New Bartop Taxi-Cab "clone". DONE and SHIPPED!

[robC]

A buddy of mine has been very interested in the construction of my recently completed upright arcade, asking me lots of questions and he was thinking about one himself, but decided he could not find the space for one.
My original upright cab is here:
http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=77702.0
So his 40th B-day is here, and I decided to surprise him with a portable bartop arcade instead. It's now getting close to completion, so here are a few pictures of the process.

This project was inspired by (read : "copied from") the superbly built and documented "Taxi Cab" bartop. Thanks to dmworking for his great writeup, especially the scaled diagrams which were a great help.
If you haven't seen it, take a look. Simply awesome design and construction!
http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=78492.0
Instead of a painted finish, which I would never be able to get to look as nice as his project, I opted for a black laminate, which should be very durable for a portable machine. After applying it, I am wishing I would have done this on my upright also. It is far faster and easier than painting, and the finish is perfect.

As seen on the Taxi Cab, I am also building swappable control panels which will plug in via RJ45 jacks. To start, it will have P1 and P2 panels with 1 stick/6 buttons each. I built an extra blank panel in case he wants to have a trackball panel in the future.

The specs:
19" LCD (4:3) monitor mounted horizontally - With tinted plexi in front.
Mini-Atx mobo / Athlon 3200+ / GeForce 6100 on board. Package deal from newegg for $60 after rebate.
P1 panel : U360 stick with 6 buttons.
P2 panel : Happ comp with 6 buttons.
KeyWiz & NovaMatrix light from GGG.
Black laminate with red t-molding.

LCD removed from the case to conserve space.




Bench testing the guts and installing MAME/MALA. Finished cab will not have the CD drive attached.



All the parts cut and pocket holes drilled.



Dry fitting the cab pieces before laminating:



Tinted plexi and monitor mounted. I cut out the floor of an old computer case and attached it to the LCD stand mounts. The mobo is then screwed to the micro-atx mounts. Cut some holes in the bottom plate to save a about 2 lbs.




Montor button board mounted. Had to cut and extend the wiring harness for the buttons.



Marquee light installed.




Cab with control panel removed. Control panels slide over the protruding section of the bottom. Monitor button plate from the case was removed and mounted here.



Player 1 Control panel. U360 is bottom mounted in a recess and held in place by smooth top t-nuts. Hopefully I can find some black ones!



Control panel installed




Next up : re-mount the guts, add speakers, and wire the controls. Can't wait to play test it!

[javeryh]

Holy crap!  That is a great job - love the pocket screws!   

[dmworking247]

Wow cool, there's an analogy needed here about a parent and being proud but its escaping me.

In any case I'm really glad my Taxi Cab project could provide some inspiration or instruction to someone else's project, and the results here look superb.

I love the extra touches too, like the front mounted (but hidden) LCD controls, and the extra supports you've put in there for the LCD, the ventilation (?) holes in the base, and the piano hinge on the back panel. Do you have a theme in mind (eg for the marquee?)

I assume you scaled everything up to fit a 19" LCD? It looks great, and that extra space on the CP could almost allow you to have a second joystick on the right (ie for Robotron, or to give you a left-handed player option)

Good luck with the rest of the build, I'll be watching closely!

[robC]

I got this thing completed and shipped out this week, so I will share a few more pictures of the final product. My bud is really digging it.

First I mounted the motherboard to the plate I installed on the back of the LCD.
Ripped apart some old bookshelf speakers to get the drivers out and installed them.
Mounted the power supply to the cabinet back.
Installed the PC fan in the top of the cabinet and put on the chrome grills.



Here was a bit of luck. I was trying to decide where to best install the Keywiz. I took the driver out of the cheap PC speakers I bought to use for the amplifier/headphone/volume control, and lo and behold the KeyWiz fit perfectly in the empty space! I used a few RJ45 cables soldered to the Keywiz, and routed them along with the speaker wires out the back. Hot glued the Keywiz in place and it turned out very clean! Just screwed the completed speaker case onto the inside of cabinet and we are good to go.




Here you can see the RJ45 cables connected to the wallplate punchdown jacks I used for the quick disconnect of the control panels. Below the plugs is the USB hub for the U360 and any extra USB devices. You can see the hard drive mounted with a couple "Joist Angles".



Internal wiring all finished and cinched up.



Painted the monitor control panel and RJ45 wallplate to make it look a little cleaner.



Here is the wiring of the control panel with the U360. And of course I had to brand it!



Connecting the control panel.



And the Completed cab. I built it with a player 2 control panel that can be plugged in at the same time, which is running a Happs Competition stick.
The P1 control planel has a space left over for a possible spinner, and the P2 control panel I left a little more room to the right for a future trackball install.





Overall, I am very happy with how this turned out. Thanks again DMWorking for your plans and writeup of the TaxiCab project. That was a great help!

[leapinlew]

Good looking project.

What is your marquee retainer?

[robC]

Thanks.
The marquee retainers are just some clear "drywall corner protectors" from Menards that are spray painted with Flat black paint. They match the laminate very well. Then I just glued on a couple little MDF spacers on the top and bottom to hold the back of the plexi.

[Blanka]

What I don't get is that people who mount joysticks below the wooden panel use bolts that go through. Just buy 15mm long screws that perfectly stay within the wooden panel. You must be really bad-ass if you can kill that mounting. Bolds through the panel are only necessary when you use a metal panel only. But that will sound crap anyway, so theres mostly always wood to mount joysticks in a clean fashion.
Which LCD do you have. As far as I know, 19 inchers are all 1280x1024 pixels and thus 5:4. 19 inch 4:3 does not exist in my opinion.

[leapinlew]

What I don't get is that people who mount joysticks below the wooden panel use bolts that go through. Just buy 15mm long screws that perfectly stay within the wooden panel.

Some people like the look of carriage bolts. If your CP is made of MDF - I would recommend bolts over screws since the holding power of screws in MDF doesn't work well if you have to take the screws out a couple times.