The Kinko's Cocktail. A modified midway cocktail.

[Crowquill]

I've wanted for some time to build a cocktail table to be able to run vertical games. Cost has been the biggest deterrent. The other day at the FedEx Kinko's I work at, a counter was being busted up and thrown away. It was made of 3/4" laminated particle board. A light bulb went off and I salvaged most of the panels from it. While granite wasn't my first choice for a laminate, the price is definitely right. I'm picking up a saw blade (to cut the laminate) tomorrow and start working on it next week, so I wanted to run my plans by you guys. I've joked that due to the granite it'll be a "monument to gaming."

It's obviously based on a Midway Pac-Man/Galaxian cocktail. I've made the base taller so that it will be able to house a pull-out drawer to hold the computer hardware. That way the only thing I'll have to "raise the hood" for is installing/adjusting the monitor and maybe working on some wiring. While it needs to be accessible, I'm not even sure I need to hinge it. I'm thinking the table top will be 3/4" plywood with a 1/4" glass top. That way, once I install the T-molding, I hopefully won't need any clips.

I'll be using a MAG 19" computer monitor that I have in storage. The CPU for now will be a 667mHz Celeron system. Hardly ideal, but it'll play the classics OK until I upgrade my upright MAME cab and then I can bump the 1.4GHz Celeron over.

As I said the main body will be granite-looking laminate. I'm currently planning on making most everything else black (t-molding, wood for the base, table top, probably even CP Overlays).

The CP will be the full width of the cocktail minus the wooden supports (so approximately 16.5" wide). I'll probably be using some Wico 8-way ball-tops or T-stick Plus(es) and picking up another 2-1/4" trackball since I already have 1 Wico trackball that's in workable condition. Basically from right-to-left there will be the Joystick, 3 buttons, and the trackball. I'm thinking mini switches for the start buttons. I'll be using my bending brake to make the CPs out of sheet metal. I may even just make the sides a bit wider so that I can use the 12" x 18" sheet steel without having to worry about cutting it.

If you haven't figured it out, I'm trying to figure out ways to cut costs as much as I can.

[Crowquill]

Somehow I posted this in Main. Can one of the mods bump it over to Project Announcements to make up for my idiocy?

Thanks, Peale.

I've added a pic of the counter. Exciting I know.

[knave]

Interesting Project.  Are you using any sort of plans or are you just winging it?

[leapinlew]

I've made the base taller so that it will be able to house a pull-out drawer to hold the computer hardware.

I assume the drawer will be at the bottom of the cabinet?

If you haven't figured it out, I'm trying to figure out ways to cut costs as much as I can.

Nothing wrong with keeping costs down. The thing is - the actual material is one of the cheaper things with this project. You can apply some sort of wood grain laminate to it easily enough to achieve the look of the original cocktails.

Looks interesting - good luck.

[Crowquill]

I've made the base taller so that it will be able to house a pull-out drawer to hold the computer hardware.

I assume the drawer will be at the bottom of the cabinet?

Yep. It's in the top part of the base. I'd originally planned on having the whole side slide out, but I'm not sure if that will be structurally sound. The "step" is partially for aesthetics as each side of the base will be one large panel with smaller boards just fastened to the top to build it out. The exception to this is the front, where the "step" out is the front of the drawer. I'm going to router out a lip under the edge of this one to serve as a handle. The drawer will be secured by a cam lock.

See the pic below for basic constuction. Blue is the drawer frame. Black is the main base, darker grey is the outer top "step". The measurements of the computer components are accurate. It's a tight fit, but should work OK.

Interesting Project.  Are you using any sort of plans or are you just winging it?

I've used Kyle Lindstrom's Pac-man plans as a basic guideline, but since the construction of a cocktail is fairly simple, I'm mostly winging it. The Illustrator drawing that I posted I actually put together over a year ago. The original reason for making the base taller was that the sides are now short enough to use the width of the 24" wide melamine that they sell at Lowe's. With the reduced dimensions of the side panels, one roll of 24" x 96" would be enough to cover it (barely). After planning this part of it, I realized that the electronics would have to go in the base and that I could make them more easily accessible.

If you haven't figured it out, I'm trying to figure out ways to cut costs as much as I can.

Nothing wrong with keeping costs down. The thing is - the actual material is one of the cheaper things with this project. You can apply some sort of wood grain laminate to it easily enough to achieve the look of the original cocktails.

Looks interesting - good luck.

The cost isn't the biggest factor in the world, but it's probably the biggest excuse I've been using for putting off building  a cocktail. It also doesn't help that I needed to buy a circular saw to work on this project. Even though I'm buying a cheap-o saw, the cost of that plus the materials was a bit more intimidating. Another big factor is that I'm pretty much broke at the moment.

The idea of the granite laminate has definitely grown on me. It'll be unique and I think it'll look nice with the black accents and T-molding. I think putting it against black will also make the blue-ish cast more apparent. I can always cover it up if I don't like it.

[javeryh]

since the construction of a cocktail is fairly simple, I'm mostly winging it.

Really?  I've built a cocktail and an upright so far and the cocktail was about a billion times more complicated, IMO.   The control panels are weird, you have to plan to squeeze everything inside (and deal with heat issues), you have an oddly shaped top, two pieces of glass on top (with glass clips that aren't as easy to install as they look), the hinged panel that has to close just right, etc.  I don't know... maybe it's because the cocktail was my first but it just seemed way harder.  Just my $0.02.

I like your resourcefulness - keep us posted!   

[Crowquill]

since the construction of a cocktail is fairly simple, I'm mostly winging it.

Really?  I've built a cocktail and an upright so far and the cocktail was about a billion times more complicated, IMO.   The control panels are weird, you have to plan to squeeze everything inside (and deal with heat issues), you have an oddly shaped top, two pieces of glass on top (with glass clips that aren't as easy to install as they look), the hinged panel that has to close just right, etc.  I don't know... maybe it's because the cocktail was my first but it just seemed way harder.  Just my $0.02.

I like your resourcefulness - keep us posted!  

The main reason I think it's easier is that most everything is straight cuts. I have limited woodworking experience, so doing an upright with lots of angles seems more intimidating. I can't imagine I'd ever scratch-build an upright though, as uprights are readily available and pretty cheap. I checked around and can't find any reasonably-priced cocktails for sale.

I figure the control panels are going to work out very similar to the stand-alone metal control panel I made a couple years ago. I never finished updating the Project announcement, but here's a link with a few pics:

http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=32328.0

While I may just be blindly optimistic, with the changes I've made to the Midway design, the glass clips and hinge are completely eliminated. cutting the funky-shaped top is probably going to be the biggest hurdle.

I am a bit concerned about heat, but I plan on having at least one fan mounted in there. I'm not sure if my biggest concern should be heat from the motherboard or heat from the monitor (or maybe heat from the motherboard ON the monitor).

[Crowquill]

I'm currently trying to work out my CP layout. As mentioned in a post in the main forum, I'm going to try bending 1/4" plexiglas to make the control panel. I think it'll be strong enough and if I paint it from the back I'm thinking I can achieve the look similar to what apple did with their older G4 desktops and iBooks.

My upright was based on the capcom drilling template. This one is based on the drilling template/measurements provided with Altered Beast and most of the other Sega system-16 games. Since most games are going to use 2 or less buttons, having the third out of the way might be nice.

Player 1's CP will have a 2-1/4" trackball and Player 2's will have a spinner. Since I'm mainly going to use the trackball for Centipede and other classic vertical games, I don't think I'll have too big of a problem with smacking my hand into the back.

The panels will be 16-1/2" long. Adding in the sides of the control panels will make it the 18" width of the cabinet sides.

The circles actually represent the button HOLES, so the final buttons will be a bit closer together. The top-left red circles are the start buttons. I'm really undecided about their placement. The top-left seems the most out-of-the-way place for them.

[leapinlew]

Looking good! Although, I was hoping to see some build progress.

Anyhow, about your start buttons. They would work fine on the left, but you could shift everything over to the left a little bit and put them on top of each other by the trackball. (just as an option - I'm not sure it would make a difference).

[leapinlew]

Here is a quick edit - not sure it's any better. but, I think it would look better with real P1 and P2 buttons.

I don't know where the CP supports are - this config may not even be possible if the trackball is next to the arms on the cocktail.

Also - I see you got a red ball top on here. What kind of controls do you plan on using?

[javeryh]

I'm not sure how much room you have on your CP but I've found that this layout works best for including 3 action buttons (ignoring the admin buttons):



My CP is 18.5" wide and 5-3/4" tall if I remember correctly.

I went through NUMEROUS revisions and mock-ups before settling on this design [this was the 6th(!) version].  I also like leapinlew's recommendation to put the admin buttons off to the side - also if you can, separate the "exit" button from the rest so no one hits it in the middle of a game when trying to pause or something and wipes out a high score on Mr. Do! or something!!

[Crowquill]

The last couple weeks at work have been really busy. I work 3 12-hour third shifts on the weekends (temporarily), so I don't plan on getting anything done then. But I've also been asked to work 1 day during the week the last two weeks. I haven't felt that I was lucid enough to safely use power tools.

I went through NUMEROUS revisions and mock-ups before settling on this design [this was the 6th(!) version].  I also like leapinlew's recommendation to put the admin buttons off to the side - also if you can, separate the "exit" button from the rest so no one hits it in the middle of a game when trying to pause or something and wipes out a high score on Mr. Do! or something!!

Admin buttons? We don't need no stinkin' admin buttons! 

My upright panel doesn't have any. I'm thinking about "cheating" on this one and adding a pause button hidden away on the underside of the CP.

I agree that that layout is the best for a standard 1-joystick, 3-button setup. The one thing that really throws things off is that with the trackball/spinner on the right, the buttons have to be usable with both left and right hands. I tried the 3-in-a-row layout and it mainly just looked boring. Many games don't use/rarely use the third button anyway. I definitely prefer to use my right hand for a trackball, so that nixed the idea of laying it out as Trackball--Joy--buttons.

The supports under the CP are the reason that the start buttons aren't on the far right like a real Midway cab. I'm thinking the top-left might be good since pressing both will probably exit back to the front-end. The odds of slipping off the joystick and hitting both are pretty minimal. I've also toyed with the idea of splitting them up to the top-left and top-right to minimize accidents, but I don't think that'll be very visually appealing.

The joystick choice is still a bit up in the air. It's a pet-peeve of mine that people say they're going to build a cabinet to accurately play Ms Pac-Man and then essentially build a Street Fighter II control panel to do it with.

Since I'll mainly be playing classics I don't want clicketty joysticks. Sure, they're responsive, but they're not accurate to play Galaga with and they're also really loud on a metal CP in my house.  I LOVE the beat-up Wico 8-way leaf sticks that are on my upright. BUT...I would like to have a 4 to 8-way switchable stick. I'm really kicking myself that about a year ago I passed up a pair of Arch Rivals 49-ways for $15. That would have been a good option. I don't think I can justify the cost of a P360. It WILL have a ball-top whether it comes with it or is an after-market add-on.

Odds are it'll probably get something generic until I get the money together to buy what I really want. I have a pair of beat-up ultimates laying around that may serve this purpose. Despite my ideals, I want this thing to be playable within the next month too. I'll just have to be careful of finding a stick with the same mounting holes.

Did I mention my Control panels are probably going to be made entirely out of bent plexiglas? That's today's project. I'll post pics.