TimeWarp Cocktail Cabinet - *updated 04/21*

[cheetah]

Well, after years of following the emulation scene I have finally gotten around to building a real arcade cabinet.  I was introduced to MAME many years ago, and got the fever to build an arcade cabinet then, but due to many factors (wife, kids, work, etc...) I never really got around to it.  After rediscovering MAME and the BYOAC forums a few months ago, I decided that it was time to go for it.

I started looking around at all the web sites and cabinet plans that have become available all over the internet, thanks in large part to the wonderful members of this web site and forum, and was inspired by the great things that are being done.  You guys are really taking home built arcade cabinets to the next level with the swapable control panels and really cool custom artwork.

After months of research, I finally decided to build a cocktail cabinet loosely based on the plans that Kyle Lindstrom developed documenting a Pacman cocktail cab.    I figured that a cocktail cab would be a good, small place to start and would be easier to convince the wife with than if I bult a full upright cab.  I plan on having this thing in the house, not in the garage.  If all goes well, maybe a custom built upright will also be in my future soon.

Anyways, on to the current project.  Here are some pics. Excuse the messy garage.

Early Stages:




I am going to have control panels on each of the vertical ends,as well as, a 2 player control panel on the horizontal side.  

The cab is constructed of 3/4 inch MDF.  I purchased the woodgrain vinyl from http://www.partsexpress.com to cover the wood.  To be allowed in the house, it has to look like a piece of furniture.

More pictures:



On with the construction:



Here I have finally gotten the 19" monitor installed and started putting the computer components inside.  I have also installed most of the T-molding.  I have gutted a Dell PC that I had lying around to put in the cab.  The PC is a dual P-III 866 with 512 MB Ram and a 64MB ELSA Gloria II video card.  Probably overkill for emulation, but I am sure I will play other games as well.



Notice one of my other toys in the background, one of the reasons that it is so difficult to convince my wife that I need yet another toy.

Well, that's about as far as I have gotten, but I will keep this post updated with the progress.  In the meantime, check out the awesome artwork that PixelHugger has been putting together for me for this project.  http://www.arcadecontrols.org/yabbse/index.php?board=13;action=display;threadid=16091
This guy does GREAT work!

And thanks to everyone who posts on this board and is an active member of the BYOAC community.  Your ideas and knowledge have been a great inspiration to me.  Now if I could only get this thing done so I can play some Pacman!

[tenka]

Your cabinet is coming along great!  Your speaker holes turned out great - that's the one area I wish had turned out better on my cab.

Is that a Hayabusa?  If so sweet ride!!!!  =)

I just picked up a new bike last week - I must share!

[mozzer]

Ducati!!!
My dream Rocket!

Did you get a good deal?

[SirPoonga]

Is that a Hayabusa?  If so sweet ride!!!!  =)

Can't be, not with the exhaust like that.  All suzukis have that hug exhaust off the right side of hte bike.

A honda Intercepter, Nope, wrong taillight
Might be a yamaha R1
Not a kawasaki

Its not a ducati, doesn' have the ducati look.  It looks japanese.  I'd guess an R1.  I don't know much about aprillia.

You people and your crotchrockets  I'll stick with my cruiser.

[cheetah]

Your cabinet is coming along great!  Your speaker holes turned out great - that's the one area I wish had turned out better on my cab.

Is that a Hayabusa?  If so sweet ride!!!!  =)

I just picked up a new bike last week - I must share!

Thanks Tenka.

Actually the bike is a Honda CBR600F3.  I wish it was a Hayabusa!

The speaker holes just happened.  I actually had originally planned on having 5 slots for each speaker, but then I started drilling the holes in each end of the slot that I had marked out so that I could route the slot and I really liked the way the holes looked.  So I figured that I could try a drilled pattern and if I really didn't like it I could still use the router and make the slots.  Turned out better than I expected.  I wanted a very clean, finished look, so I really didn't want to go with speaker grills.

Congratulations on your new bike.  It is awesome!  I'm sure that you will have alot of fun with it.

[cheetah]

Is that a Hayabusa?  If so sweet ride!!!!  =)

Can't be, not with the exhaust like that.  All suzukis have that hug exhaust off the right side of hte bike.

A honda Intercepter, Nope, wrong taillight
Might be a yamaha R1
Not a kawasaki

Its not a ducati, doesn' have the ducati look.  It looks japanese.  I'd guess an R1.  I don't know much about aprillia.

You people and your crotchrockets  I'll stick with my cruiser.

It's actually a Honda CBR600F3.  Heres a better picture of the CBR. It is embarrassingly dirty due to the cabinet building that I have been doing in the garage.  Man that MDF makes a lot of dust!



SirPoonga, some days I agree with you on the cruiser so here is reason #2 that it is difficult to convince my wife that I need yet another toy!  


It's a 2001 Yamaha V-Star 1100.

[tenka]

Mozzer:
I got a "decent" deal - it's an 03 so I got $1800 off.  The local dealer had 2 of them they were trying to dump since the 04's are already in.

Sir Poonga:
I love cruisers!  I just needed a change of pace.

Cheetah:
Shame on you for cutting MDF around your bikes!  That's a sweet CBR; I almost picked one of those up but just couldn't pull myself away from the Ducati's!  I'm sure I'll be kicking myself the first time I get my bike serviced.

=)

[SirPoonga]

Mine, a 2000 Yamaha V-Star Classic


cheetah, you a STAR member?  Or an ISRA member?
www.startouring.org
www.star-riders.org

[tenka]

Nice ride!

[cheetah]

SirPoonga,

I am a ISRA member but not a STAR member...but I will be soon.  I am also a member of the Southern Cruisers and a RhinoRiders Member.  I actually used to run the RhinoRiders web site up until a few months ago when I just ran out of spare time with all of the other things that I wanted to be doing (such as riding as much as possible).  The web site used to be www.rhinorider.org but I let the domain name expire and haven't yet re-registered, but it is still accessible at rhinorider.dyndns.org.  check it out, tell all of your friends.  

BTW, sweet ride.  Arcade junkies and bikes, what a combination!

Tenka,

I know, I know... All that dust is going to be murder to get out of all of the cracks on the bikes, but it is just too cold outside to be cutting wood and I can't wait until sprng to get this cabinet built!  If I had to wait until spring, I would probably never sleep again until I got started.  As it is, I lay awake in bed at night thinking of all of things that I am going to change on this one before I even get it done.

[SirPoonga]

I am a ISRA member

#3184, you?  Also SirPoonga on the delphi forum.

Hehe, what a way to hijack a thread

Neither rhonirider sitecomes up for me

[cheetah]

SirPoonga,

ISRA #10859 and Cheetah on the forums, but I don't participate much.

Sorry about the wrong links, try this one: rhinoriders.dyndns.org.

[Hoopstar]

Seeing as this has turned into a bike thread





Benelli Tornado 900cc Triple..

[tenka]

Now that is a fine piece if equipment!

/Droooooooollll/

How does it handle?

How does that cooling system work (out the rear)?

[SirPoonga]

Also, since I am lazy and not going to do a search, why is it called  atriple?  3 cylinder?

[Sprucemoose]

Shouldn't this be moved to the motorcycle section of BYOAC

[SirPoonga]

Ok, back ontopic  Midway cocktail is always a nice look.

Personally, I don;t like a midway looking cabinet with controls on the horizontal side, but I understand why you would do that.  I think it looks fugly, but function is important too.


What controls do oyu plan on using?

[cheetah]

I can't agree with you more about the fugly horizontal controls, but I can't have an arcade machine that only plays vertical games.  Actually, I plan on building an upright cabinet in the future and I will take the horizontal controls off of the cocktail and use them on the upright.  The I will attach a panel to fill in the hole that is left from the controls and I have enough vinyl woodgrain to recover that side, so then it will look much better.  I first have to prove that this cabinet will not be a big waste of tmie before I get the go ahead to build another.

On the two vertical ends, I plan on having 1  4-way joystick in the center, 1 8-way Happs Super on the left of the control panel and 7 buttons on the right side of the controls.



And on the horizontal side, I plan on having 2 8-ways and 7 buttons for each player.



I would have loved to have a trackball on one of these controls, but there just isn't room.  As it is I am not crazy about the shape of the control panels, but that is the only way I can make room for what I need at this point.  Once I build the upright cab, I will probably redo the controls on the vertical ends to be more like a traditional Midway cocktail.

And I am proud to say that I took both bikes out this weekend and washed them!  

[SirPoonga]

No warlords action, huh?

[cheetah]

Well,  I am looking at ways to swap my panels or possibly just add-on what I need to play trackball and spinner games.  Also, I am giong to have a 4 port usb hub under the bottom of the horizontal control, so I could easily add other things through that method.  The 4 port USB hub was actually there so that I could plug in 2 gamepads for 4 player games, but that idea may have just been replaced by the way I have wired my panels.  I am using cat5 and rj45 connections, so i could easily connect external panels for this purpose so that everyone gets the real arcade feel.   I am trying to come up with a way that I could "attach" addition controls to the cocktail cab for 4 player fun and then remove them when not in use.  Looks like that is what I will be working on this weekend.

[cheetah]

Alright, I have finally made a little more progress on my cab.  As you can see, it has finally made it out of my garage and into my house!  



Here is another picture of it opened with the monitor installed.



As you can see I have gotten the computer parts and speakers installed.  Here is a better view of this stuff.



I decided to install 4 speakers since I am also going to use this cab as a jukebox.  Things started getting pretty tight in there with the subwoofer.  I may have to take the guts of the sub out to make a little more room.  If you look on the left side you see a circuit board mounted next to the speaker.  This board has power button for the computer and is accessible through one of the speaker holes that have been drilled in the side of the cabinet.  

And here is another picture showing the KeyWiz all mounted up and ready to be wired.


Now I just have to get the control panels done and I can finally play this thing.

One last picture.  Here is an overlay that PixelHugger did very early on to show the cab with the artwork that he is working on for me.



Obviously, I still have a long way to go, but at least I have made "some" progress.

[walls83]

man that looks good. real good. cant wait to see the finished product.

[cheetah]

OK.  It's been awhile since I posted any updates.  I haven't had alot of time to work on this project.  I did manage to get my control panels cut, drilled and the buttons and joysticks installed.  Here are a few pics:

Here is the contol panel that will be on the player one side of the cocktail cab.

The two buttons on the top left are Player 1 and Coin.  The two buttons on the right are Enter and Esc.  The joystick in the middle will be replaced with a 4-way Wico Leaf as soon as I can find a few at a reasonable price.  The joystick on the left is a Happs 8-way Super.

Here is the wiring.

I still have a little clean up to do on this wiring.  The loose ends will be connected to 2 CAT5 patch cables to make it easy to switch control panels in the future.

This is the 2 player horizontal control panel.

The 2 buttons on the top left again are player 1 and coin and the 2 on the top right are player 2 and coin.  The two in the middle are Enter and Esc and the hole in the middle at the top is for a 1 1/2" trackball.  I know that is pretty small, but there is not a whole lot of room on these panels.  I decided to have the joysticks on opposite sides since my wife is left handed and since this panel is so small, it will give more room between the players.

Hopefully I will get these installed on the cab this weekend.

[Tilzs]

Nice work. Looks awesome so far

[patrickl]

Looking very nice indeed. I didn't realize these cocktail cabs got so cramped after you put everything in. That must have taken some puzzeling to fit it all in ...

The joystick in the middle will be replaced with a 4-way Wico Leaf as soon as I can find a few at a reasonable price.

Did you see the 4-Way Wico NOS auction on e-Bay ($25 buy it now)?

[cheetah]

Looking very nice indeed. I didn't realize these cocktail cabs got so cramped after you put everything in. That must have taken some puzzeling to fit it all in ...

The joystick in the middle will be replaced with a 4-way Wico Leaf as soon as I can find a few at a reasonable price.

Did you see the 4-Way Wico NOS auction on e-Bay ($25 buy it now)?

Yeah, I have been playing with the control panel layouts for well over a month now.  I have 12 different versions of the vertical controls and 7 different version of the horizontal control.  I am pretty happy with the look and feel of the ones that I cut though.

I saw an earlier post on the forums about these Wico's.  I am going to check them out later tonight an probably go ahead an order 2.  Thanks for the info.

-Cheetah

[Pixelhugger]

Just posted more artwork for this here

[rchadd]

instead of having both 8 and 4 way joysticks you could have gone for the T-Stick Plus from Ultimarc see http://www.ultimarc.com/controls.html

it would help to save some panel space. maybe help to make space for a trackball?

did design the cab yourself or follow someones plans? it looks exactly what i need to play both vert and horiz games (but domestic space restrictions).

are you using a PC or arcade monitor? what size - is it 19"?

good work!

...you've inspired me to make a cab

[cheetah]

rchadd,

Thanks for the kind words, I am glad my work has inspired you!

As for the 8 and 4 way joysticks on the control panels, growing up, one of my favorite games of all time was Pac-Man and I really wanted the authentic feel of the 4-way joystick centered in the control panel.  I thought about adding a trackball, but with my previous statement, the only place that would have been available is on the left side and that didn't make much sense for a trackball.  I may change my mind once I have gotten my itch to play authentic pac-man out of the way.  

Yes, I am using a 19" PC monitor for the cab.  I just used what I had laying around.

Also, I built this cab using Kyle Lindstrom's plans as a guide, but I made many modifications along the way.  I spent hours awake at night thinking through all of the details and went through many pieces of paper sketching out all of the options.  In the end, I think I will be very please with the results.  I still have a few interesting little tricks up my sleeve that I haven't seen on a cocktail cab before that will hopefully set this one apart from the others, but those will stay secret until I have finished.  

If you have any questions when you get started on your cab, just let me know, I will help anyway that I can.

-Cheetah

[rchadd]

the T-Stick Plus can be switched between 8 way and 4 way operation without having to delve under the control panel. it has a special mechanism - you just pull up the handle and twist it (or something like that) to switch between 4 and 8 way operation. sounds like a cool idea to me.

I'm going to use them - but after replacing the handle with the ball top version!

[cheetah]

I printed out the jpg versions of the artwork that PixelHugger has come up with just to make sure that it fits properly and to see what it will look like when it is done.  Let me know what you think.





I still need to the finishing work on the plexi and mount the marquees, but this gives a fairly good idea of how the hole theme will eventually come together.

-Cheetah

[rchadd]

truely awesome looking! v.cool  

[rchadd]

what are those star shaped things called that you have used to mount the joysticks? i like how they allow a nice and clean look to your CP without visible carriage bolts showing. how are they fixed?

will they also work for mounting the trackball as well?

i need to find a supplier of those in the UK.

one other question:

are there any vertical games that need 7 buttons? I thought only fighters need so many and they are mostly horizontal games (so presume would be played on the 3rd side of your cab).

I was planning on only having 3 button layouts on the ends of my cab, then 2 x 6 button layouts on the 3rd side.

...then of course i need to find some space for a 3" trackball...

[cheetah]

what are those star shaped things called that you have used to mount the joysticks? i like how they allow a nice and clean look to your CP without visible carriage bolts showing. how are they fixed?

They are called T-Nuts.  You just hammer them into lined up with the hole where you want them.  They have sharp pieces under each of the "star sides" that stick into the wood.

will they also work for mounting the trackball as well?

I don't see why not, depending on how the trackball mounts.

i need to find a supplier of those in the UK.

I got mine at Home Depot here in the US, but I think that they are pretty common.

one other question:

are there any vertical games that need 7 buttons? I thought only fighters need so many and they are mostly horizontal games (so presume would be played on the 3rd side of your cab).

Yes, you are correct about the 7 buttons on the vertical side, but my wifes favorite game of all time is Toobin', which takes 5 buttons and it is a vertical game.  One button for each hand paddling forward and one button for each hand paddling backwards and 1 additional button to throw cans.  I figured with the extra buttons, you could pick which button was more comfortable to use to throw.  Also, I really like the way that the 7 button layout looks.  In addition, When playing games that use 3 or 4 buttons I like to use the top 3 and the bottom one, this is the most comfortable for me.

        1  2  3
        X  X  X
     X
     4

But I also have kids and it is easier for them to use the bottom 3 or 4 buttons because of the size of their hands so they can use:

     1  2  3  4
     X  X  X  X

on the bottom of the control panel.

The configuration for the kids is the default configuration on my KeyWiz.  Using the Shazaam! button on the KeyWiz, I will be able to change the mappings to the layout I like when I am playing.

Thanks for your continuing interest in my project, I look forward to seeing yours as it gets underway.

-Cheetah

[rchadd]

hows the cab coming along?

can you make the graphics available as illustrator files. i would like to modify slightly and maybe use them for my cab.

cheers

[cheetah]

hows the cab coming along?

can you make the graphics available as illustrator files. i would like to modify slightly and maybe use them for my cab.

cheers

rchadd,

Thanks for checking back.  Actually, we haven't finalized the artwork yet, so I don't have the Illustrator files from Pixelhugger yet, but when it is done, I think we can make them available.

-cheetah