Project Dextercade (working name)

[Dexter]

Hello all,

ALthough I've mamed 3 cabs now (2 jammas and a brand new cocktail from scratch), I finally got my hands on a cab that I'll be hanging onto longterm so I'm making it my first posting in 'project announcements'.

It's a seperate 33" monitor housing/pedestal design, ideal for the small room it's in. I'm toying with the idea of chopping the top off the pedestal and fitting a quad style c/p. That wg9200 I've had in its box for nearly two years will finally see the light of day! These pics were taken after a cleanup, side art on pedestal removed and two competition sticks thrown into it.

The initial name is Dextercade, I was thinking about Divorcecade due to my blonder halfs reaction to the size of the thing (I'm talking about the cab of course). You can just about see the wheel I'm thinking of attaching. I've also a SW yoke to fit if I can get it working, IF.

It's going to be an interesting summer.......

Dexter

[Truecade]

That looks like an awesome cabinet.  There's nothing like playing games on a 33" monitor.  Are you going to convert the CP to a 4-player or leave it 2-player?

Also, did you go directly through wells-gardner to get your 33" monitor?  How much was shipping on that beast?  I noticed that WG is now selling a 39" D9200 for $100 more than the 33".      Some day when I have a bigger house I'd like to build a showcase cab with a 39" monitor.

Ken

[DrewKaree]

How 'bout DexSTAR or Dexterama for names?

[Dexter]

Not bad at all Drew thanks, Dexterama sounds cool. I could stick a few graphics of bender on it for the laugh. I'm leaving the marquee till last anyway so all suggestions welcome.

Cheers Ken. I've a serious space problem in the room where it will be, the pedestal is 32" wide, to quad it would make it 44"-48" so I may just leave it at two player and have a couple of PSX joypads inside the coin door for whenever 4 player is needed.

I can't remember how much shipping was on the WG9200 but it was a lot (I'm in Dublin, Ireland). I'll PM you the amount when I come across the receipt.

By the way, You'll need a lot of space to run a 39" monitor and be far back enough to play it comfortably for extended periods. I'm dead lucky that the cab I tracked down was (unknown at the time) two seperate parts, this means I can push it together when not in use to save space or adjust my distance from the monitor while in use, unlike the Dynamo showcase style that has a fixed distance.

Dexter

[DrewKaree]

Not bad at all Drew thanks, Dexterama sounds cool. I could stick a few graphics of bender on it for the laugh. I'm leaving the marquee till last anyway so all suggestions welcome.

Whodathunk that brain works for bad AND good

[Dexter]

Quick update, I got a good run over the weekend and got a fair bit done on the cab....

Pic 1. Drilled holes for (black) pause and exit buttons. Drilled + added coin 1+2 buttons beside player starts. Drilled + mounted ms. pac-man/galaga reunion 4 way stick + q-bert stick. Mounted 3" trackball. Covered panel in marble effect contact paper (may swap for happ black pica vinyl).

Pic 2. Attached mount from old hantarex frame to D9200 so it would mate up to the brackets on the monitor housing properly. Mounting the monitor was a nightmare due to its weight and the relatively small space it had to go in, But compared to the hassle of wiring up a regular arcade monitor to a PC, I'll go with this anyday!

[Dexter]

Pic 3. Ah yes. No splitting cables. No messing with pinouts. No high voltage shocks. Just plug in your VGA cable and enjoy.

Pic 4. Pedestal opened showing the usual spaghetti junction of wires. A-pac up and running, opti-pac ready to go.

[Dexter]

Pic 5. Rear of pedestal opened showing PC mounted on old jamma board holder. It's a sempron 2800 with 512MB memory, Radeon 9550 graphics card and 40GB hdd. To the left is the subwoofer, and sounding very nice into the bargain. It makes a hell of a difference having proper space to work with instead of a cocktail cab.

Pic 6. I know Philips arent renowned for their PC speakers but this set fit the pedestal perfectly so I don't have to start hacking away too much. Still way and above what you got in any classic games (bar a few) and excellent all-round performance for general audio use (I'll be running jukebox software in the cab too)

[Dexter]

Another update, have the machine running bits and pieces to tide me over until I get the hardware finished.....

pic 1. Gamelauncher - Nice and handy to set up and use

pic 2. Mame .96u2 running Marvel vs Capcom

[Dexter]

pic 3. zsnes running Super Mario World with 3x fillter (drool)

pic 4. Fusion running megadrive sonic 1

[Dexter]

Pic 5. Atari800 running fort apocalypse (anyone else waste their youth on this game??)

Pic 6. ePSXe running Crash Bandicoot 3

[Dexter]

Pic 7. Ultra 64 running KI1

Pic 8. Vivanonno running Rave Racer