can just copy a file to com1. I'm using DOS on my machine, so USB isn't an option for me...

maraxle · « **Reply #33 on:** April 06, 2004, 12:41:21 am »

Quote from: walls83 on April 05, 2004, 08:58:00 pm

maraxle you should sell kits for XP you know all the wiring done and the software with the LCD, and things along that line..

Ill take one

If I had time to I would. However, if you look at my thread in the Main Forum, I put a link in there for an auction (not mine) for the same LCD from the same guy I bought mine from. A couple of 9-pin serial connectors from Radio Shack, and a few feet of wire and you're ready to go.

Actually, if you're using XP, there's no special wiring required. Just a regular old serial cable will do the job.

froggerman · « **Reply #34 on:** April 22, 2004, 10:32:22 am »

I hooked my display up to my XP machine last night, set the port speed in control panel and copied a file to COM1. Nothing. Double checked everything, which really means checking that the serial cable was pluged in, still nothing. Basic to basics. I opened up Hyperterminal, configured for COM1 typed a few words and pressed Enter. They were dispalyed! Yeah! Let me try copying a file again. That works too.

Maraxle, this was a very cool idea and the display is great. Have you given any more thought to the idea of adding joysticks to the controls required so that games like PacMan don't come up blank?

Thanks again for your great little program.

maraxle · « **Reply #35 on:** April 22, 2004, 11:07:38 am »

Quote from: froggerman on April 22, 2004, 10:32:22 am

Maraxle, this was a very cool idea and the display is great. Have you given any more thought to the idea of adding joysticks to the controls required so that games like PacMan don't come up blank?

Sorry to disappoint, but per my thread in the Main Forum, I am not planning any updates to the program in the foreseeable future.

froggerman · « **Reply #36 on:** April 22, 2004, 09:33:40 pm »

No problem Maraxle. Thank you for your great contribution.
Lots of people are going to benefit from your work.

maraxle · « **Reply #37 on:** November 07, 2004, 08:23:50 pm »

I finally got around to ordering and installing my CPO. You can also see where the LCD is mounted. Here's a pic:

Rawker · « **Reply #38 on:** November 08, 2004, 07:02:02 pm »

that looks slick maraxle, i just got pictures of mine, thanks again for all your help.

Hiub1 · « **Reply #39 on:** November 08, 2004, 10:13:26 pm »

MAN! Where did you get that Guilty Gear Artwork?!? Is it vector?
Any info would be great man, the cab looks nice too! An LCD would complicate things big time for me. Anyways, any info on the art would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks, Fred


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