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Project show-off thread


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Hi all,

 

A lot of us have built cabinets for jukeboxes, Mame, restorations, etc... and whilst many of us post our own projects as we do them, they eventually sink to the bottom and dont provide a useful repository of examples to new members.

 

Lets use this thread to post a single reply each with screenshots and information (such as cost breakdowns/links to our inspirations/instruction websites/etc). Also mention if you're happy to take questions/PMs about 'how-did-you-do-that' etc

 

Any in-progress projects can be updated (edited) as the intention is to have a concise thread for newcomers and people starting new projects who want a bit of inspiration. Preferably we wouldnt give feedback/comments in this thread and leave it only for project summaries.

 

Mods/Admins: Not sure if there's a way to 'enforce' one post each on a particular thread? If you agree with the concept, how about pinning this?

 

--------------------------------

 

Edit: I guess I'll go first

 

Project Summary:

  • 2 Player Upright Arcade cabinet running MAME (Arcade Games), Gens (Sega MegaDrive/Genesis emulator), Project 64 (Nintendo 64 emulator), DOSbox (for running retro DOS PC games), Virtual Pinball (Pinball emulation) as well as Ultrastar (Karaoke, like Singstar on PS2) and Jukebox software (for playing MP3s)... all running on a single front end (Mala) controlled by the joysticks.

  • The whole unit comes on at once when turned on from mains (pc also has an illuminated green button on the control panel above the coin door for power override in case the PC crashes).

  • The cabinet is painted with black high-gloss enamel paint and bordered with red T-Moulding.

  • The display is a 21" flat screen (Trinitron) CRT Monitor (it had a black bezel - bonus), surrounded by a flat black 6mm ply bezel and covered by a piece of tinted hardened safety glass. (I definitely recommend tinted glass for the display)

  • Marquee was home made and mounted behind 4mm picture frame glass and backlit with a 15 watt fluorescent lamp.

  • The control panel has 6 colour-coded buttons for each player (2 rows of yellow, orange, red buttons), Player 1 & Player 2 start buttons, and side pinball flipper buttons, side tilt buttons, virtual front tilt button (L&R tilt together) and illuminated red 'launch' button.

  • Control panel can function as a stand-alone unit (completely enclosed and easily removable - it is held in place with hook & eye locks behind the control panel (accessible via keyboard drawer and/or coin door) and also has velcro tabs underneath).

  • Slide-out keyboard tray for system administration with mini-USB keyboard and top-mounted trackball. There is a USB cable coupled with the keyboard cable so its possible to plug in USB gadgets (eg phone chargers/mp3 players/console controllers, etc). The trackball can also be taken out to play Arcade games that use trackballs, like golf.

  • Two original 20c coin mechanisms (not yet shown on this site) for adding credits (and reclaiming back my kids pocket money)

  • 6" 3-way sony x-plod speakers hooked up to PC speaker subwoofer setupwith headphone bypass and auxiliary input (ipods/phones/etc)

  • Audio & TV Out which can be used to plug into home theatre (surround sound/TV out) for jukebox function etc

 

Project documentation/website:

http://www.got2getalife.com/

 

Construction photos:

http://www.got2getalife.com/arcade/webshots/s_cutout1.jpg http://www.got2getalife.com/arcade/webshots/s_prep_03.jpg http://www.got2getalife.com/arcade/webshots/s_building_11.jpg http://www.got2getalife.com/arcade/webshots/s_painting_01.jpg http://www.got2getalife.com/arcade/webshots/s_marquee_01.jpg http://www.got2getalife.com/arcade/myfirstcabinet.jpg http://www.got2getalife.com/arcade/webshots/complete01.jpg

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...people starting new projects who want a bit of inspiration.

 

That's very important - when I first started thinking about building a MAME cab, I got pretty excited, but after doing a bit of research on the net, I was daunted by the mass of sites showing projects from a heavy technical angle that seemed completely out of my capability .....and it put me off,

 

My enthusiasm died completely almost overnight and it was a whole year before I discovered this board, which I am very thankful for :) suddenly my inspiration was back! a local message board with local people who are only too pleased to help newbies with the learning curve.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I said only one post each but its being lost! :(

 

so.. *bump*

 

There's been a lot of new members joining recently and I know I'd have liked a single thread to gather inspiration and ideas... how about it people, post your project summaries here!

 

 

Black Tiger: Any chance you could edit your post and add a summary of your own project?

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  • 2 weeks later...

pphht... whats wrong with you lot... too busy in-fighting to put a quick summary about your project and your own hot tips to help the (seemingly frequent) new members joining the forum?

 

For shame.. don't go cryin when they ask the same old questions :D

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pphht... whats wrong with you lot... too busy in-fighting to put a quick summary about your project and your own hot tips to help the (seemingly frequent) new members joining the forum?

 

For shame.. don't go cryin when they ask the same old questions :D

 

Shame to leave a man hanging, so Ill put up my old burnt offering.

 

http://schmitt.pdcwa.com.au/

 

Ill add the specs when I get a chance & I need to get some better shots since this cab is fully finished. Im building 2 more cabs at the moment so Ill do a better job of posting those.

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This cocktail is scratch-built and self-designed. It has a rotating monitor, which is manually operated by turning a wheel near the base.

 

It lives outside my house on my back deck, normally under a waterproof car cover.

 

Control panels

One side has a standard "2 joystick/6 buttons-per" arrangement, plus a 2.25" trackball. The buttons are in a candy-cab style arc layout.

The other side has a single joystick, four buttons in an arc and a spinner.

There is a toggle switch that swaps "player 1" control from one side to the other. For cocktail flipping games, therefore, player 1 sits on the side with the single joystick.

 

Three admin buttons exist (duplicated on both sides) - a shift key (Keywiz "Shazzaamm" key), and two primarily dedicated to "pause" and "exit".

 

The machine gratefully accepts Australian 20c pieces via a single coin slot.

 

Software

The software in there is MAME 0.121, Visual Pinball 8.1/VPinMame 1.56 and MaLa 1.04. The OS is WinXP.

 

MaLa front end layout self-designed and bespoke.

 

Hardware

The computer is an Athlon 2500+, Nvidia FX5200 video, 1GB of RAM and a 120GB HDD.

The screen is a Mitsubishi 19" CRT PC monitor, partially decased.

Four 120mm fans running on 5V provide cooling. I have mounted two per short side, breathing in from the front, out from the rear.

Two 4" full-range car speakers provide sound, mounted facing the floor underneath the cab.

 

One face contains a volume control for the stereo speakers, two USB ports and two headphone ports.

 

Power is supplied via a single "kettle cord" that can be attached to / detached from the carcass. A single switch powers on everything and boots the PC. A second switch can kill power to the monitor, to allow for degaussing after rotation.

 

Dimensions

Top glass is 750mm x 1000mm. Overall footprint is about 1m square. Table top height is around 670mm from the floor.

 

Edit - 26 Jan 2008. Completed late December 07.

Progress threads:

Will continue to update this post periodically.

sea-trial-left.jpg.c28ff543b81b94bab40c392bb564cce3.jpg

sea-trial-right.jpg.123d1819b1d9ca794f0ddabb25798446.jpg

mala.thumb.jpg.a061341a6b5c0d1bfb0344f78da90219.jpg

Edited by shock_
add plans link
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  • 3 weeks later...

Adams Arcade Machine

 

Hey everyone !

 

I have just started constructing my cabinet this weekend.

Here is my blog on the project - MyBlog

 

I will be using my girlfriends computer to run it -

 

Intel Celeron 2.6GHz

760Mb ram

40 GB HDD

and i will be sourcing a 21" monitor from ebay sometime too.

 

It just gonna be a 2 player CP , but ill be using my old OZstick joystick until i make it.

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I havent really been to this site much in the past months since almost finishing my Cab. I guess when summer comes my arcade obsession goes on the backburner.

 

Ok here it goes,

 

I made a Lowboy from scratch, mainly cos i wanted it a size that wouldnt be the main focus of the room. Its located in the bar room, but hopefully oneday it will be in a dedicated entertainment room next to a home theatre.

 

Its made from MDF, painted, parts from 2 Aussie suppliers, 21 inch crt computer monitor squeezed in, inspired by all the beat ups in take away shops, plans and ideas taken from various aussie arcade and byoac posts.

 

If anyone has any questions PM me or email me at miikeboyle@hotmail.com and im happy to assist if i can.

 

My next move will be finish this in the next few weeks, got the marquee now, just need some perspex for the marquee cover, and some perspex/glass to cover the monitor. After that im thinking bout making a mini mame machine, or maybe pumping about 5 out in one go as there isnt much more effort to make 5 than 1. Or a cocktail machine. Id love a Pinny but they are quite expensive and couldnt find much info on making them from scratch.

 

So here are some pics...

 

http://images.fotopic.net/yxwfjz.jpg

http://images.fotopic.net/yxwfjv.jpg

 

You can view my build up thread here: http://www.aussiearcade.com/showthread.php?t=1643

 

Thanks

Mike

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  • 2 weeks later...

only just noticed this thread! nice lowboy miike (",)

 

this is my rotating monitor cocktail cab i made a bit over 3 years ago

 

http://dannygalaga.com/pictures/CLP00566.gif

 

 

lots of info here:

 

http://dannygalaga.com

 

construction pics and a short vid of the beast in action, a long winded story about my journey into mame (hey, its my site ill say what i want!), links to other aussie cocktail projects, a cost breakdown etc...

 

man i miss my machine. i really should get it freighted down to brissie...

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  • 2 months later...
  • 4 weeks later...

I already made a thread but didn't realize this was here so I'll post my second attempt at a upright. I made this with no plans. Just the bits I liked and stole from such places as Make your arcade controls page and Arcadeathome.

 

LINK

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  • 4 months later...

Hey Y'alll

 

I've "almost" finished my Mame cab and feel like showing it off so here goes:

 

its started as a Neo Geo 4 in 1 Upright 2 player cab, something went wrong and I couldnt fix it so I whipped out the internals and put in a PC.

At the moment its running Windows XP with mame snes and megadrive games, but I plan to go to ubuntu in the future after a little tweaking.

 

computer hardware:

AMD2100XP

512Mb Ram

40Gb Hard Disk

Radeon 9600

15" LCD screen

 

I wanted to be able to use the computer as an extra PC when home-lanning , so I made the screen on a hinge and it can flip up to vertical so you can put a small desk infront of the cab and use it as a normal PC & play games with a keyboard/mouse.

I'm just using a little hand held trackball for navigating menu's and choosing games

 

the joysticks are hacked USB joypads that work OK for the moment but sometime in the future I'll get some new sticks and add a few buttons to the control pad for street fighter and wire them up to a keywiz because for some reason Linux Mame dosent like 2 joypads.

 

anyway, here are the pics!

Image007.thumb.jpg.c80bd2b99d781bed399be95a2c32e1f7.jpg

Image004.thumb.jpg.1a859af6716f7260a781c333431e26e0.jpg

Image003.thumb.jpg.029091d0aa31d8504d6e8417ae047fa4.jpg

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Scratch built MAME cab.

 

Hi Guys,

 

I thought I'd show what I have almost finished, well it's 98% done.

 

It needs a bit more work (I need to resolve some mamewah artwork issues), and I have to get it complete ready for delivery on Sat to a mate for Christmas.

 

 

A big thanks to the Prof for printing my marquee ! :)

 

Another big thanks to Chris at OZstick for wiring up the cp ! :) (i'm lazy lol)

 

And thanks also to the guys (and gals) who have helped me sort out some software issues, but there is still one left . :cry

 

ps sorry about the photo I hope you dont put your neck out looking at it, but it wasn't able to be resized when up the right way, for whatever reason?

IMG_1268.thumb.jpg.4f5a2dbf46c72d2b1cbcb31c8a7361ca.jpg

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  • 9 months later...
  • 5 months later...
  • 2 months later...

Here are a couple pics of my MAME cocktail table (95% complete), As you can see I still need to complete the monitor surround and put the black edging around table top as well as one or two other minor things.

 

One of the things that I found very helpful when I was researching and constructing this project were photos of other peoples machines during construction. I used mainly two sites (one in the US and one in Oz) so to help any others who may consider building this type of cocktail table, I'll start a new thread showing the phases I went through building mine.

Cab-51-240706edit-.thumb.jpg.8d1066f4ff86e7fb3d9ec4055e98e890.jpg

Pacman3.thumb.jpg.dd43b1c94bb93535245a956af5264fea.jpg

Pacman4.thumb.jpg.90d4e35af59d8a593d778fa3766fbf38.jpg

Edited by ozhomer
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Hi guys

 

First off apologies for not getting over to this great forum more often. I intend to correct that from now on.

 

 

I'm nearing completion of my cab , and thought I would share some pics, excuse the paint job its still wet in places .

 

http://i151.photobucket.com/albums/s149/garynwendy/DSCF1187.jpg

 

http://i151.photobucket.com/albums/s149/garynwendy/DSCF1188.jpg

 

http://i151.photobucket.com/albums/s149/garynwendy/DSCF1189.jpg

 

http://i151.photobucket.com/albums/s149/garynwendy/DSCF1190.jpg

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  • 4 weeks later...

My cookie cutter cabinet (arcadecab.com). My first one so needed to work from a plan, also my first time using any of the tools involved.

 

All I changed was to mount the widescreen LCD with the VESA mounts; swapped the keyboard drawer for an "admin panel" (pushbutton credits, tab button, usb/ethernet ports etc); my own marquee with a bazillion snaps as background.

 

 

http://img223.imageshack.us/img223/716/p1030272n.th.jpg

http://img12.imageshack.us/img12/8855/p1030280d.th.jpg

http://img18.imageshack.us/img18/9096/p1030281e.th.jpg

http://img12.imageshack.us/img12/5536/p1030282d.th.jpg

http://img14.imageshack.us/img14/57/p1030283m.th.jpg

http://img199.imageshack.us/img199/8049/p1030262t.th.jpg

http://img223.imageshack.us/img223/7822/p1030266.th.jpg

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  • 1 month later...

My Lowboy

 

Hi All,

I have seen some great cabs on this site and decided to share mine. I was diving to work one cloudy morning and there was a local council cleanup on. Out of the corner of my eye I spotted a lowboy on the side of the road with a bunch of other rubbish. I had to drive past it, and it was bugging me when I got to work. I told the boss that I passed it and luckily enough was interested too, so he sent me off to get it with the work van.

 

When I got there, it wasn't where it was before, someone tried to hide it behind another bunch of rubbish but i saw it and claimed it. Had a good chat with an old fella that came out of the house, he had a milk bar years ago and had it in there, it stopped working and the boards were taken out (was pit fighter)

 

Anyway, I was so suprised that it was a complete unit, with glass, monitor surround, joysticks, the lot! I cleaned it up and stripped the monitor and wiring. (still have that stuff if it is of use to anybody, I threw the tube because had bad burn in)

 

I have set it up with MAME, Bought a brand new 20" Multisync VGA Arcade monitor (probably over the top $450 worth) from highway.net and it runs real nice. Put in a nice 3 in 1 button for esc, enter and credit. I have the Hyperspin frontend and have about 500 odd themes on it.

 

My plan is to upgrade the control panel to a six button format, have already ordered a blank panel from another AA member and will be looking for more of the same buttons to match.

 

Hope you enjoyed my story!

 

http://photos-c.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc1/hs028.snc1/4288_100179494675_641814675_2650018_2034779_n.jpg

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