First MAME Cab - Spider-Man (Updated: August 13, 2010)

[DillonFoulds]

Hey guys, I finally found a cab locally to work with. I've been looking in to constructing a MAME cabinet for 6 or 7 years now, and it's all started as of Friday, September 4th, 2009.

I picked up a Spider-Man, converted to NBA JAM Tournament Edition cab with a working power supply, monitor, coin door, and a lot of buttons and joysticks. The cab itself has already been repainted, as the previous owner was in the middle of converting it to a Track and Field machine. He had a friend airbrush some custom artwork on the sides, and he's rewired the Control Panel a bit as well. He got the game running, and then the game board fried. He brought in an electrician to look at the board, who decided it wasn't going to be an easy (possible) repair. The cabinet was then stored for a while, and now it's in my hands.

The control panel is mounted with 3 simple bolts, so I can make up a secondary panel if i want (2 player fighter panel, trackball/spinner panel, driving panel, etc.).

I'll be wiring it as follows: Encoder -> DB25 *2 -> Terminal Strips -> Disconnects -> Microswitches
Changed my mind, picked up an I-pac4, and decided to fore-go a trackball. Maybe in the future I'll make a trackball/spinner/2p board, but in the present I'm not concerned about it.

Friday, September 4th - Picked up the cab, dumped in kitchen. Upset girlfriend with giant arcade machine in the middle of the kitchen... no work tonight.

Saturday, September 5th - Cleaned up cabinet. Gutted C/P box. Organized some internal wiring. Peeled off Vinyl covering the C/P, and surprise! The original C/P artwork is still intact (albeit 3 holes around 4p joystick), no additional holes were made. Vacuumed cabinet, and cleaned out the inside. Tons of dust and a couple bugs :S

Sunday, September 6th - Started the planning phase. Working on C/P layouts. Went shopping for some parts, quick disconnects, wiring (i'll be using Cat5, 24 AWG for the C/P), cam locks for coin door and rear door.

Monday, September 7th - Got some PC hardware rounded up. Still need Ram and HDD though.

Wednesday, September 9th - Got PC all together, installed windows, started configuring MaLa.

Saturday, September 12th - Stripped the first side, to get a feel for the process. Looks easy enough. Weather looks like i won't get much chance this week to finish stripping it.

Sunday, September 13th - Hooked up PC to arcade monitor today. Picture was very dim, tried adjusting controls. Still not satified.

Wednesday, September 16th - Encoder Shipped Today!!!

Thursday, September 17th - Fired it up again, going crazy i haven't made enough (in my books) progress on this yet. Adjusted monitor a bit more, having some Red signal problems.

Saturday, September 19th - Brought monitor in to a tech, hopefully he can figure things out. More work on C/P. Mounted a terminal strip, and wired with DB25 cables in for a quick disconnect of the C/P.  
Edit: There was no problem with the reds, i was adjusting things wrong. Did replace a pot. on it that accounted for a bouncing screen problem though...

Tuesday, September 22nd - Finished Stripping the sides, started to prep them for primer.

Friday, September 25th - Keyboard encoder arrived today. Started wiring the control panel tonight. Can't believe how tedious it is to strip a wire on both ends, and crimp it. It took me almost half an hour to do the player 1 signal wires. Got in to a groove after that though, and did the remaining 3 in half an hour .

Saturday, September 26th - Finished wiring the control panel grounds tonight. It goes MUCH easier when you don't have to think about where you're wiring to, just daisy chaining wires and connectors...

Wednesday, September 30th - Started wiring up the keyboard encoder. I'm wiring a pair of DB25s here so that when it comes time to swap out control panels, all I have do is remove 3 bolts, disconnect the db25s, remove control panel, reverse the process.

Thursday, October 1st - Gutted the power supply, wired in the main power switch, and the external power source. Wired in a power bar. Also put a proper 115v plug on the Isolation Transformer and marquee. Put the control panel and the encoder in the computer tonight. Hooked the speakers (victims) up to the cab tonight. Played through Michael Jackson's Moonwalker with the girlfriend . My fun was building it, her fun is playing, so it's only fair I let her have first pick! After all, this thing is STILL IN THE KITCHEN!!! and she's taking it pretty well. I'm a lucky guy!

First day of snow! The weather is officially no good for me to take the cab outside to sand and repaint it. Guess it's time to put it together for the winter...

Friday, October 2nd - (Re)Wired up the coin door. I've wired it with Cat5e, and left the end on. Inside the cabinet I've wired in a Cat5 jack. Nice and easy to disconnect. Picked up a sheet of black card to mask of the marquee (temp until i get some art for it). Wired in the speakers (I sacrificed a pair of USB powered speakers, so that there would be no issues with power sourcing. They're more than loud enough to power the 2 speakers in the cab.

Saturday, October 3rd - Found an issue last night with the 3rd player wiring keyboard encoder. I've posted a thread about it in the Software forum. LINK Could be a problem with the way mame handles input signals. I swapped a couple buttons (Current CP is only 3 buttons per player, so I stole button 4 on player 1 to fix my problem, could bite me in the ass down the road).

Monday, October 5th - Happy Birthday Andrea!

Tuesday, October 6th - Picked up new locks for the cabinet. Couldn't find any keyed alike Guess the back panel key won't match the front. Oh well.

Saturday, October 10th - Looks like Winter's here to stay... moved cabinet in to it's resting place for the winter. Got some play out of it tonight. Still need to set up the front-end. Over the next couple weeks I'll work on the (boring) software side of things. Accidentally broke a couple things in Windows, had to format mid play-time... grrrr... at least I had Guitar Hero to hold the friends over while I formatted. Note to self: Ghost my hard drive once completed...

Saturday, October 17th - Having more strange issues with the encoder. Now a couple buttons are stuck on. Did some troubleshooting and narrowed the problem down to the encoder itself. It's not a wiring issue (multimeter/continuity test reports things are fine), and it's not a windows issue (tried encoder on a couple different computers, buttons 13 and 14 are stuck on)...

Friday, October 23rd - Configured the windows user account a bit. Set up MaLa and some games lists. Configured MAME and MaLa to avoid using the mouse and keyboard as much as possible. Had to clean and replace some parts in a couple joysticks (old, but good joysticks).

Saturday, October 24th - Took my first power tool to the cabinet. Picked up an 1-1/8" spade bit a while ago that I've been dying to use. I mounted a power button up near the mains power switch.

Wednesday, May 12, 2010 - New parts arrived today! Also, the weather's cleared up. Hoping on the weekend to build up a new control panel!

Saturday, June 24th, 2010 - I did up a new control panel finally!

At this point the cabinet is fully playable. Here's my remaining to-do list.
- Cut control panel Plexiglass
- Sand, Bondo, Sand, Prime, Sand, Paint, (sand?), Paint
- Do up some artwork and have it printed
- Replace t-molding. Currently in rough shape, also it's of a plastic variety, could be higher quality for sure.
- Replace monitor shield. (Currently in decent shape, but new is better )

[saleem]

this thread is useless without pics.post some pics,this is where the fun is at,looking at what you got now,showing us your every steps and the end results.
 

[drventure]

The quick disconnects will work fine, though you might need to double or triple over the wire (basically, strip off a lot more than normal, then just fold the wire back on itself before sticking it in the disconnect and crimping it down).

The 8 ways would probably be ok. I've got Magsticks for P3 and 4 and U360's for P1 and 2.

Honestly, I should have gone U360s for all players. That way, I could have used them easily for 2 player, 2 stick games. But the u360's rock!

As for coin button. There's another thread about coin mech usage, but the short of the story is, it sure makes a cab feel more "real" to have to plop or quarter (or token) in to play a game, then just reaching up and hitting a button. My cab has coin buttons. I'm kinda regretting it. But. That's just my 2c

Post pics dang it! 

[DillonFoulds]

Turning this in to a picture post.


Front Side


Left Side


Back Side


Right Side


Coin Mechs, the tan ones that are slightly harder to mod. Not sure if I'll fiddle with them much, as they accept common quarters.


Behind the marquee...


Here's a shot of the C/P latch, and also one of the 3 bolts that mounts the C/P box to the cab.


Here's the C/P opened up. You can see when it's opened you get full access to the cab, which i thought could come in handy.


And here's the backside of the CP, you can see some of the extra holes cut in here. Oddly enough, the holes by the red buttons were from the factory, and not from when the conversion was done. The only holes needed during the conversion are all around the green joysticks.


Here's the harness I'll be using to connect VGA to the RGB-HV signals


Transformer, my understanding is it steps down the 120v signal to 100v?


If I'm not mistaken, There's AC Power, D-Coil, then it goes Red, Green, Blue(brown wire), Ground, a few unused connections, then a Sync, wired in parallel with the opposing sync signal.


And finally here's some adjustment knobs on the monitor chassis. Note the model number is silkscreened here as well.


Here's a shot of the Track and field board, with a cabinet wiring harness connected to it (not JAMMA).

I got pics of pretty much the entire cab, request me if you want to see anything closer.

[DillonFoulds]

So next step i think will be repainting the cabinet.

What i plan to do is remove all the t-molding, coin door, C/P, DOA game board, and then I'll have to decide if I'm going to strip it or sand it, or just cover the outside in a black vinyl. My concerns with the vinyl would be cost and coverage (i'll cut it 1/4" from the cabinet edges, and tuck it under t-molding).

The custom paint is airbrushing with a verathane (?) coat. I'm thinking i would like the end result more if i roughed up the current paint, bondo'ed, sanded, and then repainted. Would it be easier to sand something like this, or just strip it off with paint stripper? Also, if i'm sanding and repainting over the airbrushing, is it worth a coat of primer, or can i just start painting on the black directly over top? I'd be planning on 2 coats of black, for what it's worth.

[swaffar]

Man...
...that artwork is HIDEOUS!

[DillonFoulds]

Yeah it's really something else. I guess now you can see why i want to cover it up so bad. It only gets worse the closer you take pictures, too.

[ChadTower]

Are you kidding me?  That artwork is awesome!  Uniqueness is the best attribute a cab can have in its artwork.  We need scans of that.  I'm not kidding.

[syph007]

My vote it for hideous.  Ugliest homebrew art I've ever seen.

[DillonFoulds]

The artwork itself, albeit a bit out to lunch, was actually done in a pretty decent technique. I'm sure this guy could do some pretty decent artwork, given the right picture to work off of.

[Epyx]

The first thing that comes to mind viewing the artwork is:

Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers-> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fabulous_Furry_Freak_Brothers

And that isn't necessarily a bad thing

[DillonFoulds]

Brought my monitor in to a tech to look at about an issue with the reds in the picture. I'm hoping tonight I'll find time to pick it up.

There was a pot that was causing some issues (bouncing picture, dim picture) that has been replaced. Apparently i must not have had the red adjusted properly, as there ended up not being the problem that i suspected with the red.

Quoting the tech, the pot that was replaced controls voltage in the monitor (I'm not clear on exactly what). The multimeter showed 85v out of an expected 100v, and i could see it was clearly causing a picture bounce when it was adjusted.

Still haven't received my encoder from GroovyGameGear yet, but I'll keep posted on it.

[DillonFoulds]

*BUMP*

Also, PICTURES!

Saturday, September 19th - More work on C/P. Mounted a terminal strip...



and wired with DB25 cables in for a quick disconnect of the C/P.



Tuesday, September 22nd - Finished Stripping the sides, started to prep them for primer.






Friday, September 25th - Started wiring the control panel tonight.





Saturday, September 26th - Finished wiring the control panel grounds.
*pics to come*


Wednesday, September 30th - Started wiring up the keyboard encoder.



Other Side of DB25s.


Thursday, October 1st - Gutted the original power supply, wired in a power bar.

Let me know if you want an inside shot of the gutted supply.

Friday, October 2nd - (Re)Wired up the coin door. I've wired it with Cat5e, and left the end on.

Inside the cabinet I've wired in a Cat5 jack.


Wired in the speakers.




Saturday, October 24th - Put in a permanent power button for the computer.

[emphatic]

Very clever wiring. 

[DillonFoulds]

This GPWiz40-Eco is kicking my butt...

Now it's saying buttons 13 and 14 (4Coin and 2Coin, respectfully) are being held down. Rechecked all the connections with a multimeter, everything's fine. Checked continuity between GND and "E" and "F" connections on the GPWiz, no signal until i manually push the buttons on the coin door (or insert a quarter). Unhooked the DB25s and hooked the GPWiz up to my laptop, (no control panel hooked up, just the db25s that don't connect to anywhere. Manually jumping pins presses buttons as expected, but 13 and 14 are still stuck "ON". Not sure what the deal with this thing is...

[YoGaBaR]

Hey where did you get that harness to connect VGA to the RGB-HV signals?

Nice work I like those terminals on the CP!

[DillonFoulds]

I got the harness from a local guy here (the guy i bought the cab off threw it in!)

It has wires going out, or through-hole soldering points. I figure if i get sneaky, i'll be able to wire a second input to my monitor with it.

[nexusmtz]

You were making great progress on this one for awhile. Anything new in the last couple weeks?

If not, can you take another look at the cabinet and see if you can tell what it was when it was born? The tags on the back say Sega, but NBA Jam was a Midway game. Also, the marquee area looks big enough to have been a Moonwalker, or something from that era. There might be a tag on an inside wall, or maybe you can still make out what the side art says. I don't recognize the logo, but there seems to be something visible in the picture of the right hand side of the cabinet, at about eye level.

On my NBA Jam cabinet, The Midway logo is about at that height, but the marquee tilts slightly back instead of forward, so I don't think you have a Midway cab.

Let us know what you find out. It's always interesting to learn what's lurking under the paint and overlays. My cab has apparently been a Golden Tee for most of its life, but its old self can still be seen when the lights hit it just right, and the tags (and snipped Jamma wires) on the inside confirm that golf is just a second career.

--Nexusmtz

[DillonFoulds]

Well, I can tell you the original control box had official looking artwork (Printed, NBA Seal of Authenticity, etc.).

Here's a closeup of the sega sticker on the cab.


The one sticker on the left side rear that says Sega doesn't contain any serial numbers, etc.
And here's a shot of the other Sega sticker, with a serial number on it, as well as what i would assume would be the distributors it came from initially?


As for the lack of progress, I picked up a router that was on sale and 1-1/8" spade bit for my drill. So far I've only mounted a power button up on the back, and that's about it. I'll throw some pictures of that up tonight maybe.

I keep my first post updated, and I throw pictures in the post above, that way people won't be scrolling through tons of useless/outdated posts, unless of course they want to.

There's not much cosmetically i can do to the cabinet yet, unless i feel like having a BIG mess inside. If i get bored through the winter, I'll jump on that though.

Windows and MaLa is all set up, minus the console emulators, but i consider that to be a perk of the cabinet more than the appeal, so they're not high on my list at the moment.

[DillonFoulds]

*BUMP* I added some more pictures, cleaned up the journal a bit.

As always, let me know fi you guys want any shots of anything in the cab. Playing with my first dSLR, so i like to experiment with it a bit!

[Kevin Mullins]

Sega's NBA Slam Dunk maybe ?

[TonyDanza]

Friday, September 4th - Picked up the cab, dumped in kitchen. Upset girlfriend with giant arcade machine in the middle of the kitchen... no work tonight.

hahaha same thing happened to me... Women just dont understand how awesome arcade cabs are.

[DillonFoulds]

Sega's NBA Slam Dunk maybe ?

I'm starting to think maybe just the CP is from NBA Jam Tournament Edition. I can't find the exact style of cab, but i know by the official artwork the cp is for sure NBA Jam. There was no artwork left on the side, just a black laminate, covered with primer and airbrush.

hahaha same thing happened to me... Women just dont understand how awesome arcade cabs are.

It's gonna happen all over again in mid January, when I pick up a cocktail.

[Malenko]

that looks like a kit CPO, the latches on a NBA Jam cab are on the sides not towards the front. I'll snap pix of mine if I have a chance tonight

[DillonFoulds]

NBA Jam or NBA Jam Tournament Edition? I think the non-TE was 2-player, if that matters.

[Malenko]

NBA Jam or NBA Jam Tournament Edition? I think the non-TE was 2-player, if that matters.

nah, all NBA Jams were 4 player from the factory TE was just a rom update that updated teams n stuff.

no pix tonight, too busy. Im still following along, its got tons of potential!

[newtrix]

If your girlfriend is still around I nominate her for girlfriend of the year!!!

[bjordan314]

Spiderman
Guide Spider-Man, Black-Cat, Hawkeye and or Sub-Mariner as they punch and kick their way through four chapters worth of Dr. Dooms villains. This game is in very nice shape and has a rebuilt monitor....

Manufacture: Sega
Year: 1991 Price:

[DillonFoulds]

YES! That's it! Gotta be! Thanks bjordan314!

Kind of haven't had much updates for my cabinet.

Loaded up hyperspin and most of the roms and emulators for legacy consoles (Minus SNES, which everyone seems to want the most  ).

Still trying to get a plan together for the new 4p control box...

And I ended up picking up a cocktail on the weekend. This WILL be my last purchase until they're both done. After this, I'm gonna hold out till I can get a pinball machine.

[DillonFoulds]

Figured I'd give this a BUMP.

Snow is almost all melted in the yard, the brick patio is dry as a bone, but I don't want to paint on there, so I'm gonna have to keep waiting for the grass to dry up and the ground to finish thawing out... WON'T BE LONG NOW!!

i guess to pick up where I left off...

TO DO LIST:
- Cut some handles in the bottom. Not concerned about mice, and we don't have rats in Alberta. It's gonna make taking it upstairs a LOT easier!
- Sand and repaint the cab. I picked up some bondo so I can hopefully fill in some of the nicks and chunks missing.
- Sand and repaint the coin door. There's no rust or anything, it's in great shape, but there's some "technicolor" paint on it from the previous job.
- New control box. Going to pull out the GPWiz40-Eco in favour of an I-PAC4. There's just no enough inputs on the GPWiz for what I have in mind
- Replace the T-Molding. Gotta decide on a color. Probably going to go with red, as that's what is already there, and it looks fine.
- Center the monitor. It's a bit off so the bezel doesn't sit -just- right. There's a couple gaps.
- Remount the power strip.
- Artwork - Sides and marquee.
- Nitpick about more things to redo.

[DillonFoulds]

Haven't had much for updates to this project in a while, but with just cause!!! I picked up a cocktail cabinet to do some work on, and recently picked up my first pinball machine! (1978 Mata Hari - 50 pics)



Ordered all new buttons and joysticks, and a nice shiny new I-PAC4 from Divemaster!!

Looking forwards to picking up the last of the supplies this weekend, to redo my control panel!

Then after that, it's repainting the cabinet, maybe pick out some artwork, and re-do the t-molding, and then I dare say I'll be finished!

[DillonFoulds]

Finally had an afternoon to putz around with photoshop to draft up some control panel layouts


Over all, the board measures 14"x37". The black corners are where I'm cutting off corners.
The black outline inset in the board will be where the box that the board sits on (Basically, I have to work within that box!)
The layouts are straight from Slag-coin, I put rough measurements in for the joystick mounting plates, so i have a full idea of how much room I need to factor in (and are color co-ordinated, but i may swap red and blue?).
The Orange IPAC4 is where I'm proposing to mount the Ipac (duh!).
The purple "button" is actually where I'll be mounting a spinner. The purple rectangle is perfect measurement to the mounting plate of my spinner.
The start buttons run across the top, with a single button in the middle for "Exit" (Combo buttons were initally used, but I think an Exit button is just so much more efficient for noobs).

Thoughts or suggestions? I'm planning on printing up and doing a rough cut on some 5/8" scrap MDF, so don't worry about me getting the "feel" for the panel right away... I will!

[DillonFoulds]

UPDATE!! UPDATE!! UPDATE!! UPDATE!! UPDATE!!


A couple pics of the new control panel wiring!

That leaves me with:
- Cut control panel Plexiglass
- Repaint
- Artwork (still drawing a blank here... )
- T-molding

So it's functional and complete at this point. Now I really just need to beautify the whole thing.
I was gonna consider blowing up some pixelated artwork for the sides, but I don't think that's quite what I want. I can't seem to get just that right effect in photoshop.

I may play around a bit more, but try for a themed collage. Something like Mario jumping up to hit a coin block, and put a light blue collage like one of the levels maybe?

Like I said, still unsure about the artwork. I think I want to go with a theme centralized on mario, even if he's not 100% arcade (sorry in advance to any purists that read this).

[Rick]

OMG, somebody feed the dog!  (Cute!)

 

[DillonFoulds]

Funny you should mention that. He likes to poke his head into any picture he can....








Jack(ass) Russell Terrier

[WhereEaglesDare]

 

Nice Mata Hari Pinball Machine, is it in Full Working Order?

[Rick]

Nice Mata Hari Pinball Machine, is it in Full Working Order?

I was JUST about to comment... ...on the Logitech 550 remote control.  Same one I use for my Home Media PC, and I love it. 

I think I'll post some pics of the fireplace I just built with the 'hidden features' sooner or later.  (Sure, it's not a cab, but maybe it'll showcase some hidden talents I have.)  I was actually toying with the idea of building some controls into a new coffee table my Wife wants me to build, but I'm trying to get my kids OFF my Plasma screen, not on it.

 

(sorry if I derailed your thread somewhat.)

[DillonFoulds]

Sorry, my resto is over on KLOV, not here on BYOAC.
http://forums.arcade-museum.com/showthread.php?t=131112

But to summarize, I got SUPER lucky with the pin, it was not working when I picked it up due to corrosion on the MPU (pinball motherboard, basically).
- I needed to scrub up the MPU with vinegar and replace a capacitor and diode on the MPU.
- Replaced one bridge rectifier, four diodes and all the fuse clips on the power supply, as well as a burnt connector.
- I replaced all the bulbs (120) in the head and playfield (#44's replaced with #47's).
- Cleaned, Touched up, and waxed the playfield when I had it stripped for the bulbs.
- Replaced the plunger, ball, and rubbers.
- Stripped the legs down to bare metal and repainted with a hammered silver-grey finish.
- Replaced the old power cable with a proper IEC-320 C13/14 cable.
- Fixed up the score panels, no more flickering/missing segments.

So I put a fair amount of time into it. Still need to touch up the exterior a bit, but i'd say it's about 90% now. Needs paint, and gotta replace 4 parts (2 cracked lane guides, and 2 burnt pop bumper caps), but that's it.

As for the Harmony, FREAKING LOVE IT!