Crowquill's "Vortex" cab

[Crowquill]

Finally ready to assemble everything that I've been collecting for the last 3 or 4 years.

I got the cabinet moved from my parents' house a few weeks ago (who'd have thought it would fit in a hatchback). It's a clone of the Frogger-style Sega cabs, wood-grain and all. The artwork was for Crazy Kong but a few years back we got the PCB running and it was Donkey KING Junior. It'll serve me much better as a MAME cabinet. Once my schedules calm down I'll have to get the PCB shipped out so that someone can dump the ROMs from my bootleg.

The cab's in worse shape than I thought it was. The bottom panel is warped and came off in the move. The bottom corner is bashed up and aparently warped a bit. There's a gap in the marquee area. Everything just really needed to be tightened up and reinforced. Monitor has severe screen burn from both Sidearms and Zaxxon. The monitor won't power up anymore. Reinforcing is done and I've gutted all of the original hardware and started cleaning. Here's the before and after:

[Crowquill]

Artwork is finalized. The theme is "The Vortex." It's a good analogy for the cabinet and sounds pretty cool. With some feedback in the Artwork forums, the marquee and Control panel overlay are done. Here's the thread:

http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php/topic,35493.0.html

I wanted it to be colorful and my wife's comments were that if I'm doing this it might as well look fun. Here's the marquee and Photoshop mockup:

The mockup is actually a pic of a Frogger cab.

I'll get these Illustrator files uploaded to the vector library soon.

[Crowquill]

As mentioned, the CPU will be a 400mHz Blue and white Power Mac G3 tower running Mac OS 10.3 (Panther). It has 512MB of RAM. Despite the age of the CPU, it runs decently fast and can serve as an iTunes jukebox, DVD player (Dragon's Lair box set runs well), and has internet access. It has a wireless card with an external antenna for network/internet access.

MacMAME is pretty nice and has it's own built-in front end. I'm also trying to get AdvanceMAME and XMame to compile properly to give them a try.

Controls are being wired to two hacked Playstation controllers with USB adapters. The bottom area of the cab is probably going to be used for storing consoles. The Dreamcast and Saturn will have a good home.

The control panel will have two 6-button layouts and a 2-1/4" Sega trackball in the middle which will be lit red.

[Crowquill]

Wow...I've obviously been neglecting this thread as I've tinkered with the cab. Now that it's almost done I'll at least get some updates with some of the pics I've taken along the way. I hate when people dump a ton of stuff at once to their page so every day I'll bring a new chapter 

Just because I'm mostly done doesn't mean I wouldn't like feedback. I'm not sure if it'll ever be "done"

Chapter 1
--------------------------------------HARDWARE--------------------------------------

eMachines 1.3mHz celeron w/ XP home.
   -512MB of memory
   -Rage Pro video card
   -Buffalo wireless network card (the only thing that made the jump)

Dell p1110 21" trinitron monitor ($25 at Goodwill!)

The Mac actually ran the games better, but the the PC can boot straight into MameWah, making it less computer-like and giving me the option to pick games using a joystick.

I'm still using hacked Playstation Dual Shocks with Spiffyshoes' solderless hack running through Radio Shack PS-->USB adapters.

[miles2912]

Nice name .. 

D-

[Crowquill]

Chapter 1
--------------------------------------PAINTING--------------------------------------

Got the cabinet stripped down, cleaned, reinforced, then cleaned again. I chose a lovely "gumball red" color in Olympic latex paint. It's the closest I could find to the bright red laminate used in cabs like the Neo-Geo.

Let me just say that despite going to art school, doing a project like this with standard latex paints was a learning experience.

Started putting on paint. After letting it dry overnight, I found out that I could peel the paint off of the side in one solid piece. Apparently I should've put primer on first. Off to Lowe's. Picked up some Zinsser Bulls Eye 1-2-3 primer. It's the only one I could find that listed laminate as one of the surfaces it would cover. I put on the primer. The cabinet looked pretty good white. I considered keeping it that way. But instead I started putting on coats of red. It was looking kind of pink. About 7 coats in it was looking red, but the paint was very inconsistant. I had lighter spots showing through with every coat.

I asked one of the guys at Lowe's paint counter if he had any suggestions. He told me it would never really cover and would always look bad. He then seriously suggested the best course of action would be to cut new sides and paint those. Does this guy really suggest to everyone trying to make something looking better with paint to buy a new one and paint it? He drove me to fill out a comment card. I then moved on to Home Depot hoping to get some decent help. I was told by a helpful woman in the paint department that deep colors like bright, primary red, need MANY coats to look consistant. I was also told I should've used the "deep tint" version of the primer. I took her advice and after 12 coats or so it looks quite even.

I also painted the insides of the side panels black, repainted the top and back black, and stripped down and spray painted the coin door and any metal trim with Krylon semi-flat black. No wonder every conversion was painted black, it'll cover anything. Things were starting to look much better.