mame in electrocoin goliath mk3

[boxman]

Well, here is the cab that I am turning into a mame machine. I'm pleased with the cabinet even though it is pretty damn ugly. I've gutted out the insides and started putting my parts in.



I have a strip of LEDs in the marquee you can see here:



This is the one thing that I was upset about after it was delivered, a nasty scratch in the smoked glass:



This is the slide out PCB shelf that I have mounted the PC stuff on:



And a close up of the tray I used to mount the PC bits, it's a metal box that a mousepad was delivered to me in. I stuck cardboard on the top because I thought it would be safer.



I used a hacksaw on a pen to make the little spacers between the motherboard and cardboard. I saw that tip on this board years ago.

Next job is to put the shelf in for a 22" CRT pc monitor.

[severdhed]

cool....looks like an excellent cabinet for MAME....

keep those pics coming

[boxman]

cool....looks like an excellent cabinet for MAME....

keep those pics coming

Thanks, will do!

For the control panel I am aiming for something like this:



I have no idea if those measurements are right for my parts though, I copied the button layout from slagcoin and I think they are for sanwa buttons and I have happs.

These are the controls I have:

2 Happs competition joys
2 Yellow buttons for coins
1 Red button for pause/exit
2 Start buttons
6 Blue Happs competition buttons
8 Purple Happs competition buttons

Even though I have enough buttons for a 7 button layout I think I will stick with 6 buttons each.

[Ginsu Victim]

Ugly? I think it looks awesome.

[boxman]

It looks awesome in the "80's retro look" respect, ugly in the "acceptance by girlfriend" respect!

(the cab is as old or older than her btw, has a sticker on the back saying it was last tested in 87 which is the year she was born!)

[Franco B]

Looking good 

Don't worry about using Happ buttons instead of Japanese buttons with the slagcoin layouts. Happ buttons and most Seimitsu/Sanwa buttons have the same bezel diameter (~33mm IIRC) so they will look the same once installed. Just make sure you use a 1 1/4" or 28mm bit rather than 30mm for Jap buttons.

[boxman]

Looking good 

Don't worry about using Happ buttons instead of Japanese buttons with the slagcoin layouts. Happ buttons and most Seimitsu/Sanwa buttons have the same bezel diameter (~33mm IIRC) so they will look the same once installed. Just make sure you use a 1 1/4" or 28mm bit rather than 30mm for Jap buttons.

Good stuff, cheers for letting me know.

I'm thinking I might like a 4 way stick in the middle below the red button. Do you chaps think it will be too much for a 24" panel? I don't want to miss out on the classic 4 way games but I don't want to add it if there isn't enough space.

[severdhed]

i had a 4 way in the middle of my panel for a while...i found that i was the only one who ever used it. none of my friends knew what it was, and when i would tell them, it didnt matter because they didnt know which games need to use the 4way and which ones used the 8way.  i opted for U360s from ultimarc and now everything is great.  the stick switches its mapping based on the game you play, so there is never a question about which stick to use.   

[boxman]

I'm getting fairly close to finishing this beast.

After a few frustrating late nights testing different versions of xmame, sdlmame and advancemame I finally settled on sdlmame 0.111 because it ran the Street Fighter games at 100% on my Celeron 2.4Ghz. I rolled back the romset and installed it all in the arcade machine only to find out that the Mortal Kombat games ran like turd. I was so frustrated at configuring it all at this point that I just upgraded the CPU to a P4 2.8Ghz which blows the old Celeron away. Everything runs beautifully now (well, most of it...).

I built a simple CP to test it all out on which has the basic SF2 layout. I'm glad I did this because after a few hours playing you can get a good idea of where the buttons and sticks need to be for it to be comfortable. The buttons are way too low down the CP on my test panel. I might do something a bit more fancy for the final layout. I also tested some 4 way and 2 way games and decided I don't need a 4 way stick.

For the sounds I got a cheap 2.1 system for £10 which does the job fine.

Here is a shot with the test CP and monitor installed:



And behind the coin door where I have the subwoofer with volume controls, keyboard and power button:



So far so good.

[boxman]

I have completed and installed the CP. Just need to get some tinted perspex, black card for a bezel and a marquee and I'm just about finished for now.

Here are some pics (sorry about the quality, they were a bit dark so I brightened them up a bit)





 

[boxman]

I just realised that I forgot to add the info I found out about this cabinet. I'll add it in this post for anyone who searches for the same cabinet in the future.

The cab is an Electrocoin Goiiath mk3. Here is a pic and some info from electrcoin:

Electrocoin really went to work on the Goliath Mk3 cabinet and the results saw sales soar throughout the 80's. The main changes to the cabinet over the Mk2 were firstly the introduction of a front loading pcb shelf which is accessed via the drop down control panel. The sides of the cabinet were no longer stickered and the artwork was screened. The sideart now also matched up with the 6 inch depth control panel whereas with the Mk2 it seemed as though Electrocoin had overlooked it. The monitor glass artwork was basically the same however had a new colour scheme which was not quite a bright and glittery as it was with the Mk2. The normal back door on the Mk2 was replaced with a little door that was screwed into place and had no lock. The back of this door also had a metal plate attached to it which once in place, held down the cherry switch for the power located at the rear of the pcb shelf. By far the biggest change of this cabinet over the Mk2 was the introduction of the 'wooden wheel' monitor rotation system which was a stroke of genius. This allowed operators to install games of both vertical and horizontal orientation into the same machine and easily rotate the monitor to suit. Control Panels came with whatever arrangement of buttons and joysticks the operator had asked for, however most examples of Goliaths today are 2 player and 3 buttons each. The Goliath in the picture is a single joystick with 3 buttons to each side for left or right handed players, which are in red green and blue (the standard colours used). The joysticks are all plastic and red in colour. The control panel was also designed to accommodate 4 player start buttons but Goliaths are rarely seen with more than two. The monitor remained the same size at 20", and was still removable through the front of the cabinet whilst still attached to the wooden wheel. The marquee lighting and speaker arrangement was pretty much the same. There were other subtle little changes that were made, little things like the main on/off switch on the top of the machine that was now fitted with a plastic rocker switch of a more modern design. Also, most Mk3's are JAMMA but be warned as some are not. Out of those that are not, there are those that are easily spotted but others may fool collectors into thinking they are JAMMA when in fact they are really UNIGAME, which is very similar to JAMMA but NOT the same.

http://www.electrocoin.uk.com/~electrocoin.uk.com/public_html/goliath/

It's a good easy cabinet to stick mame in and can be found quite cheap. When I got mine I told the seller to take out the monitor and take off the controls and give me some money off so that I could get it a bit cheaper. In the end he sold it to me for £80 delivered, which I think is quite fair. As I said before, the only thing that I was a bit disappointed about was the scratch in the glass which I didn't notice when I went to view the cab.

I would have loved to have kept the rotating monitor stuff but it was just too much hassle for someone with limited skills like me.

[sham69]

Cab looks great.
I got an electrocoin Xenon last year, still trying to get it finished.
It had a metal CP when I got it which is a bit of a nightmare.
I have a guy coming to make me a wooden CP for it and was wondering if the measurements for the goliath are the same for the Xenon?
If so I was going to use your layout (if you don't mind) as it's exactly what I am looking for .
Unfortunately I neither have the tools or the skills to make the panek myself.
Fair play to you for doing it and keep up the good work.
Sham.

[boxman]

Of course you can copy them, after all I just copied them from the slagcoin layouts.

I looked the xenon cab up, looks nice.

http://www.electrocoin.uk.com/~electrocoin.uk.com/public_html/xenon/

My control panel was surprisingly easy to make. I got the local timber yard to cut the ply for me which was good but the boy cut it 1/4" shorter than I asked for so there is a slightly bigger gap at the sides of the CP than I would like, but it works so ---fudgesicle--- it.

In the future when I have more money I want to build a removable box CP with a trackball or something.

There were plenty of errors that I made hacking this thing together. For one I made the tray with the mobo on so I could easily take it out the back to do upgrades and stuff but with the graphics card and sound card installed it is too tall, so I have to unscrew the top of the CP to get it out. I wanted to make a keyboard tray also, but in the end I was too impatient and just wanted to get it done ASAP.

The biggest mistake I made was not accounting for how frigging hot the monitor would get inside there when the perspex was installed. I had it on for about 5 hours before I noticed the heat coming out, I could actually feel it on my face. The perspex was sort of softened and warped. The next day I took the case off the monitor and drilled about 20 holes in the top of the cab and it hasn't been a problem since.

Here is a crappy photo with the tinted perspex installed:



Everything works perfectly now with sdlmame 0.132, but I have 1GB of ram coming to replace my 512mb just in case.

I'm happy with it.

 

[saleem]

nice!

i will remmber what you have said about the heat and such from the monitor.

i am going to fit a lcd in mine,so i might consider opening the back off but,it makes me wander if its more crt monitors that are prone to heat build up than lcd.
 

[drpcken]

Oh man! I might have to steal your cp layout if you don't mind! I'm working on my first mame cab and I have the same size CP that was already on the cab to work with ( 604mm X 215mm, but close enough).  I was really worried about getting this layout to work with this amount of space and for my first project I didn't want to custom build a CP yet.

Looks great!  Thanks for the inspiration!

[boxman]

No worries mate, copy whatever you like.

Just FYI the center of the hole for the joystick on the left (player 1) and the center of the last button to the right (player 2) are 3 inches in from the sides, if that makes any sense. You could probably move the player 2 controls and inch or so more to the right, I'm thinking I should have probably done that myself. I also would like to try putting the top row of buttons in the middle and moving the P1 and P2 controls up an inch or so, there would be more space to rest your hands that way.

I've had a couple of rounds of SF3 with some friends and while space was tight it's nothing to complain about and certainly no worse than a real arcade machine. This layout has much more space for two people than the original 2 player layout on this cab.

Good luck and thanks for the comments!